Town note
Lucedale was named for Gregory Marston Luce, who operated a lumber business there.
about 0:07:58The story
Lucedale is a small town in George County in south-eastern Mississippi, about forty-five minutes from Mobile, Alabama, and roughly two hours and fifteen minutes from New Orleans. It had a population of 3,007 at the time and is the county seat.
Brandy Stewart Yates was twenty-nine and came from Theodore, Alabama. She had been married to James Yates Jr for eight years and they had two young children, a son called James the fourth, aged eight, and a daughter called Sissy. Brandy worked nights as a cocktail waitress at the Bama Barn, a bar in Theodore. The marriage had been difficult. The couple had separated once, in 2003, and got back together. Police had been called to the house once during a fight about three or four years before 2004, but the episode says there was no other record of physical violence between them.
A court later described him as a child of incest.
Brandy did not come home from work that night. On 2 August she telephoned her husband and told him she was unhappy, had met someone else and was not coming back. James was left at home with the children. On 26 August 2004, at 3:53 p.m., she checked into room 121 at the Rocky Creek Inn in Lucedale. Pearl Bulware was on the front desk and gave her one key, even though two people were staying. Brandy gave her driving licence and then drove the car round to the room.
He checked her into a motel, bought her groceries and left her there. The first call lasted about an hour. A second call ended when someone knocked at the door. A third call followed, and during it James arranged to collect her early the next morning.
His manner changed completely, and he became gruff and angry. At about 11:30 p.m. he returned to the Rocky Creek Inn and told the desk clerk, Margaret Clark, that he and his girlfriend were locked out of room 121. Clark made him a key. He came back three minutes later saying it did not work, so she made another. He came back a third time, and Clark asked whether anyone was inside. He said yes. The room was bolted from the inside, which was why his key would not open it. He left and did not return.
The first time, a man answered. He hung up.
That morning the motel owner, Dee Wall, noticed fire damage on the outside of room 121. She used a housekeeping key to get in, saw the charred walls, then saw a pair of feet between the beds. She ran to the lobby and called 911 at about 8:45 a.m. Sheriff Gary Welford arrived at 8:55 and later described seeing two feet sticking out beyond the beds and what appeared to be body organs thrown about the room. Detective Ronnie Lambert arrived at 9:10 and found the scene had not been secured. Officers, the coroner and a detective photographed the room and put up tape. The victim was identified as Brandy through the motel registration and the photocopy of her licence.
The autopsy was performed by Dr Stephen Hayne. He found four slash wounds to the neck, cutting the left jugular vein and the left common carotid artery. Brandy had also been beaten with the drawer of the nightstand. There were gaping wounds and fractures to the face, chest and ribs, most of her teeth had been knocked out, and splinters, toothpicks and a small silver screw were found in her neck, face and scalp. A metal drawer track from the nightstand had been used to open a hole in her chest, and portions of her bowel, intestines and spleen had been torn out through it and thrown around the room. The body and the room had been set on fire.
The crime scene produced a pillow without a case, a bag of toothpicks and loose toothpicks, a gas can, cigarettes, buttons and the bloody metal drawer track. There were shoes with blood and tissue in the treads, a white glove, an empty pizza box, a bin bag, a woman's wallet with Brandy's licence, Social Security card, her children's photographs, birth certificates and Medicaid cards, a carrot cake recipe and $509 in cash, mostly fifty-dollar bills.
A police dispatcher put out a call for the white Mustang at about 3:45 p.m. on 27 August. At about 3 p.m. Trooper Jason Ginn of the Mississippi Highway Patrol saw it on Interstate 20 near Vicksburg, on the other side of the state. The temporary tag was expired, defaced and unreadable. He told the trooper he was on a "spiritual experience" to Texas. His licence was valid, but dispatch reported a long criminal history and no record of the Mustang at all. A second trooper found he had about $3,000 in cash.
He said Brandy had attacked him and that he had slapped her on the head. He said he left, then returned to the room, saw a note, noticed a smell and found her dead. He described the body as mutilated with the face crushed in and said it looked as though someone had reached through a hole in her chest and pulled out her organs. He then said he had lain on top of her for more than an hour, held her and kissed her head. He admitted taking everything that might carry his fingerprints, wiping the room down, putting the items in his car, putting on white gloves, pouring petrol from a can and setting the room on fire before leaving.
A pretrial motion to suppress the evidence from the traffic stop failed. His lawyers raised the question of his mental competency, then withdrew it, saying they had found no evidence that he was insane and that he simply seemed to be a difficult man.
In opening he said Brandy had left her family on 2 August, the day before her birthday, and that twenty-four days later she was dead in room 121. The motive was robbery: the wallet and the money in it. The defence argued that James Yates had killed her, and the lawyer questioned James about the couple's fights and the one police call years earlier. The defence also argued that the wallet had never been taken from the room, so there was no robbery and no death-penalty aggravator.
Brandy's husband James, her son James the fourth, her daughter Sissy, her mother Carolyn, her father Jack, her sister Crystal and her brother Jeff were left to live with what happened.