Flesh Collectors (19 page)

“He told him [Justin] to lay down, that it was just a bad trip, a drug-type thing. ‘Lay down and everything will be all right.’”

Justin did lie down on the ground voluntarily. He never expected what was coming. Rodgers deliberately used Justin’s innocent nature to hasten his death. Suspecting nothing, he did as Rodgers ordered.

“He [Jeremiah] sounded real nice about it,” Lawrence added. “Then Justin, he said, ‘Y’all ain’t gonna hurt me, are you?’ I just told him, ‘No, we’re just sitting there,’ ’cause I wasn’t sure what Jeremiah wanted to do.”

“Did Jeremiah like Justin?”

“I don’t think he did.”

He told the cop about how Justin would come over and bug Rodgers for butts and pop. “He [Rodgers] always called him Worm; that was his nickname. And so Jeremiah’s been calling him that.”

Motive
, Hand realized. Rodgers already had the means and, obviously, the opportunity. Here was the motive. He hated Justin. By dehumanizing him, it made it easier for Rodgers to kill him.

“What happened after Justin laid down on the ground?”

“Jeremiah was sitting real close to his left shoulder.”

They kept reassuring Justin, who was scared, while they worked up enough nerve to kill him. “Finally I just kept looking down at him and then looked up at the moon.”

Suddenly Lawrence laughed.

“And then I looked back down and he [Jeremiah] just raised the knife up real quick and hit him about one or two times in the back, then a couple of times. I was just sitting there; I couldn’t really think of what to do.”

His cousin is being murdered and he couldn’t really think of what to do? How about helping him?
Hand wondered.

“It was just kinda like a bad dream,” Lawrence continued. “Just sit around and look at the bushes. Then, I guess, when he quit breathing, I went over to get a blanket to cover him up. He looked real kinda cold.

Of course he was. At the moment of death, Justin’s body temperature had started to drop as rigor mortis set in. What helped the police to establish that the cause of death was homicide was that the murderers buried the body in the cool earth, which slowed down decomposition, caused partial mummification and preserved body tissues for later examination.

“I just kinda wrapped him up to his chin, where he looked kinda comfortable,” said Lawrence.

“Did anybody do anything else to Justin, other than stabbing? Do you remember anything about a shirt being wrapped around his neck?”

“We just sat there for a real long, long time. Oh yeah, that was one of my flannel shirts Jeremiah was wearing, ’cause I had one just like it. He took it off and wrapped it around [Justin’s] neck just to make sure he weren’t still breathing or suffering.”

Evidently, Jon Lawrence did not realize that his cousin Justin was not an animal to be put out of its misery. Nor did he realize that Hand had led him into verbal quicksand with that admission, because while Justin had already been fatally stabbed, Rodgers wasn’t satisfied with that bit of cruelty. Rodgers had to smother the poor guy to death to intensify the process. That made the crime particularly heinous, which was going to be of interest to the State’s Attorney John Molchan, who would be prosecuting the case.

Lawrence went on to describe how “Jeremiah started digging. He got the shovel out of my toolbox and took his shirt off and was digging real fast.”

He described how they picked Justin up and threw him into the makeshift grave and covered him up with dirt. After they had finished their night’s labors, they drove “back down to the store and I had a little bit of change left and I bought some Cokes.”

“What time was it then?”

“Real late, might have been around three o’clock at night.”

“That area around Chumuckla, you know it pretty well?”

“Yeah, I go there every day I can, ever since my dad first showed it to me.”

“The knife that Justin was killed with, what happened to it?”

“We took it back to my house or just left it in the truck for a while.” Lawrence wasn’t sure. “He [Jeremiah] kinda cleaned it off a little bit and put it back in the toolbox and it’s been there ever since.”

“Did you ever see that knife again after that?”

“Just that time when Jennifer was with us.”

“Where’d he clean the knife off?”

“Just where the water is, where the boat ramp is, we stopped there for a while and that’s when my truck got stuck. I was trying to back up, got in a sandy spot. So we sat there for a while and built a little fire, cleaning the knife off and just kinda sat there. Finally got the truck out and came on home, was real tired, just dropped him off at Lisa’s house. I went home and washed up a little bit and sat in my chair, trying to think of what’s happening. Just stayed there all night.”

Something bothered Hand. What about Lisa Johnson, Rodgers’s girlfriend? What did she know? After they had turned the audiocassette tape over, Hand decided to find out from Lawrence. He asked him if when Rodgers was dropped off, did he see Lisa there? Hand was curious as to what Lisa knew.

“I think she was asleep; she had the doors locked, so he had to go down to a back window to wake her up.”

“Did you see her?”

“I think so; I can’t remember.”

“Did you take anything from Justin?”

Murderers sometimes trot off with souvenirs of their “victories,” but Lawrence “just left him like he was.”

“Jon, do you remember the first time I came by to talk to you about Justin?” Hand asked, his voice moving forward slightly with his posture. He stared at Lawrence over the battered table.

“I can’t remember.”

“The very first time?”

“I forgot.”

“Do you remember talking to me on the phone?”

“I don’t remember too good.”

“Do you remember seeing me?”

“Yeah, I remember you on the phone now.”

“Okay, why didn’t you tell me [then] what happened? Why didn’t you tell me the truth then?”

“I just figured it was a bad dream.”

A bad dream with two people in the real world dead
, thought Hand.

“You were afraid you were gonna get in trouble for it?”

“I think so.”

“Any other reason?”

“I can’t think of anything.”

Hand could think of a few, like he knew he was guilty of murder. Hand really wanted to nail this guy.

“You were arrested before, right?”

“Uh, for what?” Jon asked, sounding innocent.

“For other things in your past,” answered Hand dryly.

“Oh yeah, yes,” Jon answered.

“And you went to prison?”

“Yes.”

Here it comes.…

“And you know the difference between right and wrong?”

“Yes sir.”

Bingo
!

Insanity is a legal definition that implies that the suspect does not know the difference between right and wrong when he committed the crime he is charged with. It is a defense that can be used in any criminal proceeding where the jurisdiction allows it.

If the suspect does not know the difference between right and wrong, and the defense lawyer can support it, the jury could easily come back with a verdict of not guilty. It is therefore important for cops and prosecutors to prove the opposite—that the suspect knew exactly what he was doing and knows the difference between right and wrong—in order to get a conviction.

When Jon Lawrence admitted to Todd Hand that he knew the difference between right and wrong, he was admitting that he was not legally insane. In so doing, he took one step toward the death chamber.

“Do you think you did anything wrong as far as Justin is concerned?” Hand wondered aloud.

“I just didn’t say anything when I should’ve. I was trying to forget everything.”

“Did you plan a story? The story that you told me initially, did you plan that with Jeremiah before I talked to you?”

“I don’t know. I just kept telling myself [Justin’s] down in a Florida town.”

Jon Lawrence was saying that he was living inside a delusion of his own creation, that Justin was still alive someplace else in a Florida town.

“So [Jeremiah] made up a story and you started to believe it yourself?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you do that a lot?”

Todd Hand was trying to establish a more complete picture of Jon Lawrence’s mental state.

“If it’s just real bad,” Lawrence answered, “if I just can’t handle it, I just try to forget about it as best as I can, and then I just get to where I don’t believe any of it anymore.”

“Jon, have you got anything else you’d like to add to this statement at this time? Go ahead, Jon, if you have something to say.”

“I just can’t think of anything.”

“Anything at all?”

“Well, my head’s … I can’t think.”

And the tape recorder was turned off.

Chapter 13

May 13, 1998, 2:03
P.M
.

The next day it was Rodgers’s turn.

“Just the whole story?”

“Yeah, the whole story.”

“I can start with whatever?”

“Start with whatever you like,” Hand answered gently.

Rodgers had yet to give a full statement about how Jennifer’s murder had played out. Hand was curious to hear his version of the events. And so they had gathered once again in the interrogation room.

“Well,” Rodgers began, lighting up a cigarette, “when I started meeting Jennifer at the store, she knew me before, but I didn’t realize I knew her.”

He cleared his throat and went on.

“So it was a few days later that we decided to go out on a date on her free day off from work. We decided to go to a club or a bar in Pensacola, and so the night we were supposed to go out, I met her at the store.”

Hand remembered that according to Diane Robinson, Rodgers only had a few singles in his pocket. That was barely enough for gas to get to Pensacola, let alone to go clubbing. Clearly, he was lying.

“So I followed her home to drop her car off so we could go in mine. I met her mother. And then we left.”

They went back to Lawrence’s house. They stood around for just a few minutes before deciding to leave. Rodgers noted that Jon Lawrence had already got the liquor, the Everclear. They piled in Lawrence’s truck and headed up through the cane-brake to Chumuckla.

“Why’d you take Jon’s truck instead of your car?” Hand wondered.

“It was easier to go in Jon’s truck.”

“Why easier?”

“Because it was kind of premeditated, more premeditated than anything Jon had, so we already had that. We piled in his truck and head up toward Blue Springs.”

The rest of the story was how Jennifer had gotten drunk on the Everclear and Mountain Dew while Rodgers stayed sober.

“You mix it strong on purpose?”

“Yeah, I gave her like half of the bottle at first in her one-liter Mountain Dew.”

Then they started “making out,” which led to “consensual sex. Oral sex first and then just straight intercourse.” Rodgers was careful to say it was “consensual,” lest he be slapped with a rape charge in addition to whatever other trouble he was already in. After Jennifer and Rodgers were sexually engaged for an hour, in the cab of the truck, Lawrence started sidling over.

“We got out … and during that time, Jon’s gun was jammed up. He had it then.”

“Why was it jammed?”

“It’s a piece of shit, it’s a .380 and it just jams,” said Rodgers.

Lawrence had then whispered to him, “Are you gonna be able to strangle her?”

“No,” Rodgers answered. Lawrence then walked into the woods to get the weapon “unjammed.”

“Did he let you know when it was unjammed?”

“Yeah, he whispered. He just told me it was ready.”

All three got back in the car and were driving out when Rodgers told Jennifer, “There are some pot plants I want to show you.”

“Were there?” Hand asked.

“Nah, there was no pot plants.”

“Was this part of the plan?”

“To get her out of the truck, yeah. So I walked down the hill first and she didn’t get out, so I walked back up and Jon and Jennifer was still sitting in the truck. I asked her, ‘Do you wanna look at these before we go?’ She said, ‘Yeah, I might as well.’”

After she went down the hill and came back, “I cleared my mind. I pulled the gun and I shot her in the back of the head, right where she was almost about to get in the truck.” The rest of Rodgers’s story made it seem like Jon Lawrence was the mastermind behind disposing of the body and the girl’s things. It was after they got home, around dawn, when things started happening fast.

“Jon was gonna try to hose out the back of his truck, but I don’t think there was a water hose, so he left.”

It was Diane Robinson’s friend who had seen Lawrence hosing down his truck and alerted Diane. As for Rodgers, “I went straight home to my girlfriend’s house and I went to sleep.” When he woke up a few hours later, he got ready to go on the lam. He closed his checking account, went to see his brother, Elijah, showed him the pictures “and then I hauled ass to go down south to see my sister.”

Hand, who had been listening intently, was acutely aware that a good defense lawyer at a preliminary hearing would bring up that the statement Rodgers had given was either coerced or said without being properly advised of his rights. But since he’d been arrested, Rodgers had been advised of his rights so many times, he could now recite them by heart.

Hand asked, “Now let me get something straight here. When we started the interview, if you can remember me telling you, the reason we were talking to you was we wanted to talk about Justin Livingston, right?”

“Right,” Rodgers agreed.

“And at that point in time you wanted to tell me the truth.”

“Yeah, I wanted to tell everything that happened with Justin and Jennifer and the guy that’s shot and the drive-by.”

“The drive-by?”

There had been no mention of a drive-by shooting before. Many gangs used drive-by shootings as an initiation right. Had Rodgers and Lawrence gotten themselves mixed up with a gang? Had they gotten some sort of exposure to gangs in prison, taken up with them there and then extended their activities when they got out? Hand didn’t know, so he kept Rodgers talking.