Posted on 12/11/2007 9:50:47 PM PST by SmithL
In affidavits filed in Knox County Fourth Circuit Court, Eric McLean and his divorce attorney, Steve Sharp, allege former West High School student teacher Erin McLean is embarked on a rootless existence with a 19-year-old paramour.
"(Erin McLean) has been to California and then to Austin, Texas, staying in cheap motels and then moving when she is unable to pay the bills," Sharp wrote.
Attorney Bruce Poston, who is defending Eric McLean on charges that he killed Sean Powell, his wife's teenage student and lover, in March, said Tuesday Erin McLean has since surfaced in Boulder, Colo.
Sharp has been trying to serve Erin McLean with divorce papers since September to no avail in an effort to gain custody of the couple's sons, ages 11 and 8.
It was then that Erin McLean fled her mother's Nashville home with the boys after news surfaced that she had lied to get a job as a teacher at a private Christian school and allegedly tried to seduce a 17-year-old student.
She told a relative that she was headed to California to meet someone she met over the Internet. Since then, Sharp alleged, she has been in the company of an unidentified 19-year-old. The McLeans' sons have not been enrolled in school, documents alleged.
"(She) does not stay in one place long enough to be served with divorce papers," Sharp wrote. "There have been reports that (she) has been in and out of Tennessee."
Meanwhile, Eric McLean has been working in Knoxville as a farm laborer, earning $200 each week.
Poston today will try to convince Knox County Criminal Court Judge Mary Beth Leibowitz to overturn a decision earlier this year by the late Judge Ray Lee Jenkins stripping McLean of a taxpayer-funded defense.
In a motion, Poston argues that McLean overstated the value of the Coker Avenue home he shared with his wife and children at the time of the fatal shooting. McLean listed the home's value at $65,000, with a mortgage of $35,000 owed. Poston wrote that an appraisal has since pegged the home's value at $35,000, so Eric McLean has no equity from which to tap to fund his defense.
It was the value of the home, outside which Powell was fatally shot, that Assistant District Attorney General Bill Crabtree relied on in convincing Jenkins to deem Eric McLean too wealthy to qualify for court-appointed counsel.
Eric McLean was an aspiring music teacher when he learned his wife, then a student teacher at West, had embarked on a sexual relationship with Powell, who attended her class at West.
Powell was fatally shot, allegedly by Eric McLean with a high-powered rifle borrowed from a friend after months spent trying to woo his wife back, even allowing Powell to accompany the couple on outings.
Poston has contended Eric McLean acted in the heat of passion during a seven-minute period between the time he reported Powell to authorities as an intruder and the shooting.
A Knox County grand jury later rejected a first-degree murder charge in the case.
What does a $35,000 home look like? That’s the price of an average pick-up truck. (Not being snide, just amazed that there are homes still in that price range.)
What a sorry mess for those two poor kids.
He should have shot that skank instead of the boy.
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