Nothing’s more horrific than the murder of a child, except when it’s done by a parent. A Florida woman called police Saturday morning to report her father and 6-year-old daughter missing. The next day, she was charged with their murder. Cheyanne Jessie, 25, is accused of killing her little girl, Meredith Jessie, and 50-year-old dad, Mark Weekly, before allegedly hiding their bodies in bags a maneuver cops say she learned from the TV show Criminal Minds and stuffing them in a shed.
Even more disturbing is the alleged motive: Jessie, a cashier at a big-box store, didn’t want little Meredith interfering with a new relationship.
Jessie “not only murdered them… but left them in the residence for many days until it became painfully evident she had to move them.”
Police say they caught onto Jessie after she called them 11 a.m. Saturday—two weeks after her child and father went missing. The mother had been pressured into contacting authorities by other concerned family members, Judd said.
When cops met Jessie at Weekly’s home, Jessie allegedly told them Weekly was dying of terminal cancer and headed to Georgia with his granddaughter to live out the time he had left.
But the young mother’s story changed throughout the day, cops say, and they quickly eyed her as a suspect. Detectives smelled a foul odor, which she attributed to rotten meat and a dead raccoon she had found underneath the porch. But officers didn’t see any signs of the dead animal or expired food.
Authorities say Jessie killed the child and her grandfather on July 18 and transported their bodies to a shed four days later. The shed, about 200 yards down the road, was owned by Weekly’s landlord.
The mom initially told cops she dropped Meredith off at Weekly’s house in Lakeland on July 18. She said she returned July 19 and had an argument with Weekly over her problems with the child.
Jessie later told police she attacked her father in self-defense. She claimed he tried to stab her but that she fended him off with martial-arts training she learned from her boyfriend’s father. (Police say the man had no knowledge of martial arts.)