Jessica Currin Media Links Only

[Pauli]

Mayfield's trial in grisly death starting 8 years later

Witnesses' accounts kept changing, conflict at times


MAYFIELD, Ky. -- Eight years after 18-year-old Jessica Currin was found beaten, strangled, stabbed and burned behind Mayfield Middle School, prosecutors this month will begin the trials of a second set of defendants for the crime.

Jessica Currin, shown at age 18, was murdered in July 2000 in Mayfield, Ky.

Quincy Omar Cross, 31, of Tiptonville, Tenn., will be tried first on charges that include complicity to murder, kidnapping, rape and sodomy.


Jeffery Allen Burton, 28, of West Paducah, was going to be tried with Cross but now will be prosecuted at a later date.


Tamara C. Caldwell, 28, of Mayfield, who will be tried with Burton, is being held at the Crittenden County Detention Center.

Murder charges against two previous suspects were dropped in 2003 after a flawed police investigation in which potentially key pieces of evidence were lost or destroyed.

Special prosecutors from the attorney general's office now are seeking the death penalty for three other people -- Quincy Omar Cross, Jeffery Allen Burton and Tamara C. Caldwell -- who they allege are responsible for Currin's rape, sodomy and murder during a drug-fueled orgy.

The Kentucky Bureau of Investigation, which took over the case from local and state police over the past few years, has conducted an investigation so massive that the results -- witness statements, forensic reports and other documentary evidence -- fill more than 200 CDs and 70 DVDs, the equivalent of tens of thousands of pages.

But in court papers, defense lawyers say the prosecution's key witnesses -- then-teenaged girls who say they were present when Currin was killed -- have given statements so riddled with inconsistencies that "it appears unlikely they were at the same event."

Victoria Caldwell and Vinisha Stubblefield, who pleaded guilty to lesser offenses in exchange for plea bargains, have provided dramatically conflicting -- and changing -- accounts of every aspect of the crime, from Currin's abduction to the disposal of her body, according to the records.

In the most glaring example, Victoria Caldwell, who is Tamara's cousin and was 15 at the time of the crime, initially described Burton, who is white, as African American. Later, she said he was white.

Stubblefield, who was 17 when Currin was killed, initially told police that she and other defendants hauled the body from Burton's home to the school on a bicycle -- a story that one agent found so improbable that he asked sarcastically if perhaps the body was transported on horseback. Stubblefield later said she didn't remember how the body was moved.

And when pressed on a motive for the murder, Victoria Caldwell alleged that a Mayfield assistant police chief had Cross kill Currin because she was about to tell his wife that she was pregnant by him. But an autopsy showed Currin wasn't pregnant.

"The people who did this need to be punished, but they need to make sure they've got the right ones," said Ronnie Lear, the former assistant chief, who was never charged in the case and said he passed several polygraphs showing he wasn't involved. "I hope to God they are not basing their case on those two girls' statements."

Assistant Attorney General Scott Crawford-Sutherland, one of several prosecutors assigned to the case, declined to comment, citing a judge's order.

But in a dramatic turnaround last week, his office, which previously planned to try all three defendants together starting tomorrow, won an order to try Cross first, and to try Burton and Tamara Caldwell, against whom it has less evidence, later. Jury selection is scheduled to begin March 18 in Cross' case.

The move was surprising because the prosecution had twice opposed motions by Burton and Tamara Caldwell for separate trials.

Cross' trial before Judge Timothy Stark was moved to Hickman County from Graves County because of pretrial publicity.

The 5 charged
Cross, 31, and Burton and Tamara Caldwell, both 28, are charged with complicity to capital kidnapping, murder, rape, sodomy, abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence, for allegedly trying to conceal Currin's body. Cross is also charged with four counts of intimidating witnesses.

The defendants are being held in local jails, each on $1 million bail.

Victoria Caldwell and Stubblefield pleaded guilty last May to abuse of a corpse and tampering with physical evidence. They agreed to testify against the others in return for sentences of five and seven years, respectively, though they haven't yet been sentenced.

Victoria Caldwell has been moved to safe houses around the country under Kentucky's witness protection program, and Stubblefield is lodged in Christian County Jail, according to court records.

Currin's father, Joe, a retired Mayfield fire captain who now works for the state Transportation Department, said he and his wife, Jean, will attend the trials.

"It won't bring her back," he said of the trials, "but it will get her the justice she is due."

The couple have adopted Currin's son, Zion, who was 7 months old when she was killed. They are raising the boy, now a 7-year-old second-grader, as their son, and have told him Jessica was his sister.

"One day we will tell him what happened," Joe Currin said, "when it is appropriate."

Witness accounts differ
Pair contradicted selves, each other

The re-investigation seemed to be going nowhere until January 2007, when Victoria Caldwell, then 22, responded to a Web site run by an amateur sleuth in Mayfield who had been trying for years to solve the crime.

Caldwell, who had moved to California, indicated she had some information that could help.

KBI agents Lee Wise and Robert O'Neil flew out to interview her, and after initially denying any role, she ultimately, over at least four interviews, told this story:

Late on the night of July 29, 2000, she said, Jessica Currin, whom she and Stubblefield knew as a friend, was abducted off the street, forced into a white Cadillac and taken to Burton's house. There, Cross hit her over the head with a blunt object and choked her with a belt as he forced her to perform oral sex on him while Burton raped her.

Victoria Caldwell said she, her cousin and Stubblefield also performed sex acts on Currin, both before and after Currin died, then had sex with each other, as well as with Cross and Burton. She said that they hid the body in a shed behind Burton's house until it began to smell two days later, and that they dumped it at the middle school and burned it to destroy evidence.

Stubblefield initially denied she was present but eventually confirmed the gist of Victoria Caldwell's account, according to a transcript of her statement.

State police Detective Sam Steger told a grand jury that Stubblefield's story was "very consistent" with Victoria Caldwell's. "You could pretty much sit them side by side and they're identical statements," he said.

But a comparison of their statements shows at least a dozen contradictions.
For example:
Stubblefield said Cross threatened Currin with a gun inside the car; Caldwell says Cross hit Currin's head with a bat. Caldwell said Currin was unconscious when they got to Burton's house; Stubblefield said she walked in on her own.

Stubblefield said Tamara Caldwell was the first to hit Currin with a bat; Victoria Caldwell said it was Cross. Stubblefield said Cross took off Currin's clothes; Victoria Caldwell said Burton did it.

Stubblefield said Burton had oral sex with Currin; Victoria Caldwell said it was vaginal sex.

Stubblefield said Currin's body was taken to the school in a blue Pontiac; Victoria Caldwell said it was in the Cadillac.

Both witnesses also repeatedly changed their statements as they were questioned.

Victoria Caldwell, for example, first denied she had sex with the corpse, then admitted it. She first said she ran home in horror after the body was burned, then said she got a ride. She first said Cross helped dump the body, then said he wasn't there.

In an assertion that seemed most troubling to investigators, she initially said the body was immediately removed from the house, and that she was approached the next day and asked about the murder, as if it had already been publicly reported.

Only after the prosecutor, Crawford-Sutherland, noted that the body wasn't discovered for two days -- "Something is not adding up," he said -- did Caldwell amend her remarks to say that the body was put in the shed first.

Stubblefield, now 24, gave so many conflicting accounts that agents interviewing her repeatedly called her a liar.

She initially said Currin got in the car voluntarily, then said Cross forced her inside. She initially said Currin was struck in the head with a small metal baseball bat. But after agents told her that souvenir bats aren't made in metal, she said it might have been a wrench.

Regarding the gasoline used to start the fire that burned Currin, she first said Cross got it in a pop bottle, but after Wise told her, "Don't get that confused," she said Burton got it in a red gas can.

And she initially said Victoria Caldwell poured the gas on the body. Then she said she did it before switching back to saying Victoria did it.

At one point, Wise begged her to tell the truth. "I want you to ... release that evil demon that you've hidden inside of you," he said. "The demon of lying."

Court papers filed by the defense suggest theprosecution may try to explain the inconsistent statements by saying Stubblefield and Victoria Caldwell were afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder and rape trauma syndrome in reaction to a life-threatening situation.

Other evidence
Cross was stopped day after murder

In court papers, the attorney general's office also cites other evidence, much of it involving Cross.

The morning after the murder, he was found by a deputy jailer next to a stalled car, smelling of gasoline, with a gas can inside the vehicle, according to a police report in which he was charged with possession of narcotics. The report noted that Cross wasn't wearing a shirt or a belt.

According to other court documents, witnesses at a party he attended the night before said they saw him waving a belt like the one found around Currin's neck.

According to KBI agents, Cross also told a deputy sheriff who joined the deputy jailer at the scene that he was concerned he'd be charged in Currin's murder because he smelled of gas.

But at that point, Currin's body hadn't even been discovered, the agents said, and nobody knew it had been doused with gas and set afire.

Prosecutors also have said they will present jailhouse witnesses who will testify that Cross implicated himself in the murder. And they'll offer two witnesses who will testify that Cross, a 10th-grade dropout with a long criminal record, had a pattern of choking women.

In an interview with agents, Cross said his first criminal charge was for assaulting a girlfriend he said stole money from him. "I damn near choked her out," he said.

But in two long statements to police, Cross denied any part in Currin's murder. He admitted he'd hit women before -- "Yeah, hell yeah, yeah!" he said. But "killing, that's a whole another level, man."

He also said he didn't know Currin: "I never met the chick, never saw the chick and when I seen the chick, she was already newspaper dead."

His lawyer, Vince Yustas, declined to comment on Cross' defense.

But a review of the records shows that the deputy sheriff didn't mention the alleged comment that seems to implicate Cross, either in an arrest report or another report 11 days later. It didn't surface until 2006, according to a KBI memo.

The defense also may offer an innocent explanation for Cross smelling of gas: Records show the jailer who found Cross said he saw him spilling gas on himself as he tried to pour it into the vehicle, which had run out of gas.

For their part, prosecutors Crawford-Sutherland and Barbara Maines Whaley may try to bolster Victoria Caldwell's testimony with entries from a diary in which she allegedly wrote on Aug. 1, 2000: "Damn they found the body, man. I hope they don't find out it was us."

Court papers show they also may note that the blunt object they allege was used to hit Currin was found buried behind a house in Ballard County, near where Victoria Caldwell said it would be.

But defense counsel has ready rebuttals.

The record shows that the wrench had no blood on it -- or anything else linking it to the crime -- and none of the witnesses described the weapon as a wrench until after one was found in the junk-strewn yard. Police didn't even collect the wrench initially because "we were not aware that it had any evidentiary value to the case," Steger wrote in a report.

The defense also has questioned the authenticity of the diary entries, suggesting they were written recently.

In interrogations, Burton and Tamara Caldwell have asserted their innocence. Caldwell told a court-appointed psychologist that she turned down a plea bargain because "I didn't do it and they have nothing against me."

Although one of Victoria Caldwell's cousins, Rosie Crice, told KBI agents that Burton confessed to her during a relationship they had over the past few years, Crice since has recanted her statement and said she hasn't seen Burton since high school, according to an interview that she gave to an investigator for one of Burton's lawyers, Mark Bryant.

Stubblefield also recanted her allegations that Burton was present at the crime scene, saying she gave that statement initially only because agents threatened her with the death penalty -- "a needle in my arm" -- unless she cooperated.

"To be honest," she said, "I ain't never seen Jeffery that night."
Neither Crice nor Stubblefield responded to requests for comment.

Experts weigh in
Earlier chargesshould aid defense

Criminal law experts not involved in the case say that defense counsel will be able to capitalize on the previous prosecution to create a reasonable doubt about their clients' guilt.

"It will be enormously valuable to the defense if they can get the jury to see that the government previously thought somebody else was responsible," said Kent Wicker, a former federal prosecutor.

The prosecution is expected to allege that Victoria Caldwell implicated the earlier defendants only because Cross threatened to kill her and others unless they threw suspicion away from him and onto the two men originally charged.

Jeremy Adams and Carlos Sexton were indicted on charges of complicity in Currin's murder about six months after the crime. Adams fathered Currin's child, and she had dated Sexton.

But a judge dismissed the charges, saying that local police and prosecutors had failed to turn over evidence that suggested the men were innocent. Mayfield police then were criticized in the media and by other law enforcement officers for discarding remnants of Currin's clothing and for allowing her apartment to be cleaned before it could be searched.

Lear, who had supervised that investigation, is now an insurance salesman and Methodist minister and said he's been subpoenaed to testify by the prosecution and the defense.

Reporter Andrew Wolfson can be reached at (502) 582-7189.

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080302/NEWS02/803020481

[Pauli]

The witnesses


March 2, 2008




Vinisha Stubblefield, of Mayfield, who was 17 at the time of Jessica Currin's murder, pleaded guilty last May to abuse of a corpse and tampering with physical evidence in exchange for a seven-year sentence. She hasn't been sentenced yet but has started serving her time at Christian County Jail. She changed her story so often when she was interrogated that authorities accused her repeatedly of lying.




Victoria Caldwell, of Mayfield, who was 15 at the time of the crime, also pleaded guilty to the reduced charges in exchange for a five-year term. She is Tamara Caldwell's cousin. She hasn't been sentenced yet, and the Kentucky Bureau of Investigation, because of concerns about her safety, has moved her around the country. Her story has changed on some key points as she has been interviewed multiple times by law enforcement officials. She said she and Stubblefield were friends of Currin.

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/...WS01/803020470


2 Plead Guilty In Jessica Currin Murder Trial


Video
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/2-...rial/306400815

[Pauli]

A small-town murder

July 15, 2004


Jean and Joe Currin with a photograph of their murdered daughter.
Picture:Krystal Kinnunen

When a young mother was murdered in a typically middle-American township, it seemed everyone - even the police - was looking the other way. Tom Mangold reports.

When patrolman Tim Fortner first saw her he thought she was a discarded shop window mannequin. The shape lying on the grass next to Mayfield Middle School side-entrance was bald and it looked as if the plastic frame had begun to melt in the hot sun.

Then he saw the flies. He retched as he came closer. It was the fast-decomposing body of a black, teenage girl. Her clothes and skin were badly burned, blisters covered her arms, her pants had been ripped off and lay by her side.

Her face was a dreadful death mask of pain, her eyes bulging, her entire tongue forced all the way out of her mouth. There were deep bludgeon marks to the back of her head; another blow had broken her nose. The burned remains of a black belt were tight around her throat; a plastic bottle smelling of petrol was at her feet. Jessica Currin, 18, the daughter of Mayfield's local fire chief, had been bludgeoned, stabbed, strangled and burned. They never did work out the actual cause of death.

Fortner, a 31-year-old with the Mayfield Police Department, stared at the body for several minutes. He had never, ever seen anything like this. His police background was minimal: he had been a deputy jailer before joining the force and he had completed his education without a degree.


So imagine his surprise when he was brusquely informed that he, patrolman Fortner, a man who had never had a single day's training as an investigator, would be in charge of the case.

"I didn't have a clue what to do next," he recalls. "I had no idea how to organise a crime scene or look for forensic evidence. Frankly, I was scared stiff. Looking back on it now, I can only imagine I was chosen because someone didn't want this case solved."

If that is the truth, then that bizarre hope was to be fulfilled.

The crime scene was brimming with forensic evidence. A substantial swatch of hair, seemingly torn from a human head, lay six metres from Currin's corpse. It was labelled No. 9 by Fortner but it never got as far as the police station. It was lost or stolen and has never been seen again.

The crime scene was brimming with forensic evidence. A substantial swatch of hair, seemingly torn from a human head, lay six metres from Currin?s corpse.

Materials including DNA from her nails, strands of hair in her hand, the plastic bottle with petrol in it, all the stuff that was saved and taken for examination revealed not a single useful fingerprint, not a single clue, nothing.

Once inside Mayfield Police station, the boxes of evidence became contaminated with evidence from other cases, more of it was lost or misplaced and two rape-swab tests from other crimes found their way into the Currin boxes.

Jeremy Adams is visited in jail by his mother Donna.

From its inception, the Jessica Currin murder investigation made the Keystone Cops look like Sherlock Holmes in top form.

Not that there wasn't plenty of local gossip to help the murder inquiry along. Mayfield, Kentucky, small-town America, 10,000 souls: everyone has kin in this bible-belt heartland. Mayfield Kentucky, a small town curling at the edges with insufficient work for a largely blue-collar population.

Fortner's investigation meandered on, yet despite the feast of forensic evidence that was not mislaid or misfiled, there was no breakthrough. The body was such a mess and the pudenda so burned that neither sexual assault nor rape could be positively established.

Fortner's boss, Assistant Police Chief Ronnie Lear, seemed unconcerned. If Fortner was a bit of a new monkey, Lear was the organ grinder, an experienced detective who "kept a close eye" on Fortner's bumbling efforts.

The girl had been murdered on the night of July 30-31, 2000. It took six months before the first big break came.

Jessica Currin had a son called Zion. She believed the father to be a young white man called Jeremy Adams. Adams is a petty criminal, small-time drug user with a sociopathic personality disorder. He was free on the night of the murder but went to prison the following day on unrelated matters. The word in Mayfield's bazaars was that Currin had been threatening to tell Adams's current girlfriend that he had fathered Zion.

This, it was claimed, might have been the motive for Adams to bludgeon, stab, strangle and silence Currin. Adams was in jail in January 2001 when Fortner visited him there and showed him the scene of crime pictures "to see if it would help his memory".

This was an unheard-of investigative ploy, given that Adams would always be a logical suspect. The pictures are horrific and it was not a complete surprise that, having seen them, a shocked Adams couldn't wait to describe them to his cellmate, one Jessie Roberts, another small-time crook, and known "snitch" (police informer).

Within days, Roberts informed his jailer that Adams had talked about the murder in a way which suggested he knew a great deal (which of course he did, having seen the pictures).

On the basis of this single piece of evidence, a grand jury was convened and duly recommended the indictment of Adams for the murder of Jessica Currin. On February 15, 2001, the 20- year-old was charged with murder, tampering with physical evidence and abuse of a corpse.

One year later the trial began, and the Adams case collapsed on the first day after it was discovered that Fortner and the Mayfield Police had withheld some 18 crucial pieces of evidence from the defence. The judge was so angry that he threatened to jail Fortner for his ineptitude.

The evidence "hidden" from the defence was damning. It showed, among other new truths, that Fortner, in his lumbering and inexperienced way, had actually been running a parallel investigation into Jessica's murder, had found two likely suspects and had almost certainly begun to stumble across the real truth. This is that two men, free to this day, had almost certainly picked her up on the night of the murder, sexually assaulted her, and when she protested, one of them bludgeoned, stabbed, strangled and burned her to death, probably in a cocaine-induced rage.

Two and a half years after the humiliating collapse of his case against Adams, Fortner himself resigned and a new Currin murder investigation was handed over to a professional investigator, Detective Jamie Mills of the Kentucky State Police. But even then no progress ensued.

Then, a few weeks ago, I received an unsolicited email from a concerned Mayfield resident asking if, as an investigative reporter, I would look at the Currin murder case.

It didn't require a very great reporting talent - just a lot of shoe leather - to go and see all the main parties, read original depositions taken by Fortner, talk to the lawyers and the main witnesses and put two and two together to realise that not only had Adams been framed by lazy policemen, but that Currin had clearly been murdered by others.

On the Saturday evening of her death, Currin had spent the night with a friend, Vinisha Stubblefield, allegedly playing cards until the two parted company in the early hours of Sunday.

Currin started to walk the 2.4 kilometres back to her apartment in Mayfield. No one has admitted seeing her alive again. That same night, Greg Starks was holding a party in Chris Drive, Mayfield.

In fact there were several parties taking place in the mixed-race street on that summer's evening. Of the seven young people who have admitted being at Starks's party, one, Quincy Omar Cross, a 25-year-old black man from out of town, quickly caught everyone's attention.

Cross spent some of the time at Chris Drive. The party had ample supplies of liquor and there is evidence of cocaine use. There were seven people present, occasionally sober, mostly drunk, often comatose, frequently in bedrooms. It was that kind of party.

According to Starks, Cross's behaviour for parts of the night was bizarre. "He kept saying he wanted to find women; he said it over and over again. He was ‘wired' and never stopped talking," Starks told police.

In the course of an evening blurred by witnesses' failing memories, sleep, drug and alcohol highs and lows, Cross moved in and out of 597 Chris Drive. About 5am, the priapic Cross suddenly asked Starks if he could borrow his car, a blue Pontiac because "I've got to see one of my girls".

Starks says that Cross borrowed his car at about daybreak, and returned about two hours later stinking of petrol. Starks is certain that Cross was no longer wearing the black leather belt he had been playing with before the car ride. He has said that the belt is precisely like the one found around Currin's neck.

By one of those truly remarkable coincidences, after Cross borrowed Starks's blue Pontiac, the car, with Cross at the wheel had the misfortune not only to break down but to be spotted by a deputy sheriff, Mike Perkins. It was about 7.50am.

We don't know what Cross did in that two hours during which he had the car, but when Perkins started questioning Cross in the broken-down vehicle he noticed that the driver's trousers reeked of petrol.

Cross gave Perkins a false name, false date of birth and false social security number. Perkins noticed that Cross wore no belt. There was a small red petrol can on the back seat of the car. It did not belong to Starks, the owner of the car, and had not been in the car when he loaned it to Cross.

Perkins allowed Cross to walk back to Chris Drive, (where he was later arrested for a drugs offence).

Shortly after Cross returned on his own without the car, a second man, Austin Leech, arrived at Chris Drive. Cross and Leech had a long, whispered conversation, and Leech left. Later it transpired that Leech had a white Cadillac, which for reasons still unexplained, was driven by Leech and hidden behind Starks's house that night.

Cross and Leech and their two cars are at the centre of what police now believe happened to Currin. The evidence is forensic and strongly circumstantial, but a thousand times firmer than the absurd "case" against Jeremy Adams.

I have discovered that Starks kept a small souvenir baseball "slugger" bat, made of hardwood, under the front seat of his car. That bat has been missing since Cross borrowed the vehicle. I have informed the police accordingly. They had had no clue as to the weapon that was used to bludgeon Currin.

So what did happened to Currin on that terrible night? Some of the mist is beginning to clear, some remains. Much of what really happened turns on the evidence of her friend Stubblefield, the last person to admit seeing her alive after an evening of cards together.

The two parted about 1.50am, claimed Stubblefield, and never met again. But shortly after Stubblefield made this statement, another young girl, Victoria Caldwell - a friend of Stubblefield's - told Fortner a different story. She claimed that Stubblefield had told her that after Stubblefield and Currin parted company, a white car with two men in it, had turned up, picked her (Stubblefield) up, and she in turn had directed the car towards where Currin was walking home. The white car then picked Currin up, but there was an argument between Currin and the occupants, so Stubblefield got out because she didn't want to be involved. End of different Stubblefield story. Fortner believed then (and still believes) that Stubblefield may have been somehow involved in the murder of Currin.

On Caldwell's evidence, Fortner arrested Stubblefield nine weeks after the murder, and charged her with hindering the prosecution case. But following Stubblefield's arrest, Caldwell, the only witness against her, started receiving death threats advising her not to give evidence. Caldwell and her mother were placed in police safe houses but just before Stubblefield's trial, Caldwell recanted her original statement and the family fled Mayfield for California. The case against Stubblefield could not now be heard.

While in Mayfield, I discovered that a CD with Stubblefield's name on the cover had been found by police in the blue Pontiac after Cross had borrowed it. (I told the police, who were very interested.) How had that got in there on that night?

When I challenged her, Stubblefield betrayed no emotion. "I don't know", she answered levelly, "I have no idea".

Could it have been a disc she loaned her friend Currin, which could mean Currin had probably been in the car at some stage ? "I don't think so," she answered. And that was that.

Caldwell's still unproven allegation that Stubblefield may have been economical with the truth about that night makes some sense.

Coincidentally, the car hidden behind Starks's house on Chris Drive was indeed a white car, Austin Leech's old Cadillac.

Current police thinking is that there were two crime scenes, not one. If Currin was picked up in the car by someone desperate to find a woman that night, and sexual advances were made and rejected, one can construct a scene in which her life may have been in peril.

Police today are certain she was burned in order to destroy any DNA on her body. The main investigative difficulty remains in placing two men and two cars on that night in such a way that all the dots join up.

So was Adams set up? Was his cellmate Roberts induced or bribed to give evidence against him ? "Oh no," everyone told me. "Definitely not," said David Hargrove the Commonwealth Attorney, "Of course not," snapped Ronnie Lear, "Not to my knowledge," says a hesitant Tim Fortner.

But I have discovered otherwise. The last formal interview between Fortner and Roberts, the snitch, was both video and audio recorded. It was one of the tapes that Fortner "didn't think it worth giving to the defence". Now I know why.

The audio tape from which the written deposition was made reveals nothing about a deal between the police, the Commonwealth Attorney and the jailhouse snitch.

But the video is a different matter.

The camera was switched on moments before the separate audio was switched on. In that telling few seconds which have never been transcribed, Assistant Police Chief Ronnie Lear is heard concluding a deal with Roberts by which the snitch is absolved of serving some outstanding jail term in one county, and obligingly moved to a jail in another county to be nearer his family. And this in return for helping the police nobble Adams. These deals are legal only if declared to the court. This deal was not declared to the court.

When I spoke to Hargrove in his lush Mayfield office, he was friendly enough until I asked him if he recalled the Roberts deal. There was a long, long silence. "I don't know," he answered very slowly. "I can't answer that, I can't remember."

Lear, who was the lead interviewing officer when the deal was made, wouldn't even confirm to me at first that he had actually interviewed Jessie Roberts. "I can't remember," he said staring at the wall over my right shoulder. "I don't think I was there."

"But I've seen you on the video." Very long pause. "Well, if I'm on the video I'm on it," Lear said, "but I don't remember anything about an inducement. If anything was done I had no knowledge of it."

Tim Fortner is today a security guard at the local hospital. He works for small money. The case haunts him and he believes his life is in danger. He has bought, and has permission to carry, a concealed weapon.

Cross and Leech are the objects of a new and intense police investigation. But the hard truth remains that once the investigation changed focus from the two real suspects to the framing of an innocent man, the heart went out of the inquiry, and the trail has gone very cold.

Cross and Leech remain an uncomfortable presence in a town that seems unable to come to terms with itself.

This really is heartland America; there are so many good people here; many of their young men have gone to serve in Iraq, hopeful ambassadors of a way of life they are proud to export.

But Mayfield, so typically American, will remain a stained standard for the American way of life as long as it fails to answer some of the questions that surround a small-town murder.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...694425270.html

[Pauli]

Last Update: 3/28 12:13 pm



For up to the minute courtroom blogs and LIVE STREAMING VIDEO inside the courtroom- CLICK HERE.

It's day two of the high profile Jessica Currin murder trial in Hickman, Kentucky.

Quincy Omar Cross is one of three people accused of murdering Jessica Currin in Mayfield, Kentucky in 2000.

Our courtroom reporter, Jennifer Horbelt, will be following this story.

http://www.wpsdtv.com/mostpopular/st...2-f9b2d3e09daf

[Pauli]

Testimony begins in murder trial
Tenn. man charged with killing western Ky. woman 8 years ago

CLINTON - Jurors have begun hearing testimony in the trial of a Tennessee man charged with killing a western Kentucky woman eight years ago.

Quincy Omar Cross of Tiptonville, Tenn., has pleaded not guilty to murder, kidnapping, rape and other charges in the slaying of 18-year-old Jessica Currin.

Her body was discovered in 2000 near a middle school in Mayfield.

Jurors heard testimony on Thursday from former teacher Tina Schlosser, who discovered Currin's body.

They also saw video taken by state police of Currin's burned and partially clothed body, the Paducah Sun reported on its Web site.

The circuit court in Hickman County, where the trial was moved because of pretrial publicity, began trying to seat a jury for the trial on March 18.

Cross is one of three people charged with killing Currin. Jeffrey Burton and Tamara Caldwell face trials on the same charges at a later date.

Two others, Victoria Caldwell and Vinisha M. Stubblefield, have pleaded guilty to lesser crimes and have agreed to testify against the three.

Jessica Currin's father, Joe Currin, came to think the police investigation of the murder was cursed, starting when police in this tiny western Kentucky town who had little familiarity with murder cases, made early arrests that were tossed out and were shaken by a corruption scandal.

Currin, a firefighter, stepped up his own efforts, enlisting the state's top prosecutor and bringing in civil rights groups to help keep up the pressure.
More than seven years after Jessica's death, five people were arrested.

Victoria Caldwell told state police that the five gave Jessica a ride home from a party in Mayfield on the night of the attack and Jessica refused Cross' sexual advances.

She said Jessica was taken to Burton's house, where she was raped, choked with a belt and beaten with what police think was a metal tool.

http://news.nky.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar...0103/803280393

[Pauli]

Defendants In Currin Murder Trial To Be Tried Separately

video http://video.aol.com/video-detail/de...ely/2657414058

Currin Murder Trial Heats Up

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Currin Murder Trial Underway

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[Pauli]

Prosecutor begins presenting case in W. Ky. murder

Last Update: 3/28 2:19 pm PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) - The family of a western Kentucky teen murdered eight years ago prayed together on the morning that her trial began.

The parents of Jessica Currin later took the stand and testified about the last day they saw their daughter alive.

The testimony came Thursday as prosecutors began presenting their case against defendant Quincy Omar Cross of Tiptonville, Tenn., after several days of jury selection.

Cross has pleaded not guilty to murder, kidnapping, rape and other charges in Currin's death.

Currin's body was found strangled, beaten, stabbed and burned on Aug. 1, 2000, on the back lawn of Mayfield Middle School.

During opening statements Thursday, prosecutor Barbara Whaley described the events leading up to Currin's murder and the witnesses that the jury would need to pay special attention to, including Vinisha Stubblefield and Victoria Caldwell, who were juveniles when the murder happened.

Caldwell and Stubblefield have pleaded guilty to evidence tampering and abuse of a corpse, and have agreed to testify against Cross and two others, Jeffrey Burton and Tamara Caldwell, who face trials on the same charges at a later date.

Whaley said the girls lied repeatedly to police, and will admit to it on the stand, because they were afraid of Cross.

Victoria Caldwell has told state police that the five gave Jessica a ride home from a party in Mayfield on the night of the attack and Jessica refused Cross' sexual advances. She said Jessica was taken to Burton's house, where she was raped, choked with a belt and beaten with what police believe was a metal tool.

The defense did not give an opening statement.

A string of witnesses were called on the first day of the trial, including the Currins, police officers who investigated the case and school employees who found the body.

Joe Currin testified that the last time he saw his daughter alive was July 29, 2000. The 18-year-old had just rented her own apartment and her father saw her there when he picked up her 7-month-old son for the evening.

Currin said he and his wife, Jean, began to worry when Jessica failed to attend church with them the next morning. Currin said they unsuccessfully tried to track her down.

Jean Currin said she identified her daughter's remains by the jewelry she was wearing.

Former Mayfield police officer Tim Fortner testified that investigators took an interest in Cross soon after the murder. But under questioning from defense attorney Vince Yustas, Fortner said there was never any physical evidence linking Cross to the crime.

The trial is being held in Hickman County due to pretrial publicity.
http://www.kypost.com/content/news/c...b-963366e260ba

[Pauli]

Trial in Teen's Slaying After 8 Years



(AP Photo/Michael Dann)
Joe Currin explains the long police investigation into his daughter Jessica's murder nearly eight years ago, on Feb. 27, 2008 in Mayfield, Ky. Jessica Currin's burned body was found behind Mayfield Middle School in August 2000. After several disappointing twists and turns, one of five defendants, Quincy Cross, is headed to trial on March 3. Two other defendants have already pleaded guilty to lesser charges, and another two are facing a murder trial at a later date.

Mar 16, 2008 12:45 PM (13 days ago) By DYLAN T. LOVAN, AP
MAYFIELD, Ky. - When his eldest daughter's burned body was found behind a school, Joe Currin wanted to believe the killer or killers would swiftly be brought to justice.

He trusted local law enforcement officials to solve Jessica's murder. "I told myself, 'They'll do what's right,'" he said.

That was nearly eight frustrating years ago. Currin came to believe the investigation was cursed, starting with police in this tiny western Kentucky town who had little familiarity with murder cases, made early arrests that were tossed out and were shaken by a corruption scandal.

Currin, a firefighter, stepped up his own efforts, enlisting the state's top prosecutor and bringing in civil rights groups to help keep up the pressure.
More than seven years after Jessica's death, five people were arrested, and one of them is scheduled to stand trial for murder Tuesday. That man and two others could face the death penalty.

"Joe Currin never gave up. I know it was frustrating for him," said former Kentucky Attorney General Greg Stumbo, who eventually took over the case. "No one can imagine what his family went through."

The body of 18-year-old Jessica Currin was found in 2000; investigators concluded she had been raped.

A police investigator working his first murder case focused on the father of Jessica's infant son. But Joe Currin said he never thought the that man was the killer, and charges against the ex-boyfriend and two others were thrown out by a judge in 2003.

Currin grew increasingly impatient.

"I told them, 'It ain't like we're here because somebody stole a motorcycle. We're here because my daughter was murdered,'" he said.

Graves County prosecutor David Hargrove said he understood Currin's anger.

"I think it was far more difficult than anybody thought it would be," he said. "It was very frustrating."

Currin sought out Stumbo, then considering a run for attorney general, at a political picnic in 2002.

He led demonstrations at the county courthouse, the FBI office in Paducah and at the state Capitol more than 250 miles away in Frankfort. Representatives of the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network - who questioned whether investigators were dragging their feet because Jessica was black - came to western Kentucky at Currin's request.

"Joe, he believed in the system, that the system would work for him and his family," said Alton McDonald, a member of Sharpton's group who came to western Kentucky several times. "But the system failed him."

Hargrove said he recalled just two murder cases in the decade before Jessica's killing. But her murder was the first of about a dozen in the county over the next three years, and Hargrove had just one full-time assistant.

A little more than a year after Jessica's death, a corruption scandal forced the resignations of the Mayfield police chief and assistant chief. And a rookie detective on the case was criticized by a judge for neglecting to turn over evidence to a defense attorney after the earliest arrests.

Then-Graves County Circuit Judge John Daughaday said he had "never seen a case so encumbered with problems."

State police investigators entered the case in 2003.

In 2006, Hargrove, burdened by a heavy caseload and acknowledging the growing complexity of the Currin case, asked Stumbo's office to take over. "I would have had to shut down my whole office to try it," Hargrove said.
About five months after taking over the case from Hargrove, Stumbo's office announced five arrests.

Victoria Caldwell and Vinisha M. Stubblefield, who both knew Jessica, have pleaded guilty to evidence tampering and abuse of a corpse, and were given sentences ranging from five to seven years.

This Tuesday, Quincy Omar Cross, 31, of Tiptonville, Tenn., is set to go on trial for murder, rape, kidnapping, abuse of a corpse and evidence tampering. The trial was moved to nearby Clinton because of pretrial publicity. Jeffrey Allen Burton, of West Paducah, and Tamara Caldwell, of Mayfield, will be tried later on the same charges. If convicted, all three face the death penalty.

Victoria Caldwell told state police that the five gave Jessica a ride home from a party in Mayfield on the night of the attack and Jessica refused Cross' sexual advances. She said Jessica was taken to Burton's house, where she was raped, choked with a belt and beaten with what police believe was a metal tool.

Attorneys for the defendants and special prosecutor Scott Crawford-Sutherland would not comment because of a judge's gag order.

Currin, who is now retired, and his wife, Jean, are focusing on raising Jessica's son, Zion, who is now 8 and calls them "mom" and "dad." They have not figured out the right time to tell the boy about his mother's death.

Currin said he questioned why he had to take such an active role in the investigation of his daughter's death.

"One of my main thoughts was 'I shouldn't have to do this,'" he said. "But it seemed like if I didn't push, it wouldn't get started."

http://www.examiner.com/a-1282163~Trial_in_Teen_s_Slaying_After_8_Years.html

[Pauli]

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[Pauli]

Friday, March 28-Day 2 of Trial-
11:57 AM-Greg Starks, Courtney Tolbert, and Jesse Alexander have been called to the stand by the prosecution. Right now, Alexander is testifying. Their stories all relate.

They tell about the Saturday before Jessica Currin was murdered. According to them, a group of men, including Starks and Alexander, went to Tennessee to pick up drugs. They also brought back Quincy Cross to the house Courtney lived in with Jesse Alexander, another girl and her boyfriend.

They began taking drugs, and they say they remember Quincy Cross taking off his belt, an old braided leather belt, and swinging it around. Then, Jesse and Courtney say they went to sleep and woke up the next morning to police knocking on their door. They went to jail for drugs in the house, and Quincy Cross went with them.

Alexander says one of the next times he saw Cross was outside a grocery store. Cross drove up in a car, jumped out, and Alexander says accused him of snitching to the police about "killing that girl".

Ashley Hardison has just been called to the stand. She shared the house with Courtney and two other men in 2000. She was there the Saturday night before the murder.


10:30 AM-
Trial proceedings began this morning at 8:30am. The prosecution first called Dr. Wes Mills, Jessica Currin's dentist. He was asked to turn over her dental records to identify her body on the day her body was found. The defense asked no questions of him.

Next, Dr. Mark LaVaughn was called to the stand. He is a former Forensic Pathologist with the Medical Examiner's Officer in Madisonville, KY. He was fired in 2002, for reasons never explained in his testimony. He visited the crime scene the afternoon Jessica's body was found. He testified that he took and drew pictures, and noticed a piece of a belt near Jessica Currin's body. The belt was charred. The body was then taken to Madisonville for an autopsy. The prosecution presented his drawings of the autopsy findings, and Dr. LaVaughn explained what he found. There was decomposition to the body, second and third degree burns to her chest and abdomen, and lacerations to her nose and the back of her head. Based on his findings, Dr. LaVaughn stated that her death was caused by a combination of strangulation and blunt head trauma.

Then, the defense began to cross examine Dr. LaVaughn. They asked him point blank if he had any physical evidence that Jessica Currin was strangled. Dr. LaVaughn said there was none. No bruising or scratches, no physical evidence at all. In fact, he stated that he drew the conclusion of strangulation as a cause of death only from the piece of the belt found at the crime scene. Vincent Yustas, defense attorney for Quincy Cross, asked Dr. LaVaughn if he would have any medical basis for saying that strangulation was a cause of death if the belt was not there. Dr. LaVaughn said no.

There was also a Sexual Assault Evidence Collection Kit done on Jessica Currin's body. That kit showed no evidence that she had been sexually assaulted, according to Dr. LaVaughn. He said he found no bruising or injuries, but stated that decomposition ot the body may have masked those injuries.

Finally, Yustas asked Dr. LaVaughn what happened to the dress Jessica Currin was wearing. That dress appears in photos of the crime scene but did not make it to the evidence room. Dr. LaVaughn stated he remembered holding up the dress, which had been partially melted from the burning of her body and was covered in maggots, and asking a member of law enforcement present at the autopsy if they wanted the dress. He says that person said no. So, he stated he put the dress either in the body bag or the trash. Also, he stated that none of the maggots were saved, although they can be used to determine a time of death for a decomposed body. He was not conclusive on the time of death of Jessica Currin, merely that she had died one to two days earlier.


The prosecution next called Margie Saxton, a former Mayfield Police Officer to the stand. She was called to the scene of the crime at Mayfield Middle School in 2000. She did not collect evidence, but worked the perimeter of the scene, keeping back spectators. She was asked by Detective Tim Fortner at one point to take the Caldwell Family in, one of the daughters being Victoria Caldwell. She did not know why they were there, but stated that they exhibited fear. She claimed they crawled from one room to another, and ducked whenever cars would pass by.

The court took a brief recess and is back in session. Greg Starks has taken the stand. He owned the car that Quincy Cross was found pushing, because it was out of gas, the Sunday morning after Jessica Currin's death.

http://www.wpsdtv.com/content/currin/default.aspx