MOUNT HOLLY TWP. — Laciana Tinsley, 42, sat in shackles holding back tears in a courtroom as she listened to her son and three friends describe her as a gentle, pious woman who didn’t have it in her to hurt anyone.
That description failed to match up with the murder charge she is facing, Burlington County Superior Court Judge Thomas P. Kelly acknowledged in her detention hearing Tuesday.
Tinsley has been charged with beating her husband to death by repeatedly hitting him in the head with a fire extinguisher at their Willingboro home Jan. 30.
Her attorney, Public Defender Karen Thek, told the judge it was self-defense because Douglas Tinsley attempting to suffocate her. She asked the judge to set bail and allow Tinsley to remain out on house arrest, but he sided with Assistant Prosecutor Danny Ljungberg and ordered her held pending trial.
Outside the courtroom, Karel Rue, 25, of Trenton, said his mother had been physically abused by “Mr. Doug” and had fled the house with his younger sister more than once to stay in a women’s shelter.
“They were in the system for months,” he said of the help domestic violence social workers tried to provide for his mother. Last March, he said, they helped his mother and sister get an apartment where they stayed until sometime after his sister left for college in the fall.
“I guess she went back to try to work it out and clearly that was not a good idea,” he said.
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Rue has not lived with his mother since he was 15 and his knowledge of the alleged violence comes from his sister, he said.
Theresa Caver, a friend from Trenton who described Tinsley as a “spiritual sister” to her, said her friend was a devout Christian who loved her family and was against all sin.
“She didn’t like when things were not right with her husband,” she said of Tinsley, and believed that God could restore their relationship.
Douglas Tinsley’s family was also at court Tuesday and declined to talk to a reporter at that time.
Ljungberg said in court that none of Tinsley’s supporters knew what had transpired at her home Jan. 30, and Tinsley told police at the home that she had beaten her husband to death with the extinguisher. Because she faces a possible sentence of life in prison, she should be considered a flight risk, he argued.
Thek conversely argued that Tinsley’s immediate cooperation with police — refusing her right to remain silent or have an attorney — was because she wanted police to have all the facts and to look into the evidence of her husband’s alleged violence.
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“What’s in the probable cause statement is she was being smothered and she picked up the first thing that was available to defend herself,” Thek said.
Tinsley has no criminal history.
Kelly said that the self-defense claim was a matter for trial and not relevant to the issue of detention. And whether there was a history of domestic violence, he said, the act of striking Douglas Tinsley repeatedly in the head with the fire extinguisher was “probably done in some great anger.”
That anger “flies in the face of” the descriptions her friends and son gave, he said.
Also testifying in support of Tinsley was Caver’s daughter, Kamei Caver, of Trenton, and Libby Vallari, who said she knew her through church.
According to a 2016 Trenton Monitor article, Vallari was Tinsely’s sponsor when the latter converted from being a Jehovah’s Witness and began attending St. Katharine Drexel Parish in Burlington Township.
“She’s a gentle person,” Vallari said. “What happened was tragic but I don’t believe that she provoked it.”
Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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