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A mother’s natural instinct to protect her children is a powerful drive that can provide a heightened awareness & readiness to respond to danger. These instincts are supported by hormonal influences & can even manifest as a sixth sense that kicks in before danger is even apparent. This maternal behavior isn’t just seen in humans, but also animals. So this begs the question, what drives a mother to harm her own child?
The tragedy of what’s known as maternal filicide, or child murder by mothers, often involves cases where a mother is struggling financially, socially isolated, have been victims of domestic violence or had other relationship troubles. There is usually also involvement in mental health struggles that include psychosis, depression, suicidality, personality disorders, & previous mental health care. Significant life stresses were often noted & some of the perpetrators experienced auditory hallucinations & were of low intelligence.
A small New Zealand study found that psychotic mothers often killed suddenly without much planning whereas depressed mothers had contemplated killing their children for days to weeks. The mean age for filicidal mothers is late 20s
This case begins with a chilling 911 call that was placed a little after 9 pm on the quiet Friday evening of June 5, 2009 when a woman calmly & matter-of-factly told a Hillsboro, Texas 911 dispatcher that she just killed her children. She was calling from an abandoned house on Highway 77 & she explained that one was dead, but the other was still alive & wanted to be saved. She could be heard speaking to her daughter who was still alive, telling her, Hold on, they’re coming.
(Click HERE to listen to the 911 call).
Although the caller told the dispatcher that she didn’t want to disclose her name, she was later identified as 32-year-old Debra Janelle Jeter from Hillsboro, Texas. Hillsboro is 60 miles south of Dallas where the majority of emergency calls are placed for a noise complaint or a traffic accident rather than a horrific, violent crime.
Hill County deputies, Hillsboro police as well as state troopers converged on the abandoned farmhouse on U.S. 77 just off of I-35 in Mildford, a rural area near Waco. As they arrived, they found Debra in the garage with her hands raised above her head.
As they entered the dilapidated home, they found 12-year-old Kelsey Leanne Jeter dead in the bathroom & 13-year-old Kiersten Leigh Jeter critically injured in a bedroom. Not only had her neck been slashed from one end to the other, but she also had a stab wound to her back that was inflicted when she tried to protect her younger sister during the attack. Kiersten was still conscious & had been able to beg her mom for help, but she was bleeding & clinging to life. Not only was her larynx or airway cut, but as was an artery.
At the time of this horrific attack, Debra was in the midst of a divorce as well as a custody battle & it was the first time she was spending time with her teenage daughters in fifteen days as part of a first-time custody visit.
In May 2009, Lester “Lee” Jeter filed for a separation from Debra, his wife & the mother of his two daughters. The family lived at 101 Brazos Street in Hillsboro & although the exact reason for the separation hasn’t been revealed in detail, a man who lived down the street indicated that he had to contact police on several occasions due to Lester & Debra’s constant fighting. The single-story unkempt house where they lived on the corner was very noisy & other neighbors had also called for similar reasons.
Debra hadn’t been coping well since Lee filed for separation & shortly after his request, on May 21, 2009, she attempted suicide in their home in front of the girls by ingesting pills. She subsequently received psychiatric treatment at the DePaul Center in Waco from May 22-26. Court records were filed on May 22, 2009, one day after Debra’s suicide attempt, that revealed there was concern for Debra’s ability to safely care for her two daughters.
The records indicated that Lee Jeter was granted a temporary restraining order against his wife due to the fact that Debra tried to commit suicide at their house while the children were there & under her care. Lee voiced his concern that she would be released from the psychiatric center in a few days & he feared for the safety of their daughters.
A hearing was held on June 4, one day before Debra placed the chilling 911 call, when the judge made the decision to lift the restraining order against her & allow Debra to see Kelsey & Kiersten. Lee admits that he agreed with this decision, claiming that Debra hadn’t shown any resentment toward the children nor had she ever put them in harm’s way. She had been taking 100mg of Zoloft daily & her mental health seemed to be improving.
However, it can be noted that five years earlier in 2004, investigators concluded that Debra had physically abused Kiersten, but the case was closed after she received mental health treatment.
Lee told the judge that he had no issues with Debra having unsupervised weekend visits as long as he was informed of the girls’ whereabouts & granted access to Debra’s medical records. Judge Harris ordered that both parties sign medical release forms under HIPPA, allowing each to view the other person’s records. However, this order came too late as less than 24 hours later, Debra’s first unsupervised visit with the girls ended in utter tragedy that would leave her family devastated forever.
Despite the trauma that Kelsey & Kiersten experienced during their mother’s suicide attempt only a couple of weeks earlier & the fact that they hadn’t seen her since that time, they seemed to be excited about their upcoming visit. 12-year-old Kelsey took to MySpace to express her excitement when she wrote, I get to see my mom tomorrow! Yay!
One day after the restraining order was lifted, Debra picked her daughters up on that Friday, June 5, 2009 at 6 pm & told them she had a surprise. They said goodbye to their dad & excitedly climbed into the car, eager to find out what their surprise could be.
Only three hours after they left the safety of their home & said goodbye to their dad, both girls were covered in blood. Rather than being presented with a surprise, they were taken to a creepy abandoned home at 215 U.S. Highway 77 in rural Hill County, a place they had likely never seen before. Once inside, their throats had been slashed at the hands of their own mother.
Hill County Sheriff Jeffrey Lyon recalls going inside the abandoned house & described the scene as horrific. 12-year-old Kelsey, who was an honor roll student, a Girl Scout & played the flute as first chair in her school’s band, was sadly dead. Meanwhile, 13-year-old Kiersten was clinging to life.
Investigators learned that after Debra guided her daughters into the darkness of the abandoned house, she brought them into the bathroom, locked the door & took a knife out of her pocket. As she grabbed Kiersten first & began slashing her, Kiersten struggled & screamed for her little sister to run.
Debra released her older daughter & raced after Kelsey, who had run from the bathroom & into a bedroom. Kiersten ran after her mom & tried to jump in between her & Kelsey in an attempt to protect her. In doing so, she was stabbed in the back as Debra continued to slash Kelsey’s throat, fatally wounding her. She then returned to Kiersten & slashed her throat.
When Debra called 911 just after 9 pm that night, she could be heard talking to Kiersten, but rather than tending to her daughter or providing any life-saving measures, she told the dispatcher that she was walking around the house. A medical helicopter transferred Kiersten to Parkland Hospital in Dallas where she was taken into emergent surgery on her arrival.
As police officers pulled up to the scene, they saw Debra, who is 6’0” & weighs 195#, standing just outside of the garage with her hands in the air, holding a cell phone. Her car was parked in the garage with a small knife lying on the roof. She had blood on her arms, but it appeared that she tried to clean herself off.
After Debra was arrested, she was placed on suicide watch at Hill County Law Enforcement Center & arraigned on one count of attempted capital murder & one count of murder. Her bond was set at $1.5 million. She remained silent & offered no explanation for what she had just done.
The residents of the small town of Hillsboro were left reeling as neighbors, teachers & classmates tried to come to terms with what Debra had done. Debra Hargrove, associate vice president of human resources & organizational development at Hill College, where Debra Jeter was working part-time, was utterly shocked & devastated.
During the previous fall semester, Debra had been a tutor at the college in anatomy & physiology. In December, she’d been accepted into the college’s licensed vocational nurse program, but she turned it down saying that she wanted to become a registered nurse.
According to 12-year-old Kelsey’s history teacher at Hillsboro Intermediate School, J.C. Rogers, who had only just seen her one week earlier when school let out for the summer, Kelsey was a smart & quiet student. She often finished her work before her classmates & while other students talked to one another during downtime, Kelsey was always sitting quietly, engrossed in a book. It was only a few months earlier when Mr. Rogers sat with Debra at a parent-teacher conference & spoke about her daughter’s love of reading. He recalls Debra laughing when he told her this & she explained how Kelsey would often say she was going to take a bath, but when Debra would check on her, she would find her reading in the bathroom while the water was running.
Since Mr. Rogers’ wife worked as a nurse, Kelsey would come to his first period class & proudly tell him about how her mom was studying to also become a nurse. Rogers, who has three daughters of his own, misses Kelsey’s gentle spirit in his classroom.
There was a lot of public outrage as word of Kelsey’s death & Kiersten’s attack spread as this was a tragedy that could have been prevented. There were questions as to why or how Debra had been granted access to her daughters so soon after a serious mental health crisis when Debra tried to commit suicide in her daughters’ presence only a couple of weeks earlier. The courts have a duty to protect children & sadly, this case failed with devastating consequences.
While Kiersten was being treated at the hospital in the wake of the vicious, traumatic attack that left her so severely injured & her little sister dead, Lee Jeter kept an around-the-clock vigil at her bedside. By Monday, three days after the attack, Kiersten was thankfully in stable condition & transferred out of the intensive care unit. Only days after her release from the hospital she attended her little sister’s funeral.
After Debra picked her girls up & told them about a surprise, she elaborated that she had a night of surprises in store for them. She said they would sing songs together from American Idol & read together.
After investigators reviewed cell phone records, they determined that after she picked Kelsey & Kiersten up, she drove to Corsicana, 40 miles east of Hillsboro, & back, searching for an abandoned house.
In September 2009, a judge set a trial date for March 8, 2010. It was revealed that since her arrest in June, three months earlier, Debra had only received one visitor – her mother. Her defense attorney, Russ Hunt Sr., indicated that his client was experiencing significant memory gaps which he claimed was a result of a previous car accident. When he was asked if his client was aware that her youngest daughter, Kelsey, was dead, he said, It depends on what day you talk to her. There have been periods of her life she has no recollection of.
At this point, the expectation was that Kiersten Jeter, who survived the attack, would be expected to testify against her mother. She had expressed willingness to take the stand, but she was understandably terrified by the idea of reliving the details of that unimaginable night. Thankfully, she never had to.
On May 26, 2010, Debra Jeter pleaded guilty to the murder of Kelsey & the attempted murder of Kiersten, a decision that spared her from facing the death penalty. She appeared in court via video link from jail while Kiersten & Lee watched the proceedings remotely from another location.
Before she went to prison in Gatesville, Texas, Kiersten & Lee met with Debra & although she told Lee that she still hated him, she apologized for what she had done.
Debra declined to speak during her hearing, meanwhile outside court, her attorney indicated that she had been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, a condition that she hadn’t received appropriate treatment for. He said that once it was determined that she was competent to stand trial, she decided to plead guilty. She said that this was the most compassionate thing she could do for her surviving daughter.
According to her attorney, Debra expressed deep remorse for what she had done. Some days she would sob uncontrollably while she spoke of the stabbings, while on other days, she had a flat demeanor & seemed detached when recalling the events of her daughters’ attacks. He also said that she frequently spoke of Kiersten & Kelsey with pride & affection.
Debra Jeter was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Regardless of the fact that she faced justice for her unthinkable actions, detectives were never able to establish a motive. Everyone was left to speculate that the stress of her deteriorating marriage, mental illness & lack of adequate support may have led her to a catastrophic breaking point.
12-year-old Kelsey Jeter was a gentle girl who had only just finished 6th grade, she was starting her summer break & sady, she didn’t live to start 7th grade. She was a happy girl who had an optimistic outlook on life & never hesitated to make her own path in life. She loved nature as well as drawing & painting & she was a memorable little girl who made an impression on those she met.
Studies indicate that spouse revenge filicide is often difficult to prevent because there is usually little warning. In many cases of filicide, a couple is actively going through custody battles, as was the case with Lee & Debra. However, in Debra’s case, there were major indicators that her mental health was struggling as not only had she just tried to commit suicide, but she had been hospitalized in 2004 after she was accused of abusing Kiersten.
After surviving a horrific attack that nearly killed her & left her baby sister dead at the hands of their mother, someone they expected to love & protect them, Kiersten demonstrated incredible strength when she made a statement, I’m not giving up. I’m going to keep going, no matter what.
References:
- Murderpedia: Debra Janelle Jeter
- Morbidology: The last visit: The horrific crime of Debra Jeter
- Marshall & Marshall Funeral Directors: Kelsey Jeter
- NIH: Child murder by mothers: patterns & prevention
- Ready Steady Cut: Where is Kiersten Jeter now?
- Medium: The mother who slit her daughter’s throats
- Medium: Debra Jeter: “I just killed my children”
- Ati: The gut-wrenching story of Debra Jeter, the Texas woman who slit her own daughters’ throats
