Warrants: Wake mom charged in murder plot was having affair

Tammy Franklin, 45, and Steven Donald Franklin, 23, both of 6825 Greywalls Lane, were charged last week with felony conspiracy. Steven Franklin also is charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, while Tammy Franklin is charged with intimidating a state's witness, communicating threats and accessory after the fact of a felony.

Sheriff Donnie Harrison said Steven Franklin attacked his father, Donald Webster Franklin, with a 4-inch paring knife in the Greywalls Lane home on Oct. 31. Donald Franklin escaped with only cuts on one hand.

Investigators obtained search warrants for the Facebook accounts of Tammy Franklin, Stephen Franklin and Savannah Franklin, Tammy Franklin's daughter, as well as a cellphone belonging to another man.

The man told investigators on Wednesday that he has been swapping explicit photographs with Tammy Franklin for two months and often spoke with her on the phone or communicated through Facebook, according to the search warrants.

"During the course of their correspondence, a relationship had developed," the warrant states, noting that the man had visited with Tammy Franklin and her children locally and in Haywood County, where her parents live.

Tammy Franklin had led the man to believe that she had been separated from her husband since last December and that they no longer lived together, according to the warrants.

Search warrants released on Monday stated that Tammy Franklin had taken out a $1 million life insurance policy on her husband and had lied to investigators about it. She also tried to erase information from her cellphone before investigators could examine it, the warrants stated.

Donald Franklin also told investigators that he thought his son was planning to kill him on two other occasions, only to have his mother stop him, saying, "Not now, Stephen," according to the earlier search warrants.

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.

Stephen Franklin and Tammy Franklin remain in the Wake County jail under $1 million bonds.