"NO PRECEDENT": JUDGE DISMISSES ALL CHARGES AGAINST EBONY PARKER, PLUS A MAINE STRANGLING TRIAL AND A LIFE SENTENCE FOR BEAUTY COUCH'S KILLE

0:03 Kalaroga Shark Media. Good morning, I'm Garrett Fisher. This is Daily Crime and Justice. It is Wednesday, May twenty seventh, twenty twenty six. Three rooms today, all of them about accountability or the absence of it. The first room is in Newport News, Virginia. You will remember from last Thursday that we walked you through day one of the criminal trial of Ebony Parker, the former assistant principal at rich Neck Elementary. We walked you through the prosecution's opening. We walked you through Abby's werner, taking the stand for the second time in two years and describing again what it felt like to be shot in her own classroom by a six year old. We walked you through the warnings, four of them that landed on Parker's desk that morning, and we told you we were going to track this one all the way through verdict. Well there is not going to be a verdict, because on Thursday, after the same day we recorded that episode, Judge Rebecca Robinson stood up and dismissed every single one of the eight charges against Ebony Parker before the defense even called a witness.

1:11 We are going to walk you through how that happened, what the judge said, and what it means. The second room is in Bangor, Maine. A man named Richard Thorpe is on trial right now for strangling his ex girlfriend, Virginia Cookson with an HDMI cord in her own home. Cookson was thirty nine years old, she had just broken up with him. He had been out of prison for less than a year. And the conviction he came out on was and this is the part you'll want to remember, domestic violence aggravated assault. And the third room is in Atlanta. A young woman named Beauty Couch had more than one hundred thousand Instagram followers for posting roller skating videos. Last week, the man she was dating was convicted of stabbing her eighty one times and lighting her mother's car on fire to try to cover it up. On Friday, he was sentenced life without parole plus twenty years. Three rooms. Let's get into it. Let's go back to Newport News, Virginia Circuit Court Judge Rebecca Robinson on the bench Commonwealth of Virginia versus Ebony Parker. Quick recap because some of you are picking this up for the first time. January sixth, twenty twenty three. Rich Neck Elementary School. A six year old first grader named JT. Walked into his classroom that morning with a loaded nine millimeter handgun in his backpack.

2:36 He had told another student he was going to shoot people. He had shown another student the gun. He had been seen on the playground hiding behind rocks and trees with another child behaving strangely. By eleven fifteen that morning, four separate adults at the school had warned the assistant principal, Ebony Parker that this child had a gun and was going to hurt someone. A reading specialist searched his back packet Parker's direction, empty. The gun was in his jacket pocket. Another teacher asked, please, can we search this child's person? Parker said no, his mother is coming. Wait. Ninety minutes later, JT pulled the gun out of his hoodie pocket in his first grade classroom, pointed it at his twenty five year old teacher, Abby's werner, and fired one round. The bullet went through her left hand, then into her chest.

3:28 It is still in her chest today. Seven more rounds were in the weapon. One was jammed in the action of the gun. Eight bullets total, eight charges, one count of felony child abuse. For every round ebony, Parker did not get out of that classroom. That was the prosecution's theory. Day one was Tuesday, May nineteenth. Joshua Jenkins gave the opening for the Commonwealth. The defense, Curtis Rogers gave his opening. Abby's Werner took the stand and again described being shot. The reading specialist, Amy Kovacch testified that students reported to her that a first grader had brought a gun. The deputy who responded thought he was walking into an active shooter.

4:10 The principle of rich Neck, Breonna Foster, conceded under oath that she, the principal, had no idea on January sixth, that there was a gun in her building. The only administrator with the information was Parker. Day two was Wednesday, May twentieth. The Commonwealth wrapped up its case. They had spent two full days putting witnesses on the stand, teachers, officers, the forensics technician who walked into that classroom afterward and photographed a backpack, a cartridge case, and a handgun lying on the floor. Another teacher, Jennifer West, testified that she had personally seen JT acting suspiciously behind a rock wall on the playground, that another student had reported the child threatened to quote blow them up, and that she had reported what she saw to the front office, which in this school on that day meant ebony Parker. Two days of evidence, the commonwealth rested. Now, in a normal trial, this is the moment where the defense routinely moves to dismiss.

5:11 It's called a motion to strike or a motion for judgment of acquittal. Different courts use different names. It is a procedural step. The defense says, Judge, the prosecution has rested and the evidence they have put on is not legally sufficient for a jury to convict. The judge almost always denies it. The defense puts on its case, the jury deliberates, the system grinds forward. Curtis Rogers, Parker's defense attorney, made the motion. Judge Rebecca Robinson took it under advisement Wednesday evening, came back Thursday morning, and here is what she said. Quote. There is no precedent for what's before the court, for an administrator criminally charged and tried for what has been presented. The court is of the legal opinion that this is not a crime, not under the common law of Virginia, nor under the Code of Virginia end quote. Then she went further. She said the Commonwealth's case was, and I want you to hear this phrase, a mashup of legal theory. She specifically pulled apart the eight counts because of eight bullets framing. She pointed out that under Virginia case law, you cannot generate a separate felony child abuse charge for every bullet and a gun that wasn't fired. The case law requires the bullets to be discharged. Seven of those eight rounds never left the chamber.

6:32 The prosecutors had structured their case in a way that wasn't permitted by the statute they were prosecuting under all eight counts dismissed before the defense called a single witness. Before Parker took the stand, Before the jury heard closing arguments, the judge sent the jury home. Parker put her head down on the council table and sobbed. Now, look, I'm going to be honest with you. I have a complicated reaction to this, and I want to walk you through at care because the worst thing I can do on a case like this is pretend it's simpler than it is. Start here, Judge Robinson is not wrong about the law. She is being asked to read a statute, a felony child abuse statute, and decide whether it covers the conduct of an administrator who failed to act on warnings about a student with a gun. And the answer she gave after two days of hearing the prosecution's evidence is that the statute as written in Virginia does not cover this.

7:28 That this conduct, as terrible as it is, as preventable as the shooting was, does not fit into the legal category that the prosecutors brought it under. That is a defensible legal call. There is no precedent. The judge said so out loud. Nobody has ever been prosecuted in Virginia for being a school administrator who ignored warnings about an arm child and an American criminal law. You can't make the law up as you go. You have to charge people under statutes that exist, and the conduct has to fit. So, as a matter of law, I understand the ruling. As a matter of accountability, and accountability does not have a legal department. I want you to sit with what just happened.

8:13 Abby's werner has a bullet in her chest. She is twenty eight years old. She doesn't teach anymore. She went to cosmetology school because she cannot go back into a classroom. She has nightmares about a six year old finding her again. The civil jury in this same courthouse looked at this same set of facts last fall and decided ebony. Parker owed Abby's werner ten million dollars. That is what twelve neighbors of Newport News thought of Parker's conduct that morning, ten million dollars. Now that civil verdict is currently being appealed, Parker has asked the court to throw it out. So even the civil money is not yet money in Abby's Werner's pocket. And the criminal accountability the part where a jury says, yes, you did this, this was a crime.

8:58 You are going to be held responsible by the state. That just went away permanently. Double jeopardy attached. The Commonwealth cannot recharge this, They cannot appeal a dismissal. At the close of the prosecution's case, it is over, which means the legal scoreboard at the end of this is a civil judgment that may or may not survive appeal paid for by an insurance pool. No prison time, no felony record, no conviction. Nothing on Ebony Parker's name that says in writing what the State of Virginia thinks she did. And the part I keep coming back to, the part I cannot shake, is that the judge is essentially correct that this is the gap in the law. There is no statute that fits because nobody when they wrote these statutes, imagine that an assistant principle would receive four separate warnings in ninety minutes that a six year old had a gun on her playground and would say, wait, his mom is coming. Nobody planned for that, so nobody legislated for it.

9:58 And until somebody does, until some state legislature somewhere writes a statute that says, here is what an administrator owes the children in their building, and here is what happens when they don't deliver. There is no playbook. There's a playbook for the shooter. He was six, so he didn't face it. There's a playbook for the mother who left a loaded gun where her violent six year old could find it. Daja Taylor is serving nearly four years in federal prison for that. There's a playbook for the school board which paid out a settlement to z Werner. There's a playbook for civil court which valued what was done to her at ten million dollars. There is no playbook for the administrator. That's where the gap is, and until the gap closes, every assistant principle in America who gets a warning that a kid might have a weapon now has a Newport News, Virginia ruling sitting on her desk that says, essentially, even if you do nothing, even if you tell people to wait while you find the kid's mom, even if a teacher gets shot in the chest with a bullet that never come out, there is no crime here.

11:02 That is not a mistake. That is a choice the law made by not making one. Parker resigned shortly after the civil suit was filed in twenty twenty four. She is no longer an assistant principle. She will not be again in any school I can imagine wanting her. So in the most narrow practical sense, she is out of the position. But that's a labor market consequence, not a legal one, not a justice one, not the kind of thing that says on the record, this is what we as a society think should happen when you do this. Abby's Werner sat through two days of testimony last week. She watched the prosecution put on its case. She heard her own boss described not knowing what was happening in her own building. She heard the deputy describe an active shooter response in an elementary school, and then she watched a judge dismiss the case before anyone gave a closing argument.

11:55 And the woman who's ninety minutes of inaction put a bullet in her chest cried at the council table, and the judge commended both sides on their decorum, and then the courtroom emptied out. Somebody had to say her name, Abby's Zwerner. Let's move to Bangor, Maine. There is a woman whose name you should know, Virginia Cookson. She was thirty nine years old. She had a job that mattered enough to her that when she didn't show up on the morning of September twenty fifth, twenty twenty four, a coworker thought something was wrong and asked police to do a welfare check at her house. That welfare check found Virginia Cookson lying in a downstairs bedroom of her own home.

12:48 First responders described her body as positioned quote awkwardly. She was covered with a blanket. There was an HDMI cord wrapped around her neck. She had been strangled to death in her own house by someone who knew exactly where she kept her HDMI cord. The man now on trial for killing her is named Richard Thorpe. He is forty four years old. Earlier this year. Earlier this year, meaning the spring of twenty twenty four, he was finishing a five year prison sentence for domestic violence aggravated assault. He did not finish that sentence. On February thirteenth of twenty twenty four, the state of Maine released him early into something called a supervised community confinement program. The five year sentence stopped operating like a five year sentence. He was out three months later. He had moved in with Virginia Cookson.

13:37 They had met shortly after his release. They had started dating. By May, they were sharing a house in Bangor. Three months after that, September of twenty twenty four, Cookson, according to her family, broke up with him. Her family also told investigators that Thorpe had recently shown up at her home unannounced, and that he had threatened to kill her. On September twenty fifth, she he did not arrive at work. The welfare check happened, her body was found. Investigators traced it back to Thorpe immediately a warrant went out for his arrest. He was not in Maine. He was in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, about three hundred miles south. Neither he nor Virginia Cookson had any known ties to Pittsfield. We don't know why he went there. What we do know is that on September twenty seventh, two days after the killing, police in Pittsfield tried to stop him. He crashed one car, he stole another. He led officers through Pittsfield in a stolen vehicle.

14:35 He crossed the center divider, he passed cars in a no passing zone. He blew past police signals. And this is the part from the press release that I have not been able to stop thinking about since I read it. The Pittsfield Police Department noted that school bus operations were active at the time, school buses on the road. A man fleeing a murder charge in a stolen car blowing past them at speed. He was caught charged to in Massachusetts with a list of motor vehicle offenses extradited to Maine. Trial is happening now here. Is what I want you to hold on to from this case, even before the verdict comes in, even before we know what the jury does. The man charged with strangling Virginia Cookson in September of twenty twenty four was in January of twenty twenty four sitting in a main state prison serving a sentence for beating somebody up in a domestic violence aggravated assault case.

15:28 That's what put him in prison the first time, domestic violence. The State of Maine looked at that sentence, looked at his record, and decided in February that he could be released early into a supervised confinement program. Within ninety days of that release, he had attached himself to a thirty nine year old woman in Bangor who had no idea who she was bringing into her house. Within seven months, she was dead with a cord around her neck. There is a playbook for this. There is always a playbook for this. The playbook says people convicted of intimate partner violence have one of the highest reoffense rates in the criminal justice system. The playbook says early release into a community confinement program is supposed to come with conditions, with supervision, with check ins. The playbook says, the family of a man like this, the women in his life, the supervision officer assigned to him, somebody ideally is supposed to be paying attention. Virginia Cookson met him in February, she moved him in by May, she broke up with him by September, and by the end of September she was dead. Thorpe has pleaded not guilty. He is presumed innocent. The trial is happening in Banger right now, with prosecutors putting on their case and the defense presumably going to argue that the evidence does not prove who put that cord around Virginia Cookson's neck. We'll track it. But the framing on this one for me going in is that whatever the verdict ends up being, there is already a system somewhere upstream of this that decided in February of twenty twenty

16:59 five four that this man should be out on the street, And the person who paid the price for that decision is named Virginia Cookson. Forty miles north of where the trial is happening, in a Bangor cemetery, someone has to say her name, Atlanta, Fulton County, Friday afternoon, Judge Kimberly Childs delivered a sentence that was about as long as a sentence can get in the state of Georgia, life without parole plus twenty years consecutive. The defendant is Eugene Luis Jacques. He is twenty four years old. The jury convicted him last week on every count the state filed malice, murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, arson, concealing a death, and tampering with evidence. The judge then immediately imposed the maximum sentence.

17:57 But before I get to him, I want you to know about Beauty Couch. Beauty Couch was twenty two years old. She lived in Hostile, Georgia, just outside Atlanta. She was a roller skating influencer, and I know that phrase sounds a little flat, but she was very good at it. She had more than one hundred thousand followers on Instagram. She made videos of herself skating. People watched them, people liked them, people built community around them. She was a young woman who had figured out a small, joyful thing she was good at and was sharing it with the world, and she was just starting She met Eugene Louis Jacques at a beauty conference in Orlando. He lived in Louisiana. After they met, he relocated to Georgia to be near her.

18:38 They started dating in April of twenty twenty three. Four months in, in August of twenty twenty three, she was dead. Here is what happened. On August twenty second, twenty twenty three, Beauty disappeared. Her mother could not reach her. She called Beauty's boyfriend, Louis Jacques. He did not answer either. The mother became increasingly worried throughout the day. Less than twenty four hours later, police came to the mother's door. They had found Beauty's mother's Dodge Dart, the car Beauty had been driving, on fire. When officers were told that Beauty was missing, they went back to the scene of the burned car. They walked the area less than two hundred feet away from the burned out dodge. In a wooded area, they found Beauty's body. It had been covered with branches.

19:25 She had been stabbed eighty one times, eighty one stab wounds, and then the car set on fire to try to erase the rest. Louis Jacques was gone. He had fled Georgia. Police caught up with him in Louisiana days later. When officers approached him, he initially gave them a fake name. He was arrested and brought back to Georgia to stand trial. Now, the case that the prosecutors Stephanie Green and Jared Horowitz put on was almost entirely circumstantial. Green admitted it in opening statements. There was no DNA from Louis Jacques on Beauty's body. There was no Beauty Couch blood on Louis Jacqu's clothing. There was no Beauty Couch blood in Louis Jacqu's car. The dodge had been burned so thoroughly that there was essentially nothing left to test except one piece of paper. In the trunk of the burned out dodge, which had been set on fire to destroy evidence, investigators found a PAYE dub with Eugene Louis Jacques's name on it.

20:24 The fire that consumed the car's interior, the upholstery, everything around it somehow left this pay stub identifying him intact inside a box inside a container in the trunk. The defense attorney Brian Lumpkin pointed at this in opening and again in closing and said, that's so bizarre, it's so unreal, it can't be a coincidence. He suggested that piece of paper was planted there, that someone not his client, wanted Eugene Louis Jacques to take the fall for this and arrange the evidence accordingly. Look, I'm going to be honest with you. I have seen a lot of defense theories on this show. The someone else planted the evidence theory is one of the oldest in the book, and there are absolutely cases where it has been the right theory.

21:12 But the someone else planted the evidence theory works best when you can also explain why your client did everything else he did, and Lumpkin couldn't. He stood up in front of the jury and conceded openly that his client fled to Louisiana, conceded that his client gave a fake name to police. His explanation for that was, quote, he knows he's a likely suspect and he doesn't want to get caught. End quote. He's guilty of being quote the best suspect they could come up with. End quote. That is not a defense. That is a sympathy bid. That is asking the jury to believe that an innocent man twenty four years old, knowing nothing about who actually killed his girlfriend, packed up his life, fled to a different state, and gave officers of fake name, all because he was worried about being framed. And then in addition that the actual killer also took the time to plant a payroll document in a trunk that they were about to set on fire on the off chance the document would survive the fire and get found later. There's a playbook for this.

22:17 The playbook says, when somebody runs, somebody usually ran for a reason. The playbook says, when a victim has eighty one stab wounds on her body, the person who did that lost control, and the person who lost control is the person who knew her, who was in proximity to her, who had access to her car. The playbook says, when you can't put DNA on someone, but you can put their pay stub in the trunk of the car they used to dump the body, and they then run to a different state under a fake name, the jury is going to add it up, which is what they did. Conviction came back on every count. Judge Child sentence immediately. The prosecutor Jared Horowitz asked the judge to give him the maximum, saying, quote, the evidence in this case has demonstrated that this defendant showed no mercy towards Miss Couch, and this court shouldn't allow any mercy either. End quote.

23:11 The judge agreed life without parole plus twenty years. He is never going to be free again. Beauty Couch was twenty two years old. She was building a career out of a thing that made her happy. She had one hundred thousand people watching her skate. She had a mother who started calling her boyfriend in the middle of an ordinary day because something felt wrong, and who later opened the door to find police standing on her porch with the worst news a parent can hear. There were eighty one stab wounds on her daughter's body. Eighty one is not a number that happens in a moment of passion. Eighty one is rage. Eighty one is somebody you used to love deciding you don't get to leave Beauty Couch.

23:53 Someone has to say her name. It's Daily Crime and Justice for Wednesday, May twenty seventh, twenty twenty six. In Newport News, Virginia, a Circuit court judge dismissed all eight felony child abuse counts against Ebony Parker, the former assistant principal at rich Neck Elementary. Before the defense ever called a witness, Judge Rebecca Robinson ruled that what happened that morning, as terrible as it was, does not fit any crime defined in the common law or the Code of Virginia. Abby's werner still has a bullet in her chest. The civil ten million dollar verdict against Parker is still under appeal.

24:35 There will be no criminal conviction ever. In Bangor, Maine, Richard Thorpe is on trial for strangling his ex girlfriend, Virginia Cookson with an HDMI cord in her own home, seven months after he was released early from a five year sentence for domestic violence aggravated assault. He fled to Massachusetts, crashed one car, stole another, and led police on a chase past active school buses. He is pleaded not guilty. The trial continues. In Atlanta, Eugene Luis Jacques was sentenced to life without parole plus twenty years for the murder of twenty two year old roller skating influencer Beauty Couch eighty one stab wounds a car set on fire to cover it. A paced ub in the trunk that survived the flames, A jury that did the math, three rooms, three different cities, the same question every time. What do we owe the people who were warned? The Newport News question?

25:30 What do we owe the people who were released? The Bangor question? What do we owe the people who were loved by the wrong person? The Atlanta question. Abby's Erner, Virginia Cookson, Beauty Couch. I'm Garrett Fisher. Do better. This is Daily Crime and Justice. Disclaimer. All charges discussed in this episode are allegations unless a guilty, plea or conviction is specifically noted. In the Ebony Parker matter, Judge Rebecca Robinson dismissed all eight counts of felony child abuse on May twenty first, twenty twenty six. At the close of the Commonwealth's case. Parker stands acquitted of those charges by operation of that ruling. The ten million dollars civil verdict against Parker entered in October twenty twenty five, remains under appeal and is stayed pending post judgment proceedings. Richard Thorpe has pleaded not guilty in the state of Maine and is presumed innocent Allegations that he threatened Virginia Cookson before her death are attributed by Court TV to statements from her family and have not been independently verified by this program.

26:35 Eugene Luise Jacques was convicted on May twenty second, twenty twenty six, of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, arson, concealing a death, and tampering with evidence in the death of Beauty Couch. The sentence imposed by Judge Kimberly Childs is reported by Court TV as life without parole, followed by an additional twenty to twenty one year. Sources for this episode include Court TV, WC SH New Center, Maine, WVIII, Fox Bangor, the Pittsfield Police Department, and our prior coverage of the Richneck Elementary School civil and criminal proceedings. Daily Crime and Justice is a production of Calaruga Shark Media