She walked with a limp and struggled with headaches, short-term memory lapses, ringing in her ears, and numbness on the left side of her body. Jessicas only diagnosis was acute stress disorder, which, the evaluator wrote, occurs when an individual is exposed to actual or threatened death. The evaluator added that her symptoms are normal and to be expected through circumstances such as hers.. Matthew testified that Jessicas grandparents were not blood-related, and could not be trusted with the children. There is no public record of the proceeding, but the grand jury chose not to indict Matthew either for making false statements or for violating his oath. In the police body-cam videos, the dog is still wearing his leash. I mean he might have grabbed my arm before, but I don't think he would intentionally do anything to hurt mebut like I said, he's changed so much here, lately, she said. One of about 70 messages they exchange throughout the night. Uh, just my service weapon, he responds. "I left the location, I'm back en route, I'm on Carver Road right now. Mathews, the publisher of The Grip and its only reporter, submitted an Open Records Act request to the magistrates court, where judges swear in new officers. Browning, who sometimes socialized with Jessica and Matthew, cried throughout her interview. Gradually, though, her concerns dissipated. ), In a private Facebook message, Willey complained to a friend that Matthews demeanor was emotionless but very authoritative. She had learned about Jessicas shooting after probing stories were published by Sheila Mathews in The Grip, a free newspaper in Spalding County, and aired on the Atlanta television station 11Alive, reported by Brendan Keefe. If that's what you want to do. She told the agent, they were at home when they argued about his girlfriend and the photo that Jessica found on his phone that night. One woman said that he would drive to her house and shine the lights of his patrol car into her windows. Updated: 11:14 PM EDT July 28, 2017. Wouldnt listen to anybody.. Am I recording it? Her marriage had been crumbling, and she and her husband of six months Matthew Boynton, 20 . The police were notified of said "shooting" by Jessica's then husband Matthew Boynton. "What you're saying to me, that's not, you know, I don't see anything he did wrong by saying that," Fred Mays told Mathews. After he serves a three-year sentence and finishes his probation, his record will be wiped clean. The neighbor saw Matthew leaving the apartment for dinner with a coworker. In an interview with the police, she said that she found him intimidating. You cant force her into the truck. (Matthew refused to comment for this story.). Jessica, at home with her three boys, still has occasional migraines, weakness in her left foot, and lingering amnesia about the night of her shooting. Matthew Boynton, 21, had just started work as a Griffin police officer. I would have picked something different, Jessica went on. Its always more exaggerated every time. She felt uncomfortable that Matthew told Beam every detail of his life, but that the conversations were all confidential.. Although Gibson had been indicted on fourteen charges, he was allowed to plead guilty, in June, 2017, to only two, for violating his oath of office, and he was granted first-offender status. Jessica Boynton was found in a closet bleeding out. She silently surveyed the walls, where her family had taped pictures of her sons. That question lingers--but not for Georgia Bureau of Investigations, who said the case is closed--repeatedly stating that they are satisfied with their findings. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Its always different. Mathew, a then police officer raced home only to hear 2 consecutive gunshots. After Gibson left, citizens came forward to say that they, too, were terrified of him. A text message is sent to his phone from Jessicas phone. Jones passes by a framed portrait hung on the wall. After she came out of her coma, Denise had had to buy her new clothes. I didnt know if it was an active scenario, he later told investigators. Jessica Lester started dating Matthew Boynton when she was fifteen. But DeMarco insisted to Mathews during their phone conversation, that the timeline was not relevant. Shortly after Jessica was hospitalized, her aunt Kathy took a photograph of a C-shaped bruise on the back of Jessicas head, and she shared it with the G.B.I. Once the investigation was closed, reporter and publisher, Sheila Mathews, investigated the shooting for her newspaper, The Grip. The first officer she saw in the parking lot was Beam. Thats the game here, he said. Although the hospital had placed her under constant observation after she was admitted, the precautions were removed after she regained consciousness. Absolutely, Matthew said. My dream is that, one day, the Feds show up and say, We want the notebook, he said. She could now recall that after she returned from Walmart she went to her closet to put her shoes on, because she needed to walk the dog. Her shoulder-length, blonde hair was saturated in crimson. She finished her high-school coursework online, and almost never saw her friends or family. He's meeting his buddy at the local Waffle House. In April 2016, hours after an argument with his wife Jessica, Griffin, Georgia police officer Matthew Boynton radios for assistance and reports hearing two gunshots coming from inside his home. At the Griffin Police Department, concerns about domestic violence have apparently been so slight that in 2018 the department hired an officer whose personnel record showed that he had recently been accused by his childs mother of threatening her with a gun. I dont think the text was quite that literal, Jacob said. Im, like, You dont have to ask me, he said. But, he said, there are a lot of questions out thereboth in favor of Jessica and in favor of Matthewthat could be answered, but I just dont think the G.B.I. Haha I'm sorry I didn't think about that lol he sends to her after receiving a text from her--moments following his text from his wife. Jessica could not come within three hundred yards of Matthew or her children. ), After several months, a male officer told a captain in Internal Affairs that he didnt understand why Whitehouses complaint had been ignored. Dont make me laugh.. In all my years in law enforcement, when someone shoots himself in the head its one and done, Jessica Whitehouse, a deputy there at the time, told me. The judges are very swayed by their own reactions to each person, Meier said. She told me that, for female officers in many parts of the South, theres no in-betweenyou cant just be a human in uniform. They were made to feel that their presence contaminated the ethos of the department. Hardheaded. Officer Robert Brian Jones shouts, as he travels deeper inside the two-bedroom apartmenthis weapon drawn. Underneath her . I dont doubt the findings of the G.B.I., he told me. But she felt isolated. For a time, Sanders thought that the source of Gibsons power might be connected to the Dixie Mafia (a gang based in the South), or a gambling ring, or some hidden knowledge that afforded him a lifetime of leverage over Beam. He would flash his lights and pull her over, and force her to have sex with him. Then he called E.M.S. She rebukes the text message that was sent from her phone to Matthews that night and said she didnt have a lock on her phone, so anyone couldve sent it. Martha was initially skeptical when Jessica got involved with another man who assumed the role of protector. (The purposes of such a sweeping request were never clear. In early May, after three weeks in a coma, Jessica began to regain consciousness. FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE FOR YOURSELF, CLICK HERE. But Matthew said that hed raise the child as his own. But the factors that lead to abuse at homecoercion, authoritarianism, a sense of entitlement to violenceare also present in the work that police officers do on the streets. Statements from Jessica Boynton and Matthew Boynton are logged into evidence," said a statement written by Yancy March 13. But otherwise, he said, Im doneIm out. While sifting through pages and pages of the report, a GBI evidence photo caught her attention. GRIFFIN, Ga. Who shot the officers wife? They had wiped stuff off the computers, Dix said. Jessica and Jacob have a son together, and their living room and kitchen are arranged like a nursery school, with a poster displaying the ABCs, a whiteboard, and wooden coat hangers shaped like trucks. But asking those questions resulted in a threat. After getting home around 10:45 PM, a neighbor heard a gunshot from the Boynton home. There is another problem now. Not long afterward, she saw Matthew walk briskly to his truck. They moved in together in January, 2017, and as they were packing Willey discovered that Matthew had a large gym bag full of womens clothes, along with a retainer with Jessica printed on its case. She speaks lovingly of her children and the need to and desire to see them.. Shes just a piece of shit, Jacob clarified. Jessica and Matthew moved into a house across the street from the sheriff, Wendell Beam, and his wife. When the men wanted tea, they just shook their glasses.. Four months later, he was hired as a reserve officer in Braswell, Georgia, a community of four hundred people. I just came up the stairs, two rounds be advised I smell gun smoke, and I cant get an answer at the door, he says out of breath and panicked. Earlier that night Jessica's husband Matthew headed to Waffle House for a late-night bite with a fellow officer, leaving his service weapon . According to the order, which Matthew had petitioned the court to issue, probable cause exists that Family Violence has occurred in the past and may occur in the future. Jessica was ordered to have a psychological evaluation. But a Griffin city official said that the document couldnt be found. According to a police report, Jessica was very reserved and appeared to be upset. She said that the officers recommended that she not yell at Matthew. The shooting occurred on the evening of April 14, 2016. Anybody that went against him would be eliminated. Whitehouse said that Beam seemed concerned, but he said that shed have to write down her complaint. I never wanted to hurt myself before, she said, going on to say that shes never handled a gun, nor shot one. Jessica was the kind of intuitive mother who predicts a babys dangera fall, a spilled drink, a choking hazarda few seconds before it happens. Jessica found it darkly funny that it was a missing retainer, and not her brain injury, that ultimately led to Matthews arrest. In an analysis of more than two thousand family-court opinions from the past decade, Joan S.Meier, a professor at George Washington University Law School, found that, in sixty-four per cent of cases, courts did not accept the story of a mother who said she or her children had been abused by her husband, even when evidence corroborated the claim. According to Jessica Lester, Boynton's ex-wife who filed a . "Well, how do you come to that conclusion?" I was scared to death, because I couldnt find [Tyler]that she would shoot me, I mean shoot him, shoot me, and then kill herself.. He calls out for Jessica, but no answer. In December, 2016, Jessica filed a report with the Griffin Police Department, saying that Matthew hadnt returned her belongings. He did not explain why hed earlier sent word that Jessica was dead. However, with the later discovery of previously-unknown evidence, it evolved into an . His flashlights beam reveals a smiling family of four. She found that, when a mother accused a father of domestic abuse or child abuse, she lost custody to the father in twenty-eight per cent of cases. Just one minute later, Matthewcalls 911, reaching Spalding County dispatch. SHEILA A. MATHEWS ::: The July 29 arrest of former Griffin Police Department Officer Matthew Boynton stemmed from a theft report filed Dec. 19, 2016, by his former wife, Jessica Lester. Dusty and her husband drove to Jessicas apartment. | Examine the evidence yourself, calls 911, reaching Spalding County dispatch. Hewrote a letter to Jessicas attorneyon June 10, in which he questioned the finding that Jessicas head injury was a self-inflicted gunshot wound, indicating that there was no investigation conducted by authorities at the hospital. No it wasn't. It was actually from him. Jessica could see her children for only four hours on Sunday afternoons. She now works for 6ABC Action News. The officers found a police-issued .40-caliber Glock belonging to Matthew under Jessica's body. Jacob is gentle and jovial, articulating emotions that Jessica herself struggles to name. But the report and follow-up interviews with the lead investigator make the case as clear as mud to one reporter in the small town where it happened. Denise said that Amy confided that Matthew had once hit her and that their relationship was strained. At the judges recommendation, they also arranged for a psychological evaluation. A phone that text messages were sent and received to/from following his recollection of hearing,POP-POP! and running out of the apartment. The secretary whom hed slapped in the head was asked to type his resignation letter. Dr. Vernon Henderson, chief of Trauma and Critical Care at Atlanta Medical Center was on-call the morning Jessica came in and treated her for the next month while she was in the hospital. The officers found Jessica in her bedroom closet, unconscious and lying on her side, her head on a bloody pillow. I want you to make sure that Jessica is going to be O.K., because hes going to hurt her.. I know that hes a police officer, and Im not really anybody, she said. Her family wondered if this was her way of escaping the relationship. Sanders was forty-three years old and the son of a former Republican state representative; he considered himself a happy beneficiary of the good-old-boys system, he told me, and did not do his work in pursuit of political reform. When female officers told him that they were afraid of the patrol-division captain, David Gibson, whom Beam had promoted, he did nothing. In nearly a third of cases, the officers already had a domestic-violence incidentand, in one case, eightin their records. When I visited them in August, Jacob mentioned that one of the boys had recently done a spin in the living room and called it a pirouette. Jessica seemed more energized by the comment than by anything else we discussed. In isolated, poor regions of South Carolina, coming from an lite familyoffereda feeling of impunity. Earlier that night Jessica's husband Matthew headed to Waffle House for a late-night bite with a fellow officer, leaving his service weapon . He assigns another officer to standby at the door until the rest of the apartment is cleared. The new sheriff, Darrell Dix, the former lieutenant in the Griffin Police Department, told me that when he unlocked the doors to the sheriffs office on his first day on the job, January 1, 2017, he found nine industrial-sized trash bags full of shredded papers. At the time, I was well known in my field by people who had some cloutshe worked in hospital risk management and had friends in law enforcementand what we should have done is pulled some strings, she said. You know you cant give a sworn statement and lie on it. Crying, Matthew set his body armor, badge, and police radio on the table in front of him, and agreed to resign from the department. "Well listen, if you're going to start quoting, you gonna start recording these things, you need to let me know ahead of time before you do, before I'm starting answering questions," DeMarco ordered the reporter. And he said, Its a damn shame she didnt do it right the first time. She added, He doesnt refer to her as, like, human. Something had happened to the mama lions cubs, Kathy said. A key piece of evidence was photographed inside the kitchen after officers arrived on the scene. Thats what I told yourThats what I told the sheriff today, he said. agents, asking them to investigate how Jessica had been injured there. GBI/Griffin Police Dept. Is she gonna wear a mask or. My mama told me stories about going to lunch with my father and his friends in the sixties, he said to me. By Rachel Aviv. At 12:54 AM, Matthew's phone received a text from Jessica's phone that read like a suicide note. Matthew sends another text to his girlfriend, a Spalding County dispatcher, Give me a few. Leigh Goodmark, the director of the Gender Violence Clinic, at the University of Marylands Carey School of Law, speculates that one reason for the dearth of research is a reluctance to fund a study that will bring attention to an uncomfortable dilemma: that, as Goodmark says, those policing the crime and those committing it are often the same person.. Jessica could never quite explain whythere was no proposal, just an understanding that there was too much momentum to break up. Earlier that night Jessica's husband Matthew headed to Waffle House for a late-night bite with a fellow officer, leaving his service weapon . Then he would handcuff me and put me on the hood of his patrol car and have oral sex with me, she wrote in a statement. On a shelf by her head was the notebook documenting Matthews infidelity. Police departments have become more attentive to officers use of excessive force on the job, but that concern rarely extends to the home. Only the pillow under her head was bloody. The subsequent investigation was short-lived, with it having been deemed a "civil matter.". Her marriage had been crumbling, and she and her husband of six months Matthew Boynton, 20 . One, investigators said penetrated Jessica's head and the other the wall. Jessicas grandparents, who are Baptist, were willing to help her bring up the child, but Jessica decided to settle down with Matthew, her first boyfriend. She loved those kids more than anything, and she knows how it feels to grow up without a mom, she said. Jessica Lester's friends persuaded her to date Matthew Boynton, a boy in the eleventh grade, by saying, "If you don't like him, you can always break up . Police and Officer Boynton claimed that Jessica tried to kill herself but after Jessica awoke . Jessica still has occasional migraines, weakness in her left foot, and lingering amnesia about the night of her shooting. I finally had the evidence that I needed that Matthew was cheating on me. I know that we got into an argument, but that's about all," she said, not remembering much of what had happened on April 15.
Joseph Gould Obituary,
Stafford Clothing Company Website,
Articles M