Murdered By Love

Chapter 1: Day 1 pg. 1-6

Chapter 1: Day 1

The trial of the State of Mississippi verses Marlon Edwards for the murder of Kayla Givens started off with the lead State prosecutor James S. Daniels giving a dramatic summation of the events surrounding the death of Kayla Givens. The trial gained national headlines from every new station. The heated racial tension from a city divided was held at the Walthall County Municipal Courthouse. As Ms. Kayla ran through the cornfields scared and terrified. She could hear Marlon screaming  saying that he was going to kill her. She stopped and kneeled down to catch her breath. Marlon ran past her still screaming about what he was going to do to her when he caught her. After hearing Marlon run past her, Kayla decided to run back in the opposite direction that she had came from. Ms. Givens ran so hard, that she broke the heel of her shoe and sprung her ankle. The shoe' heel dug so far down into the ground that it caused her ankle to roll and snap. Kayla fell to the ground screaming out in pain for help. That's when Marlon heard her. He turned around and made his way back through the cornfields to where she was lying. She was crying out for help. Marlon took a shovel and bashed her head in. This vicious act rendered Kayla unconscious. Mr. Edwards then grabbed Kayla by the leg and drugged her to the nearby barn where he raped, tortured and killed her. Her body stayed in that barn for weeks decaying, stiff and rotten. She stayed there until Mr. Gary Howard came to plow his fields three weeks later. Mr. Howards saw the vultures circling around his farm and thought the worst about his animals. As he got closer that's when he smelt the horrible odor coming from somewhere inside of his barn. He quickly walked over to where he kept his horses thinking that one of them had died. When he approached the horse stable, Mr. Howard started to see a trail of blood on the ground. He followed the trail of blood around to the side of the stables. That's when he noticed the dead and battered body of Ms. Kayla Givens. She was half naked with her cloths ripped apart. Mr. Howard quickly ran back to the house and called the local sheriff department.

When Sheriff Ford and Coroner Evans got to the Howards' farm, they examined the body and the immediate crime areas. Coroner Evans noticed strangulation and bite marks upon Ms. Kayla's torso. For three weeks her dead body sat in the back of that barn. Kayla's family, friends and local law enforcement officers searched for her for weeks. The local law enforcement agencies teams up with every agency possible while searching all farms and wooden areas for her body. The Howards' farm was also one of the farms searched in the initial investigation disappearance of Ms. Givens. The smells coming from the pig pins concealed the smell of her decaying body from even the conniver dogs. The Givens family was left in pain pondering the multiple possibilities that surrounded her whereabouts. The accused Marlon Edwards brutally murdered, raped and tortured Kayla Givens. His semen was found inside of her womb. I'm going to prove that he stalked, raped and brutally killed Kayla Givens because she was someone that he could never have said Prosecutor Daniels as he tried to drill his theory into the minds of the jury.

Prosecutor Daniels then took out some pictures to show the jury. The pictures were taken from the crime scene. Each picture showed the extent to which Kayla' dead body was beaten and raped. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I know that these photos are gruesome. For that I am truly sorry. I need you to see what type of monster we're dealing with. This man, the accused Marlon Edwards took a daughter from her family! He took a young college student from her dreams! You, ladies and gentlemen of the jury must convict him. It's up to all of you to make sure that he never takes another child from their family. He's a violent and senseless killer. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, anything less than life imprisonment would be a crime on your part in this case. This was the picture the States' lead Prosecutor James S. Daniels painted for the jurors.

The jury sat in awe as they listened to the depiction of the events as presented them. Prosecutor James S. Daniels was a veteran trail lawyer out of Jackson, Mississippi. He grew up in Tylertown. After graduating from Millsap's he took a job in Jackson. Daniels worked for Gilberts Law Associates. For the pass fifteen years he has been looking for that one case that would gain him some national recognition. He had his sights on a job working for Jones & Jones out of New York. The national spotlight of this trail would help to propel his name to the top of the candidate list. The Judge presiding over this case was Anthony E. Claiborne. Claiborne was a thirty-five year veteran of the courts from Tylertown, Mississippi. He was married to Mabel Claiborne and had two sons. Mabel and their two sons worked from home attending to their chicken farms. After listening to Prosecutor Daniels depiction of the events surrounding the murder of Kayla Givens and seeing the juries' reaction, Judge Claiborne had no choice but to call a quick fifteen minute recess.