Yes, for an article, just to make sure I get quotes proper.". When Jessica graduated from high school, her grandparents held a party for her and projected a movie on the side of their barn. Whitehouse didnt understand why she was being directed to basically a hiding spot. She recorded the conversation on her phone, so that investigators could look for clues if she disappeared. provided images. Chris DeMarco, GBIs assistant special agent in charge, arrives on the scene and meets with Griffin Police Chief Michael Yates for a briefing. But otherwise, he said, Im doneIm out. I mean he might have grabbed my arm before, but I don't think he would intentionally do anything to hurt mebut like I said, he's changed so much here, lately, she said. That question lingers--but not for Georgia Bureau of Investigations, who said the case is closed--repeatedly stating that they are satisfied with their findings. Like many docile, self-effacing women, Jessica has some hidden pockets of pride, and one of them is her skills as a writer. There are a lot of questions that I would love to have answered. But the report and follow-up interviews with the lead investigator make the case as clear as mud to one reporter in the small town where it happened. GBI begins interviewing neighbors and Matthew interviews with the GBI later that morning. And then I started thinking, Well, why did I even come to you? she said. All rights reserved. Nothing will happen to the kid.. 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. After Jessica was shot, Matthew, then-20, was back on duty with his gun on his hip, before key interviews were conducted and the GBI director wrote an official letter about the cases conclusion, stating that the shooting was ruled a suicide.. I figured she was going to retract her statement, he said later. Sanders said, I think the city thought this would be business as usual, until a local reporter and a loser truck driver got involved.. It was like he was spitting in my face, she said. 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. Officers rush to the scene to find Jessica Boynton inside a locked closet, with an apparent gunshot wound to her head. But asking those questions resulted in a threat. Matthew makes it home, jumps out of his truck, races through the breezeway of his apartment building and bolts up the stairs. Her head wound soaked into the green and white pillow, where her head rested. A Griffin Police Officer's wife herself, the reporter called DeMarco, on Sept. 28, the investigator who was in charge of the investigation for the GBI, to question him about the case and the photo that nagged her, and that for her, called into question how anything they investigated was trustworthy. Matthew claims this was around 1 a.m, but the neighbors . She became dead seriousId never seen her so serious, Denise said. The agent asked her if she had ever held her husbands service weapon. She loved those kids more than anything, and she knows how it feels to grow up without a mom, she said. Jessica could see her children for only four hours on Sunday afternoons. | Examine the evidence yourself. In September, 2016, the G.B.I. agent who lived near Spalding County and had worked with Beam on several cases over the years. He said, Sad. When asked, how come, he stated, because daddy scares me. He went on to say, Daddy was up the hill and hurt me in his house., The sheriffs department in Pike County, where Matthew was living, investigated whether there had been abuse, but Matthew denied the allegation and the department did not find any concrete evidence. Early that morning, Matthew was interviewed by Chris DeMarco, a G.B.I. agent, Jared Coleman, interviewed her as she lay in her hospital bed. Updated: 11:14 PM EDT July 28, 2017. Willey had seen a copy of Matthews sworn statement in his car, and she was disturbed that he was lying straight to everybodys face, she later told the police. 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. Two shots had been fired. 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. Now itsa twenty-two-billion-dollar industry plagued by exploitation. There are too many useless words thrown in, she said. Ive always been such a firm believer in our justice system, she said. Contact Justice for Jessica on Messenger. ! his girlfriend texts him. Jessica found it darkly funny that it was a missing retainer, and not her brain injury, that ultimately led to Matthews arrest. Its just a hobby, he said. And, unfortunately it appears those questions will never be answered," Mathews said. 11Alive reached out to Officer Matthew Boynton, however, phone calls were not returned. In Jessicas first three weeks in the hospital, he visited her once, accompanied by Beam, who wore his uniform and carried his gun. GRIFFIN, Ga. - Matthew Boynton was arrested by his fellow Griffin Police officers and taken to the Spalding County Jail on felony charges. Although Gibson had been indicted on fourteen charges, he was allowed to plead guilty, in June, 2017, to only two, for violating his oath of office, and he was granted first-offender status. Police investigate further and find a gun underneath Jessicas limp body. Jessica could not come within three hundred yards of Matthew or her children. They wanted me to come back Friday for orientation for the job, she said. Like, he talks about her as if shes nothing., As Willey was moving out of Matthews house, she again came across the gym bag of Jessicas clothes. In April 2016, hours after an argument with his wife Jessica, Griffin, Georgia police officer Matthew Boynton radios for assistance and reports hearing two gunshots coming from inside his home. The agent had that phone, I think DeMarco, Chris DeMarco had the phone and they was [sic] trying to get in the gate, and, uh, he accidentally hit, I guess, the last number dialed, called or whatever. Shes just a piece of shit, Jacob clarified. They're saying it was self-inflicted, she said. After you got on the radio and you were outside communicating on the radio, you never went back in to actually check, check on the kids, the agent questioned Matthew about once he removed himself from the apartment. Willey wanted to help Jessica because she was scared of Matthew, too. Matthew Boynton is the grandson of Sheriff Beam. Her parents had abandoned her when she was three, along with her sister and brother, and she grew up on a farm with her mothers adoptive parents. Jessica, then-19, had just put her two young sons to bed and was getting her clothes ready in the closet for the next day. After the visit, Matthew, who had been placed on administrative leave, was interviewed again by DeMarco. At first he lied, but within fifteen minutes he acknowledged that hed known about Jessicas bag all along. Why did you write the damn statement? a sergeant asked him. Although police departments have become more attentive to officers use of excessive force against civilians, the same scrutiny has not been applied to their potential for violent behavior at home. It could have been simply that um, all his, he left his stuff there. She now lives two hours north of Griffin, with her fianc, Jacob Boyack, a high-school classmate, in a small yellow house with black shutters and an American flag hanging from the front porch. Im glad to know theres still advocacy in the practice in the courts of the Griffin Judicial Circuit. No one ended up testifying about Jessica and Matthews marriage. Jessicas grandparents hoped that this development would help their case. Mathews, the publisher of The Grip and its only reporter, submitted an Open Records Act request to the magistrates court, where judges swear in new officers. He reads another text from his girlfriend, while driving 90 mph. He didnt find any, and dismissed the protective order. But I never look in it.. And its assigned to Matthew. Matthew, grandson of then-sheriff of Spalding County, texts a fellow Griffin Police officer. Jessica and Jacob have a son together, and their living room and kitchen are arranged like a nursery school, with a poster displaying the ABCs, a whiteboard, and wooden coat hangers shaped like trucks. Jessica, at home with her three boys, still has occasional migraines, weakness in her left foot, and lingering amnesia about the night of her shooting. Jones passes by a framed portrait hung on the wall. I was scared to death, because I couldnt find him, that she would shoot me, shoot him, and then kill herself.. Jessica thought that Matthew, who was baby-faced but muscular, looked rich; he wore Ralph Lauren boots and collared shirts from Hollister. Previously city included Delray Beach FL. There is another problem now. Matthew Boynton, 21, had just started work as a Griffin police officer. Especially because of my children. She started crying. His phone was given to someone else at Griffin PD, they put the phone in the thing because they knew GBI wanted it, and that's where we're gonna be while he was taken to the police department. The G.B.I. "Well, how do you come to that conclusion?" 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 there are almost no empirical studies examining the prevalence of this sort of abuse today. Jessica is placid and effortlessly polite, warm without being intimate. Earlier that night Jessica's husband Matthew headed to Waffle House for a late-night bite with a fellow officer, leaving his service weapon . I guarantee you he wont a hundred per cent say what happened, he said. And he said, Its a damn shame she didnt do it right the first time. She added, He doesnt refer to her as, like, human. The sheriffs department does not respond to incidents inside the Griffin city limits, and he was the only one from his office there. Sanders was forty-three years old and the son of a former Republican state representative; he considered himself a happy beneficiary of the good-old-boys system, he told me, and did not do his work in pursuit of political reform. Lowry wanted to put witnesses on the stand who would testify that Matthew had been psychologically abusive. Bad decisions, he said. It was Im going to lock people up. Jessica told me, Id probably go to jail before Id put the boys back in a situation where Matthew could even think about doing anything to them.. His flashlights beam reveals a smiling family of four. It was retrieved from the kitchen counter in front of the microwave oven," she probed further. According to the order, which Matthew had petitioned the court to issue, probable cause exists that Family Violence has occurred in the past and may occur in the future. Jessica was ordered to have a psychological evaluation. Her family wondered if this was her way of escaping the relationship. I would have written suicidal thoughts, not suicide thoughts., She told me that she couldnt imagine using a clich such as I have not been able to recognize the person I see in the mirror., I dont generally even look in the mirror, she said. Haha Im sorry I didnt think about that lol, he wrote. This is not the first time I have had suicide thoughts. Jessica gave him her old cell phone and notebook, and he keeps them in a safe at a location that he wont disclose, along with a shrink-wrapped box containing all the documents he collected. Immediately following that flip, Mathews said, DeMarco asked if she was recording their conversation. Jessica and Matthew moved into a house across the street from the sheriff, Wendell Beam, and his wife. I was going to report this, but, like he said, who will they believe? Another woman, who used methamphetamine, said that sometimes Gibson followed her as she drove. They decided to get married. A text message is sent to his phone from Jessicas phone. He enters, checking the master bedroom. Im not well connected with anyone. She decided to resign instead. Her voice was hoarse from the breathing tubes, and she seemed childlike and dazed, as if her only goal was to accommodate the agents as quickly as she could. 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. According to Jessica Lester, Boynton's ex-wife who filed a . Still peering down at his phone, Matthew also sends a text to his girlfriend, a Spalding County dispatcher. Her marriage had been crumbling, and she and her husband of six months Matthew Boynton, 20 . She just said that she's been experiencing suicidal thoughts right now, she told me to take care of the boys. Difference between non-contested & adultery divorce? she wrote. I dont know what she is capable of, Judge., Jessicas family agreed to pay a hundred dollars every Sunday so that her visits could be observed by another armed law-enforcement agent. That's the bottom line for me. Matthew claims he received a text from Jessica stating she was going to commit suicide. He would flash his lights and pull her over, and force her to have sex with him. Never, she said. So there was really no need for me to leave. Especially because of my children. Hardheaded. 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. 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?. Jacob is gentle and jovial, articulating emotions that Jessica herself struggles to name. reports, Matthew said. Jessica reported what he said to child-protective services, who helped arrange for the boys to see a child psychologist. The new sheriff, Darrell Dix, the former lieutenant in the Griffin Police Department, told me that when he unlocked the doors to the sheriffs office on his first day on the job, January 1, 2017, he found nine industrial-sized trash bags full of shredded papers. looked into the allegations. Credit: GBI/Griffin Police Dept. At 12:54 AM, Matthew's phone received a text from Jessica's phone that read like a suicide note. He was Spalding County. They were becoming estranged, and when something h. I dont think Ive ever had that one before, he said. And its inside that closet, where police found her seemingly shot in the head, laying on top of her husbands service weapon. Matthew sends another text to his girlfriend, a Spalding County dispatcher, Give me a few. Matthew was now dating Shelby Willey, a young mother who had recently separated from her husband. In the past thirty years, the criminal-justice system has become more responsive to domestic violence, but family courts have been largely insulated from this cultural change. Philip Stinson, the professor at Bowling Green, maintains a database of officers who have been arrested around the country, and he said that, in response to the Lautenberg Amendment, a federal provision that was passed in 1996 and prohibits people convicted of domestic violence from owning firearms, cops accused of domestic violence are often charged with lesser offenses, as a kind of professional courtesy, so they can continue working. Jessica would not touch a gun, she said. Until recently, Matthew's grandfather, Wendell Beam, reigned as Spalding County sheriff. is going to do it. He believes that the only two people who know the answers are Jessica and Matthew, and Jessica will never be a reliable source, given her traumatic brain injury, and Matthews account cant be trusted. 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. Less than a month after her hospital-bed interview, Matthew was verbally cleared by the GBI, according to his chief. Even Gibsons lawyer, Phil Friduss, seemed at a loss to explain whether Gibson had controlled the county, as so many people believed. The older boy was asleep in his bedroom, and the baby was in his own room, crying in his crib. Matthews childhood dream was to work in law enforcementa career inspired by his grandfather, who had helped bring him up following his parents divorce.
