17 year old Jessica Dawn Dishon (1999)

[maverick1862]

17 year old Jessica Dawn Dishon (1999)

Police believe missing teen was abducted
Her car, keys, purse were in the driveway

Monday, Sept. 13, 1999

The Bullitt County Sheriff's Department is treating the case of a missing teen-ager as an abduction.

Sheriff Paul Parsley said Jessica Dishon, 17, was last seen by her family shortly before 7 a.m. Friday.

"Everything we've seen appears like an abduction," Parsley said.

On Saturday, the Sheriff's Department and the county's Disaster and Emergency Services used dogs to search a farm and a wooded area near Jessica's Deatsville Road home and found nothing. Yesterday, volunteers driving all-terrain vehicles searched the same general area with no success.

Jessica's mother, Edna Dishon, first suspected something was wrong when she got home from work about 1:30 p.m. Friday and found her daughter's car still in the driveway.

Inside the car she found her daughter's cellular phone, one shoe and her car keys on the floor. In the back seat were two textbooks, her book bag, her work clothes, a bottle of water and her purse. On the driver's seat, a piece of molded plastic had been ripped away and sat in the well of the seat.

Edna Dishon said no money had been taken from her daughter's purse. Her checkbook was also undisturbed.

Edna Dishon said her daughter usually left the house at 7:15 a.m. for the eight-mile drive to Bullitt Central High School. Jessica's mother and her father, Mike Dishon, had left the house before their daughter.

Edna Dishon said she's upset with Bullitt Central because school officials didn't call her to tell her that Jessica wasn't at school. Bullitt Central principal Ron Dunlevy said last night that he's not sure whether Jessica's parents were called on Friday.

Jessica's best friend, Sarah Bailey, 17, said Jessica was scheduled to work with her at the Hardee's Restaurant in Shepherdsville Friday. She said she had never known Jessica to miss work or to go anywhere without her purse.

"She wouldn't have just left," Sarah said.

On the kitchen table in the Dishons' house, surrounded by baked goods brought by relatives and friends, lay a stack of fliers with Jessica's picture and a description of what she was wearing when she disappeared. Edna Dishon believes she may have been wearing jeans and a yellow Tommy Hilfiger T-shirt with red or orange letters.

Her hair, which in the picture is long and brown, has been bobbed and dyed strawberry blonde. Jessica weighs 112 pounds and stands 5 feet, 4 inches tall.

Jessica's friends and relatives are posting the fliers on church bulletin boards and at convenience stores and gas stations in Shepherdsville, Bardstown and across Bullitt County.

Anyone with information about Jessica's disappearance is urged to call the Bullitt County Sheriff's Department at [phone].

[maverick1862]

Louisville, KY -- Sept. 11, 2000 -- Edna Dishon crawls into bed each night with the same hope.
This will be the night she dreams of her daughter's face, cradles her in her arms and gently strokes her hair.

This will be the night Jessica Dishon smiles and tells her mother that everything is OK, that she can stop worrying and go on with her life.

A year to the day since her 17-year-old daughter was abducted and slain, her body dumped in woods, Edna is still without the comfort of such a dream.

"It would help so much. It would make me think she was thinking about me and is not upset that I wasn't there for her," said Edna Dishon, her eyes brimming with tears. "I just want to see her face and talk to her.

"But I guess she's just not ready yet."

Her mother is not ready either. Not ready to go back to work. Not ready to live again.

She craves forgiveness for not being there to prevent her daughter from being snatched from her driveway on Sept. 10, 1999, as she left for school. Jessica's partially clothed body was found 17 days later in woods seven miles from her home, leaving the family broken and shattering the illusion of safety in their rural community, Cedar Grove.

Although there have been no arrests and no suspects named, the Dishons' relationship with three brothers whose father lives next door has grown strained. Three Brooks brothers have been arrested and charged with harassment or wanton endangerment, escalating a feud between the once-friendly families that began the day Jessica disappeared.

Frustrated investigators, meanwhile, wait for the results of expensive DNA tests that they hope will produce an arrest.

As the waiting continues, life passes Edna Dishon by.

"It's like you feel hollow inside," she said. "You try to go on, but you just can't."

On the night before she disappeared, Jessica Dishon was in a giggly mood, as she cruised with her best friend, Sarah Bailey and the two of them sang along with the car radio, off key.

They stopped at Hardees, the fast-food restaurant where both worked, then went to Bailey's house and talked in her bedroom for hours.

"We just talked and talked and told each other that we were the other's best friend and how much we mean to each other. We had never talked like that before," Bailey, now 18, said recently.

"I asked her to spend the night, but she said she hadn't talked to her mom and she should go home. I told her to call me in the morning, but she never did."

Jessica arrived home about 9:30 p.m. that Thursday, crept past her sleeping parents and rushed in to tease her brothers, Michael and Chris.

"She was so happy," Michael Dishon Jr., 14, said with a smile. "It was the first time she had come in our room in a while, and she was just talking and looking at everything."

The family arose the next morning and followed its routine. Edna Dishon was up by 4:30 to fix lunch for her husband, Mike, and get the boys ready for the bus. When she left for work at Nazarene Day Care in Shepherdsville, a little after 6, Jessica was still asleep.

When Mike Dishon left at 6:30 a.m. for his job at Cardinal Drywall, Jessica was just waking up. She was in the bathtub when her brothers caught the bus to Bernheim Middle School 15 minutes later.

Jessica habitually left for Bullitt Central High School about 7:15 a.m. When she didn't arrive, school officials counted her absent. But because she had a good attendance record, no one from the school called to check on her.

So when Edna Dishon returned from work about 1:30 p.m., she thought it odd that Jessica's red 1996 Pontiac Sunfire was there.

Her daughter must be sick, she told herself.

Inside, she called Jessica. Silence. A quick search showed each room empty. Panicked, she called her husband, who told her to see if Jessica had left her car because of some mechanical problem.

What Edna found when she opened the door of her daughter's car left her numb.

Jessica's cell phone was lying in the passenger seat. The number 9 was displayed on the screen. Her keys were on the floorboard; her purse and backpack in the back seat. A piece of plastic was lying loose, broken off from the bottom of the driver's seat.

One of Jessica's shoes lay in her seat.

"I knew something bad had happened immediately," Edna Dishon said. "I knew someone had taken Jessica."

But abduction was the last thing on the minds of Bullitt County sheriff's officers that day.

Confident that they were dealing with a runaway, the Bullitt County sheriff's office entered Jessica in the computer database of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The parents were told to go home and wait for her call.

"They told us . . . she probably went to a football game," Mike Dishon said.

That night, sick with worry, they lay in bed watching the clock creep, praying for the phone to ring.

It never did.

The Dishons were up at 5:30 a.m. Saturday and at the sheriff's office by 6 a.m.

This time, investigators listened.

By 9 a.m., county Disaster and Emergency Services workers and volunteers on all-terrain vehicles were searching the heavily wooded area near the family's home.

A trained dog traced Jessica's scent from the front door to her car and then back up the driveway before it disappeared.

Friends, neighbors and reporters came by. Some poked around inside Jessica's car, the one piece of physical evidence the police had.

"They never roped off Jessica's car or used any gloves when searching it," Edna Dishon said. "I don't know what they were thinking."

Sheriff Paul Parsley said later that it would have been pointless to seal off Jessica's car because "everyone in the neighborhood had been all over (it) by the time we went there."

By the time the FBI got involved and impounded the car on Monday morning, their tests showed 30 different sets of fingerprints, none of which could be conclusively identified, Edna Dishon said.

The family say their initial claims of foul play were taken too lightly. Authorities say they acted properly.

"Nothing really stood out. There was no blood, no scuff marks in the driveway, torn clothes or anything that would key anybody other than a parent," Bullitt County Detective Charles Mann said.

Besides, Mann said, the office wasn't used to dealing with an abduction. "We weren't geared in that particular mode."

Vernon Geberth, author of "Practical Homicide Investigation," a reference work for police, and a former commander of the Bronx Homicide Task Force in New York said that given what the family told Bullitt County authorities, they should have treated the case as a kidnapping.

"It shows complete naivete or no exposure to crimes of this type" he said. Although it is common to wait 24 hours on a missing person, "if she is supposed to go to school, her school bag is in the back seat, her car is in disarray and her shoe is off, that raises the level of suspicion to the possibility of foul play."

"Girls don't walk around with one shoe."

Police now say Jessica was likely alive that weekend and being kept somewhere nearby.

After that first weekend, the FBI began to give polygraph tests to potential suspects. At least one of the Brooks brothers, whose father, James "Pops" Brooks, lived next door to the Dishons, was tested, as was a female student at Bullitt Central High School.

Related by marriage to the Dishons, David "Bucky" Brooks, Joseph "Tommy" Brooks, and Herbert Brooks, grew up on their father's farm and all knew their next-door neighbors, the Dishon family.

David Brooks and his wife, Irene, had even lived in a small white house next door to the Dishons' home in 1991. They were friendly neighbors, borrowing tools and chatting through the fence, both families say.

Mike Dishon and David Brooks were childhood friends and, along with Herbert Brooks, played horseshoes through the years.

Mike's sister, Betty, married Johnny Brooks, the second-oldest of the four Brooks brothers. The couple, married 27 years, live just a few houses away from the Dishons.

So the Dishons say they were puzzled when they were denied permission in the days after Jessica's disappearance to search the Brookses' farm, vehicles and buildings.

"We were surprised and angry," Edna Dishon said. "If it was their daughter missing, we would have let them search our land."

Mary Lou Brooks, wife of Herbert Brooks, has denied that permission to search the property was refused.

Police initially searched the Brooks farm, but not the house, other buildings or vehicles.

Over the next few weeks, the search intensified, with helicopters, airplanes, police officers, firefighters, dogs and dozens of volunteers combing the area within three miles of Jessica's home. Friends posted fliers around the county picturing a smiling Jessica with her hair recently dyed strawberry blond.

For the family, the wait was excruciating, Edna Dishon said.

"The not knowing if she was dead or alive was the worst."

Those who knew Jessica the best feared the worst.

They knew she was strict about her schedule, rarely missing work or school. "You couldn't ask for a better worker -- dependable, always on time, never missed work -- and just a sweet, nice person," said Greg Stearns, a manager at Hardees.

Something of a tomboy, Jessica never wore makeup, and she felt more at ease in jeans and a T-shirt than a dress. A slender, pretty girl, Jessica had no difficulty attracting boys. She dated a few but never really got serious.

Her best friend, Sarah, said Jessica could be shy and polite in front of adults but when alone with friends could have them laughing so hard they would blow milk through their noses.

"She was crazy and always doing something to make you laugh," Sarah said.

She teased her younger brothers unmercifully, yet she would stop at home to get them if she was going to a mall.

"I used to do everything with her," Michael said of his older sister. "She told us she would never take us anywhere when she got her driver's license, but she always took us places."

Jessica was the type, her father said, that "if you were broke down on the highway, she would stop and help you and take you wherever you needed to go. She was there for you no matter what."

On the morning of Sept. 27, school-bus driver Karen Hobbs was on Greenwell Ford Road, on her way to work, when she caught a glimpse of something blue in a wooded area near Mount Washington.

Thinking about it later at work, she became convinced that what she had seen, about 60 feet off the road, could have been a pair of jeans.

"I just had a feeling something was wrong. You know that feeling?" said Hobbs, who had been Jessica's bus driver in her elementary school days.

When Hobbs completed her bus run for the day, she and a friend went back to the Greenwell Ford Road site known to locals as the Salt River bottoms, a dumping ground for trash, stolen vehicles and other contraband.

It had previously been searched by residents of the area and sheriff's deputies, who found nothing despite the presence of suspicious odors.

As they walked closer to the jeans, Hobbs suddenly turned away in horror.

They drove to a friend's house nearby and called police.

Just over an hour later, Sheriff Parsley pulled into the Dishon driveway and got out of his car. He looked as if he'd lost his best friend.

A friend saw him coming and rushed to tell Mike and Edna Dishon, who met Parsley halfway up the driveway.

"We found Jessica and it's not good," Parsley said.

Edna Dishon fainted on the driveway.

The grim task of examining and removing the body started the next morning. At the scene were the FBI, sheriff's officers and Bullitt County Coroner Tommy Kappel.

They found that someone had wanted Jessica's body discovered. Initially, it had been buried under a tire and other debris.

Investigators concluded that less than 18 hours earlier, the body had been moved about 15 feet to where it was visible from the road.

Had the body not been moved, Kappel said, "she would probably still be there. Somebody wanted them to find that body."

In the absence of drag marks, police speculated that at least two people had pulled the debris off the body, carefully picked it up and moved it closer to the road.

Jessica had been struck in the face, most likely with a fist, with enough severity to break her jaw, but she died of strangulation, Kappel said.

Autopsy tests have shown Jessica was probably not killed immediately, more likely kept alive a day or two before her death, Kappel said. She did not die where her body was found, he said.

Sheriff's Detective Jim Adams, who was the first person on the scene after authorities got the call from Hobbs and her friend, said he wishes he could give the family more answers.

"People don't realize how frustrating it is for us to have one of the kids from our community end up like that."

Weeks later, the Dishons and some of their relatives began receiving disturbing phone calls.

Using a caller-identification service available from the telephone company, the families identified the origin of the calls.

David Brooks, 43, and Joseph Brooks, 36, were arrested Oct. 23, accused of making the harassing calls and stalking the Alan Mattingly family, cousins of the Dishons. The brothers were ordered to stay 1,000 feet from both families.

In January, David Brooks was sentenced to 30 days in jail after a Bullitt district judge found him in contempt of court for violating conditions of his previous bond by continuing to harass Jessica's family.

David Brooks found himself back in jail in June on new charges of criminal trespass and contempt of court after he was accused of going behind the Dishon property late one night.

The harassment and trespassing trials, scheduled for Dec. 15, were moved to Owensboro because of heavy news coverage.

The feud then took a dangerous turn in July when a holiday cookout at the Dishon home was interrupted by shots that apparently came from the Brooks farm.

Friends and relatives at the cookout have testified that Herbert Brooks, 53, fired a handgun 12 to 15 times toward the Dishon home, with bullets kicking up dirt just feet from where around 40 people were gathered.

Mike Dishon ran into his house, got his own gun and fired three warning shots into the air in an effort to stop the shooting, he said.

The Brooks family has said that it was the patriarch of the family, James "Pops" Brooks, 79, who was doing the shooting, and that his target was frogs in a pond on the farm. However, a police search found no bullets at the Dishon home, or dead frogs in the Brooks pond, which is about 50 yards from the Dishons' driveway.

A grand jury indicted Herbert Brooks on a charge of wanton endangerment in connection with the incident.

The Brooks family contends that almost from the day Jessica Dishon disappeared, they have been harassed, maligned and convicted by the press and the community.

"I just want to know what's wrong with America when you are guilty before proven innocent," said Mary Lou Brooks, Herbert Brooks' wife.

"That's just not right. I just wish people in this county would ignore the media and think for themselves."

Judges in the cases involving the Brooks brothers have ordered them not to talk to reporters.

David Brooks was released from jail in early August on a $10,000 property bond on the condition that he leave Bullitt County and not come back until after the Dec. 15 trial.

He now lives in Jefferson County.

His wife, Irene Brooks, said she cannot get a job in Bullitt County because of her last name. "It isn't fair. It's like you go in a store or someplace and the people just stare a hole through you."

Irene has lost her temper several times, and in the process several jobs, she said. Although her husband has his problems, "he is a sweet man, someone that would do anything to help you regardless of who you are -- he's not a killer," she said.

On the day Jessica disappeared, David, Joseph, Herbert and their father were together, working at Pops' water-hauling business, Irene Brooks said. Police said they have been unable to find any witnesses to corroborate this alibi.

"I would have known if they had had something to do with it," Irene Brooks said. "If he (David) had come home that day and told me he had done something, he would have gotten a frying pan upside the head."

And if he had done it, she said, he would have high-tailed it out of Bullitt County long ago.

"He would have been gone so fast, you wouldn't've known what happened."

More than 400 people gathered at a tiny brick church, Cedar Grove United Methodist, for Jessica's funeral on Oct. 2. Mourners followed the flower-covered, blue-and-black casket up the gravel road through the graveyard behind the church, and huddled to sing "Amazing Grace" beside Jessica's grave.

"It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do," Bailey recalled. "It seems like I'm empty now. I don't have that person to talk to. Sometimes it doesn't seem real, just like a bad dream."

In grocery store check-out lines, gas stations and restaurants, Dishon's death has been the topic over the past year, stirring up uneasiness and fear.

Gary Lavely lives about five miles from the Dishons, and about 100 yards from a school-bus stop. Since the murder, Lavely said, his daughter, Kerry, a junior at Bullitt Central High School and a friend of Jessica's, will no longer walk alone to the bus.

"Every morning, I drive her the 100 yards to the school bus," he said. "At night, she goes around and checks all the doors before she goes to bed. It's not just her -- the whole community is like that.

"We never thought of anything like that ever happening here until it did. We live out in the country where things like this just don't happen."

Since the murder, Lave-ly has tried to get his wife, Alice, to take a firearms class and carry a gun when she is out late at night.

"Everyone is nervous," said Larry Thornhill, who lives down the street from the Dishons. "My girls are especially scared. My oldest is scared to sleep downstairs by herself."

"This was a community that always felt really safe," Hobbs, the bus driver, said of Cedar Grove. "Nothing ever really happened here. This has put people on alert and watching their kids. It's a shame."

A 4-foot chain-link fence and electrical wire now guard the Dishon home. But it is emotions that keep Edna Dishon fenced in.

She no longer works, and she rarely leaves the house alone. Her mind is a daily battleground for daily bouts with fear, grief and guilt.

When her sons, Michael, 14, and Chris, 13, leave for school, she watches them walk to the bus stop. She waits on the porch for their return.

"I have to be there for them; I wasn't there for Jessica," she said.

"If my family had been more important to me last year, and I hadn't been working, Jessica would be home right now."

Each morning, Edna, 35, and Mike, 40, are drawn to their daughter's tiny bedroom. Jessica's clothes still hang in the closet, and stuffed animals and smiling pictures adorn the shelves.

"It's like we're waiting for her to come home, even though I know that's not going to happen," Edna Dishon said. "Without all of the answers, it's too early. This is Jessica's room, not a closet or storage space or a room for the boys -- Jessica's room."

On Jessica's bed, next to flowers, stuffed animals and other expressions of sympathy, rests a frame filled with pictures taken throughout her short life. The frame is smudged from the kisses her parents plant on it every morning when they wake and each evening when they wish their only daughter a good night.

Edna Dishon often finds herself drifting into Jessica's room, where she will sit on the floor and talk to her daughter's picture or write her a letter.

"I feel like if I think about her all the time, I will be able to dream about her, but it hasn't happened yet," she said quietly.

"I wonder sometimes if she is upset with me."

There are still moments when Edna Dishon expects to look up and see her daughter pop in the door with a smile and a story.

But in the end, she is left with memories of her daughter and the hope that soon the case will be solved -- and the dreams will come.

[maverick1862]

UPDATE

Jan. 19, 2001 -- Nearly a year and a half after 17-year-old Jessica Dishon was found beaten and strangled, two brothers who once lived next door to the teen-ager were charged in her death.

After an indictment yesterday by a Bullitt County grand jury, David "Bucky" Brooks, 43, was arrested and charged with murder, kidnapping, tampering with physical evidence and complicity. He is being held without bond in the Bullitt County jail.

Joseph "Tommy" Brooks, 36, who also was indicted, was charged with tampering with physical evidence and complicity. His cash bond was set at $100,000. He was being held last night in the Bullitt County jail.

For the Dishon family, the arrests ended months of uncertainty and anguish and brought a measure of comfort and relief.

"It's kind of like being in a really dark tunnel for a long time and then you actually see a light," said Edna Dishon, Jessica's mother. "Maybe life can go on now."

Bullitt Commonwealth's Attorney Mike Mann said he's considering seeking the death penalty for David Brooks. Joseph Brooks could face up to five years in prison if he is convicted. Mann refused to discuss details of the case.

David and Joseph Brooks pleaded innocent at an arraignment yesterday. They are being held in solitary cells and watched closely, said Jailer Danny Fackler.

It could be at least a year before a trial, Mann said.

Jessica disappeared from her driveway on Sept. 10, 1999. Her body was discovered 17 days later, dumped in a remote wooded area.

The Brooks brothers became the subject of a police investigation shortly after Jessica's body was found. Later, they also were charged with harassing and stalking the Dishon family.

A Bullitt County grand jury, which had heard more than 20 witnesses since Jan. 3, announced its decision at 9 a.m. yesterday in Bullitt Circuit Court.

Jessica's parents held each other tightly, squeezing their eyes shut, as Judge Thomas Waller read the indictments.

Edna Dishon wept upon hearing the jury's decision. "It was like Jessica went through me, like she was in there with us," she said.

"We've been waiting for this for 16 months," said Jessica's father, Mike Dishon, also with tears in his eyes. "And it happened, it finally happened."

Shortly after 10:30 a.m., sheriff's department officials arrived at the jail with David Brooks handcuffed in the back of a squad car.

Bullitt Sheriff Paul Parsley said David Brooks was arrested in his pickup truck on the ramp from northbound Interstate 65 to Outer Loop. He was with his wife, Irene. Brooks has been living in Jefferson County since August after a judge barred him from Bullitt County until his trial on charges he harassed the Dishon family and trespassed at their home.

After his arrest, Brooks was led just a few feet from the squad car to the jail's back entrance. Asked by a female reporter if he had any comment, he replied, "No ma'am, not right now."

Joseph Brooks was arrested at a Shepherdsville business after his attorney talked with him, Parsley said. He arrived at the jail shortly after his brother.

Neither man resisted arrest, Parsley said.

David Brooks' wife, Irene, said yesterday that most of the Brooks family was in shock and hadn't taken everything in yet.

"We are all just trying to hold together and not break down," said a visibly shaken Irene Brooks, who married David Brooks when she was 16. "I still say he is innocent and I would stake my life on it."

Although police had never named the brothers as suspects, David and Joseph Brooks, along with an older brother, Herbert, 55, are the only people whom police sought to give DNA samples for testing. They were ordered by a judge in the fall of 1999 to provide hair and blood samples to compare with DNA samples recovered from Jessica's body and elsewhere.

The FBI's crime laboratory analyzed the samples and returned them to Bullitt County investigators on Nov. 30.

Herbert Brooks has not been charged with any crime.

The DNA results were only part of a substantial amount of technical information, circumstantial evidence and witness testimony presented to the grand jury, investigators said.

"I don't think the DNA evidence was that important," said Bullitt County Sheriff's Detective Charles Mann. "I am surprised the grand jury took this long, but I'm not at all surprised by the indictments. The evidence was there."

Investigators said they wanted to wait for the DNA evidence to make sure the case was solid.

"We waited on a lot of things and the reason we waited was because of . . . the double-jeopardy rule," Charles Mann said. "I'd rather wait and take the heat than rush in and jeopardize the whole case."

Jessica was a senior at Bullitt Central High School when she disappeared from her family's Deatsville Road home while on her way to school on Sept. 10, 1999. Her car was in the driveway, and her purse, cellular phone, other belongings and one shoe were in the car when her mother returned home that afternoon.

After an intensive search, a family friend found Jessica's partially clothed body on Sept. 27 in woods along Greenwell Ford Road, about seven miles from her home.

Jessica had been struck in the face, most likely with a fist, with enough severity to break her jaw, but she died of strangulation. Investigators have said they believe she was kept alive a day or two before her death.

The indictments and arrest warrants contained little information about the case. The charge of tampering with physical evidence included destroying, mutilating, concealing, removing or altering evidence between Sept. 10 and Oct. 1 of 1999. The indictment said the brothers believed the evidence was about to be used in an official proceeding.

Among the evidence investigators sent to state police was a carpet-cleaning machine that David Brooks rented from a Shepherdsville grocery the night that Jessica's body was found. An unidentified member of the Brooks family tipped police off to the rental.

Police also found hairs similar in color and microscopic characteristics to Jessica's in linen seized from the Brooks family's farm.

David Brooks has maintained his innocence from the beginning, said his attorney, John Spainhour, whose law firm of Givhan & Spainhour has represented the Brooks family since 1951.

"I have known Bucky for years and have never known him to be violent or even yell at people. He doesn't have a violent bone in his body," Spainhour said. "He is just a guy trying to do the best he can with what he has."

Bullitt Commonwealth's Attorney Mike Mann says he is weighing whether to seek the death penalty for David "Bucky" Brooks, who was indicted on murder and kidnapping charges yesterday in the death of 17-year-old Jessica Dishon.

Under state law, a prosecutor may seek the death penalty when there are aggravating circumstances, such as:

A kidnapper kills his or her victim.

More than one person is killed.

A law enforcement officer or state or local public official is killed.

A murder is committed during a robbery, burglary, rape, arson or sodomy.

A murder is committed for profit.

A murder is committed by someone with a prior conviction for a capital offense.

Since the family can't afford private counsel, he will only assist in David Brooks' case, Spainhour said. Vince Yustas, who is with the Department of Public Advocacy, will lead the defense, Spainhour said. Joseph Brooks is being represented by Shepherdsville attorney Rebecca Murrell.

[maverick1862]

Case split families

Related by marriage to the Dishons, David and Joseph Brooks, along with brothers Herbert and Johnny, grew up on their father's farm and were friends with their next-door neighbors, the Dishon family.

But the once friendly relationship between the families grew strained after Jessica's disappearance. Three Brooks brothers have been arrested and charged with harassment or wanton endangerment in cases involving relatives of Jessica.

The suspicion and anger began, the Dishons say, when they were denied permission in the days after Jessica's disappearance to search the Brookses' farm, vehicles and buildings.

The Brooks family has denied this.

Weeks later, the Dishons and some of their relatives began receiving disturbing phone calls. Using a caller-identification service, the families identified the origin of the calls.

David and Joseph were arrested Oct. 23 and accused of making the harassing calls and stalking the Alan Mattingly family, cousins of the Dishons. The brothers were ordered to stay 1,000 feet from both families.

Last January, David Brooks was sentenced to 30 days in jail after a Bullitt district judge found him in contempt of court for violating conditions of his previous bond by continuing to harass Jessica's family.

David Brooks was back in jail in June on new charges of criminal trespass and contempt of court after he was accused of going behind the Dishon property late one night.

Those charges were put on hold pending the grand jury deliberations.

The jury had been expected to make a decision Wednesday. But about 5:15 p.m., after nearly six hours of deliberation, it adjourned for the day, infuriating the Dishon family.

Yesterday, the family apologized for their anger on Wednesday and thanked jurors and investigators for their hard work.

"I have so many different feelings right now," Edna Dishon said. "We're just very happy knowing that justice is finally going to be served and that the people who did this are going to be put behind bars where they should be."

The indictments went a long way towards healing wounds in Bullitt County, some family members said.

"It's not just the family, this whole town has been held hostage," said Phyllis Lynch, Edna Dishon's aunt. "People don't let their children out here anymore. This is what Bullitt County needed."

Oct. 19, 2001 -- New information has surfaced about a teenager who was found beaten and strangled to death in rural Bullitt County after her personal diaries were found.

It's believed that five diary pages were written several years before Jessica Dishon's death. A daily planner and a letter written by Dishon date back to 1996.

Dishon disappeared in September 1999. Her body was found a few miles from her home several days later.

Defense attorneys are pouring over the pages to see if Dishon's words shed any new light on her murder. NewsChannel 32's Abby Miller reports that Dishon wrote of typical teenage details, but the tone of many of her entries was that of depression.

"I'm sick of living the way I do," Dishon wrote. "I can't stand it anymore."

In another portion of a letter -- believed to have been written in 1996 -- Dishon wrote, "I'm tired of living and wishing at the same time to be dead. I really don't want to go, but I need to. Pray that I may go to Heaven. Hopefully, I will."

Her mother, Edna Dishon, has told Miller that the diary and journal entries are private, and never should have been released to the attorneys of the suspects, Bucky and Tommy Brooks. Edna Dishon also said that her daughter's depression might have stemmed from growing up poor, and not having some of the things that other children had.

The Brooks' attorneys say that the diaries turned over by the prosecution are not the ones that they wanted. They believe that there are more recent pages not yet turned over that could shed light on the last days of Dishon's life.

Meanwhile, the murder trial is expected to start next August. Tommy Brooks is charged with complicity to murder, and tampering with evidence, and has been released on bond.

His brother, David "Bucky" Brooks, is charged with kidnapping and murdering Dishon. At a hearing next Wednesday, he's expected to ask to get out of jail on bond as he awaits the trial.

[maverick1862]