[NOTE: This is being posted as a favor; please respond directly to Mr. Petrey if you would like to help him ...]

My case involves the disappearance of a female college student from a softball field where she worked a weekend job in 1994. Her body has never been found. There is quite a bit of circumstantial evidence pointing to a convicted sex offender who was working with her the day of her disappearance, and when he was later incarcerated in an arson case he made statements to other inmates indicating that he had killed the missing girl and that her body would never be found, that she was "fish-bait."

The US Attorney's Office here in Atlanta had the case until late 2003, when they delivered it to my office for possible prosecution. I would love to learn of other prosecutors' experiences with murder cases in which no body was ever discovered.

Thank you
John Petrey
Chief Assistant DA, Dekalb County, Georgia
jhpetrey@co.dekalb.ga.us
(w) 404-371-2565

Shannon, while Mr. Petrey may not see it here, I thought I would query whether any such prosecutions have succeeded in Texas, since what was then our highest criminal court noted the following in 1889: "[N]o person shall be convicted of any degree of homicide unless the body of the deceased, or portions of it, are found and sufficiently identified to establish the fact of the death of the person charged to have been killed. * * * the fearful results consequent upon any other rule being adopted and followed are well known to all thoughtful readers and students of criminal jurisprudence. * * * We could cite hundreds of cases in which the innocent have been punished under the old rule, which did not require the body or a portion of it, to be found, but believe it unnecessary." Puryear, 11 S.W. at 931. What will likely stand as the most interesting case I was ever associated with did involve the civil trial of a deceased person for the homicide of his father, whose body was never found (yet). Mayes v. Thompson, 707 S.W.2d 951.

Didn't Travis County convict Kenneth McDuff several years ago without ever finding the victim's body?

Bob, as was pointed out in McDuff, 939 S.W.2d at 622-3 (which I would be willing to bet is one of the few opinions in which Judge McCormick & Judge Baird teamed up together), the law indeed changed in 1974 and Travis County succeeded in proving up another of McDuff's victims without a body. Still, the thoughts expressed in Puryear must permeate that type of trial (except possibly when it is a McDuff who is on trial). Have there been other successes since 1974?

I thought that in McDuff there was some blood evidence in the car. Also, you had the codefendant's statement as to being an eyewitness.

I seem to recall there being one of these no-body murder prosecutions discussed in Texas Prosecutor a few years back.

In 1996 I was preparing for a Capital Murder trial and received some information from one of my witnesses about the murder of a woman from Post, Texas. The woman's body was never found. I contacted the Garza County Sheriff's Department to pass the info along and all of the info my witness had received from Jerry Smith checked out. To mmake a long story short, Garza County DA Ricky Smith and ADA Andrea Handley tried the case in December of 1996. My witness and I both testified. They did a great job and Jerry Smith received a life sentence. Ultimately, Smith's conviction was upheld. So, it can be done. Sometimes we just need to be creative and remember that any element of an indictment can be proved circumstantially. The facts of the case are set out pretty good in the original opinion found at Smith v. State, 968 SW2d 452.

A few years ago Lubbock County D.A.'s Office prosecuted a murder case with no body. They did, however, have a tremendous amount of blood in the carpet and carpet padding. They used an expert to proove that no person could have lost that much blood and survived. They got a conviction and I believe it stood up on appeal.

Other examples include the recent prosecution of Dennis Jaggers in Harris County for the murder of Barbara Stewart, whose body has yet to be found and the prosecution of Thomas Fisher in Bexar County in 1990. Also turns out the CCA has made a recent reference to "the shocking spectacle and deleterious effect upon the criminal justice system when a murder victim suddenly reappear[s], hale and hearty, after his . . . murderer ha[s] been tried and executed". Salazar v. State, 86 S.W.3d at 644. Fortunately, the law also now recognizes: "The fact that a murderer may successfully dispose of the body of the victim does not entitle him to an acquittal. That is one form of success for which society has no reward."