ELYRIA — Rennell Malone’s former cellmate said Wednesday during the second day of Malone’s murder trial that Malone had confessed to him that he killed Diane Utsey-Henderson.

Malone, 47, has denied that he killed his 44-year-old ex-girlfriend by beating her and then stabbing her to death in June 2001 in her Amherst Avenue home in Lorain.

But Delmas Parsons Jr. said Malone opened up to him while they shared the same cell in the Lorain County Jail.

Parsons said the cellmates often discussed their cases — Parsons was facing an escape charge at the time — and he said Malone seemed confident that he would beat the murder charge he was indicted on in 2006.

But as they talked, Parsons said Malone revealed more and more about the crime and his tumultuous relationship with Utsey-Henderson.

Malone, Parsons said, told him that Utsey-Henderson didn’t treat him well, especially when she was drinking.

“The first thing he said that concerned me was, ‘Do you blame me?’ ” Parsons said.

But defense attorney Kenneth Ortner questioned Parsons’ motives and asked why Malone, who is black, would open up to a man with a swastika tattooed on his stomach and two lightning bolts tattooed on his hand. The lightning bolts, Parsons admitted, were white power symbols.

Parsons asked several times to be allowed to put his black leather jacket back on as Ortner examined his tattoos, including one on his arm that contained the words “extreme,” “death,” “rage” and “hatred.”

Parsons, who is white, said he was never a member of an organized white supremacist organization and got the tattoos when he was younger, in prison and full of hate for everyone. He said he was unemployed and couldn’t afford to have the tattoos removed.

Parsons said other inmates brought up the tattoos to Malone, who told them that Parsons had always treated him like everyone else.

Parsons said Malone told him he talked to him because he couldn’t “do him any harm because he wasn’t telling me anything that wasn’t in the papers.”

Among the revelations Parsons said Malone made to him — and Parsons later shared with police — was that Malone had hit Utsey-Henderson in the head with a glass serving dish that he later broke and tossed in a trash bin in another city.

Parsons also said that he didn’t receive any benefit from testifying against Malone in either the escape case or an unrelated burglary charge, both of which he received probation for.

Parsons also said that Malone had complained about James “Poochie” Williams, another man who dated Utsey-Henderson, whom Malone referred to as her “sugar daddy.”

Williams testified Tuesday that he last saw Utsey-Henderson after she had an angry confrontation with Malone outside her house on June 13, 2001. He said he left her house either late June 13 or early June 14 to meet up with another woman he was seeing and never saw her again.

Utsey-Henderson’s sister, Deloise Brantley, testified Wednesday that she never liked Malone and didn’t care for Williams because he was seeing her sister while he was married.

But Brantley said after she couldn’t reach her sister either by phone or by stopping by Utsey-Henderson’s house and after Williams told her he couldn’t reach her either, she called police on June 15.

Officers found her partially clad body on the floor of her upstairs bedroom.

County Coroner Paul Matus said Utsey-Henderson bled to death from the stab wounds probably on June 14, 2001. He had originally said she likely died on June 15, but later changed his opinion after learning she had last been seen by men powerwashing her home on June 13, not June 14 as he had originally been told.

Investigators also testified Wednesday that they found a toothpick with Malone’s DNA on it at the crime scene, which they contend proves he was there.

The trial resumes today before county Common Pleas Judge Mark Betleski, who is hearing the case without a jury.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.

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