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Lunsford's Plan To File Suit Leads To Dueling Attorneys

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By THOMAS W. KRAUSE and JOSH POLTILOVE, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 27, 2008

JACKSONVILLE - JACKSONVILLE - JACKSONVILLE - In dueling news conferences about 150 miles apart Tuesday, the father of Jessica Marie "Jessie" Lunsford and the sheriff who investigated the girl's abduction and murder traded verbal jabs.

Mark Lunsford and his attorneys said lapses in judgment and mistakes by the Citrus County Sheriff's Office were swept under the rug after the trial of Jessie's killer. At a Jacksonville news conference, they cited specific allegations documented in investigative reports. Lunsford, in a letter sent Feb. 19 to the sheriff's office, had informed him of a plan to file a negligence lawsuit.

Sheriff Jeff Dawsy declined to discuss specifics, instead giving blanket denials of wrongdoing. At a news conference in Inverness soon after Lunsford's, he said the allegations were baseless, absurd and nothing but sound bites easy to disprove.

Lunsford and his attorneys pointed out alleged missteps, including:

•If the sheriff's office had arrested John Evander Couey as an absconded sex offender, as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement requested weeks before Jessie's disappearance, the slaying could have been prevented.

•After the 9-year-old girl's disappearance and before investigators found her body, sheriff's detectives knocked on Couey's mobile home door four times without asking to be admitted. Only after Couey buried the girl alive in a shallow grave under his window, after he fled to Georgia and after he was captured and described his actions did detectives perform an adequate search of his home.

•Detectives focused their attention on Jessie's grandfather as a suspect rather than on a search.

A Suspicious Residence

Lunsford attorney Mark Gelman said detectives should have known that FDLE reports sent to Citrus County said Couey could be found at his sister's mobile home, across the street from the Lunsfords.

Gelman also referred to a law enforcement summary report that showed detectives visited Couey's home twice on the first day Jessie was missing. They searched the outside but did not ask to enter, Gelman said.

The next day, a boy in the neighborhood told detectives that a man in Couey's home was always staring at him and his little brother, according to Gelman and the report.

Detectives, therefore, returned twice. Once they spoke to Couey roommate Gene Secord and the second time to roommate Matthew Dietrich. Dietrich, they noted in their reports, was so nervous his hands shook.

Three days later, the detectives asked to search inside the home. They smelled a strong chemical, like a cleaning solution, but found nothing.

Dawsy maintains that Couey killed Jessie the night she was abducted. Had detectives entered the house on Feb. 24, 2005, she would not have been there, he said.

Gelman, however, points out a medical examiner's report that says Jessie had no food in her stomach, meaning she had not eaten for at least 24 hours before her death. The Lunsfords, he said, fed Jessie dinner and a bedtime snack the night she disappeared.

'They Lied To Me'

Lunsford attorney Eric "Rick" Block said the detectives did not sufficiently search for Jessie because they thought they knew who abducted and possibly killed her: Archie Lunsford. Detectives told Mark Lunsford that Jessie's blood was found in his father's underpants and asked him to confront his father.

"They lied to me," Lunsford said. "I went in there, broken-hearted, and spent the next three days angry at my father."

The sheriff, Lunsford said, has said publicly that he stands by his investigation and, if he had it to do over again, he would do everything the same way.

Lunsford said his main concern is that the sheriff's procedures change. "I've been about change since the beginning," he said. "If it was about money, I'd have sued in the beginning, and I'd have won. ... The only way I can get them to change their policy and procedures is to sue."

Dawsy said that change already has happened, citing his work with Lunsford and state legislators. He also pointed out that he attended Lunsford's charity motorcycle ride Saturday to raise money for child advocacy centers.

Reporter Thomas W. Krause can be reached at (813) 259-7698. Reporter Josh Poltilove can be reached at (813) 259-7691.

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