Fort Myers, Florida - On the third day of trial against Juan Mendez Jr. , the last person to hear Whitney Mendez and Lorena Stone alive testified she heard Whitney Mendez tell her attacker he wasn’t supposed to be there because of a restraining order.

Moments later, Brandy Ayers heard Whitney Mendez scream. “It sounded like something from a horror movie,” she testified.

Prosecutors say Juan Mendez Jr. killed the Lorena Stone and his estranged wife and mother of his child, Whitney Mendez. Ayers, a key witness for the prosecution, also testified that she heard a male tell the young mother that she “wasn’t a good mom and that the baby wouldn’t be with her much longer.”

A welfare agent who used to work for the Department of Children and Families also testified that the defendant agreed with her request, one day before the women’s death, not to see his son that weekend.

Earlier in the day, a medical examiner detailed for jurors the numerous locations Mendez and her mother were stabbed. Both were stabbed and or cut more than 20 times, mostly to the head, neck, and upper torso. Some of the wounds, to the forearms and hands, were consistent with defensive wounds, the medical examiner testified.

The defense says Mendez is innocent. They believe police rushed to arrest Mendez despite not having any evidence linking the defendant to the crime. Ayers did not give a statement to police until one year after the killings.

– Nancy Leung, In Session Producer

GRUNDY CENTER, Iowa–On Thursday afternoon, after approximately one and a half hours of deliberation, a jury in Grundy Center, Iowa convicted defendant Michelle Kehoe of the first-degree murder of her two-year-old son Seth in October, 2008. Kehoe was also convicted of attempted murder for assaulting her seven-year-old son, Seth. Both boys had their throats slashed by their mother.

Kehoe now faces a mandatory life in prison without the possibility of parole. She will be officially sentenced on December 15.

–Michael Christian, IN SESSION senior field producer

INDEPENDENCE, Iowa–Michelle Kehoe suffered from severe depression for 12 years before she killed her toddler son, attempted to kill her other son and tried to kill herself in October 2008.

A psychiatrist who evaluated Kehoe for her defense to murder and attempted murder charges testified on Tuesday that Kehoe’s thinking was “so colored by depression” that she did not have the capacity to know right from wrong. She is asserting an insanity defense.

Dr. William Logan was the first defense witness. He recounted Kehoe’s childhood trauma in Missouri, where both of Kehoe's parents were alcoholics. Her parents separated when she was four and her father died when she was six years old. Between second and seventh grades, Kehoe was the victim of incest by her stepfather, her stepfather’s nephew and a neighbor.

When she finally told her mother about it, her mother sent her to live with an aunt in Iowa. She appeared to adjust well to her new life, but had her first depressive episode in the fall of 1996. She began to take an antidepressant, though it was effective for only a year or so.

Kehoe attempted suicide a number of times, the first being in March 1998. She drank “Heet” and inhaled carbon monoxide. Her next suicide attempt was a year later, in February 1999, when she checked herself into a hotel and cut her femoral artery. Kehoe was hospitalized after each suicide attempt. Her on-again/off-again therapy included up to 44 electroshock treatments.

Kehoe’s oldest son, Sean, was born in September 2001. She had miscarriages between 2003 and 2005. Her second child, Seth, was born in October 2006.

In December 2007, Kehoe’s car skidded into the Iowa River. She and her two sons were rescued by four men who witnessed it. According to Dr. Logan, Kehoe began to experience post-traumatic stress disorder after the river incident. Her condition worsened throughout 2008 following stressors that included her husband losing his job and her ill mother moving to Iowa.

From July to October 26, 2008, Kehoe had thoughts of suicide as “the only way out,” according to Dr. Logan’s evaluation of her. As in the past, she didn’t vocalize her suicidal thoughts to her husband or to those around her. Kehoe began to think that her children might be better off dead, fearing that they may have inherited her mental illness. She plotted to kill her sons and herself for two months before carrying out the acts on Sunday, October 26, 2008.

Three days after killing Seth, attempting to kill Sean and while recuperating from her own self-inflicted slash to the throat, Kehoe said that the December 2007 river incident was a suicide attempt but no one realized it at the time. She also said it was an unforgivable sin.

Jurors saw photographs of the gaping wound to Kehoe’s neck. It was a deep cut across her entire throat, through her windpipe. There were other smaller cuts across a portion of her neck.

Before Dr. Logan’s testimony, the State called its final witness, the deputy medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Seth Kehoe. Jurors saw a deep gash across half of Seth’s throat and multiple bruises on the left side of his head, ear, and left lower extremity, indicating recent impact of blunt force. Periodically, Kehoe glanced at the autopsy photos of her little boy and dabbed her eyes.

Testimony continues Wednesday on In Session.

–Beth Karas, IN SESSION correspondent

WATERLOO, Iowa –The Iowa trial of Michelle Kehoe, accused of slashing the throats of her two young sons then her own, will wrap up later this week. The State presented most of its evidence last Thursday and Friday at the Grundy County courthouse. The trial was moved from Buchanan County as a result of massive pretrial publicity.

Michelle Kehoe

Jurors heard from fifteen witnesses, thus far, whose factual accounts went largely unchallenged by the defense. Kehoe is asserting an insanity defense which means the issue for the jury is not whether Kehoe committed these acts, for she admits she did, but whether she should be held criminally responsible for them. Psychiatric experts for both sides are expected to testify this week.

Kehoe purportedly set out for a two-hour drive on Sunday morning, October 26, 2008 with her two young sons to visit her mother at a nursing home. But she and her sons never arrived. Instead, fewer than two hours after leaving home, Kehoe pulled into a wooded area by a pond. She took her older son, Sean, out of the family’s minivan, duct-taped his eyes, nose and mouth, and slashed his throat with a hunting knife she had purchased the previous month. Sean fought and kicked his mother who left him on the ground. She then removed two-year-old Seth from his car seat and also bound him with duct tape. Sean heard his baby brother cry as Kehoe slit his throat. Kehoe then went into the woods and slit her own throat. Sean managed to remove his duct tape and sneak into the van where he locked himself inside, apparently unbeknownst to his mother.

Kehoe’s husband and father of the two boys reported his family missing at 8:45 p.m. that evening. The following morning, Kehoe dragged herself to a home a quarter mile away to summon help. She concocted a story that a strange man had abducted them, killed her sons, and tried to kill her. Police found Seth’s body on the ground some distance from the vehicle. Inside the minivan, they found Sean, bloody, dirty, shivering but alive. They also located a note that Kehoe had written and left in the van in which she detailed the abduction. She wrote the note in the present tense as though she were writing it as the events unfolded.

Investigators confronted her with Sean’s statements that she had cut him and his brother, then herself. It wasn’t long before Kehoe confessed to the acts and admitted she had planned it in the prior two months, purchasing the knife and duct tape and drafting and redrafting the note found in the minivan.

Kehoe told investigators that what she did “is unforgiveable.” She confessed: “I can’t explain it. I can’t face anyone. I want to die…Please just finish it for me…I’m so sick. I don’t feel that I can ever be healthy.”

Less than a year earlier, on December 14, 2007, Kehoe says she lost control of her car when her two sons distracted her. She hit a curb, skidded on ice and plunged into the icy waters of the Iowa River. Four men helped rescue her and her sons.

Given the current allegations, many are questioning whether that prior incident was truly an accident or whether it was an attempt to kill her sons and herself.

Beth Karas, In Session correspondent

INDEPENDENCE, Iowa–The trial of Michelle Kehoe, charged with murdering one son and attempting to murder another, began Wednesday in the small Iowa farm town of Grundy Center. Prosecutors claim that Kehoe meticulously planned the crimes, savagely slashing the throats of two-year-old Seth Kehoe (who died) and seven-year-old Sean Kehoe (who survived to identify his mother as his attacker) – acts she originally blamed on an unknown assailant.

To help prove its case, the State of Iowa called 10 witnesses. Most of them had contact with Sean Kehoe immediately after his ordeal. They all testified that Sean told them that his mother had driven to a remote location, covered his eyes with duct tape, and then slit his throat – after which, according to the youngster, she attacked his baby brother, Seth.

The defense has not contested the testimony of any of these prosecution witnesses; Kehoe’s attorneys concede that she is indeed the person who attacked her sons. But they will argue that Kehoe was legally insane at the time, and should therefore be acquitted.

Stay tuned to In Session for gavel-to-gavel coverage of this case.

–Michael Christian, In Session senior field producer

NEW YORK – Crime scene investigations are continuing today in two states as law enforcement pursue whoever killed little 7-year-old North Florida resident Somer Thompson.

Somer Thompson

At a mid-morning press conference, a spokesperson for law enforcement announced that all 90 registered sex offenders in the 5-mile radius of Thompson’s home have been spoken to, and at this point it is believed they have no involvement. Reporters were told the convicted offender’s homes and properties have been searched and families have been contacted in an attempt to eliminate them as suspects.

The second grader, in Orange Park, Florida, was last seen on Monday as she walked home from school with her twin brother and sister. This murder investigation has revealed that detectives are very interested in an abandoned house along the route that Thompson walked home. The home has become an active crime scene as law enforcement combs the structure for what they hope may be probative evidence. A local park, across the street, has also been of interest to these crime scene investigators.

And while law enforcement tries to find the killer of Somer Thompson, the little girl’s body that was found in a Georgia landfill on Wednesday, is still in Savannah Georgia, after an autopsy was performed on Thursday.

Investigators are asking for any information from the public on who murdered Somer, but they are also focusing on any and all forensic evidence that can be collected from locations in Florida and also from the little girl’s body.

A sexual assault or “rape kit” testing undoubtedly was performed at autopsy as well as a collection of any material under Thompson’s nails, and a collection of her clothes for sophisticated DNA testing.
A relatively new DNA technique labeled “touch DNA” allows forensic scientists to isolate foreign DNA on a person mainly from their clothes that comes from merely a touch of an assailant. That touch can leave behind skin cells. These skin cells then are analyzed to find the DNA of a possible assailant.

In 2008, touch DNA found from the clothing JonBenet Ramsey was wearing at her death in 1996, not only led to prosecutors officially clearing members of the little girl’s family, but led law enforcement one step closer to solving the murder of this 6 year old Boulder Colorado girl.
Florida authorities say they are hard at work to find the perpetrator of the horrific murder this week of Somer Thomson, not only to find justice for the elementary school student, but to also protect others in this North Florida community.

As reporters were told this morning the goal is to find that “one piece of crucial evidence” to solve the murder of Somer Thompson.

-Jean Casarez, In Session correspondent

CANTON, Mississippi–The same panel of jurors that convicted a former middle-school teacher of two counts of capital murder spared her life Wednesday.

Carla Hughes, 28, who prosecutors say fatally shot, stabbed, and slashed a pregnant Avis Banks in November 2006, could have received a death sentence. Now, she will spend the rest of her life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The jurors deliberated less than one hour before reaching their unanimous decision. Hughes was sentenced immediately after jurors were dismissed. She will serve the life sentences concurrently.

You can see complete coverage of the case Thursday on In Session.

–Nancy Leung, In Session field producer

CANTON, Mississippi–The courtroom was silent as jurors filed in one by one to announce their verdict in the case of Mississippi vs Carla Hughes.

Carla Hughes reacts to guilty verdict

Not one juror looked at the defendant, but two jurors looked the way of the prosecution as they took their seats.

As Judge William Chapman read out the first verdict: the jury finds Carla Hughes guilty of the murder of Avis Banks, Hughes seemed to try to comprehend what was happening. Her quiet but continuous crying continued as Judge Chapman announced the second count: that Hughes was also guilty in the murder of Banks' unborn child.

Avis Banks' family, the victim who the jury determined was shot, stabbed and slashed by defendant Hughes, let out a cry of relief in an otherwise still stoic courtroom.

Following the polling of jurors, the group of nine females and three males left the courtroom to return on Wednesday for the penalty phase. Relatives and close friends of both Hughes and Banks were crying as they left.

Carla Hughes is now facing the death penalty.

Stay tuned to In Session for complete coverage of this case.

–Jean Casarez, In Session correspondent

Canton, Mississippi –  After about eight hours of deliberations, a jury has found Carla Hughes guilty of two counts of capital murder. Hughes was charged with killing her lover's fiance, Avis Banks, who was five months pregnant.

Carla Hughes

Prosecutors say Hughes killed Banks and her unborn child. They accused Hughes of fatally shooting, stabbing, and slashing Banks with a knife.

Jurors asked only one question during deliberations: could the prosecution have called Hughes to the stand. The judge sent a note back to the jurors directing them to their jury instructions. Hughes decided not to testify in her own defense during the trial.

During seven days of testimony, defense attorneys tried to convince jurors that Hughes did not commit the crime and that Keyon Pittman, Banks fiance, did.

The penalty phase will begin Wednesday and In Session will bring you full coverage of the proceedings.

-Nancy Leung, field producer

CANTON, Mississippi–Jurors deliberated for about four hours Monday in the Mississippi case of Carla Hughes without reaching a verdict. Earlier in the day, it was a packed courtroom for closing arguments, as prosecutors argued to the jury that victim Avis Banks had everything that Carla Hughes wanted...a new house, new car and Keyon Pittman.

Avis Banks

Pittman was engaged to Banks, who was five months' pregnant with his child. Both mother and child were murdered in the brutal attack.

Prosecutors argued that Carla Hughes had control over all of the incriminating evidence in this case: the gun, the shoes, her cell phone and even her voluntary statement to police.

That recorded statement was made several days after Banks' murder. District Attorney Michael Guest told jurors Hughes originally said in that interview she and Pittman were only friends and that she had no access to a gun.

Pittman was having an affair with Hughes and later that night, after her police interview, Hughes allegedly returned the gun unloaded to her cousin.

This was a gun prosecutors say she borrowed three days before the murder, the same day Hughes allegedly told her lover Pittman "things were going to change."

Assistant District Attorney John Emfinger told the jury that later that Sunday, after an angry Hughes made that statement to Pittman, she went to her cousin and got the gun and a knife.

Defense attorneys put their focus on Keyon Pittman, telling jurors he had a motive to kill his fiancee. "He didn't want to be married or to have that child," State Senator Johnnie Walls told the jury. "You cannot place the gun in the defendant's hand, cannot place Hughes at Banks' home and cannot place those shoes with the blood of Banks on Hughes' feet."

Defense attorneys argued Keyon Pittman left basketball practice and had time to get the gun, wear the shoes he had already admitted to using, and kill a woman he cared so little about.

"It is just as reasonable that Pittman wanted to get rid of Banks as Carla Hughes wanted to get rid of the victim," Sen. Johnnie Walls, Jr. told jurors. And that, the defense concluded, is reasonable doubt.

Hughes is facing two counts of capital murder. Deliberations begin again on Tuesday morning.

–Jean Casarez, In Session correspondent