Reputed gangster sentenced in Livingston murder
Tuesday, September 6, 2022, the 21st Judicial Court issued a news release regarding the 2019 murder of Livingston Parish resident Jessica Clark. However, the brief does not recount the convicted murderer’s extensive arrest record. Anthony Terrell removed his ankle monitor nine days before killing his wife without arousing police suspicion.
In the report from the District Attorney’s office, Marcie Danna wrote:
“A Livingston jury returned a verdict of guilty of First-Degree Murder on Thursday in the trial of 39-year-old Terrell Anthony. Anthony was accused of shooting his estranged wife multiple times at her home in the 9000 block of Rue De Fleur in Watson on October 7, 2019. The jury deliberated less than thirty minutes before finding Anthony guilty as charged.
“During the trial, Assistant District Attorney Zach Daniels presented testimony that Anthony had come to the home and waited for the victim to return from an out-of-town trip, then shot the victim in front of her 12-year-old child.
The child testified emotionally to the jury that he witnessed the murder of his mother and then ran to a neighbor’s house and called 911. Anthony was later apprehended in Denham Springs and charged with First Degree Murder and Felon in Possession of a Firearm.
“Judge Erika Sledge presided over the trial and ordered that police hold Anthony until his sentencing date, which the judge set for September 22.
“First Degree Murder carries a mandatory life sentence without the benefit of parole.”
Ten years earlier, police charged then 29-year-old Terrell Anthony with kidnapping, beating, torturing, and shooting a man. In another incident, investigators charged him with shooting a second victim in the legs and face and shooting at another person in a third incident.
Police arrested him at 2388 Carolina Street in Baton Rouge on October 23 of that year. They booked him with five counts of attempted first-degree murder, two counts of attempted second-degree murder, and two counts of assault by drive-by shooting, Baton Rouge police Corporal L’Jean McKneely told reporters.
According to police affidavits of probable cause, the victim accused Anthony and others of picking him up on September 15 and taking him to a house in south Baton Rouge.
At the residence, five to six masked men with guns taped the victim’s legs and hands together, the affidavits said. They also put tape over his eyes and a towel in his mouth and beat the man for more than 24 hours, the affidavits said.
Anthony and the other men then drove the victim to the 2700 block of Apperson Street in Baton Rouge and tossed him into a ditch. The documents said they also hit him in the head and shot him in both arms.
The victim told authorities he survived by pretending to be dead.
In a second incident, five people accused Terrell Anthony of shooting at them as they stood in front of a home on Jean Street on September 16, 2012, McKneely said. Anthony shot one of the five people in the jaw and legs during the drive-by shooting, McKneely said.
In a third incident that year, according to another victim, driving east on Winbourne Avenue on October 19, 2012, Anthony pointed a black handgun from inside his black Chrysler into the victim’s car and fired two shots.
McKneely said the victim in the third incident was a friend of Anthony’s and that the shooting occurred following an argument.
Five years later, Thursday night, September 8, 2017, two hours after a man spoke to police about a double murder earlier in the year, someone shot the man, and police charged Anthony with the homicide, booking Anthony for second-degree murder.
Police said Anthony was upset that the victim, David Walker, denied knowing anything about the double murder, a police report said. One of those killed in the double murder was Terrell Anthony’s brother, Harold. Donovan Cummings was the other victim, according to the report.
Investigators heard rumors Walker witnessed the shootings, but he denied it.
In their investigation, police learned that on September 8, Walker received a call from someone telling him to go to the 3600 block of Seneca Street.
Someone shot and killed Walker on Seneca Street that night, and police detectives traced the call back to Terrell Anthony.
Arrest documents added that two months earlier, in July 2017, Terrell Anthony had been involved in a shooting in Baton Rouge when he was wounded in the foot and returned fire at the shooter. The Louisiana State Police Crime Lab confirmed the gun used in that shooting was also the gun that killed Walker.
According to the investigators’ statements in 2020, Baton Rouge Police believe the 2017 murders were ordered by the head of what they call an “extremely violent group of large scale, illegal narcotics traffickers.”
At the time of Jessica Clark’s murder, Anthony was free on $300,000 bail for the 2017 homicide. In court documents, Zach Daniels, the assistant district attorney prosecuting the case, described how surveillance video showed Anthony prowling around the victim’s home before the shooting.
Jessica Clark’s 12-year-old and her toddler and nanny were inside the home during the shooting, all held against their will, waiting with the gunman for Jessica to return from Las Vegas.
In addition to a long, violent criminal history, Terrell Anthony, a reputed cocaine user, had a history of domestic violence. In 2016, Jessica Clark reported Anthony strangling her, throwing her to the ground, and trampling her.
According to the arrest report, Jessica told police she feared her husband might “one day go too far.”