Wake woman pleads guilty to trying to kill husband

Tammy Franklin, 46, of 6825 Greywalls Lane, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury and accessory after the fact of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. She was sentenced to 38 months to 58 months in prison on the charges.

Donald Webster Franklin told authorities that his son, Steven Donald Franklin, attacked him with a 4-inch paring knife in their home on Oct. 31, 2015. The father said that his son first tried to push him down a flight of stairs, where a "spiked rake" had been placed at the bottom, and that his son ran at him with the knife after he was able to break his fall and avoid the rake.

Donald Franklin escaped with only cuts on one hand.

After the attack, Tammy Franklin instructed her son to hide out at her parents' home in Haywood County, authorities said.

Donald Franklin also told investigators that he thought his son had planned to kill him on two earlier occasions, only to have Tammy Franklin stop him, saying, "Not now, Steven," according to search warrants released in the case.

Steven Franklin, 24, pleaded guilty in September to assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and was placed on probation for two years. Prosecutors dropped a conspiracy charge against him in return for his testimony against his mother.

Investigators said Tammy Franklin had been having an affair and had taken out a $1 million life insurance policy on her husband a couple of months before the Oct. 31 attack.

Family members claim Donald Franklin abused them for years and that he concocted the assault story as a way to get even with his wife, who was leaving him.