KELSEY JETER - 12 yo - Hill County TX

A March 8 trial date is
set for the 32-year-old nursing student accused of slashing her
daughters’ throats, and prosecutors say it is likely that the woman’s
surviving daughter will testify.
Appearing Friday from the Hill County Jail via video screen in Judge
Bob McGregor Jr.’s 66th State District Court, Debra Janelle Jeter
stared directly into the camera with her arms behind her back and
answered the judge’s few questions with a confident “Yes, sir.”
She hasn’t left the jail since her June 5 arrest at an abandoned
ranch house in rural Hill County, where she called 9-1-1 to tell
dispatchers that she had just killed her two daughters. Reportedly, her
only visitor has been her mother, who lives in Malakoff.Hill County District
Attorney Dan Dent said Jeter’s 13-year-old daughter, Kiersten, who
survived the alleged attacks, is a “capable” and “willing” witness.
Jeter’s attorney, Waco-based Russ Hunt Sr., has said that chunks of
his client’s memory are missing as the result of a car accident. When
asked whether she knows that her 12-year-old daughter, Kelsey, is dead,
Hunt said, “It depends on what day you talk to her.”
“There have been periods of her life she has no recollection of,” Hunt said. “We’re having to work through that.”
Between now and the first pretrial date, which is scheduled for 10
a.m., Jan. 7, the defense’s investigators will compile information
regarding the accident and her medical records, Hunt said.
Neither Hunt nor his co-counsel, Whitney-based Phillip A. Weaver,
said they had seen an accident report or been given any details about
the crash.
Jeter was indicted last month on charges of capital murder and
attempted capital murder by a Hill County grand jury, and a
psychiatrist found her competent to stand trial. She remains in the
Hill County Jail in lieu of $1.5 million bail.
Court documents reveal that Jeter attempted suicide on May 21 at her
Hillsboro home with Kiersten and Kelsey present. She was revived and
treated at the DePaul Center in Waco. The day after, Jeter’s husband of
nine years, Lester Lee Jeter, filed a temporary restraining order
against his wife and filed for divorce.
In his request for the order, Lester Lee Jeter wrote he was “concerned about her possible actions regarding the children.”
In a June 4 hearing, however, Lester Lee Jeter granted his wife to have unsupervised visits with their daughters.
That same day, Debra Jeter wrote to the court that she “does not
agree” with her husband’s filing for divorce, and said she was
“answering with a general denial to the divorce papers.”
At 6 p.m. June 5, sheriff’s officials say Debra Jeter picked her
daughters up for their weekend visit and told them she had a surprise
for them. She called 9-1-1 about three hours later.
Dent declined to talk about Debra Jeter’s suspected motive.
Court documents reveal that Jeter has long suffered from depression, but the extent of her mental illness is unclear.
Psychiatrists discuss filicide
Dr. Sheila Wendler, a Hawaii-based forensic psychiatrist who
researches filicide, or the homicide of a child by a biological parent,
said it is rare for a woman who is merely depressed to kill her child.
“Most often (if the parent’s motive is altruistic), they hear voices
that tell them to kill their children,” Wendler said. “It’s uncommon
without psychosis for a woman to kill her child.”
Both Wendler and Dr. Phillip Resnick, the director of forensic
psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University, were among the
psychiatrists who provided expert testimony in Andrea Yates’ 2002 trial
in Houston.
Yates believed Satan was inside of her and that she needed to kill
her five children to save their souls. She was found not guilty by
reason of insanity.
Resnick said roughly one in every 22 homicides are filicides. And,
he said, it is more common for a parent to kill their child in their
early formative years.
He said it is most common for a parent to kill their child unintentionally, as a result of abuse or neglect.
The least common motive, he said, is revenge on the other parent.
Resnick said a parent might also kill their child if they believe
death is in the child’s best interest, whether because of a psychotic
belief, severe depression or a type of euthanasia, or because of a
psychosis with no other comprehensible motive, Resnick said.
In Resnick’s findings, the fifth reason a parent might kill their
child is because the child was a hindrance, such as in the case of
Susan Smith. In 1994, the South Carolina woman rolled her car into a
lake with her 14-month- and 3-year-old sons strapped into their car
seats. Court testimony revealed that Smith wanted to rid herself of her
children to increase her chances of a relationship with a man. She was
sentenced to life in prison.

Debra Jeter, 33, who pleaded guilty Tuesday in Hillsboro to capital murder and attempted capital
murder in an attack that left one of her daughters dead and the other
seriously injured, was transferred Thursday to a Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison unit in Gatesville.
Hill County Sheriff Jeffrey T. Lyon left Hillsboro with Jeter just before noon Thursday.She was sentenced to life in
prison without the possibility of parole after entering the guilty plea
Tuesday in a deal that spared her the possibility of a death sentence
and spared her surviving daughter from the trauma of having to testify.
Once she’s turned over to prison officials Thursday, she’ll be searched, photographed, fingerprinted and
given clothing and a physical examination.
She’ll also undergo an initial psychological screening as part of a diagnostic process that lasts for
several weeks, after which she’ll be assigned to a specific prison unit.
Jeter has been behind bars since she was arrested on June 5, 2009 after placing a chilling 911 call to
report that she had killed one of her daughters.

Listen To The Entire 911 Call

Hill County deputies, Hillsboro police and state troopers converged on an abandoned farmhouse on U.S. 77
just off Interstate 35 and found Jeter in the garage with her hands raised above the head.
Officers found 12-year-old Kelsey Leanne Jeter dead inside the house and13-year-old Kiersten Leigh Jeter
critically injured in a bedroom.
Authorities said Kiersten, had a stab wound in her back and evidently tried to protect her younger sister
during the attack.
Debra Jeter can be heard on a 911 dispatch tape released Wednesday imploring the operator to speed an
ambulance to the abandoned house in Hill County where she used a knife
in an attack that left her younger daughter dead and her older daughter badly wounded.
“I just killed my children,” Jeter told the dispatcher.
Then she said, “One of them is still alive, hurry.”
“Get an ambulance out here to save the one that didn’t die,” she said.
“Come on, hurry up.” Later she can be heard saying, “Oh my God, she’s dead. Oh My God.”