A Cookeville woman was stabbed to death in her bed on Tuesday, and her teenaged daughter is being held in connection with the murder.
The body of Teresa Parramoure, 38, was not found until Wednesday after her 16-year-old daughter had sought treatment for a stab wound that investigators now believe she sustained in the attack on her mother.
Putnam Sheriff Jerry Abston declined to release the name of the daughter, but other sources identified her as Tiffany Taylor, a student at Cookeville High School.
Sheriff Abston said the daughter is being held in the Putnam Juvenile Detention Center and while she has not been formally charged in the case, she is "being held because she is implicated in the homicide."
He also said that the girl allegedly confessed to stabbing her mother to death early Tuesday morning. The two had been arguing in the days before that over "friends and companions" [sic] of the girl, the sheriff said.
The girl and her mother lived in a trailer park on Fisk Road.
Sheriff Abston gave this account of the case:
"The body was not found until about 5 p.m. on Wednesday, but we now know the killing took place around 6 a.m. Tuesday. Ms. Parramoure's body was found by her ex-husband, Ronnie Taylor, who lives in Jackson County.
"We first learned about this case when the girl showed up at Cookeville General Hospital about 11:30 a.m. Tuesday for treatment of a cut on her thigh. She told the doctors at the emergency room that she had fallen on a knife.
"The hospital notified the Sheriff's Department, and Detective David Andrews and Deputy Rick Smith went to investigate and interviewed the girl. She told the investigators that she had been kidnapped by a Jackson County man who had been stalking her.
"She said she'd gone to school at Cookeville High that morning and he showed up and kidnapped her and drover her up to Jackson County and tried to sexually assault her. She said he had a knife.
"She said she fought him off and he then brought her back to Cookeville and let her out of the car. We began investigating all that and also began trying to contact her mother, but we couldn't reach her mother and finally contacted her father, Ronnie Taylor.
"Her father came to the hospital and took custody of her and took her home with him. Then on Wednesday, he decided the girl needed to go to her mother's home and get some clothes, and they both went to the trailer on Fisk Road.
"The father went into the trailer and saw a lot of blood. He walked back to the bedroom and saw the body on the bed, backed out and called us. The daughter was with him, but didn't go into the bedroom.
"I went to the scene, along with Deputy Bryan Whitefield, Detective Donald Pierce, and Detective David Andrews. We found a lot of blood and a good deal of physical evidence and we called the TBI forensic unit out of Nashville."
The sheriff said Teresa Parramoure was found lying face down in her bed and said a large kitchen carving knife was found on the side of the bed. She had been stabbed multiple times, and investigators believe the attack began while she slept.
After the body was found, investigators questioned the girl again, and allegedly she confessed to the killing, the sheriff said.
"She said she had had disagreements and arguments with her mother over some of the friends and companions the girl had," Sheriff Abston said.
The girl is an 11th grader at Cookeville High and is reported to be "a good student," the sheriff said.
The mother, Teresa Parramoure, worked at the Discount House store and was a member of Trinity Assembly Church and also worked regularly in the Jail Ministry, a volunteer effort by various churches to minister to the spiritual needs of Putnam jail inmates, the sheriff said.
The body of Teresa Parramoure was sent to Nashville for an autopsy, and complete results of that were not available today, the sheriff said.
He also said the case is still under investigation.
District Attorney Bill Gibson said his staff is also involved in the investigation "in its legal aspects."
"Crimes like this take an emotional toll on the whole community," Gibson said. "It's so hard to understand why things like this have to happen."