Murder suspect denies charge of spitting on guard

• Taliaferro was charged with spitting on the officer, hitting him on his face, arm and shirt.
• He told a state trooper investigating the incident that the correctional officer was lying.
• Taliaferro was in prison awaiting trial on a murder trial for the June 6 homicide of his mother.

A Palmyra man, awaiting trial on charges he murdered his mother, is also heading to court on charges he spit on a Lebanon County correctional officer.

Jacob Taliaferro, 18, waived a preliminary hearing Thursday before District Judge Anthony Verna and was ordered to stand trial on charges of aggravated harassment by a prisoner and disorderly conduct.

Taliaferro was charged with spitting on a correctional officer on Nov. 15 last year in Taliaferro’s cell in the county prison.

According to a police affidavit of probable cause, the guard saw excess property in Taliaferro’s cell. Taliaferro’s, who was on 15-minute suicide watch, was not allowed to have any property, except for a smock and a blanket in his cell. When two officers entered his cell to confiscate the property, they saw that the toilet was overflowing with feces and toilet paper.

The officers ordered him several times to turn over the toilet paper before he finally complied, according to the police affidavit. When the officers left his cell, Taliaferro allegedly spit on one of the officers, hitting him on his face, arm and shirt.

Police: Palmyra teen kills mom, then watches TV

Taliaferro told a state trooper investigating the incident that he spit on the floor as the correctional officers left his cell and the officer who reported him was lying, according to the police affidavit. The other correctional officer who witnessed the incident told the state trooper that Taliaferro’s spit hit the other correctional officer.

Taliaferro is in prison without bail on a criminal homicide charge for the murder of his mother Lorrie Ann Demko in their home at 805 E. Cypress St. on June 6 last year. He was charged with stabbing his mother with a kitchen knife and strangling her with a piece of rope.

After checking for a pulse and finding none, Taliaferro, then 17, told investigators that he watched TV for an unspecified time, took a shower, then called 9-1-1, according to a police affidavit.

Shortly before 5 a.m. on June 6, Taliaferro called Lebanon County Emergency Management Agency and told the dispatcher that he had killed his mother with a kitchen knife, according to the criminal complaint filed by Palmyra Borough Police Department. He also told the dispatcher she had been dead for a while and that he wanted to turn himself in.

When police assisting from North Londonderry Township arrived a short time later, Taliaferro was still on the phone with the dispatcher. The officer told the dispatcher to instruct the teen to leave the house through the front door.

Hearing set for teen accused of killing mother

As the officers approached the house, Taliaferro walked out, still talking on the telephone with the emergency dispatcher, and complied with commands to show his hands and lay face down on the ground, according to the complaint.

When police searched the house, they found blood on the carpet near the kitchen and in a hallway leading back to a bedroom, where Demko was found with a large laceration on her chest.

A police affidavit did not include a motive.

Taliaferro is scheduled to go on trial the last week of October for his mother’s murder.