A former Mississippi police officer, who was charged with fatally shooting his Black mistress after she reportedly ended their affair and threatened to tell his wife about it, has agreed to take a plea deal in connection with the killing.
According to The Oxford Eagle, Matthew Kinne had initially pleaded not guilty after he was arrested and charged with the 2019 murder of Dominique Clayton at her residence. However, attorneys for Clayton’s family as well as Lafayette County Circuit Clerk Jeff Busby told the news outlet Kinne eventually agreed to a deal, and he was set to plead guilty to Clayton’s murder this week. Per the terms of the plea deal, the accused will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Clayton, a mother of four, was fatally shot in the head while she was sleeping at her home on May 19, 2019. The deceased mother’s children were not at home when the incident occurred as they were sleeping over at their uncle’s residence, FOX13 reported.
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Her body was, however, discovered by her eight-year-old son upon their return the day after her death. Clayton’s son had gone inside the home to try and bring her out for a prank while the rest of the family waited outside. But he returned alone to inform them she was dead.
“It broke us because my sister was the life of the party, she made us laugh,” Clayton’s sister, Shyjuan, said after her death in 2019. “My sister was crazy and silly. It won’t be the same without her.”
Shyjuan also told the news outlet her sister and Kinne were having an affair. “She was having an affair with Matt, the police officer with OPD [Oxford Police Department],” she said. “(He was) real possessive and stalking her… kept sneaking in her house I guess he did this so he wouldn’t have to tell the wife.”
“He bought my sister a car and kept it in his name,” Shyjuan added. “He was about to get her a house. He just basically didn’t want his wife to find out.”
Kinne was arrested the day after Clayton’s murder and he was terminated from the Oxford police force three days later. In an interview with WRAL, Kinne’s lawyer, Tony Farese, said his client “broke” after Clayton threatened to inform his wife about their affair, PEOPLE reported.
“He’s remorseful,” Farese said. “This was a situation where he literally got to the point where he broke. This has been a law-abiding citizen, a law enforcement officer, he had no prior history and he literally got pushed to the brink of breaking and he committed a crime of passion.”
Kinne is set to be sentenced on Friday.
