🚨 Hours Before Austin Metcalf Was Killed, Karmelo Anthony Sent A Chilling Knife Photo And A Blood-Covered Threat — Now The Jury Never Heard The Full Story
The message sat on his phone like a confession waiting to be read. “When I stab somebody I’m gonna lick their blood off the blade.” Karmelo Anthony sent those words to his ex-girlfriend hours before he plunged a knife into Austin Metcalf’s chest.
Prosecutor Bill Wirskye revealed the texts Thursday at Anthony’s appeal hearing. The 19-year-old, already serving 35 years for murder, is fighting for a new trial. The jury that convicted him in June never heard any of this. A gentleman’s agreement between both legal teams had locked the evidence away.
Valerie Perez, Anthony’s former girlfriend, went to an assistant principal at their high school on the morning of April 2, 2025. She told school officials she had broken up with him and he would not accept it. He was stalking her. She was afraid. That same morning, according to prosecutors, Anthony sent her a photograph of the exact folding knife he would later use to kill Metcalf. The accompanying text read, “I’m low key on the verge.” He also threatened her directly with the blade.
Wirskye described a teenager already coming apart. Anthony had been obsessed with fights, guns, and knives. He kept a picture of the murder weapon saved on his phone. As a younger boy he had such trouble keeping his hands to himself that his parents sent him to a special program for troubled juveniles. “He was spiraling,” the prosecutor said.
A few hours later Anthony walked into the bleachers at Kuykendall Stadium during a track meet, sat under the Memorial High tent, and refused to leave. When Austin Metcalf and others confronted him, Anthony reached into his bag and warned them not to touch him. Metcalf shoved him. Anthony stabbed him once, 2.5 inches deep, into the left side of the chest. Metcalf bled out in front of his twin brother.
The same agreement that hid Anthony’s texts also hid Metcalf’s past. Anthony’s original trial lawyer, Mike Howard, presented a 20-page document of the victim’s juvenile record at Thursday’s hearing. In 2018, when the Metcalf twins were still in elementary school, they faced assault charges for bullying a girl. Later they were caught spray-painting graffiti that included “KKK kill all blacks” and “Heil Hitler.” They received 12 months of probation. Howard said Metcalf used the N-word freely in messages with friends. Records showed he had bullied another Black student without being disciplined. A month before he died, he was ordered to stay away from yet another Black student he was accused of harassing. Several parents of Memorial High cheerleaders told the court their daughters were afraid of both twins.
The deal was simple: prosecutors would not mention Anthony’s stalking, his graphic texts, or his history with knives and anger. The defense would not mention the graffiti, the bullying, or the twins’ reputation for aggression. Both sides wanted the trial to stay on the few minutes under the tent. They feared the case, already a national racial flashpoint, would explode if the full backgrounds came out.
The agreement collapsed at the last moment. Prosecutors told the defense that if Anthony took the stand, everything was back on the table. Anthony chose not to testify. Wirskye later said he wished the teenager had spoken. “It would’ve been the cherry on top for the prosecution.”
Anthony’s new legal team now argues the entire arrangement, plus closed-door hearings and the original judge’s public comments after the verdict, denied him a fair trial. Judge John Roach was recused this week. A new judge is considering whether to grant a retrial.
The texts and the stalking report give a window into Anthony’s state of mind that morning that the first jury never received. The 20-page file on Metcalf gives a window into the victim’s history that the first jury also never received. One side sees a young man already fantasizing about stabbing someone and licking the blood off the blade. The other side sees a victim with a documented record of racist vandalism and bullying. The gentleman’s agreement tried to keep both portraits out of the courtroom.
It did not keep them out of the record forever. Thursday’s hearing put them on display. Perez sat in the courtroom as the prosecutor described how she had gone to school officials that morning begging for help. The knife photograph, the “on the verge” message, and the blood-licking fantasy are now part of the official story. So are the spray-painted slurs and the earlier assault charges against the twins.
Five teenagers died in a separate case in Ireland the same week these details emerged. Different country, different crime, same pattern of young people filming their own destruction. In Texas the destruction was a single stab wound at a high-school track meet. In both places the aftermath is the same: families shattered, lawyers arguing over what the public and the jury should have been allowed to know, and a growing pile of social-media evidence that no one can unsee.
Anthony remains in a Texas prison serving the 35-year sentence. Metcalf is dead. Perez reported a stalker the morning of the killing and then watched the man she had dated become a convicted murderer. The new judge will decide whether any of that hidden history is enough to start the trial over. The texts themselves cannot be unread. “When I stab somebody I’m gonna lick their blood off the blade” is now part of the public record, sitting alongside the graffiti that read “KKK kill all blacks.” Two teenagers, two sets of secrets, one fatal afternoon under a tent.