Accused murderer Darrin Lopez Thursday took the stand in his own defense. The 51-year-old sounded almost childlike while detailing his high school romance with former Oak Cliff resident Jennifer Faith, the woman who is now serving life in prison for convincing Lopez to murder her husband, James Faith, outside the Faith’s Oak Cliff home in October 2020.
The accused smiled, blinked a lot and looked almost giddy when his defense attorney showed him his own teenaged prom photo with Jennifer and when relating a high school band trip to Europe.
Entered into evidence: A high school prom photo of Jennifer Faith and her husband’s killer Darrin Lopez
But the testimony became deadly serious as Lopez described his midnight drive from Tennessee to Oak Cliff where he laid in wait to ambush and kill James Faith when he set out on an early morning walk with wife Jennifer and their dog Maggie.
Read about day one and day two of trial and the case background
Warning: Thursday’s testimony includes violent and sexually explicit content.
Lopez dropped out of college in Arizona after his freshman year before working at Jack-in-the-Box and entering the Army Reserve, like his dad.
By 1994 he had married a woman named Rebecca (adopting her daughters and having their own for a total of five), joined the active military and trained as a medic after which he advanced to special forces and was deployed to combat zones several times.
In all, Lopez served 20 years in the military. The defense showed evidence — including Jennifer-related code words used on his military cards — that even during his deployment, Jennifer Faith was on his mind.
In 2005 Lopez sustained minor injury and was one of four survivors in an IED explosion that killed 19, he testified.
Prosecuting attorney Brandi Mitchell objected to discussion of injuries, citing relevance. But the judge allowed them to discuss the serious brain injury incurred on Lopez’ third deployment. The severity of this brain damage was not determined until his fifth deployment, after which he was discharged on disability.
Once home his marriage dissolved, he continued to live in Tennessee, at first with three of his daughters. But after they left to be with their mom, and COVID restrictions went into effect, he became extremely depressed, he testified.
Looking for his old flame Jennifer Faith was part of a New Year’s resolution to begin living life again, he said.
On Wednesday, the prosecution showed the initial contact in March 2020 and how it escalated over eight months with fatal consequences. That intensification included deceptive emails from Jennifer Faith to Lopez under various fake accounts. The defense attempted to show that Lopez was duped into thinking Jennifer was suffering dangerous and violent abuse at the hands of her husband.
By then, Lopez was not sleeping at all, he said. He testified that he believed he was communicating with not only Jennifer but also with one of Jennifer’s male friends Rob Schmitt in Dallas and James Faith himself, all of whom were detailing sickening perpetrations of life-threatening abuse upon Jennifer.
Emotions were high during Thursday’s testimonies
Said Lopez, “It made me sick. I was losing my mind.”
It was not until he was in jail, Lopez said, that he learned he was only communicating with Jennifer, who was posing as the others.
Lopez testified that on each occasion he tried to call police, Jennifer Faith would call to talk him out of it. She made Lopez swear that he would never call police or tell the Faith’s young-adult daughter Amber. Lopez teared up when pressed about calling the police, saying that, in the military, your “word is everything,” and he had given his word (prosecuting attorney Mitchell did not object but noticeably rolled her eyes to that).
In early October Jennifer posing as James sent Lopez an email threatening that James and several of his friends were planning an underwater hot tub gang rape as a “special anniversary surprise” on October 9 (supposedly the day James and Jennifer met).
Lopez testified he did not ultimately make the decision to kill James until the moment he left for Dallas the evening before the shooting. He tried to explore other options with Jen, like her leaving town with him, he said, but she swayed him by saying that if she escaped she feared James would abuse their daughter instead of her. Since he perceived an imminent threat on Jennifer’s life, he said, he decided to carry out the killing.
As he drove, he started to transition back into a military mindset as if he were on a mission to rescue Jennifer and Amber from this horrible broken man, he testified. In a special forces sense, it was not a difficult mission. But as he crossed the state line into Texas, he did begin to experience stress.
He talked about his confusion while driving into Dallas. The construction, the size of the state, he said, felt overwhelming.
“I’m trying to look for Clarendon [major street in Oak Cliff], there’s a whole bunch of construction, I got lost, he says of his arrival in the Oak Cliff part of Dallas. He pulled over to compose himself, he said.
Now crying, he said, “I feel these emotions coming on. I am lost. what am I going to do? She is going to be attacked within hours. The only way I can get there is to turn on my phone. I knew it would leave a digital trail but I began thinking …”
At that point he tearfully described past trauma — his granddaughter had drowned while he was deployed, his best friend committed suicide and he’d sustained losses of many friends in Iraq, he said.
“Was I going to go back to Tennessee only to realize Jennifer is dead because she drowned or is in a coma?” So he decided to power on the device and find Waverly Street, where Jennifer had explained there was an empty house next door to the Faith’s.
He set up along the wall fence next door to the Faith home. He was now again thinking of this as a life-saving mission, he testified.
He said the seven rounds shot into James were to ensure that the man, though he hated him, did not suffer. Then he had to attack and throw Jennifer to the ground to give her plausible deniability. “Her screams were earth-shattering to me. It made me sick,” he said on the stand. “This is the first time I had seen or touched her since 1993.”
Lopez also described his encounter with neighbor Emery Wilson, who testified Tuesday that he had come face to face with Lopez. Lopez said that the moment he made eye contact with Wilson, he decided to flee. He was determined that there would be no collateral damage, he testified.
He was not gleeful on his way home, he said, but felt he had accomplished his mission. Even once he was arrested, he took solace in knowing he had saved Jennifer and Amber.
It took months in jail before Lopez accepted the fact that Jennifer had tricked him. Even Lopez’ own attorney recalls trying to convince his client that it was a con, initially to no avail. When he finally learned and accepted the truth, Lopez says he was destroyed.
“I was devastated that I took an innocent life … a man who was like me. I would never take Amber’s dad away. I don’t know how Jennifer can do that to her daughter,” he testified, again in tears. “Jennifer turned me into the monster. I destroyed her family.”
Cross examination
“So you’re the victim,” retorted the prosecutor.
“This is a man who works for American Airlines, one of the most regulated industries on earth, he’s going to email you about ‘double penetration’ and ‘splitting her like a peach’ — that makes sense to you, Mr. Lopez?” Mitchell asked.
“He’s going to hot-tub drown his wife and you don’t tell anyone?” She went hard, proceeding to make the defendant seem naive, ridiculous and negligent in his failure to perceive the deception or seek alternate help.
She arguably did not convince 12 jurors that Lopez was in on the fantasy.
Jennifer Faith’s confession to orchestrating the murder is not in admissible form, the judge ruled. Thus far the defense says they will not call Jennifer Faith to testify.
Jurors won’t have to believe that Lopez was role playing in order to convict him in the murder. He did drive almost 10 hours and spend several more in that Waverly Street backyard before firing seven bullets into a man. As Det. Barnes pointed out yesterday, Lopez had plenty of time to consider options that did not involve murder.
A forensic psychologist is testifying this afternoon about the defendant’s very traumatic life before the affair and murder and possible mental illness. We will continue to bring updates to Advocate readers here.
