Town note
After the United States acquired Arkansas in the Louisiana Purchase, American settlers began hunting, trapping and trading with the local tribes around Jonesboro.
about 0:04:39The story
In August 2011 Mark Despain, a property investor and landlord, was shot dead in the kitchen of his home in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
Mark Despain was born on April 16th, 1977 to Jack and Tana Despain. He graduated from Nettleton High School in 1995, where he played football. Mark went to work for the family real estate business and the couple had two sons.
He bought a run-down trailer park cheaply and flipped it for about $100,000, then moved the family from the trailer into a four-bedroom house with a swimming pool. They took several holidays a year to Jamaica and Cancun and, by all accounts, lived well beyond their means.
The families broke for good over what they called the incident. Tana left her husband, then returned when it emerged that Brooke had taken the pictures herself on Jack's phone to send to a boy.
In 2010 and 2011 the property market turned, the mortgages on Mark's rentals went underwater, he began evicting tenants, and the couple were more than two million dollars in debt.
At 2.30pm she left early, saying she had to collect some bills at home. Shortly afterwards she called 911 to say she had found the house ransacked and Mark on the kitchen floor. He had been shot once in the left chest and then, as he lay on the floor, once between the eyes at close range. Ice cream was melting on the kitchen table beside his phone, and televisions and computers were untouched.
Neighbours reported an unfamiliar black man on the street and a blue Mercedes circling.
He said he had been promised between seven and ten thousand dollars and never paid.
She had insisted on lunch and then on ice cream, keeping Mark out of the house while the gunman waited. She first denied everything, then admitted her father was involved but denied knowing beforehand.