WEATHERFORD — A Parker County jury returned three life sentences late Wednesday afternoon for convicted kidnapper and rapist Jeffrey Allan Maxwell.

According to testimony presented during the trial, Maxwell abducted former Whitt neighbor Lois Pearson in March 2011 and subjected her to severe beatings, sexual assaults and torture during the 12-day ordeal.

The jury convicted Maxwell on a charge of aggravated kidnapping and two charges of aggravated sexual assault Tuesday and, after about 50 minutes of deliberation Wednesday afternoon, returned three life sentences on the charges, along with accompanying $10,000 fines.

District Judge Trey Loftin stacked the two aggravated sexual assault life sentences, making Maxwell ineligible for release on parole for 60 years.

“I’m proud that it’s all over,” Pearson said shortly after the verdict. “And I feel relieved that he won’t be bothering anybody hopefully, because my greatest fear was that he if he did get out, he would attack another lady. And I don’t think the next lady would live.”

After sentencing him, Loftin told Maxwell that he preyed on the least, lost, little and last and, in the words of a Parker County law enforcement officer, was every parent’s nightmare.



Abduction

Pearson told jurors she’d rejected repeated advances by Maxwell before he moved away from her neighborhood in 2005 but had not seen him since until he showed up at her house in 2011.

Left tied up in her house while Maxwell went outside, bruised and bleeding from an earlier struggle and beating, Pearson escaped and nearly made it to a family member’s driveway when Maxwell chased her down and put her in the cargo area of his vehicle at gunpoint, she told jurors.

Pearson said she made repeated attempts to escape as Maxwell abducted her. When they arrived at his Corsicana home, Maxwell reportedly stripped the woman in his garage and hung her from an iron bar and winch system he described as a hog-cleaning device. As she hung there, he sexually assaulted her while beating her with whips and attaching clamps to her nipples, the woman told jurors.

When Maxwell left the house for a couple hours, according to testimony, he put her - gagged and shackled hand and foot - in a solid wooden box she called “the coffin.”

Maxwell reportedly left her gagged and bound hand and foot, laying on her back the entire day of March 3, the day investigators suspect he burned her house to the ground. She was forced to relieve herself on the bed and bounce up and down to keep some circulation in her fingers, she said.

Maxwell sexually assaulted her for eight days until he became sick, and she underwent other humiliations and abuse during her time in Corsicana, Pearson testified.

Pearson said she believed Maxwell was going to kill her at the end of two weeks but survived by reading a Bible and praying constantly.

While investigating the fire and her disappearance, investigators went to Maxwell’s home in Corsicana on March 12 with a search warrant for his vehicle. There the woman walked out of the house shortly after Maxwell, who had told investigators he had not seen her in years, according to evidence presented to jurors.



Punishment testimony

Witnesses testified Wednesday morning that Jeffrey Maxwell molested two young girls and raped a woman years before he kidnapped and repeatedly sexually assaulted his former Whitt neighbor.  

One woman, a then long-time friend of the family, told jurors Maxwell raped her days before his 1995 wedding after he showed up unexpectedly at her home. Several months later, she reported the incident to police but chose not to pursue charges against Maxwell, she told jurors.

“I didn’t want to go through the humiliation of a court case,” the woman said. The Democrat does not generally identify alleged victims of sexual assault.

Two women, one around 8 years old at the time and another age 10 to 12 years old at the time, also told jurors that Maxwell sexually molested them more than once in the mid-1990s. One woman, who burst into tears as walked into the courtroom, told jurors she made two outcries to school counselors about repeated groping by Maxwell before her mother removed her from the situation.

Jurors were also shown DVDs, books and pictures of many more DVDs, books and other publications found in Maxwell’s Corsicana home dealing with the theme of rape, bondage and torture of women.  

Despite continued objections from Maxwell’s defense attorneys, assistant district attorneys Jeff Swain and Kathleen Catania played many of the recorded portions of investigator interviews with Maxwell, which were redacted for jurors during the initial phase of the trial.

During a couple of interviews, Maxwell admitted to stealing panties from women 30 to 40 times, beginning when he was a teenager and would enter the unlocked homes of neighbor women to take a pair.

Many of the pairs found in his house came from the daughters of his girlfriends, Maxwell told Bradford.

Bradford also probed Maxwell about earlier incidents.

“Ever tried to kill somebody before?” Bradford asked Maxwell during one interview.

There was a long pause before Maxwell answered, “let’s go back to domestic violence,” asking to change the topic of conversation.

Maxwell said he used a stun gun on his former wife Martha Martinez Maxwell. She consented to it, Maxwell said, adding “At first.”

In 1987, Martha Maxwell was found lying beside the road in Oklahoma, hours away from the couple’s Watauga home, severely beaten and her throat slit, according to court documents. She reportedly told investigators he tied her up without her consent following an argument, beat her, attached an electrical shocking device to her nipples and sexually assaulted her.

A Tarrant County grand jury declined to indict Jeffrey Maxwell in the case and Martha Maxwell went missing in 1992. Investigators have said Jeffrey Maxwell has always been the main suspect in her disappearance.

Maxwell opted not to testify on his own behalf during the second phase of the trial and his attorney, Rick Alley, told the court that Maxwell’s two sons refused to testify on their father’s behalf and no witnesses were located to speak in his favor.

In addition to considering sentences of between 5 and 99 years in prison, the jury had the option, because Maxwell had never been convicted of a felony, to give him probation. Maxwell suffers from congestive heart failure, diabetes and kidney failure and dramatically lost weight in the past year, his attorney, James Wilson, told jurors.

“How long is this guy really going to last?” Wilson asked, requesting jurors consider probation.



Reaction

During her victim impact statement, Lois Pearson spoke of some of her losses, including her destroyed home and car, her cats burned alive, her broken shoulder and injured fingers and her belief that Maxwell robbed her of a special reward in heaven by taking her virginity.

However, she ended her statement with a testament to God.

“I want you to know there is a God, and he answered my prayers to spare my life,” Pearson told Maxwell. “It’s a miracle that I am alive.”

Pearson said afterward she felt very relieved after the verdict, saying it was one of her worries that Maxwell would come after her and try to kill her.

The trial was difficult, Pearson said because she is a timid, shy person. Facing him also brought back difficult memories, according to Pearson.

“Yes, I will forgive,” Pearson said after the trial, adding that her religion teaches forgiveness to reach heaven.

Forgiveness releases the other person into God’s hands to deal with and it is no longer her responsibility to deal with, Pearson said.

Pearson also showed compassion for Maxwell.

“I shouldn’t feel sorry for him but he’s lost a bunch of weight,” Pearson said.

Pearson said she has appreciated all the support from her church, her friends, her family and the people of Weatherford.

Assistant District Attorney Jeff Swain said they were pleased with the verdict because Maxwell would spend the rest of his life in prison.

“He’s just evil incarnate, frankly,” Swain said of Maxwell.

One of the most difficult things about the case was the volume of evidence they had to cull down to present to jurors, Swain said.

“We had a lot of evidence that we had of other crimes,” Swain said. “We had to figure out what we could actually prove, what we couldn’t prove and get that all together for the jurors.”

Loftin also awarded Pearson restitution of the $560 Maxwell took from her during her abduction and instructed the county attorney and district attorney offices to begin the process of taking possession of Maxwell’s home through forfeiture as the house itself, along with the winch built into the garage, had become a criminal instrument in the offense.

Maxwell has 30 days to appeal and his attorneys indicated they had tendered notice of an appeal.

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The Daily Sun generally does not identify victims of sexual assault, however Pearson spoke publicly about the incident Wednesday.