SC v. Zachary Hughes: Rose Petal Murder Trial

Posted at 8:48 AM, February 13, 2025

GREENVILLE, S.C. (Court TV) — A concert pianist known for memorizing Beethoven’s sonatas is standing trial on charges he brutally murdered a woman whose body was found surrounded by rose petals.

Zachary Hughes is charged with murder and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime in the death of Christina Parcell. Parcell was stabbed approximately 31 times in her home on Oct. 13, 2021.

zachary hughes appears in court

Defendant Zachary Hughes appears in court Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025. (Court TV)

At the time of his arrest, police said Hughes, a Juilliard-trained pianist, had no criminal history. Investigators linked Hughes to Parcell through Hughes’ friend, John Mello. At the time of Parcell’s death, she was in a custody battle with Mello over their shared daughter and Mello was facing charges of custodial interference for taking the child out of the country. The charges against Mello were dismissed in April 2024.

Prosecutors say they found approximately 1,769 WhatsApp messages sent between Hughes and Mello, including one where Mello asked the defendant to harass Parcell. Additional evidence against Hughes includes a Ring video showing a person leaving Parcell’s home and riding a bicycle out of the neighborhood; a search warrant revealed a bike matching that in the video at Hughes’ home.

Hughes’ defense has maintained his innocence and has instead pointed at Parcell’s fiancé, Bradley Post, as a potential suspect. Post, who called 911 after finding Parcell’s body, is not charged in her death but is facing charges of sexual exploitation of a minor and buggery in a separate case.

DAILY TRIAL UPDATES

DAY 2 – 2/12/25

  • Prosecutors called Tina Parcell who testified that her sister Christina was in the throes of a contentious custody battle with her daughter’s father John Mello at the time of her murder.
    • Tina testified Mello violated their custody arrangement when he left the country with their daughter in 2020. Christina did not know where he had taken her, and it was only through a Facebook post that allowed Christina to track down her daughter’s whereabouts in Italy.
    • That started a new round of litigation for custody that required intervention from the State Department. Christina eventually won custody and she returned to the U.S. with her daughter in the spring of 2021 moving in with her sister Tina.
  • After Mello left the country, a Guardian Ad Litem was appointed to represent Christina’s daughter.
    • Vanessa Kormylo testified that John Mello would not cooperate or allow her to speak to the child and the exchanges she had with him were ‘threatening, bullying and harassing.’ His emails to her were so voluminous and vitriolic, she said printing them in preparation for the family court trial took up 3 reams of paper.
    • Kormylo testified that she recommended that the child remain with the mother because A.M. was thriving. Her direct testimony sparked another round of arguments from the defense claiming that the door had been open to admit testimony of the child pornography allegations against Christina Parcell and her fiancé Bradley Post.
  • The judge took a break and returned after nearly 30 minutes and ruled that the door had not been open after all and that any evidence of kiddie porn would stay out of the trial. The defense insisted on a proffer and elicited from Kormylo that had she known ‘then what she knew now,’ she would have separated the child from her mother.
  • A Greenville County Homicide investigator testified that photos recovered from traffic cams captured the defendant’s gold pick-up truck showing a black bicycle in the bed of the truck. That photograph was captured on October 13, 2021 – the date Christina was murdered.
  • Michael Manigault testified he met Zachary Hughes through the yard and clean-up work he did for Mello. He said he and Hughes worked on Mello’s house together.
    • He described Hughes as a ‘good man,’ before he left the witness stand.
    • Christina and the defendant did not know each other, but prosecutors claim that Hughes and Mello were friends, and Hughes became aware of Mello’s custody battle and killed Christina to help him out.

DAY 1 – 2/11/25