Rhonda Clark (Photo courtesy of Baxter County Sheriff’s Office)
A Mountain Home woman sentenced to 17 years in prison for killing her live-in boyfriend in 2010 appeared in Baxter County Circuit Court April 21 and pled no contest to new drug-related charges filed against her.
The charges included possession of a controlled substance and paraphernalia used to ingest drugs. Fifty-two-year-old Rhonda Jean Clark was sentenced to six-years-probation.
As Circuit Judge John Putman was going through a litany of facts related to the incident prior to handing down her sentence, Clark was hesitant when the judge asked her if the information was correct.
She appeared ready to argue about whether she actually had possession of the drugs and paraphernalia. Clark paused at one point and then said the judge could continue. Judge Putman asked her if she was guilty and she said, “Well, I guess, I was there.” She meant in the small camper trailer where the drugs were found. The judge said he would not proceed with the sentencing because, “I don’t want you to plead guilty to something you aren’t guilty of.”
After Clark conferred with her attorney, she agreed to make a no-contest plea.
Court documents show that since being released from prison, Clark has been arrested twice on drug-related charges.
DRUG ARRESTS
Clark was picked up Aug. 4, 2023, and again on March 27, 2024, and charged with drug offenses.
The March 2024 charges were the ones Clark pled to during last week’s circuit court session.
Clark was arrested when officers went to a camper trailer parked on property along Oriole Lane. They were looking for the male resident of the small trailer, 60-year-old Larry Bell, and found Clark living there as well.
Both Clark and Bell were on parole at the time, and Clark had also been put on 48-months-probation in the 2023 drug case.
According to the probable cause affidavit, officers found a substance field-testing positive for methamphetamine.
Clark was arrested in early August 2023 when a Mountain Home policeman spotted a tan Chevrolet Impala in a church parking lot along East Arkansas Avenue.
The officer reported seeing what he thought was an unconscious female slumped over the steering wheel. He knocked on the car window multiple times but was unable to wake the woman.
He then opened the door, tapped the woman on the shoulder and brought her around. The officer said she appeared to be under the influence of an unknown substance.
The officer checked on the woman and found she was on parole with a search waiver on file. He reported finding a plastic bag containing a substance field-testing positive for methamphetamine.
She was also checked to determine if she had been drinking since there were beer cans in the back seat of the car. The test was negative.
On Dec. 15 last year, Clark pled guilty to possessing methamphetamine and was put on probation for four years.
PAROLE BOARD DID NOT ISSUE WARRANT
In the case filed in August 2023, she had also been charged with violating parole which could have returned her to prison.
The local probation/parole office sent a violation report to the State Parole Board, but it was decided at the state level not to issue an arrest warrant for the violation at that time.
Officials in Little Rock said that while no arrest warrant was issued, the parole board did set strict conditions for Clark to remain free. A curfew was ordered and she was required to wear a GPS tracking unit.
THE MURDER
Clark.s most serious case ended when she was sentenced to prison after a Baxter County Circuit Court jury found her guilty of second-degree murder in late December 2012.
The state had originally charged her with the more serious crime of first-degree murder, but the jury exercised its option to select the lesser-included offense.
Clark was accused of shooting and killing then 43-year-old Antonio Sanchez III on Thanksgiving eve in 2010 in the home the couple shared on Old Tracy Ferry Road.
An autopsy was performed on Sanchez’s body and he was found to have been shot twice, including once in the head which was determined to have caused his death.
What was first believed to be a bullet wound in Sanchez’s back proved to be a “stab-type” puncture wound to a depth of almost six inches. The State Medical Examiner reported an instrument other than a knife likely inflicted the wound and that it might have been a screwdriver.
According to testimony during the trial, Clark had gone to a restaurant on Highway 62/412 East on Thanksgiving Day and told a co-worker Sanchez had committed suicide.
During the trial, an investigator who worked the case dismissed Clark’s suicide story. He testified, “You don’t shoot yourself twice in the back with a rifle and then stab yourself.”
The defense painted Sanchez as being abusive to Clark to the point law enforcement had to be called.
Clark had been interviewed by a Baxter County deputy sheriff a few months before the shooting. She maintained Sanchez had assaulted her and that she had suffered injuries to her chest and back and been choked.
On the day of the shooting, Clark alleged Sanchez had grown angry with her because she had refused to go with him to his father’s house in Mountain Home to help prepare the family’s Thanksgiving dinner.
She said a verbal and then physical altercation ensued. Clark told several different stories about how her boyfriend had been killed. She said at one point that if she did shoot Sanchez, it must have been an accident.
Clark was an inmate at the McPherson Unit of the state prison system in Newport when her parole was approved and she returned to this area.
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