Jessica Lunsford

I could not even do this blog without putting nine year-old Jessica Lunsford on here. Her murder shocked the United States from coast to coast, but even more shocking was the discovery of how she died. She was a beautiful young girl who deserved to live a wonderful life, living full instead of dying young.

But evil had plans for her, and its name was John Couey.

The Disappearance

On the morning of February 24, 2005, Mark Lunsford, Jessica’s father, woke at 5:00 a.m. to get ready for work. He could hear Jessica’s alarm clark going off as she usually got up at the same time to prepare for school. Mark noticed she was not turning her alarm off. Thinking she must be overly tired and would eventually hear the alarm, he went about to get ready for work.

When he was finished, he could still hear Jessica’s alarm going off, so he thought he better go in to wake her. But when he opened the door, Jessica was not in her bed. He searched throughout his doublewide trailer that he shared with his parents and Jessica before calling 911.

The local police immediately launched an investigation for the young girl while her family and friends tried to locate her. The following day hundreds of volunteers joined in the search. By the time a week had passed, there was still no sign of Jessica or what happened to her.

The night before she disappeared, the outgoing and friendly girl attended her church’s youth group, King’s Kids. She had been preparing for a contest, memorizing a passage from the Bible, Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” She was known as a very loving child who loved her father dearly and enjoyed playing with her dolls.

The Suspect

Soon after Jessica was reported missing, the authorities checked into sex offenders in the area and realized that one of them, John Evander Couey, 46, was not living at the address where he was registered. A sex offender is required by law to notify the police of a change of address.

Couey, an habitual user of crack cocaine, had previous charges of “burglary, carrying a concealed weapon, disorderly intoxication, driving under the influence, indecent exposure, disorderly conduct, fraud, insufficient funds, and larceny,” according to Citrus County Sheriff’s Office. His driver’s license had been “suspended for 99 years”. In addition, he had been arrested for drug violations and in 1991, he was arrested and charged with “fondling a child under the age of 16.”

Soon, police discovered that Couey was living with his half-sister, Dorothy Marie Dixon, 47, and her boyfriend, Matthew Oley Dittrich, 31. Also living with them was Dorothy’s daughter and son-in-law.

When detectives arrived at Couey’s new residence, Dorothy, her daughter, and Matthew denied that Couey was living there and said they did not know where he was. The detectives then did a casual search of the premises, but did not see any evidence of Couey or Jessica’s presence. However, they failed to look in the closet in the room where Couey was staying. This would prove later to be a fatal mistake.

On March 14, 2005, police were still trying to find Couey. They searched the trailer again, and this time they checked the closets. In doing so, they nothing incriminating. However, in the bedroom where Couey had slept, they found blood on the mattress. Instantly, John Couey’s became a “person of interest.”

On the Run

Couey was no fool. He knew the authorities would soon come after him, so he fled to Georgia, where he stayed in a Salvation Army shelter in Augusta. But by this time, Jessica’s disappearance had made national headlines and a secretary recognized him and called authorities. On March 17th, Citrus County detectives Scott Grace and Gary Achison headed to Augusta to question Couey. Throughout questioning, Couey maintained his innocence.

Transcripts of the interview reveal that Grace pressed Couey hard for information that would lead to the recovery of Jessica. Achison took a softer approach, trying to appeal to Couey, in Achison’s own words, “human being to human being.”

At one point in the interview, Detective Grace asked Couey if he would take a lie-detector test.

Couey responded by saying, “I guess. I’m just… I want a lawyer, you know.”

“I want a lawyer here present,” Couey said. “I want to talk to a lawyer ’cause I mean, if people are trying to accuse something I didn’t do, I didn’t do it… I just want to talk to a lawyer to get this thing straight.”

On March 18th, Couey took a polygraph test administered by FBI Special Agent John Whitmore. During the polygraph, Couey broke down and confessed to the abduction and murder of Jessica Lunsford, and told them where they could find her body.

The Crime

In his video-taped confession, Couey admitted he entered Mark Lunsford’s home at around 3:00 A.M. on February 24th and found Jessica sleeping in her bed. He awoke her and ordered her to be quiet. “Don’t yell or nothing,” he said and then forced her back to his sister’s house. According to Couey, she was compliant and did not fight him. As a matter of fact, police did not find any evidence of a struggle in Jessica’s bedroom.

After the two arrived at the trailer, Couey raped Jessica, keeping her in bed with him for the rest of the night, raping her again the next morning. Afterward, he put her in his closet and ordered her to stay there and not say a word while he went to work. Again, she obeyed his order and stayed quiet the whole day. Couey turned on a T.V. for her to watch through the slightly opened closet door, where she had seen televised news reports about herself and the search to find her.

Couey told authorities he had been drinking and getting high the night he kidnapped the nine year-old, saying he had been “drug-hazed.” He said he cooked her a hamburger at some point during her captivity and made her urinate in the closet, so that his housemates would not know she was there. He kept her in that closet for three days, during which time investigators came to the trailer looking for him but did not check his closet. Had they checked it, they would have found Jessica alive.

Couey claimed that Jessica had every chance to leave, but did not do so. “She had several chances to take off but never did,” Couey said in his statement. “I left the room, you know. … She just sat there.”

After learning that detectives were looking for him, he panicked. He felt he had to do something with Jessica right away before he was caught so he decided to bury her.

“I dug a hole and put her in it, buried her,” Couey said on tape. “I pushed. … I put her in plastic baggies. She was alive. I buried her alive.”

Couey buried the dolphin with her.

“I let her keep it,” he said. “She wanted to take it with her.”

The detectives immediately informed the authorities in Homosassa of the details of Couey’s confession. Then, shortly after midnight on Saturday, March 19, a team of investigators arrived at Dorothy Dixon’s trailer. They discovered a shallow grave where Couey had said it would be. The young girl’s clothed body was found inside two tied plastic garbage bags, her hands were bound with speaker wire. Regardless of being bound, brave Jessica managed to poke two fingers through the plastic in an attempt to free herself. When the bags were completely removed, investigators saw that she had died clutching her prized purple dolphin.

The Autopsy

Jessica’s body was transported to the morgue in Leesburg, Florida, where Dr. Steven Cogswell, Medical Examiner for the Fifth Judicial District, performed an autopsy. After removing the body from the trash bags, he noted that she had been placed feet first into the first garbage bag, head first into the second, and it appeared she had not kicked through the bags.

The cause of death was suffocation, which Cogswell believed took from 3 to 5 minutes.

Dr. Cogswell reported that the body was in a state of “medium decomposition.” Though he could not pinpoint the time of death, the degree of decomposition suggested that she had died about three weeks earlier. Dr. Cogswell found vaginal lacerations at the six o’clock position, which indicated sexual assault. He estimated that these lacerations likely occurred “probably not more than six hours prior to death.”

Her fingernails were painted with a peach-colored nail polish, and the two exposed fingers were partially mummified. Because she was able to claw through the bag, this indicated that Jessica was buried alive.

Jessica’s gastro-intestinal tract was “basically empty.” Dr. Cogswell estimated that the last time she ate was between “twelve hours and three to four days before death.”

Traces of cocaine were found on her body, but she did not ingest cocaine herself. Rather, she had been “in an environment” where crack cocaine had been smoked.

Justice for Jessica

On March 20, 2005, John Evander Couey was booked in the Citrus County jail in Lecanto, Florida, where he was put on suicide watch. Dorothy Dixon, her daughter, Madie Secord, and Matthew Dittrich were each charged with obstruction of justice for lying to the police. Dorothy’s son-in-law, Gene Secord, who had not been at the house when detectives came by looking for Couey, was charged with failure to pay child support.

On April 1, 2005, a grand jury indicted John Couey on charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping, sexual battery, and burglary. The various charges against his housemates were dropped.

On April 6, Couey appeared in court and pleaded not guilty to the charges, and was held without bail. The state declared it would seek the death penalty. Even though he pleaded not guilty, Couey admitted to killing Jessica Lunsford.

The Trial

As the trial approached In the spring of 2006, Judge Ric Howard of the Fifth Judicial Circuit ordered that the jury pool be made up of residents of Lake County, the farthest community from Homosassa in the Fifth District. The jury would be transported to the courtroom in Inverness, where they would live in an undisclosed motel for the length of the trial.

In June 2006, Judge Howard listened to pretrial testimony regarding the investigation of Couey and ruled that Couey’s confession to Detectives Grace and Achison in Augusta had to be thrown out because the detectives violated Couey’s rights when they did not comply with his repeated requests for an attorney.

“It’s very damaging to lose a confession, especially one that’s as detailed as that one,” Larry Sandeford, a Florida defense attorney and former prosecutor said to ABC News. “When you don’t have a confession and you have to tie it all together, it’s definitely harder to get a conviction.”

Finding the right jurors proved to be a difficult task. By July 13, 2006, 58 prospective jurors were selected, however, Judge Howard suddenly decided that an impartial jury could not be assembled in the Fifth District in a timely manner, so he cancelled further jury selection. A few potential jurors reported that they had been threatened with physical harm if they were put on the jury and did not find Couey guilty. Many expert witnesses were scheduled to testify at the trial, but they were not be able to fit a delayed trial into their schedules, so the judge decided that a change of venue would be the best solution. Ultimately, it was decided that John Couey would be tried in Miami-Dade County, about 335 miles south of Citrus County.

Finaly in early March 2007, the trial began. Jessica’s father, grandmother and a family friend took the stand and told the jury about the circumstances of Jessica’s disappearance.

The family friend, Sharon Armstrong was the first witness. She told the court that she last saw her the evening of Feb. 23, 2005, when she dropped her off at her grandparents’ home after King’s Kids.

“I was teaching her sign language. She turned around and she signed, ‘I love you,’” Armstrong tearfully testified as she demonstrated the gesture.

A lawyer for Couey did not deny his client’s involvement, but he told the jury that his client was mentally retarded and suggested that law enforcement, during the confession, played on his feeble-mindedness to elicit the incriminating statements.

“They took advantage of the fact John Couey is mentally retarded,” defense lawyer Dan Lewan said. “Is this a case of premeditated murder, or is this the childlike actions of a man overwhelmed by the presence of the media and law enforcement?”

The jury also heard from members of Couey’s family who lived in the home with Couey when he allegedly held Jessica captive in his closet. However, prosecutors did not question Couey’s sister, Dorothy Dixon, or her daughter, Madie Secord, about the alleged period of captivity, because the only source for that information is a statement from Couey that has been ruled inadmissible.

Dixon did testify that on the night of Feb. 23rd, she shared a small rock of crack cocaine and drank alcohol with her boyfriend and her brother. She told the court how she bought a bus ticket to Savannah, Ga., for Couey in her name. Three days later, Secord said, he left for Georgia.

John Couey informed the court that he did not wish to take the stand. He struggled to respond to some of Judge Howard’s standardized questions regarding his right not to testify, consulting with his attorneys before answering.

The judge asked Couey if he had ever received treatment for a mental illness.

“Not to my knowledge, I guess not,” he responded blankly, shaking his head.

Disturbing crime scene and autopsy photographs of 9-year-old Jessica brought several jurors to tears.The images, along with video of the property and a bloody mattress from Couey’s room, provided the jury with its first window into the physical details of the murder.

Defense lawyers called in a forensic psychologist, who testified that Couey had met the legal standard for mental retardation. Dr. Robert Berland testified that Couey had an IQ of 64 and suffered from paranoid delusions and hallucinations that began in childhood.

He then testified that Couey’s “sub-average” mental functioning made him more likely to admit to the crimes in an effort to gain the favor of his jailers.

“The mental illness, the retardation would have increased the likelihood that the circumstances in the jail would propel him to talk about crime,” Berland said, referring to several alleged jail house statements the jury heard about, including the testimony of corrections officer John Read who said Couey admitted to him he abducted Jessica from her bed, raped her, then placed her in two plastic bags and buried her alive three days later.

“He said he could not bring himself to directly kill her by his own hands,” said Read, who guarded Couey in Citrus County jail while he awaited trial for Jessica’s murder. “He said he did not mean to kill her, that he panicked when police came around.”

“Did he indicate to you whether she was alive?” Assistant State Attorney Richard Ridgway said.

“She was alive,” Read testified, as Jessica’s parents glared at the defendant from across the courtroom.

Read testified that Couey said he only intended to rob the Lunsford home in Homosassa, Fla. Instead, Couey allegedly said, he lured Jessica her from her room by telling her he was bringing her to her father, and transported her to his trailer about 60 yards away.

Read also told the court that Couey said Jessica spent about three days in his room, either on his bed or in hiding in his closet whenever police came to his home.

“He said on the first day there, they engaged in sexual activity,” Read testified, prompting one male juror to look over at the defendant. “He said she bled … she made some joke, that she had the rag on.”

Read’s coworker, Nathalia Windham, testified that Couey once remarked to her how Jessica would “play” with him sexually.

“He said for a 9-year-old girl, that she knew a lot more than she should have known,” Windham testified.

Several jurors dabbed tears as Windham testified that Couey allegedly told her how he convinced Jessica to get into the garbage bags.

“He told he was going to take her home,” Windham nervously testified. “He told her to get into a plastic bag because he didn’t want people seeing her cross the street.”

“After she was in the plastic bag, what did he do?” Ridgway asked the witness.

“He put her in the hole,” she said.

While some parts of Couey’s alleged jailhouse confession were corroborated by physical evidence, even the medical examiner who performed Jessica’s autopsy clarified that he could not conclusively say she was buried alive.

Read testified that Couey said he tied Jessica’s wrists and ankles and placed her in two garbage bags before putting her in a hole he dug behind his trailer.

But in testimony, forensic pathologist Steven Cogswell said that he found ligatures only around Jessica’s wrists when he performed her autopsy.

Cogswell also said that he could not be certain that Jessica was alive when she was buried. He said he was only sure that she was alive when she was placed in the bag, based on the fact that two of her fingers were poking through the bags.

“Certainly, we know she was alive when she was in the bag,” testified Cogswell, who is the chief medical examiner for the 11th judicial circuit. “This bag was not pulled over her fingers. She was pushing her fingers out through the bag.”

“Do you have an opinion as to whether she was in the ground when that occurred?” prosecutor Peter Magrino asked.

“It’s not possible to say definitely whether she was in the ground when she pushed her fingers through the bag,” Cogswell testified.

Cogswell also told the court that he was fairly certain that Jessica sustained vaginal trauma indicative of rape right before she was killed.

He estimated her time of death at about three weeks prior to the discovery of her body, which lent credibility to Couey’s timeline.

“I believe her time of death was approximately three weeks prior to her being found. I base this on her stage of decomposition within being in a trash bag in shallow grave,” Cogswell testified.

“That’s around the end of February, first week of March?” Magrino asked.

Magrino nodded his head.

In the end, the jury took only four hours to deliberate. On March 7, 2007,Two years after Jessica was murdered, Couey was found guilty of first degree murder. The panel of six men and six women also convicted him of burglary, kidnapping and sexual battery for abducting Jessica from her bed and raping her before burying her in a shallow grave.

The Sentence

On March 14, the jury recommended in a 10-2 vote that Couey should die for his crimes, but the decision was left to the judge.

Finally, on Friday, August 24, 2007, John Evander Couey, 48, was sentenced to death for kidnapping 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford, raping her and burying her alive in his yard.

An attorney for Couey had argued that he could not legally be executed because he is mentally retarded, and mentally retarded people cannot be executed under a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision. However, Judge Howard brushed this aside.

Jessica’s father, Mark Lunsford, teared up as he listened to the judge read a detailed history of the case for nearly an hour. He hugged relatives after the sentence was read.

Outside court, Lunsford had a message for Couey: “Skip all these appeals. Take your punishment.”

Jessica’s Legacy

Following Jessica’s brutal death, Mark Lunsford pursued new legislation to provide more stringent tracking of released sex offenders. The Jessica Lunsford Act was named after her, which requires tighter restrictions on sex offenders (such as wearing electronic tracking devices) and increased prison sentences for some convicted sex offenders. Jessica’s Law refers to similar reform acts initiated by the states.

In 2005, the same year Jessica was murdered, University of Florida Documentary Institute student Boaz Dvir and institute partner Rebecca Goldman began making an observational documentary about Jessica’s father, Mark Lunsford.

Their hour-long film, “Jessie’s Dad,” chronicles the crusade of Lunsford, a trucker-turned-activist. Dvir and Goldman followed Lunsford as he advocated “Jessica’s Law” around the country.

“Jessie’s Dad” was the only documentary in the country to win a 2008 Carole Fielding Student Grant, which is awarded by the University Film and Video Association. Roberts said there are only a handful of production grants available in the nation. He noted that Goldman and Dvir’s grant proposal stood out because of their print-journalism background. He also emphasized the power of Lunsford’s story (The Independent Florida Alligator).

On, February 19, 2008, almost three years to the day after her kidnapping and murder, Jessica’s father was represented by Jacksonville, Florida lawyers in a pre-trial brief filed against the Citrus County Sheriff’s Office and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. After receiving notice of the pending suit, Citrus County Sheriff Jeff Dawsy stated that he believed the case to be “baseless… There is only one person in the world that should be held responsible for Jessica Lunsford’s death and that’s John Couey.”

Following complaints and suggestions from Citrus County residents that the pending litigation was being pursued out of greed and that had he been a better father his child may still be alive, Mark Lunsford and Jacksonville-based attorneys Eric Block and Mark Gelman held a news conference in Jacksonville, where it was stated that the pending litigation was “not for the money… but for change.” Lunsford stated that changes were needed in procedures and policies. It is alleged that Couey had Jessica Lunsford alive in the trailer while Citrus County officials visited the trailer, that police dogs indicated Jessica was being held in the direction of the trailer and were ignored, that Citrus County officials actively pursued Mark Lunsford’s father as their prime suspect while evidence pointed elsewhere, and that had Citrus County officials followed up on an outstanding warrant issued by Georgia, that Citrus County officials could have entered Couey’s residence and possibly saved the child. Such inactions or lack of follow-up is believed to have led to her death (Wikipedia).

Sources for this post: Wikipedia, The Independent Florida Alligator, Crime Library and CourtTVNews.com.