MOBILE, Ala. (RNS) Through the years of sexually abusing and controlling his stepdaughter, Anthony Hopkins warned her not to tell anyone about her mother’s dead body, entombed in a freezer, or she would be “cursed by God,” the young woman testified Tuesday (April 6).
Hopkins, a 39-year-old traveling evangelist and self-proclaimed prophet, is accused of murdering his wife, Arletha Hopkins, in 2004 and storing her body in a freezer at their house in Mobile.
Prosecutors said Anthony Hopkins killed his wife after she discovered he had been sexually abusing her daughter — abuse that started when the girl was 11 years old.
The stepdaughter, who is now 21, went to police in 2008. Religion News Service does not generally identify alleged victims of sexual assault.
Hopkins has been charged with murder, second-degree rape, second-degree sodomy, second-degree sex abuse and incest.
The stepdaughter wept Tuesday as she told jurors about the night her mother died, Dec. 4, 2004.
She also testified that Hopkins would punish the children — there were eight in the Hopkins household — by making them hold their arms up or lie in a push-up position for hours.
She said he told Bible stories to justify having sex with her, adding “he was a man of God, so you just trust everything he said.”
Because of the abuse by Hopkins, his stepdaughter had one abortion and a miscarriage, prosecutors said.
Defense attorney Sid Harrell told jurors they must start with a “clean slate” in considering the law and the evidence presented in the trial. He said Hopkins was awarded medals for his U.S. Army service in Kazakhstan and later worked as a nurse’s aide, licensed in Alabama and Louisiana.
“Trying to raise eight children … this man is doing what he can,” Harrell said.
Hopkins has not been charged with anything that happened after his wife’s death, Harrell said, and prosecutors “cannot prove the cause of death.”
Prosecutors said her death has been ruled a homicide, but the body was too decomposed to determine exactly how she died.
The trial is expected to continue in Mobile County Circuit Judge John Lockett’s courtroom.
