By Janice Morse
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Tucker

LEBANON - On Christmas Eve, two little girls witnessed their father bludgeon and stab their mother in a near-fatal attack. On Friday, they listened as their mother calmly, unflinchingly told a Warren County judge about the fury her ex-husband, Alvin Tucker, unleashed - and revealed his gruesome intentions.

"He was going to cut me up and put me in the trunk of his car," Virginia Gilbert declared at a Common Pleas Court hearing at which Tucker, 50, pleaded guilty to attempted murder and was sentenced to seven years in prison.

To back up her statement, Gilbert noted that a meat cutter was found inside Tucker's Mason home and plastic had been used to line his vehicle's trunk.

Assistant Prosecutor Carolyn Duvelius confirmed that investigators found "what can only be termed 'a murder bag,'" whose contents included a hammer, gloves and a plastic poncho.

Gilbert, 42, said she told her story because she wanted everyone to know what Tucker is capable of.

"She's the strongest person I've ever known," said Mason Police Detective Scott Doughman. Even though Gilbert was covered in bandages at Bethesda North Hospital - and in intensive care, suffering from at least two dozen stab wounds and injuries that required 60 stitches in her head - she agreed to let Doughman interview her immediately after the attack. "She was amazing," Doughman said.

The attack happened as Gilbert, who had divorced Tucker in early 2002, was in her fifth month of chemotherapy for breast cancer.

She had gone to Tucker's home around 8:15 p.m. to pick up her daughters, ages 5 and 7, from visitation with their father.

At one point, she said, "I went to the door - and he snatched me in there," she said. The girls came running downstairs. "They saw their dad beating me," she said.

His instruments of attack: his fists, a foot-long metal bar and a block of wood.

In a bathroom, "he started banging my head to the left and right," against a wall.

She remembers screaming for her daughters: "Get out of the house girls; just run!"

He started attacking her with a gardening awl. Its sharp point punctured her face, arms, leg and lung. "I pleaded to him, 'Please, Alvin, don't kill me,'" Gilbert recounted.

Somehow, she managed to get away and collapsed in a neighbor's yard. Soon, she heard police sirens.

She didn't learn until later that, while the younger girl remained in the house, her 7-year-old daughter had gone to summon help.

"My children saved my life," she said. "My 7-year-old, I call her my hero. And my 5-year-old, I call her my brave girl."

In exchange for Tucker's plea, prosecutors dropped charges of felonious assault, domestic violence, child endangering, kidnapping and auto theft.

After the hearing, Gilbert said her ex-husband had been angry over court-ordered child-support payments, especially after he was fired from his longtime job.

Gilbert brought her daughters to the hearing because "I wanted them to put closure" to the incident. She's concerned because they still have nightmares about it.

As for her cancer, "it's considered gone," Gilbert said. And, for the next seven years, so is Tucker.

"Hopefully, while he's in prison, he will find the Lord and he will do right," she said. "All I can do is pray for him."

E-mail jmorse@enquirer.com