Torres: Sent to prison at 12, Jones walks out at 29
Curtis Fairchild Jones walked into prison a 12-year-old boy. This morning he walked out a 29-year-old man.
Prison officials confirmed that Jones was released from South Bay Correctional, just south of Lake Okeechobee shortly after 7 a.m. Jones has refused all interview requests from FLORIDA TODAY and his attorney said there will be no statement made to the media.
He leaves prison a convicted murderer, a victim of childhood sexual abuse, a brother to a sister scheduled to be released from prison Saturday, and an ordained minister. Time will tell if he has had a chance to work through the demons that terrorized his childhood and drove him to take a life.
Curtis — along with Catherine, his older sister by a year — shot and killed their father's girlfriend, Sonya Nicole Speights in 1999. They also had planned to kill their father and a male relative who they said was sexually molesting them. No one believed they were being abused, even after investigators from what is now the Department of Children and Families identified evidence of the abuse. The children panicked after shooting Speights and were apprehended.
"The story of siblings Catherine Jones and Curtis Fairchild is a tragic tale of several people and systems that failed these two young victims before dumping them in prison," said Ashley Nellis, senior research analyst with the Sentencing Project — a Washington D.C.-based advocacy group working to promote changes in sentencing policy among other reforms related to incarceration. "It seems that even a cursory look at their childhood environment and the backgrounds of their caretakers would have prompted grave concern and care rather than stiff prison terms."
But facing life in prison after Brevard prosecutors made the kids the youngest ever charged with first degree murder, they remained quiet about the abuse. They pleaded guilty to second degree murder and accepted the sentence of 18 years and probation for life.
'It is somewhat haunting to me that there was a world of horrors that this child was growing up in that was never explored," said Curtis Jones' attorney Alan Landman. "As a lawyer, we are only as effective as the information given to us by our clients or that which we can glean from the charges and the discovery received by the State. There was absolutely no indication in the entire case of what was truly going on behind the scenes and in the life of Curtis and his sister."
In confidential documents revealed to FLORIDA TODAY by an an attorney working to gain the children clemency several years ago, it was revealed that DCF said there were indications of abuse but did nothing.
No one had to die in this case. Speights' own children had to grow up without a mother. Many suffered, but Catherine said during an interview from prison that at one point she was "happy to be away" and felt "safe" in prison. Things would have certainly been different had the authorities not failed those children.
"I can only wish Curtis and his sister the best that life has to offer under circumstances which no child should have to endure," Landman said.
Nellis echoed that. "With the support of loving friends and supporters it won't be long before they are back on their feet and enjoying their much-deserved freedom," she said.
It was nothing but tragedy all around for children who ran out of options, at least in their young minds. But today, his debt paid, Curtis walked out of that prison with something he may not have had in more than 16 years — a bit of hope.
Contact Torres at 321-242-3684 or at jtorres@floridatoday.com. Don't forget to follow him on Twitter @johnalbertorres or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/FTjohntorres.