At bedtime on the night of Feb. 23, 2005, Jessica Lunsford got under the covers — wearing a pink nightgown and clutching her stuffed purple dolphin under her arm — and drifted off to sleep.
Jessica was never seen alive again.
The 9-year-old vanished in the middle of the night from the Homosassa, Fla., home where she had been living for the past year with her father, Mark Lunsford, then 41, and her grandparents.
Authorities searched for the third-grader for nearly a month before they found her body in a shallow grave, wrapped in a plastic bag, just 150 yards from her house.
Her heartbreaking murder is the focus of the season premiere of People Magazine Investigates on Monday, Oct. 28.
Airing on Investigation Discovery/ID at 9/8c and streaming on Max, the episode, titled “The Boogeyman,” details what happened that night, the exhaustive search for Jessica — and how authorities finally caught her sadistic killer.
Monday night features back-to-back episodes, with the episode, “A Story to Die For,” about the murder of reporter Sarah Greenhalgh, following the episode on Jessica’s murder and airing Monday, Oct. 28, at 10/9 c.
In the days following Jessica’s disappearance, search and rescue teams scoured Citrus County for any sign of the little girl.
On March 5, police suspended search and rescue efforts to focus their resources on following up on phone tips and other key leads.
During their investigation, they learned about a man named John Couey, then 46, who had been staying at a mobile home across the street from the Lunsfords when Jessica vanished.
In an exclusive clip from the episode, retired Citrus County Sheriff Jeffrey Dawsey talks about how they started to close in on Couey as a suspect.
“One of the leads came from Maddie Secord, Couey’s niece,” says Dawsey.
“Maddie Secord came in because she knew John Couey’s history of sexually assaulting people. She told us Couey was living at the house across the street from Jessica Lunsford, but nobody knew it.”
The home belonged to Dorothy Dixon, Couey’s sister, who was one of the people police interviewed when they began canvassing the neighborhood. But when police had gone to her home, they’d only been allowed in certain parts of the house — something that seemed concerning after they learned about Couey’s past.
“Did we actually go into this home and maybe the kid was there and we missed her?” says Dawsey.
On March 17, 2005, police arrested Couey, who slipped into the Lunsfords’ home through the unlocked front door, put his hand over Jessica’s mouth and led her to the trailer where he’d been staying.
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Authorities don’t know how long Jessica was alive after being abducted, but they say he raped her before burying her alive.
He was a convicted sex offender who failed to register his new address, which was required by law, authorities said.
He was convicted of Jessica’s murder in March 2007 and sentenced to die.
He died in 2009 of natural causes.
People Magazine Investigates: The Boogeyman, the season premiere, airs on Monday, Oct. 28, at 9/8c, on Investigation Discovery/ID and streams on Max. That episode is immediately followed by another People Magazine Investigates episode, “A Story to Die For,” about the murder of reporter Sarah Greenhalgh, which airs at 10/9 c.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.
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