Jones passes by a framed portrait hung on the wall. Jessica and Matthew left their wedding reception, which her family hosted, after less than an hour. Matthew wore a titanium wedding ring with a blue stripe, to signify that he was in law enforcement. My understanding of the laws of physics is that one person cannot be in two places at the same time," Mathews said in an interview with 11Alive. Her marriage had been crumbling, and she and her husband of six months Matthew Boynton, 20 . Officers rush to the scene to find Jessica Boynton inside a locked closet, with an apparent gunshot wound to her head. "I left the location, I'm back en route, I'm on Carver Road right now. Twice, Matthew called the police on Jessica, for yelling or cursing or poking his chest. A deputy named Misty Piper said that, after Gibson repeatedly pressured her to have sex with him, she acquiesced, because she felt that, if she defied Gibson, she would meet a similar fate. In the spring of 2016, less than six months after the wedding, Jessica discovered that Matthew was having an affair with Courtney Callaway, a dispatcher at the Spalding County sheriffs office, a mile away from the Griffin Police Department. Few states mandate that custody evaluators have domestic-violence training; judges often characterize the allegations as mudslinging and focus not on their veracity but on which party appears to be the better parent. Right, she said, nearly whispering. In Jessicas first three weeks in the hospital, he visited her once, accompanied by Beam, who wore his uniform and carried his gun. All rights reserved. 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. He concluded that Jessica had shot herself in the head, though he indicated that his assessment would have been more definitive had there been a photo of Jessicas wound before shed had surgery. The Citizens Police Data Project, in Chicago, analyzed the records of Chicago cops between 2000 and 2016 and found that officers accused of domestic abuse received fifty per cent more complaints than their colleagues for using excessive force. It interests me on a psychological level. He had conducted his own canvass of Jessicas apartment complex; retraced Matthews journey to the Waffle House, timing the drive with a stopwatch; and got permission from the new tenants of Jessica and Matthews apartment to inspect the holes in the closet. One witnessJessicas neighbor Megan Browningwould like to speak to you anonymously in chambers, because she is afraid., Judge Hankinson seemed to find the idea so novel as to be humorous. 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. I think weve got the right to confront and cross-examine anybody thats gonna be offering testimony, Owen said. If the phone was found by the GBI in the kitchenif the phone is on police body camera footage sitting on the counter by the microwave, and he was outside never returning insidehow is it possible for Matthew to text his girlfriend, while he's calling in shots fired while outside of the apartment? The subsequent investigation was short-lived, with it having been deemed a "civil matter.". Two months later, Jessica was hired as an assistant teacher at a child-care center in Griffin. Although the hospital had placed her under constant observation after she was admitted, the precautions were removed after she regained consciousness. Jessicas grandmother, Martha, said that initially she had trusted Wendell Beam, whom her husband had known for years, and the G.B.I.s investigative process. Now itsa twenty-two-billion-dollar industry plagued by exploitation. Her DNA had been found on the gun, which was to be expectedshe had been lying on it. Then-Griffin Police Department officer Matthew Boynton was arrested on July 28, 2017, for giving a false statement to his own department stating he was not i. Both couples said that the shots occurred around 11 p.m.not at 1 a.m., when Matthew had reported them. 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. She said, Do me a favor. In the spring of 2013, when she was sixteen and had dated Matthew for a year, she took her grandparents into the kitchen, closed the door, and told them, apologizing, that she was pregnant. When the men wanted tea, they just shook their glasses.. He had a reputation for being kind and personable but also passive, indecisive, and resistant to change. On a shelf by her head was the notebook documenting Matthews infidelity. He drove to a nearby Waffle House to have a late dinner with a fellow Griffin police officer. Earlier that night Jessica's husband Matthew headed to Waffle House for a late-night bite with a fellow officer, leaving his service weapon . We will not be swayed by hearsay, false rhetoric or sensationalism in a manner that would cause harm to the innocent, he wrote. I can't even get it out of its case, she replied. For a while, he put clear tape on the doors of his house and car, so he would know if anyone had sneaked inside. You do whatever you want to do. The lead teacher at the day care where Jessica worked had also found her unnecessarily deferential. Community. Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us. He did not explain why hed earlier sent word that Jessica was dead. 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. There is an unwillingness to believe, as if its just preferable not to know this about our culture, Meier told me. At the time of the shooting Jessica was looking to make a new start for herself and two young sons. He reads another text from his girlfriend, while driving 90 mph. The Griffin Police Department had not received any complaints about Matthews use of force, but Darrell Dix, a former lieutenant, told me that he and some of his colleagues worried that Matthew had a domineering and one-dimensional approach to his work, which could provoke fights and scuffles. He had not learned that there is a human side of this, too, Dix said. 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.. The sheriffs department does not respond to incidents inside the Griffin city limits, and he was the only one from his office there. To obtain the search warrant, a lieutenant submitted a sworn statement explaining that there was probable cause that Sanders had been involved in two commercial burglaries; later, the lieutenant said that this was the result of a cut-and-paste error.). This activity on his cell phone had to have taken place inside the kitchen inside his apartment," Mathews said to DeMarco in a recorded phone conversation. With their guns drawn, the officers checked every room in the house. Was the investigation a mess up or a cover up? She believes that she and Matthew must have fought in the closet, and she never made it outside. Take care of the children. I didnt know if I was dealing with a possible active active scenario where she still had the gun and she had shot Tyler, he replied. "You know, you're trying to match up times of where he is getting these text messages or how he's responding to them, that he has to be in the kitchen. With his gun raised and arms poised, he holds his weapon out in front of him with both hands. 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. And he called the girlfriend, so Mays said to Mathews. Jessica thought that Matthew, who was baby-faced but muscular, looked rich; he wore Ralph Lauren boots and collared shirts from Hollister. No. The next day, Yates texted the D.A. According to Jessica Lester, Boynton's ex-wife who filed a . It was like he was spitting in my face, she said. But there are almost no empirical studies examining the prevalence of this sort of abuse today. 2023 Cond Nast. Only eight were fired. I mean you can't prove that," DeMarco. When I asked about her mother, who lived nearby, she said, mildly, that she had tried to reconnect with her several times over the years, but her mother didnt seem interested. . I mean, I'm sure there's a plausible explanation to it without trying to come up with some sort of, you know, theory that, 'Oh, he has to be here in the kitchen answering these text messages.'". I figured she was going to retract her statement, he said later. "Police department!" Eleven Griffin police officers arrived at the apartment complex. The shooting occurred on the evening of April 14, 2016. The officers found Jessica in her bedroom closet, unconscious and lying on her side, her head on a bloody pillow. Eleanor Attwood, a lawyer representing six women who filed civil suits against Gibson, warned me to do all my reporting when the sun was out. September 30, 2019. reports, Matthew said. did not record any interviews with Jessicas family or friends. I told him, You're going to have to go get it, because I cant get it out of the case., Do you know how it was that you got shot?, Have you ever had any type of thoughts about hurting yourself?. In December, 2014, Jessica had a brief affair and got pregnant again. His flashlights beam reveals a smiling family of four. After getting home around 10:45 PM, a neighbor heard a gunshot from the Boynton home. agents asked if she had ever handled Matthews gun. Matthew testified that Jessicas grandparents were not blood-related, and could not be trusted with the children. In April, 2018, nine months after Matthew was charged, Jessica called the Spalding County district attorneys office to ask why Matthews case hadnt been presented to a grand jury. Like, how hours after the shooting, the phone was put into an evidence bag, sealed and logged into GBI evidence, it was still calling Matthew's girlfriend. 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. Ill go ahead and tell you that the boys deserve more structure and more care and love which Im almost positive YOU have. By then, the boys were spending half their time with each parent, switching houses on Fridays. He's meeting his buddy at the local Waffle House. He spoke about how he gambled with a mythical figure known in the sheriffs office as the Wood Chipper, because, supposedly, he had used such a device to kill a woman. Gradually, though, her concerns dissipated. Jessicas grandmother made an appointment with a lawyer who could help her file for divorce. GRAPHIC WARNING: Jessica Boynton, 19, was found lying in a pool of blood in a locked wardrobe in the home she shared with her husband Matthew Boynton in Griffin, Georgia back in April. Armed with body camera attached to their uniforms, the officers burst through the door, quickly passing Matthews phone, a black and grey Verizon LG smartphone, on the kitchen counter. Theres no second shot. He had filed nearly a hundred Open Records Act requests about Jessicas shooting, and he shared what he learned with Jessicas family, as well as with The Grip. In the nineteen-nineties, researchers found that forty-one per cent of male officers admitted that, in the previous year, theyd been physically aggressive toward their spouses, and nearly ten per cent acknowledged choking, strangling, or usingor threatening to usea knife or a gun. 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. If you perceive yourself as being country and rough, then youre a dyke, she said. agent who lived near Spalding County and had worked with Beam on several cases over the years. 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. agents, asking them to investigate how Jessica had been injured there. summary of an interview with King, the neurosurgeon, noted that he called the circumstances of her injury suspicious, but the agent who conducted the interview failed to record the conversation; he hadnt charged his audio recorder. I would have picked something different, Jessica went on. Everyone said, Beams grandson will get off, she went on. Less than a week after Jessica emerged from her coma, DeMarco and another G.B.I. Chris DeMarco, GBIs assistant special agent in charge, arrives on the scene and meets with Griffin Police Chief Michael Yates for a briefing. If he has to drive to downtown Griffin, he cleans and vacuums his car, so he can easily see if someone plants drugs or contraband. The shooting occurred on the evening of April 14, 2016. But a Griffin city official said that the document couldnt be found. I figured out what happened. Jessica and Matthew moved into a house across the street from the sheriff, Wendell Beam, and his wife. Within three hours, she received a copy of Matthews official oath, which the D.A.s office had been trying to find for six months. He hears a baby crying as he carefully steps into the bedroom where a dark brown crib is situated. Ive never, ever wanted to hurt myself before., Do you think Matthew was incapable of doing this?, Honestly, I dont know, she said. Community See All. | Examine the evidence yourself, calls 911, reaching Spalding County dispatch. (She and Callaway, Matthews ex-girlfriend, couldnt be reached for this story. The next door neighbor interview was conducted after Matthew returned to full duty. Owen proposed that Beam supervise the visits. It felt like he was just a ticking time bomb, she told the police. The secretary whom hed slapped in the head was asked to type his resignation letter. The rest of us enjoyed her graduation party, Martha, her grandmother, said. She suspected that there had been a physical altercation leading up to the gunshots. I mean, I walk past it. No, I cant even get it out of the case, she said. You find plenty of reasons to leave nowI know that, Jacob teased her. Jessica Boynton was initially . The following year, Gibson put a female colleague in a headlock and held a Taser against her temple. "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. Until recently, Matthew's grandfather, Wendell Beam, reigned as Spalding County sheriff. This is not the first time I have had suicide thoughts. Can a new approach curb domestic homicide? Her shoulder-length, blonde hair was saturated in crimson. For their sons first Christmas, Matthew took Jessica to her grandparents housethe first time shed seen them in monthsbut before she opened her presents he told her that they had to leave. He never let me go anywhere without me sharing my location with him. She said that, when they talked about what happened to Jessica, he laughs about it. One of about 70 messages they exchange throughout the night. In response to The GRIP's objection, the city of Griffin produced four records - a photograph of Matthew Boynton identified as Boynton.png, a photograph of Sanders identified as sanders.png, a screen shot of a private Facebook message identified as chat.png and a Word document composed of those three elements identified as will.docx. It should not be surprising that domestic abuse appears to predict excessive use of forcea link that scholars have suggested should alter the way that departments respond to both kinds of aggression. And based on the totality of circumstances, all the facts and circumstances, all the forensics, and the conclusion of the case, as well as the GBI's and the district attorney's recommendation, is no, he did not cause her injuries, Yates concluded in an interview with 11Alive for"Trigger: Who shot the officer's wife.". The air is thick with the trepidation, as officers approach the locked closet. Underneath her . And then I started thinking, Well, why did I even come to you? she said. Is Jessica Boynton still alive? The shooting occurred on the evening of April 14, 2016. Matthew called a Griffin police lieutenant for advice. Not now. When facts are wrong, evidence altered to fit theories and threats made, how does the GBI remain the last word on the case? Dispatch notifies Spalding County Sheriff Wendell Beam, Matthews grandfather,and police notify Jessicas family that she has died. Previously city included Delray Beach FL. I have been suffering for a while now and no one has noticed. 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 . Can you please dispatch a unit out to my location? he said calmly. GBI/Griffin Police Dept. So I'm trying to hurry and get back home just to make sure that nothing's going to happen to them.. Matthew makes it home, jumps out of his truck, races through the breezeway of his apartment building and bolts up the stairs. 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. Matthew Boynton, 21, had just started work as a Griffin police officer. Especially because of my children. She started crying. They recorded interviews with eight Griffin police officers, some of whom Matthew considered good friends; one informed the agents that Matthew was telling me how she kind of acts crazy sometimes when she dont get her way. The G.B.I. Jessica Lesters friends persuaded her to date Matthew Boynton, a boy in the eleventh grade, by saying, If you dont like him, you can always break up. He was the grandson of the sheriff of Spalding County, where they lived, an hour south of Atlanta, and his friends were football players and cheerleaders. | Examine the evidence yourself. Furthermore, she said, there were too many errors and discrepancies for her to have sent a text like that. From her porch, Jessicas neighbor Megan Browning saw Jessica and Matthew return home. The officers found a police-issued .40-caliber Glock belonging to Matthew under Jessica's body. Am I recording it? And that's all I needed, so I was on cloud nine.". A male sergeant saw the exchange and told Beam, who provided Gibson with what he called undocumented counselling. Two years later, Gibson slapped a secretary on the back of the head, telling a male officer, Im gonna show you how we take care of these secretaries. Although the secretary complained to Beam about Gibsons behavior, Gibson was never disciplined. 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. According to the report, GBI investigators never conducted a re-canvass of the apartment complex, and did not talk with the immediate next door neighbor for four and a half months, despite reports from other residents that they heard a single gunshot hours earlier than the officers call claiming shots had been fired. Matthews father and stepmother visited the next week. If you dont want to be with me anymore, Jessica texted him, Im not going to stay here and play house. Matthew, who had begun spending his free days with Callaway, told her, Its not gonna work for us. But according to Mathews, that was not the last number dialed, so it could not have just been a redial accidently called through the evidence bag. In July, 2018, he criticized Yates on the departments Facebook page for denying Sheila Mathews, The Grips publisher, access to public informationbehavior that, Sanders said, was part of a pattern of intimidating female reporters. "That's the way we're gonna play this game, Sheila. Updated: 11:14 PM EDT July 28, 2017. He asked me to go get it out before, and I told him, Youre going to have to.. I would fight you tooth and nail defending it. But, after receiving thousands of documents from Sanders, Martha stopped driving through Griffin, because she was afraid. The neighbor saw Matthew leaving the apartment for dinner with a coworker. 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. The fact that they dont believe that she did this to herselfI think theyre not taking it seriously, Owen said. Police and Officer Boynton claimed that Jessica tried to kill herself but after Jessica awoke . When Jessica graduated from high school, her grandparents held a party for her and projected a movie on the side of their barn. After the visit, Matthew, who had been placed on administrative leave, was interviewed again by DeMarco. Matthews case was presented to a grand jury in July, 2018. I love you and the boys., A minute later, Matthew responded to a joke from Callaway. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Yes, for an article, just to make sure I get quotes proper.". looked into the allegations. At the judges recommendation, they also arranged for a psychological evaluation. It was the first time anyone had spoken with her at length about the night of her injury. I guarantee you he wont a hundred per cent say what happened, he said. Matthew was now dating Shelby Willey, a young mother who had recently separated from her husband. I hold up the white flag., Jessicas older son often cried and clung to her when Matthew picked him up on Fridays, and in the summer of 2018 he complained that his father had hurt him.

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