John Couey, Murderer of Jessica Lunsford, Dies

John Couey, the serial child predator and murderer of Jessica Lunsford, died Wednesday, a Florida Department of Corrections spokeswoman told CNN. John Couey had been on death row for the conviction of the abduction, rape, and murder of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford in 2005. He had been imprisoned in the Florida State Prison at Starke, Florida. Prison officials would not elaborate as to specifics about John Couey's illness and death, but they did say that his death was not unexpected and that Couey had been ill for some time.

Jessica Lunsford's father, Mark Lunsford, said that the death of Lunsford both surprised and saddened him. Mark Lunsford said he never expected John Couey, 51, to live through the appeals process to face the lethal injection waiting at the end of it, but he hadn't expected him to die so soon. "To me, death is sad," Lunsford told CNN. "But her death, Jessie's death, has been redeemed ... I'm relieved. I'm glad it's over with."

Back in 2007, Mark Lunsford watched as John Couey received a death penalty sentence for what the sexual predator had done to his daughter in February 2005. Couey had abducted her from her own bed in Homosassa, Florida, taken her just a few trailors away, secreted her in his room, raped her, and, when he feared he would be caught with Jessica, buried her alive. Jessica Lunsford would end her life suffocated, wrapped in garbage bags, buried within eyesight of her home.

John Couey shocked the nation by telling the police the crude details of his assault on the little girl and that the press was blowing the case out of proportion. "This kind of thing happens every day," he told them.

The Jessica Lunsford case sparked the passing of measures and pieces of legislation on the state level across the United States -- all called Jessica's Law -- that provided for harsh sentencing of violent or predatory sexual offenders who prey on smaller children. It also engendered a federal law called the Jessica Lunsford Act, but it was never enacted into law.

John Couey's death follows closely on the heals of the death of Manson "family" member Susan Atkins, who, according to the New York Times, died from brain cancer Friday. Susan Atkins, 61, was convicted of murdering Sharon Tate, the wife of director Roman Polanski, personally admitting to stabbing the actress, who was pregnant, to death during the Charles Manson-inspired murder spree in 1969.

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Sources:

CNN.com
BillOreilly.com
NYTimes.com