YORK, PA — A Pennsylvania man has pleaded no contest to charges that he killed his father and stepmother with a sword in their Pennsylvania home nearly five years ago.
Court documents indicate 43-year-old Levar Fountain pleaded guilty to third-degree murder in York County Court earlier this month, avoiding a trial that would have begun this week. Charges of first-degree murder that would have resulted in mandatory life without parole were dismissed. Fountain is to be sentenced on November 8.
Authorities said Fountain told them he was off his schizophrenia medication around the time John Fountain, 74, and Mary Fountain, 65, were killed in December 2019 in the York home the three shared. The sword authorities believe was used in the murders was found in his bedroom, authorities said.
Officials said he moved the bodies to the basement, put a note on the front door saying the couple had moved back to Florida and went to his room for three days. They say he also killed dogs owned by the victims, telling authorities they were “known as ‘God’ but spelled backwards, making them lower class dragons and they had to be killed.”
The York Dispatch reported that several relatives told the paper they did not believe their mentally ill relative was the culprit. His sister Caren Fountain said he told her a few days before his plea that he had no recollection of committing the crime and would “never” have harmed the victims.
Defense attorney Clasina Houtman declined comment but pointed out that her office had filed paperwork to use an insanity defense if the case had gone to trial, but it was her client’s decision not to go to trial.
Under prosecutorial usage, a defendant does not admit to committing the crime but agrees that prosecutors have enough evidence to secure a conviction. Attorneys agreed during the trial that Fountain does not remember the deaths due to his mental state at the time.