The Murder of Jessica Currin — Talk Murder With Me

When he went out to the scene of the crime, a spot behind Mayfield Middle School, Tim Fortner initially thought the body was a mannequin. As he got closer, however, the presence of flies proved him wrong.

Fortner was selected to lead the investigation by Ronnie Lear, Mayfield’s assistant chief of police. Fortner was a low-level patrolman and former deputy-jailer with no experience as a detective. This was his first homicide. He admitted from the outset that he was totally out of his depth.

Fortner was horrified by what he saw. The body of the young black woman was decomposing quickly, thanks to the hot, humid weather characteristic of western Kentucky in the summer. Her skin and clothes were badly burned and her underwear had been savagely ripped off. A charred belt lay next to her, and about 20 feet away was a substantial clump of hair. An empty plastic bottle, smelling strongly of gasoline, was discarded at her feet.

Fortner knew nothing about setting up a crime scene or collecting forensic evidence. He basically had no clue what to do next.

The Crime Scene

Due to the state of decomposition, police guessed that the young woman, who would soon be identified as 18-year-old Jessica Currin, had been dead for about two days.

Jessica’s body, and the area immediately surrounding it, were awash with evidence. But only some of this evidence ever arrived at the police station. Some pieces were left behind, while others were lost on the way to the station.

The lack of care taken with the evidence that did make it to the police station only continued once it got there. Boxes from Jessica’s case were shoved in with boxes from other cases. Much of the contents of different boxes mixed together. Jessica’s rape kit even got mixed in with other rape kits. Many pieces of evidence were misplaced. Jessica’s clothes were discarded before they were even tested for forensic evidence, after Mayfield detectives declared them too burned to be of any use. It’s hard to imagine a police department doing a worse job of handling evidence than the Mayfield police department (MPD) did.

DNA testing was carried out on clippings of Jessica’s fingernails and strands of hair which were found clutched in her hand. The plastic bottle was also tested for fingerprints and DNA. But the tests revealed no useful information.

Jessica had been beaten, stabbed, strangled and set on fire. Her body was so badly burned and brutalized that her exact cause of death could not be determined. However, due to the presence of the belt, the medical examiner, Dr. Mark LeVaughn, presumed that strangulation was the ultimate cause.

The state of her remains also meant that physical evidence of rape could not be identified. However, her ripped underwear indicated that rape had taken place.

Her autopsy confirmed that she had been dead for two days before her body was found.

The news of the body found at the school traveled quickly through the small town of Mayfield, Kentucky. When Joe and Jean Currin, Jessica’s parents, heard about it, they were overcome with a sense of dread. They hadn’t heard from their daughter in two days, which wasn’t like her at all.

On the evening of July 29, a Saturday, Jessica had asked Jean to watch Zion so she could have some down time with her friends in her new apartment. Jean agreed.

The following morning, Jean and Joe would come by Jessica’s apartment with Zion and they would all go to church. At least, that was the plan. But when Joe and Jean arrived at the apartment the next day, nobody was home. Jessica had probably just gone to a friend’s for the night, they told themselves. They went to church anyway, then came back to the apartment after the service. But there was still no answer.

Joe and Jean returned home with Zion, hoping they would hear from their daughter in time. But as the hours passed, their concern mounted. Jessica was highly responsible, despite her young age. She was an extremely caring and attentive mother. Joe and Jean knew that unless something was badly wrong, Jessica would at least call to check on Zion. But no such call ever came.

When Joe and Jean arrived at the police station on August 1st, their worst fears were confirmed.

Jessica Currin

Jessica Currin was born November 29, 1981 in Mayfield, Kentucky, to Joe and Jean Currin. Joe (who is now retired) was Mayfield’s fire chief. I believe she was the oldest of four children.

I unfortunately couldn’t find very much information about Jessica as a person. She had her son Zion about seven months before she was murdered, and she loved him dearly. Craving some independence, she had moved out of her parents’ home with Zion in early July 2000. She was just settling into her new apartment in Mayfield.

Jessica was beautiful. In every photo I found of her, she was always smiling.

She is buried at Oak Rest Cemetery in Graves County, Kentucky.

Mayfield, Kentucky

Mayfield is the county seat of Graves County, in south-western Kentucky. Graves County is one of the eight counties which makes up the Jackson Purchase region of Kentucky - a section of land which was bought from the Chickasaw Indians in 1818 by Andrew Jackson and former Kentucky Governor Isaac Shelby. After a prolonged series of negotiations, the two sides finalized the purchase by signing the Treaty of Tuscaloosa.

While it’s only home to about 10,000 people, Mayfield is the third largest city by population in the Jackson Purchase region, after the cities of Paducah and Murray.

If the name Mayfield sounds at all familiar, it might be that the town made the news recently, in December 2021, after being hit by a devastating tornado. Twenty-two people in and around Mayfield were killed, hundreds were injured and many businesses were destroyed. The tornado also caused severe damage to Mayfield’s historic district.

An Unbelievable Display of Incompetence

Rumors quickly began to spread around town that 20-year-old Jeremy Adams, the father of Jessica’s son Zion, had killed Jessica because she was threatening to tell his girlfriend that he was the father of her son.

About six months after Jessica’s murder, having made no progress in the investigation, Tim Fortner went to speak to Adams. Being the father of her child, Adams surely should have been one of the first people Fortner spoke to, so it’s unclear why it took him so long.

Adams was a small-time drug user and petty criminal. When Fortner finally went to speak with him, he was in jail on drug-related charges. When the two men sat down together, Fortner took out a selection of pictures of the crime scene and laid them out in front of Adams, to quote “see if they would help his memory”.

On seeing the photos, Adams was stunned. He did not say anything to Fortner that would suggest he was involved in the murder. The interview ended with Fortner knowing nothing more than he did when it started.

When he returned to his cell, Adam told his cellmate, Jesse Roberts, about being shown the gruesome crime scene photos. Roberts, a known jailhouse snitch, was intrigued by what Adams was telling him. Perhaps this could benefit me in some way, he thought.

So Roberts went to the jailer with what Adams told him. In so many words, Roberts said that Adams seemed to know a lot about the murder. The jailer in turn informed the MPD.

Failing to take into account the fact that Adams only knew what he told Roberts because he had seen the pictures of the crime scene, detectives from Mayfield Police, including Fortner, rushed to the jail to speak to Roberts. Probably enjoying the attention, Roberts enthusiastically spoke to the detectives, basically telling them that Adams had confessed to him that he had murdered Jessica.

This is one of the most bizarre series of events I’ve ever come across since I started writing about true crime. Adams did not provide any of this information on his own - it all came from being shown the crime scene photos. Fortner was there. He was the one who showed them to him.

Furthermore, you don’t even have to be in law enforcement to know that jailhouse informants are notoriously unreliable. It’s just common sense. The majority of informants, at the end of the day, act purely out of self-interest. They want a shorter sentence or to be granted certain privileges for while they’re behind bars. Of course they’ll lie or exaggerate their stories to achieve these things. Statements from jailhouse informants should only ever be used as evidence when investigators have an abundance of other more reliable evidence, in case their statements turn out to be false. Relying solely on the statement of a jailhouse informant to build a case against somebody is frankly embarrassing and beyond incompetent.

However, on February 15 2001, on the recommendation of a grand jury, Adams was charged with murder, tampering with physical evidence and abuse of a corpse.

Adams pleaded not guilty to the charges, and went to trial in early 2003. However, the trial barely started before it came to the attention of Adams’s defense team that the Mayfield police had failed to hand over 18 pieces of evidence to them, most of which were audio and video tapes.

The judge was livid, tearing a strip off Fortner and the rest of the Mayfield PD. He dismissed the charges against Adams. The district attorney agreed with this decision.

“I have never seen a case so encumbered with problems,” the judge said, “and I hope I never see another one.”

Another man, Carlos Saxton, was also charged in connection with Jessica’s murder at the same time as Adams, but the information on this case has so many holes in it that I really couldn’t find who Saxton was or why he was charged. Some sources just refer to him as an acquaintance of Jessica’s, although I believe he might have been a romantic interest. Regardless, all the charges against him were dropped, as they were with Adams.

After this embarrassment, the MPD pretty much gave up on the case. It was taken over by the Kentucky State Police (KSP).

Later in 2003, Tim Fortner, never quite recovering from his humiliation, resigned from the MPD.

A Broken Police Department

The handling of Jessica’s case shone a light on an already struggling and dysfunctional police department. Mayfield PD officers were poorly trained and underpaid. Officer morale was low. In the years leading up to Jessica’s murder, turnover of officers was very high.

At the same time Fortner began pursuing Adams as a suspect, the Assistant Police Chief, Ronnie Lear, who had put Fortner on the case, was suspended for just over a month for selling a video recorder and stereo, both of which were pieces of evidence in an active investigation. Lear claimed it was a mistake. A month later, he resigned.

Tim Fortner said of his assignment to the case, after his own resignation from the force: “Looking back on it now, I can only imagine I was chosen because someone didn't want this case solved."

An Amateur Sleuth

Susan Galbreath had been fixated on Jessica’s case from the beginning.

On August 1, 2000, Susan, a Mayfield homemaker, had been having coffee with a friend in town when she first heard the horrifying news of the body found at the middle school. Someone had run into the coffee shop that afternoon and announced it.

Susan, intrigued by what she heard, left her friend and walked to the school. When she saw what the person at the coffee shop had been referring to, she was sickened.

It was then that Susan knew; she would not rest until Jessica Currin got justice.

Susan had been watching as MPD’s case against Jeremy Adams went up in flames. Furthermore, the corruption scandals and resignations of high-ranking officers meant public confidence in the department was practically non-existent. Even the mayor was calling for a full investigation into its conduct.

Susan was encouraged that the Kentucky State Police had taken over the investigation. However, as the weeks passed, there were no new developments.

Mayfield is a small town, and as is characteristic of small towns, talk travels fast. Susan was not immune to gossip and speculation, but she knew it wouldn't solve the case. She began cold emailing journalists and celebrities, anyone she could think of who might be able to help.

It was in this way that she found herself emailing back and forth with veteran British journalist, Tom Mangold. Susan had seen Tom on the BBC'S investigative television programme Panorama (which is similar to 60 minutes in the United States).

Susan soon asked Tom to fly out; there was only so much investigative work they could do by email. She knew it was a long shot, but she had nothing to lose. To her delight, he agreed. In 2004, nearly four years after Jessica's murder, Tom arrived in Mayfield.

Tom and Susan worked well together. Many Mayfield residents were somewhat mystified by the partnership between the rural Kentucky homemaker and the London born and bred BBC journalist. Others viewed them with suspicion. Susan, however, was on a mission. She wasn't about to let this bother her.

Susan and Tom Investigate

One of the first people they talked to was Jeremy Adams. Although the charges against him for Jessica's murder had been dropped, he remained in jail on petty drug offences. Jeremy gave them a few names he thought might be of use, but beyond that, he couldn't be of much help.

Susan Galbreath and Tom Mangold (source: wkms.org)

They also paid a visit to Donna Adams, Jeremy's mother, at her trailer home. Donna was, understandably so, still extremely angry with the Mayfield police department’s treatment of her son.

Donna had plenty to say about the night Jessica was murdered, including theories about who she thought was involved. While Susan and Tom did not take everything Donna said at face value, she did have some useful information to share.

That night, Donna said, there had been a wild, drug-and-alcohol fueled party going on. Many of Mayfield's young people were in attendance.

The party began on the night of July 29 and continued past daybreak on July 30.

As Donna continued, she kept bringing up one name in particular: Quincy Cross, a drug dealer who lived just across the border in Tennessee.

After leaving Donna, Susan and Tom went about tracking down and interviewing party-goers. They found out that it was held at the home of a young man named Greg Starks. Alcohol and cocaine had been flowing freely. Quincy Cross was there, and a friend of Jessica’s, Vinisha Stubblefield. According to Starks, Cross was especially wired that evening. At around 5AM, he asked to borrow Starks’s car, because he wanted to quote “find women”. Starks agreed.

Susan also got her hands on a report made by Graves County deputy sheriff Mike Perkins, who had had an encounter with Cross at around 7:50am on July 30. Cross was sitting behind the wheel of a car that he told Perkins had broken down. A strong smell of gas emanated from the inside of the car. It also appeared that Cross had spilled some on himself. Perkins noticed that as they spoke, Cross was not wearing a belt and kept pulling his pants up. Perkins let Cross go and he walked back to the party, which was still going on. Starks noted that Cross was no longer wearing the belt he had on before he left the party.

Later that morning, Perkins arrested Cross at the party for cocaine possession.

After two weeks of non-stop investigation, Susan and Tom felt they had gathered enough information to implicate Quincy Cross in Jessica’s murder. They went to the Kentucky State Police with what they had. As they handed their work over to a rather bewildered trooper, they had little hope that this would bring the kind of results they were hoping for.

Unable to avoid responsibilities at home, Tom returned to London. Susan was still determined to continue her investigation, despite her partner leaving. She promised to keep him updated as best as she could from 4,000 miles away.

A Meeting With Quincy Cross

While on the phone with Tom one evening in early 2005, Susan revealed that Quincy Cross had been stalking her. By that point, pretty much everyone in Mayfield knew that Susan was conducting her own investigation of the Currin murder, including Cross. Cross did not appreciate her looking into his business.

Susan told Tom about a plan she had hatched in which she would be able to meet Cross. She was going to tell a cousin of Cross’s, who she knew through a friend, that she was writing a book about the Jessica Currin case, and she wanted to give Cross a chance to tell his side of the story. Cross’s cousin spoke to Cross, who agreed to meet with Susan.

Susan reached out to a contact at the KSP, telling them about how Cross had been stalking her. The KSP knew about Susan’s activities - they had the information she and Tom Mangold had given them several months earlier, but they had made no progress in their investigation. They agreed to let Susan meet with Cross. They would fit her with a wire and park around the corner in an unmarked police car in case anything went wrong.

Don’t ask me how Susan went about this, because it seems pretty unbelievable to me that law enforcement would agree to such a thing. To me, it certainly looks like the KSP were putting Susan in danger (especially since they knew about the stalking). Regardless of whether she wanted to put herself in this situation, it just seems like something they should not have allowed.

On February 25, 2005, Susan met with Cross at his cousin's house. During the meeting, Cross appeared agitated, but according to Susan, he was not unfriendly. However, he got upset when she spoke about the condition of Jessica’s body.

“I don’t want to hear that shit,” he snapped.

He asked Susan about aspects of the crime that she was quite sure were not public knowledge. For example, he wanted to know whether any DNA was found on the bottle next to Jessica’s body (Susan could not recall the bottle ever being mentioned publicly).

Susan left the meeting with Cross feeling hopeful. She thought that the combination of her conversation with him, the information she had previously handed over to them, and the fact he was stalking her, might compel the KSP to look into him. However, much to Susan’s disappointment, they maintained that it was not enough.

Joe Currin Takes a Stand

Meanwhile, Jessica’s father, Joe Currin, was becoming increasingly exasperated with the lack of progress being made into finding his daughter’s killer. He had watched in frustration as Mayfield PD made a mess of the investigation, charging Jeremy Adams with the killing. He never thought Adams was the killer, he told the Ocala Star Banner.

His hopes were renewed when the KSP took over the case. However, after another three years passed and the investigation still appeared to be at a standstill, Joe decided he couldn’t sit and wait any longer without taking action.

In order to gain more publicity for the case, Joe began organizing and leading demonstrations at the Graves County courthouse, the FBI office 26 miles away in Paducah and the state Capitol building in Frankfort, 260 miles from Mayfield. He reached out to national civil rights organizations, including Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. Representatives from the organization came to Mayfield to meet with Joe and join him in rallying the public to demand justice for Jessica.

Joe also appealed to the state attorney general at the time, Greg Stumbo, to have the KBI (the Kentucky Bureau of Investigation) take over the case from the Kentucky State Police.

Graves County prosecutor David Hargrove spoke of how the murder rate in the county had increased significantly since before Jessica’s murder and his office was struggling to keep up. He agreed that the KBI should take over Jessica’s case, which he viewed as especially complex.

In the fall of 2006, thanks to Joe’s efforts, Attorney General Stumbo agreed to have the KBI take over. Agents Lee Wise and Robert O'Neil would handle the case from then on.

“Joe Currin never gave up. I know it was frustrating for him. No one can imagine what his family went through.”

— Kentucky Attorney General Greg Stumbo

“Justice for Jessica”

Around the same time that the KBI took over the case, Susan created a MySpace page which she titled “Justice for Jessica”. On top of being a memorial site, Susan hoped it might nudge someone with information about the murder into coming forward. Six years had passed and Jessica’s killer (or killers) still walked free.

It was in February 2007 that Susan’s efforts paid off. She received a message, which gave the impression of someone whose conscience had been weighing on them for some time. It was from a young woman named Doris Victoria Caldwell (who went by Victoria, which is how I’ll be referring to her from now on). She was frightened, but needed to tell someone what she knew.

A short time later, Susan was on the phone with Victoria, who now lived in California. It didn’t take much for Victoria to tell Susan her story.

Victoria was not a new name in the investigation. In fact, she had come up quite a few times before, back when Tim Fortner was working the case for the MPD. Fortner, despite his inexperience, had actually done some good investigative work. He had come across Victoria early on, while interviewing people who had attended the party on the night Jessica died. Victoria (who was just 15 at the time) indicated to him that she had witnessed what happened to Jessica, but was afraid of being killed herself if she talked.

As a temporary solution to keep her safe, Fortner had her placed in the home of one of his female MPD colleagues. But then, without warning, she fled. No one from MPD made an effort to find her and get her to tell her story. She had been in California ever since.

After hearing what Victoria had to say, Susan called Detective O’Neil with the KBI. O’Neil went out to California, where he met with Victoria and brought her back to Mayfield. At KBI Headquarters, Victoria gave her version of events.

Victoria’s Story

CW: Graphic detail of sexual assault

On the night of July 29, 2000, Jessica and another girl, 16-year-old Vinisha Stubblefield, had been at Victoria’s house. Vinisha told the other two that she had made plans for them to hang out with a man named Quincy Cross. Cross, who was 23 at the time, arrived at Victoria's house a short time later. The three girls got in the car with him. He first drove to a house where he exchanged the blue car he was driving for a white one. They then drove to another house, where they picked up two more people - Victoria’s 21-year-old cousin, Tamara Caldwell, and 20-year-old Jeffrey Burton. Cross took some cocaine, then passed it around to the others.

They then began driving to Burton’s house. On the way, Cross and Tamara Caldwell began touching Jessica inappropriately. Despite Jessica’s protests, they would not stop. When they arrived at Burton’s house, Cross picked up a small baseball bat from the floor of the car and hit Jessica in the head with it, knocking her unconscious. Cross and Burton carried Jessica into the bedroom and put her on the bed. Victoria followed them into the bedroom.

Cross tried to force his penis into Jessica’s mouth, but was unsuccessful, so he masturbated instead. Burton tried to have sex with the unconscious Jessica as Tamara Caldwell held her legs open. At this point, Jessica began to wake up. As she did so, she began groaning and protesting. She said the name of her son several times. Cross grabbed a wrench and hit her in the head with it, once again knocking her out. He then took off his black braided belt and strangled Jessica with it. After a short time, Victoria could clearly see that Jessica was dead.

Cross then forced Victoria and Vinisha to perform sexual acts on Jessica’s body so that they would be implicated in the crime. Afterwards, Cross, Burton and Tamara Caldwell continued assaulting Jessica’s body.

After the horrific ordeal, the five took more drugs and had sex with each other.

They then put Jessica’s body in Burton’s garage. Once the body began to smell, Victoria, Vinisha, Burton, along with two others who were not involved in the murder, 19-year-old Austin Leech and 14-year-old Issac Benjamin, took it to the school and set it on fire.

Vinisha’s Story

After interviewing Victoria, the KBI tracked down Vinisha. Her account differed from Victoria's in some ways.

On the evening of July 29, 2000, she and Jessica had been playing cards at another friend’s house. Jessica eventually left to go home. Not long after she left, Vinisha decided to go out and look for her (it’s not clear exactly why she did this). Quincy Cross, who Vinisha had met at least once before, showed up in a blue car and Vinisha got in with him. They then picked up Victoria Caldwell at her house. The three drove to another home, where they exchanged the blue car for a white one. They picked up Tamara Caldwell and Jeffrey Burton, and continued driving around, looking for Jessica. All the while, they were using cocaine, pills and marijuana.

They eventually found Jessica, and asked her if she wanted a ride. Jessica agreed, but made it clear that she did not want to party with them and wanted to go home. They said they would take her home. Once Jessica got in the car, Cross began touching her inappropriately. Despite Jessica’s protests, Cross wouldn’t stop. They continued driving to Burton’s house.

Once they arrived, Jessica and Cross got into an argument, and Cross hit Jessica in the head, but did not knock her out. He forced her into a bedroom in the back of the house. Vinisha stayed in the living room. After about 20 minutes, Burton told her to come into the bedroom, where she saw Cross strangling Jessica with his belt. Cross then began having sex with Jessica. Vinisha could not say whether Jessica was still alive at this point. After Cross had sex with Jessica, Burton did the same. Cross then told Vinisha to perform sexual acts on Jessica. She complied.

Vinisha’s testimony was the same as Victoria's from here: the group began having sex with each other, and they moved Jessica’s body to the garage. Later on, Victoria, Vinisha, Burton, Leech and Benjamin got rid of Jessica’s body at the school.

A still from a news segment on the murder (source: KFVS 12)

In late March 2007, Cross, Burton and Tamara Caldwell were indicted on charges of capital murder, kidnapping, first degree rape, tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse.

On May 2, 2007, now 23-year-old Vinisha Stubblefield and 22-year-old Victoria Caldwell pleaded guilty to charges of abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence. Vinisha was sentenced to 7 years and Victoria to 5 years. Both agreed to testify against Cross, Burton and Tamara Caldwell in their trials.

Quincy Cross on Trial

The Prosecution's Case

Cross went to trial in March 2008. Due to pre-trial publicity, the trial was moved from Graves County to Clinton, Kentucky in Hickman County.

Victoria Caldwell and Vinisha Stubblefield were the prosecution’s star witnesses. While their individual stories differed in some ways, the key parts that the prosecution used were largely the same: both girls said they witnessed Cross sexually harassing Jessica in the car, hitting her in the head, then raping her back at the house and strangling her with his belt.

Special prosecutor Barbara Maines Whaley emphasized how threatening Cross was; how he forced the two girls to implicate themselves in the crime by performing sex acts on the body and then disposing of it.

"He was in control, and there's never been any doubt about that," Whaley said. She added that the reason it took Vinisha and Victoria so long to implicate Cross was because they were afraid for their lives.

Rosie Crice, Victoria Caldwell’s sister, testified that Cross told her to tell Victoria he was going to kill her for “running her mouth” about Jessica’s murder.

Whaley referred to a journal entry of Victoria’s dated Aug. 1, 2000, in she which wrote:

"Damn, they found the body. I hope they don't find out it was us. Fuck men. Q is nowhere to be found and Jeff don't want to talk to me.”

Victoria also admitted on the stand that she had lied to police early on in the investigation, which led to the original indictments against Jeremy Adams and Carlos Saxton.

Deputy Mike Perkins testified that he arrested Cross the morning after the murder for cocaine possession, after finding him at the wheel of broken down car, reeking of gasoline.

The Defense's Case

The defense attempted to poke holes in the prosecution’s case by saying that it was almost entirely based on the testimony of Victoria Caldwell and Vinisha Stubblefield, who lied repeatedly throughout the investigation and had pointed to a number of other suspects over the years.

During cross-examination, Vinisha admitted that she was interviewed by police 17 times before she first mentioned Cross in 2005, and did not mention a belt during a police interview until 2007.

"Admitted liars must not be believed when a man's life is at stake," said Vince Yustas, one of Cross’s lawyers.

In a rather dramatic moment during the cross-examination, Rosie Crice recanted her testimony she had given for the prosecution. She said she actually knew nothing about Cross’s actions the evening Jessica was killed. She said that she lied because the KBI threatened to take her kids away if she didn’t lie and implicate Cross. She was later charged with perjury and pleaded guilty.

Yustas also pointed to the discrepancies between Victoria and Vinisha’s testimonies as evidence that they were unreliable witnesses.

He also raised questions about the diary entry written by Victoria, bringing in a handwriting expert who testified that it looked like the date may have been changed from 2001 to 2000, suggesting it could be fake.

The defense told the jury that the police had it right the first time when they indicted Jeremy Adams and Carlos Saxton. The two men killed Jessica together, they said.

Dr George Nichols, the former chief medical examiner for the state, testified that there was no physical evidence that Jessica was strangled or had been raped, given how badly burned her body was. Her cause of death was not officially determined, though the medical examiner, Dr Mark LeVaughn, had taken an educated guess that her cause of death was strangulation due to the presence of the belt near her body.

The Verdict

On April 8, 2008, Quincy Cross was found guilty of the murder, kidnapping and rape of Jessica Currin.

“You don’t know how excited I am. I’m pleased and happy, happy for Jessica,” Jean Currin told the Paducah Sun newspaper after the trial.

"I can't celebrate with something like this," Joe Currin said. "Nothing is going to bring her back, but justice needed to be done.”

The day after he was found guilty, the jury recommended that Cross be sentenced to life in prison and spared of the death penalty.

In May 2008, the judge formally sentenced him to life in prison without parole, plus a further 58 years for charges of sodomy, abuse of a course and tampering with evidence.

Further Consequences

In September 2008, Jeffrey Burton and Tamara Caldwell entered Alford pleas to second-degree manslaughter and abuse of a corpse. Burton also entered a plea to a charge of tampering with evidence. An Alford plea means that while a person does not admit guilt, they concede there was enough evidence for a guilty verdict. In October 2008, Burton was sentenced to 15 years in prison and Caldwell was sentenced to 10 years.

In Jul 2008, Austin Leech and Isaac Benjamin were indicted on two counts each of tampering with evidence for “removing, concealing or mutilating (the body) and then burning it”. Leech was acquitted of his charges after a short trial in Aug. 09. I couldn’t find what happened in Benjamin’s case.

Cross’s Appeals

Shortly after he was found guilty, Cross spoke with The Paducah Sun newspaper. He maintained his innocence, saying he had never met Jessica and played no part in her murder. He also denied knowing Jeffrey Burton or Tamara Caldwell in 2000, nor did he know Victoria Calwell or Vinisha Stubblefield.

“The truth will come out. It all depends on me and God. If God knows I didn’t do it, and I know I didn’t do it, why should I worry about what the rest of the world thinks about me?”

— Quincy Cross to The Paducah Sun

In February 2016, he filed a motion requesting a new trial based on his assertion that Victoria, Vinisha and Rosie Crice, recanted their testimony, either because they lied in order to get reward money and/or they felt threatened by law enforcement officials.

Victoria's alleged recantation was found in the affidavit of Dale Elliot, a former Kentucky Innocence Project investigator.

Cross also asserted in his appeal that Jessica’s father, Joe Currin, signed an affidavit in 2014 which said he did not believe Cross was guilty because the witnesses had recanted their statements because they were forced to lie by law enforcement officers.

On November 9, 2016, the trial court denied Cross’s motion. There’s so much back and forth but from what I gathered, the Commonwealth also filed an affidavit that denied statements attributed to Victoria in Elliott’s affidavit.

Furthermore, the trial court pointed out that the law concerning recanted testimony specifies that alleged recantations should be regarded with distrust and suspicion, and new trials will only be granted because of recanted statements in extraordinary circumstances.

It also appeared that Cross did not fully understand the extent of the Kentucky Innocence Project’s work on his behalf. He testified that they had done some research and investigation into his case, but had never actually done any legal work for him. He also stated that he did not discover that the Innocence Project was no longer pursuing his case until a significant period after the organization ceased its participation.

“Free Quincy Cross”

Cross has a number of defenders who believe he is innocent. There is a petition on change.org titled “Free Quincy Cross”, which was made very recently in August or September. The description for the petition says in part:

“In 2008, Quincy Omar Cross was convicted of crimes he did not commit and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. For 14 years, he has been incarcerated based on fallacies, the ineptitude of law enforcement, and inadequacy of his legal representation. Despite these obstacles, Mr. Cross has neither stopped proclaiming his innocence nor given up hope that justice and truth will prevail.”

There is an accompanying website which I’ll link to in the show notes, if you’d like to take a look.

I personally can’t say where I stand on this case - there is just so much conflicting information. When the nature of a murder is so sadistic and depraved, as this one was, it’s natural that we might let our emotions take over. Far too often however, this results in wrongful convictions, and the true perpetrators of these horrific crimes continuing to walk free.

I’m not saying I think Quincy Cross is innocent, but I definitely think there were holes in the prosecution’s case. I don’t like that there was no forensic evidence linking him to the crime. Vinisha and Victoria, the prosecution’s star witnesses, definitely had credibility issues.

Joe and Jean Currin raised their grandson as their own. As Zion was an infant when Jessica was murdered, they have been the only parents he has ever known. At the time of Cross’s trial, Joe and Jean had not figured out how to tell him that Jessica was really his mother. Zion will have turned 22 this year.

Jessica with newborn Zion (source: Find a Grave)

In 2009, Susan received the first-ever KBI Kentucky Outstanding Citizen Award for her work on the Currin case.

On August 17, 2018, she sadly died of natural causes at age 58.

“My Dear and Wonderful Susan. A brave colleague, a close friend, a lady with a huge heart. We have been robbed of your presence while you were still so young. Thank you for having made my time with you such a rewarding experience. In deep sadness, Tom Mangold.”

— Tom Mangold on Susan's Memorial Page

A Disclaimer From Me

This case was not easy to research. It was hard to tell what was fact from fiction a lot of the time, but I’ve done my best to get the facts straight and only present information from sources I found reputable. As I said earlier, Mayfield is a small town where talk travels quickly. Such talk mutates over time, resulting in the spread of misleading or outright false information.

The investigation was deeply flawed from the start, being carried out by an inexperienced, poorly-resourced and corrupt police department. False statements from witnesses were commonplace.

Susan Galbreath was a champion for Jessica, relentlessly pursuing and analyzing leads, but she had no professional experience. Joe Currin was responsible for having his daughter’s case taken over by the KBI, and keeping it in the public eye by bringing civil rights leaders to Mayfield.

But it should never have been that Susan and Joe were putting far more time and effort into this case than the Mayfield PD and Kentucky State Police, whose actual job it was.

While I’ve done my best to cover Jessica’s story as comprehensively as possible, there were so many questions throughout the investigation - some of which remain unanswered to this day.