NEW YORK, Sept. 22 (UPI) -- A woman on trial in New York for murder in the death of her father told jurors she meant to cut off his penis, not to kill him.
Brigitte Harris, 29, testified Monday she did research on the infamous 1993 case in which Lorena Bobbitt castrated her husband, John Bobbitt. Prosecutors say Harris handcuffed her father, Eric Goodridge, to a chair before using a scalpel she had acquired online to remove his penis in July 2007, the New York Daily News reported Tuesday.
Harris said she did not intend to kill Goodridge, who was 55, but to take revenge on him. She said she acted after she learned he planned to take her nieces to her native Liberia, where she said she had been abused since she was 3.
"Just know I'm doing this because I know he's not gonna change," she said in a video message taped several days before the attack, the newspaper reported.
Harris said she destroyed the evidence after removing her father's penis because she knew John Bobbitt's penis had been surgically re-attached after he was castrated.
