“Proud” Mother Throws Her Daughter In a Dumpster

“Proud” Mother Throws Her Daughter In a Dumpster

October 11, 2011, the little girl was reported missing: “Hello? Hello, I need… I need an officer at my house. I can’t find my daughter.” The disappearance of five-year-old Jessie Shockley: her mother, Jerice Hunter, is charged with killing her own daughter, even though a body has never been found.

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When a person dies, we as humans naturally feel protective over the deceased remains and want to make sure that they are afforded a proper burial or send-off into the afterlife. Whether that’s a traditional funeral service or something more eco-friendly, we want to make sure that our loved ones are resting in peace. This is especially the case when the deceased is a minor. But what if your loved one’s final resting place was deep within an Arizona landfill, and you had no option but to let them stay there?

Jessie Joshua Shockley was born on April 1, 2006, to parents George Shockley and Jerice Yaten Hunter. The two were later divorced. From the very beginning, things were not okay in the Shockley-Hunter household. Jerice had an extensive history of crimes committed against her kids in Vallejo, California, where she lived with her then-husband George and Jessie’s three older siblings. In October 2005, Jerice was charged with five felonies: four counts of corporal injury to a minor and one count of torture. She allegedly whipped her three and seven-year-old kids with an extension cord and a belt. She also punched her 14-year-old son during an argument and frequently beat him with sticks. All of Jerice’s kids that could advocate for themselves stated the crimes against them had been going on for years, with the judge presiding over the case stating that Jerice should never have had kids.

You might be asking yourself, where was the father during all of this? It’s actually a pretty common question that we get in the comments section. Well, prior to their divorce, Jerice married George Shockley, who wasn’t much better than she is. He was a convicted child predator who was on the registry and had crimes against kids spanning back to 1990. George actually participated in some of the beatings inflicted upon the kids and faced charges of CA [Child Abuse], as well as failure to register as an offender. George did time for some of those crimes and, according to California’s Megan’s Law website, is currently listed as a transient and in violation. A search of the California’s inmate directory showed no results of a George Shockley as of the date of this recording.

In 2006, Jerice pled no contest to the four counts of corporal injury to a minor, and the torture charge was dropped. As a result of her plea agreement, she was sentenced to eight years in prison, only served four of them, and was later paroled in 2010. Jessie and her siblings were raised by her mother’s relatives during her incarceration, and Jerice got them back following her release. Many of her family members were supportive of her, saying she loved her kids and had become a much better parent since her release from prison.

However, other relatives had much deeper concerns about Jerice. On February 28, 2011, not even a year after her parole date, CPS received a report that Jerice Hunter was homeless, which was a cause for concern as she had been previously incarcerated and she had four kids. In an interview with the Arizona Republic, Jerice’s cousin, Mahogany Hightower, told reporters that she repeatedly called CPS both in California and Arizona. CPS in California told her that there was nothing they could do, as Jerice was paroled without any restrictions on her ability to see her kids. Hightower claimed that she talked with Arizona’s CPS caseworkers several times between February and May of 2011 to report that both Jessie and her older sister—whose beatings sent Jerice to prison—were in danger.

One of those calls came after Hightower last saw Jessie on April 24th at a family barbecue. The cousin claimed that when she was getting ready to go home, Jessie cried heavily and kept asking her not to leave. After that day, Hightower said she called CPS yet again and also mentioned her suspicion that Jerice was doing drugs. According to Hightower, the caseworker visited the older girls’ school and Jerice’s home but told them there was nothing she could do because the kids denied that they were ever being harmed.

Fast forward to the start of the 2011 school year. Jerice Hunter was around eight months pregnant and living in an apartment near Glendale and 43rd Avenue in Glendale, Arizona, with five-year-old Jessie and her siblings, ages 6, 9, and 13. Jessie had just started kindergarten but had been abruptly withdrawn from school on September 22, 2011, after Jerice claimed that she had pink eye and ringworm. Although both of these ailments are somewhat common among school-aged kids, neither were substantiated by a doctor. No truancy calls that we know of were made, nor was there any known contact from the school to check up on Jessie’s extended absence.

This brings us to October 11th, 2011. A call was made to emergency services to report a missing young girl. The caller was Jerice Hunter. According to Jerice, she had gone to a check-cashing establishment, and when she came home, the front door to their apartment was open. Jessie was gone, and her siblings didn’t know what had happened to her. Jerice allegedly searched around the apartment complex for her daughter and then subsequently made the call after she couldn’t be located. Around that same time Jessie vanished, a black woman who appeared to be between the ages of 25 to 35 was seen at Glendale and 45th Avenue putting a young girl into a black four-door 1998-2000 Chevy Malibu. The young girl, who didn’t resist, physically resembled Jessie, and authorities sought to identify and interview the woman. An extensive search of the area turned up no sign of Jessie, and the woman could not be found.

In the aftermath of Jessie’s disappearance, her older sisters were taken into protective custody by CPS and placed in foster care. As we mentioned previously, Jerice was eight months pregnant at the time, and CPS took custody of her baby after it was born later that month. Jerice maintained her innocence in her daughter’s disappearance and said she thought Jessie had been abducted by a stranger, but she refused to cooperate with the investigation or take a lie detector test. However, what ensued was a media circus where Jerice called press conferences claiming that police weren’t doing all that they could. The mother even insisted that Jessie’s race had something to do with the efforts of the police.

Still, police, members of the community, neighbors, and volunteers all worked tirelessly handing out flyers, searching, and following up on leads. “Please bring my baby back. Drop her off at a public place. Do I look like I hurt my daughter? Do I look like I hurt my daughter? She’s scared, she’s scared, please, I know she’s scared. Don’t ask me about my past. You already know, you already know. You know what, lies are lies.”

However, on November 21st, six weeks after five-year-old Jessie went missing, things took a sinister turn. Authorities arrested and charged Jerice Hunter with felony CA, and the victim named in the charge was her missing daughter, Jessie. Furthermore, police no longer believed that this was simply a missing person’s investigation; they were confident that this was a homicide. But the conclusion wasn’t the result of quality police work; rather, it was a tip from a group of unexpected sources.

Jessie’s 13-year-old sister told investigators, as well as her own foster parents, that her biological mother had kept Jessie in a closet several weeks prior to her reported disappearance on October 11th, and that she hadn’t been feeding her. The sister said that she would sneak the five-year-old girl food and water and noticed that she had been inflicted with several different injuries, including cuts, bruises, pulled-out hair, and black eyes. When questioned, Jessie’s other siblings confirmed that they’d seen bruises on their little sister. The 13-year-old even described her younger sister as looking like a zombie in the closet, resembling a grave.

Additionally, the 13-year-old claimed that several weeks before her sister was reported missing, her mother had come home and found her watching TV with a little boy from the neighborhood. Now, according to the 13-year-old sibling, Jerice called Jessie a “hoe” and dragged her into the bedroom, where she subsequently began to scream and cry. Mind you, this is a five-year-old girl. Furthermore, Jessie’s siblings stated that the closet started to smell like dead people, and that their mother burned incense and spent a whole day cleaning the apartment as well as her own shoes prior to reporting their sister missing.

Investigators confirmed that Jerice had purchased bleach on October 9th at Walgreens, two days before Jessie’s disappearance was reported. Now, I know some of you might be wondering how in the world three kids, ages 6 to 13, would know what dead people smell like, or was this something that Jerice told them? Either way, this entire situation is tragic.

Unfortunately, Jerice was released without charge a week later. Now, this might sound crazy, but this was due to the fact that police did not want to create a double jeopardy situation just in case homicide charges were filed against her at a later date. Additionally, police believed that they did not have sufficient hard evidence to bring her to trial, despite blood evidence being found in the closet where Jessie was allegedly held and also on a back cement patio. We’ve covered many cases on this channel—even some that hit close to home, such as the case of Donna Parady—where the accused ends up being held in jail on a lesser unrelated charge until police can solidify probable cause for homicide charges. Do you think this is something that should have been done in the case of Jerice Hunter? With Glendale being about a three-hour drive north of the Mexican border, do you think she was a flight risk? Let us know in the comment section down below.

When asked if she hurt her daughter, Jerice went ballistic and stated, “I really think they should take the focus off of me and quit asking people, wasting time. If I did something to my daughter, they should quit holding my babies hostage and trying to get them to say something about what happened to Jessie. Authorities are telling me your kids aren’t saying anything. It’s been 13 days, what do they expect my babies to say that they haven’t already said? CPS don’t want to hear ‘we love our mama, we want to go home, we want our mommy.’ They don’t want to hear that. They won’t let me see them because they don’t want them running into my arms. They don’t want to hear them scream ‘mommy.'”

Around the same time, police received another tip with regards to the events of October 11, 2011, this time from a neighbor. According to the neighbor, Jerice had asked for a ride to sell shoes roughly 31 minutes away in Tempe, Arizona. This contradicted Jerice’s statements that she had left to run an errand at a check-cashing establishment. But what the neighbor told investigators next was the magic bullet that sealed the deal on Jerice’s fate. When the neighbor went to give her a ride, Jerice allegedly brought along a big, heavy suitcase, which she subsequently deposited inside of a dumpster at a Tempe apartment complex. The suitcase emitted a foul odor. Further examination of the neighbor’s car revealed biological evidence in the trunk, to include blood and hair. From that point on, Jerice Hunter was now the main and only suspect in Jessie’s disappearance.

I think this should be talked about a little bit. So, we have a neighbor who is bringing Jerice on a trip for no reason whatsoever. We’ve got a suitcase that’s heavy, it smells, and is clearly seeping biological fluids. Jerice is eight months pregnant, and in being eight months pregnant, I highly doubt she’s able to pick up this suitcase and put it into the dumpster. Let us know in the comment section if something should have been done about this neighbor as well. So we don’t know if the neighbor helped her, but depending on the size and weight of this, it really does make you wonder.

On February 6, 2012, the tip sparked a search in the Butterfield Landfill in Mobile, Arizona, that lasted months. With the help of cadaver dogs and other recovery technology, police and 280 volunteers searched in vain for five-year-old Jessie Shockley in the hot Arizona sun. Volunteers from Glendale and surrounding police departments carefully sifted through approximately 9,500 tons of trash. To be clear, this is the equivalent of two football fields in length and 20 feet deep. It’s been estimated that $750,000 was spent on the search. In early July, authorities held an emotional press conference to announce the cease of the landfill search. Police detectives and volunteers choked back tears as they said they were sorry they weren’t able to find Jessie’s remains and were unable to fulfill their promise of bringing justice to her.

After almost 11 months, Jerice Hunter, now 40 years old, was taken into custody by Glendale police detectives for the homicide of Jessie Shockley on September 6, 2012. Interim Glendale Police Chief Deborah Black addressed the media during a press conference held at the Glendale Police Headquarters later that day: “For the past 11 months, the men and women of the Glendale Police Department and our partners from local, state, and federal law enforcement worked tirelessly to accomplish two goals: to find Jessie and to hold the person responsible for her disappearance accountable. We are confident that with the indictment and arrest today, we will achieve our second goal of securing justice for Jessie.”

On Monday, April 27, 2015, Jerice Hunter was convicted of first-degree homicide and CA with regards to Jessie Shockley’s death. Jerice showed no emotion as the verdict was read. She’s currently serving a natural life sentence at the ASPC Perryville Lumley Unit, the same correctional institution that houses infamous killer Jodi Arias. A sentence of natural life means there are no parole hearings, no credit for time served, and no possibility of release.

In a news conference, Jessie’s grandmother, Shirley Johnson, said she believes her granddaughter is still alive and should not be taken off the national missing persons list. She claimed that the media and police didn’t do enough to spread the word and look for the little girl because she is Black. She stated, “Black lives matter just like everybody else. Don’t stop looking for my grandbaby.”

It’s been almost 11 years as of the day of this recording that Jessie was killed, and it’s questionable if she even got the justice that she deserved. Today, Jessie would be 16 years old, and she should be hanging out with friends and doing all of the fun things that normal high school girls get to do. She should be getting her license, she should be playing sports, she should be thinking about prom. But instead, Jessie Shockley is in her final resting place: the Butterfield Landfill, cast aside like the garbage that makes up her grave, and nobody is looking for her any longer.

According to Jessie’s aunt, Lisa Vance, who spoke with news sources last year on the 10-year anniversary of Jessie’s death: “I believe the Glendale police got it right. I think the correct person is in prison.” She said that she misses Jessie every day for the past 10 years, but she believes that she is in heaven.