Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Woman Goes Missing, Body Found, Revealing Photos Surface?
Episode Date: June 4, 2021The New Orleans district attorney has agreed to re-examine the case of Jessica Easterly Durning, a woman found deceased less than a mile from her home. Jessica was reported missing on August 14, 2019,... after her husband, Justin Durning Jr., contacted one of her friends and claimed he couldn’t find his wife. Durning also claimed that Jessica left her cellphone, money, and keys behind at their home. Joining Nancy Grace Today: Maria Creel - Best Friend of Victim Audrey Schmitt - Sister of Victim, Justice4Jessica.org Twitter: @justice4jess_ (underscore), facebook.com/Justice4JessicaEasterly Darryl Cohen - Former Assistant District Attorney, Fulton County, Georgia, Defense Attorney Dr. Bethany Marshall - Psychoanalyst, Marriage and Family Therapist www.drbethanymarshall.com, Jeff Cortese - Former FBI Special Agent, www.jeffcortese.com Joe Scott Morgan - Professor of Forensics Jacksonville State University, Author, "Blood Beneath My Feet" featured on "Poisonous Liaisons" on True Crime Network Leigh Egan - Crime Online Investigative Reporter Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
You know, just before COVID hit, I took my twins to New Orleans. We were there for CrimeCon. We had the best time. We flew in
and we ate our way out.
We ate everything. We saw everything. We did everything.
We listened to the music. We looked at
the people. We went in the shops. The big
easy. right? Not for Jessica Easterly. This beautiful
woman, beautiful on the inside and out, is dead. And I want answers.
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
I'm Nancy Grace.
This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us here at Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111.
With me, an all-star panel.
But first, I want to introduce to you someone that cannot speak for herself today,
Jessica Easterly.
Who is she?
Take a listen to our friend, Tyler Hunt at CrimeOnline.com.
The thing about siblings is that usually you get along or you don't.
Jessica Easterly Durning and her sister Audrey Gutierrez got along.
The pair grew up in Mississippi, but now as adults live in different states. So they spent hours on
the phone or sharing long, encouraging messages on Facebook. But it was those phone calls that
raised an alarm. Those phone calls raised an alarm. You know, when I look at Jessica,
she just looks like everybody's best friend, the best sister you
could ever imagine. I do not want her death to be lost in the sauce, lost in the shuffle,
this file to that department, to this department, to that department, and never any answers. Oh,
no, that is not going to happen.
With me, an all-star panel to make sense of it.
CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter.
You know her well, Lee Egan.
Professor of Forensics, Jacksonville State University.
Author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon.
Death investigator and star of a brand new hit on the True Crime Network, Poisonous Liaisons, Joseph Scott Morgan.
He's been on literally thousands of death scenes.
We're now a psychoanalyst.
Joining us from Beverly Hills, featured in Netflix's brand new hit, Bling Empire,
you can find her at drbethanymarshall.com.
Renowned attorney, trial veteran, former prosecutor turned defense attorney, Daryl Cohen.
The name of his law firm is Cohen, Cooper, Estep and Allen.
He's joining us today, but special guests joining us.
Audrey Schmidt.
Jessica's sister.
She is leading the battle at the forefront. You can find
all her information at justiceforjessica.org. Also with me, Jessica's best friend, Maria Creole. You know, I've studied a lot about Jessica Maria, a lot, Audrey. I know she was a voracious
reader. She would read all kinds of books, everything from cooking to design to Fifty
Shades trilogy, you name it. She loved to laugh. And when she married, she devoted her life to her brand new built in family, including a little girl named Gracie.
Am I right about at least that much, Audrey?
Yes, ma'am.
You are.
And you know, in the pictures of her it's like happiness my grandmother just used to say
when she would look at my picture my grandmother lucy that i named my daughter after she could
just see the devilment coming out even though i'd be smiling in the picture there's just this this
aura coming out of her she She's just so alive.
What about it?
Yes, she was.
She was very happy.
Super happy.
That's why I don't understand what exactly has gone wrong.
First of all, take a listen to this. Last time the friends communicated was by text.
Two days go by with no contact from Jessica.
Creel is worried.
Then comes a Facebook message from Easterly's account.
It was Jessica's husband, Justin Durning, asking if his wife was with her best friend Creel tells NBC's
that she knew then that something terrible had happened straight out to Maria Creel you state
that that's when you knew something was very very wrong when you got a call wanting to know, hey, is Jessica with you? What happened? Yes, ma'am. I was I was very alarmed. Like I felt all of the blood in my body.
Very cold. I don't I don't know how else to express that, but I literally felt a whole chill come over my body when I saw a text from her, but it wasn't from her saying, where is she? And
my boyfriend had just asked me if I had heard back from her since Monday, because we had discussed
what was going on with her because she seemed very panicked when she contacted me on Monday.
So to get a message saying she was missing, I just felt frozen.
You said you got a text from her, but it wasn't from her.
Explain.
It was from her Facebook account, but it was from her husband.
Saying where is she?
Okay.
Saying where is she.
Yes, ma'am.
Joseph Scott Morgan, a death investigator.
What is that sensation?
Because my dad hated heights, and I don't hate them.
I love to go hiking and up mountain trails, but when I'm really high up and I look down,
sometimes I can feel a tingle run down my legs. Or there's times when
I get a chill, like Maria was just describing. Or sometimes, you know, when you hear a certain
thing, the hair will stand up, you'll get a chill on your arm. What is that? Something mental is
happening, but you have a physical reaction. She said her blood went cold.
Yeah, probably flushed face. She could feel herself getting warm all over her body. It's a
yeah, well, cold and hot, too. I mean, I've had these sensations. It's a physiological response
to something that's buried deep within your brain, something that I don't know how to explain it
other than the fact that we have an ability as humans to sense trouble.
We have an ability to sense things that are, I don't know,
kind of pointing to maybe bad news or maybe something kind of ominous or dangerous.
Yeah, and it's foreboding.
Yeah, it is foreboding.
Yeah, absolutely.
What is that, Dr. Bethany? With me from Beverly Hills is Dr. Bethany Marshall. There's a mind-body
connection, but that doesn't explain, it's almost like ESP. You know, you immediately sense
something is wrong. And I've discussed this with Daryl Cohen, trial lawyer, many times
that you have a victim say, I knew right then something was wrong before they could possibly know anything was wrong.
But they do. And to think that she got the Facebook message from the husband,
but it was through her sister's Facebook. I mean, right there, you have a clue that something is not right. Right. She should be using her own Facebook.
Exactly.
Lee Egan, joining me from CrimeOnline.com, investigative reporter.
Just give me the dates and the locations.
Let me get the nuts and bolts down first so I can start a timeline.
Okay, Nancy.
So the last time that Jessica spoke with her best friend Maria and with her sister was August 12th, 2019.
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
Guys, where is Jessica at this point? Her sister, her family, her friends have no idea.
Take a listen to this. She had left everything behind. Her cell phone, car keys, money, and her
ID, all still in the home. Creole calls the New Orleans Police Department to perform a welfare
check at the Durning home. That evening, Jessica's husband files a missing persons report.
So the husband finds missing persons report, the husband, Justin Joseph Durning Jr.
Now, let me understand this correctly. The timeline, Maria Creel, this is Jessica's best
friend, along with Audrey Schmidt, her sister. August 12, you hear from Jessica. Then August 14, you hear from the husband through her Facebook saying, hey, is she with you?
Do I have that timing correct?
Yes, ma'am.
Lee Egan, when was the missing persons report made?
It was made on August 14th after they spoke with, after Maria messaged with Justin.
Okay.
So you two are messaging back and forth.
Audrey Schmidt, when did you get in the mix trying to find your sister?
I didn't find out until around the 17th or 18th. Maria had tried contacting me, but we weren't
friends on Facebook. So I didn't, you know, I didn't see her message. Right. Gotcha. Gotcha.
I'm trying to make sense of everything that we are hearing.
You know, Daryl Cohen, former prosecutor, felony prosecutor, turned defense attorney.
So often we see something almost exactly like this at the beginning of a missing person scenario where everyone's attention is
raised because they simply don't hear from someone. They miss a day. August 12, she hears
from her. August 13, nothing. And then suddenly she realizes something is wrong. You know, to a
lot of people, you think, wow, you didn't hear from her one day. Why are you worried? But it's called, quote, behave routine evidence. I don't mean it's SOP,
standard operating procedure, like ordinary evidence. I mean, it's evidence of someone's
routine. If Jessica Easterly Durning had spoken with her best friend practically every day, Maria, and then she misses.
And then suddenly Maria gets a Facebook from the husband.
Then she knows immediately something's wrong.
You cannot discount that kind of evidence, Daryl Cohen.
Well, something is obviously wrong.
And when you also take into account that all of her items of personal, her driver's license,
et cetera, were found in
the house. You don't just leave without that. If you're going to leave on your own, you have to
take something to make sure that people know that you're somebody, not necessarily who you are,
but if you're checking into a hotel, checking into a motel, going they need ID so at this and you're right Nancy what I do every day
if suddenly then tomorrow I don't do it that's unusual if I don't do it two days in a row
something is wrong so the Facebook post it makes no sense it tells me we've got a problem and it's a major problem. Where is she?
Why?
Why is she gone?
Did somebody take her?
Is there any evidence of breaking or entering into that house where they may have kidnapped her?
Obviously, if there was, we would know that.
But why would they leave everything?
If I could jump in quickly.
Jump in, Bethany.
It's not what we get from people.
It's sometimes what we don't get.
It's the absences. It's not the call that raises people. It's sometimes what we don't get. It's the absences.
It's not the call that raises the alarm. It's the lack of a call. You can feel the emptiness and the
hollowness when somebody is not there. And I think that's what you're talking about. I've had couples
come to therapy and the wife says, I think my husband's having an affair. And I say, why? And
she says, well, he came home 10 minutes late yesterday. And I never
underestimate the level of anxiety the wife might have when the pattern breaks. Patterning is so
important. And that's what Jessica's sister and best friend are talking about, the pattern of all
that daily contact broke. It might seem slight to the viewers, to the listeners, to people who say,
you don't hear from your family for a day.
But we know the patterns of our loved ones.
And when those patterns shift, even slightly, we know something is off.
I'm just taking in what you're saying.
And Maria, I've told Bethany this story before, but my husband travels a lot for his business.
And he calls from the airport.
Then he calls when he touches down.
Then he calls when he gets from the rental car to whatever hotel or meeting he's at that he made it there.
Right.
So he was somewhere in Florida on a deal and he called when he touched down.
But then I didn't hear from him again.
Do you know, I enlisted my friends. We were on the phone until three or four o'clock in the morning.
I just imagine somebody hitting him in the head in a parking lot or carjacking him or,
you know, killing over having a heart attack or choking in his hotel room. Finally, Dee, my friend, found the hotel room.
I called the manager.
Of course, I did not want to disturb him.
But after I threatened them, they did go knock on his door.
He was sound asleep.
He had gotten up that morning at four o'clock to catch the flight and sound asleep
with the cell phone right there. And I was so happy. I didn't even fuss at him. But that one
text missing that one text, I knew that was totally out of the ordinary. So when she doesn't
write you back or call you, you Maria what went through your mind?
I wasn't sure what to make of her not calling me back on the 13th after speaking to her on the 12th
I was a little concerned but you know as adults with active lives, I thought I would hear from her soon enough.
But then when the 14th also proceeded to go by and I didn't hear from her.
And then I think I got a message from her and I opened the message and it's her husband instead.
I immediately was very, very concerned.
All of the hair on my head stood up.
My blood went cold.
I just knew something was very, very wrong.
And another thing that I believe Daryl or Joe Scott brought out, Lee Egan, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter.
Is this correct that her cell phone, car keys, money, and ID are all still in her home?
Nancy, her cell phone and keys were in the home, but her ID was not.
You know, that's curious.
The just SOP, why would you leave without your cell phone or your car keys?
And let me understand something. Audrey
Schmidt, you are Jessica's sister. Where was her car? It was there at the house. So the car is
there. What kind of car does she drive, Audrey? A Range Rover. So driving a Range Rover. And where
was it parked typically? In the driveway. So the Range Rover sitting there big as Ike in the driveway. So the Range Rover sitting there big as Ike in the driveway,
her cell phone is there, her car keys are there, her Range Rover is there, but no Jessica. I mean,
what's the theory here that she set out on foot? So what do we know about her? How can we make
sense of it? If everybody came home and I wasn't here,
they would probably look to see if my favorite tennis shoes are here,
my running shoes, because maybe I'm out jogging or walking.
Is the dog here?
Have I taken him out?
Because if your car's here and all your stuff's here,
the only thing missing is you.
We're talking about a beautiful,
a beautiful young woman on the inside and out
suddenly, seemingly vanishes off the face of the earth,
Jessica Easterly.
But who is she?
Will it give us a clue as to where she is?
Take a listen to our friends at WDSU TV.
By all accounts, Jessica Easterly Durning
was a kind and fun-loving person.
She was a good woman.
One thing she did good,
one thing she did so well,
was she made friends.
That's why her family believes
something went terribly wrong
just about three months ago
when Jessica was reported missing
from her home in Lakeview.
Guys, you're hearing our friends at WDSU TV,
but you're also hearing her dad,
Rick Schmidt, speaking, and you could just
hear his voice cracking. It makes me think of my dad so much, hearing the pain in his voice when
he realizes Jessica is gone. Then the case takes a horrible and unexpected turn. Take a listen to Tyler Hunt, Crime Online.
A week after Easterly was last seen, two of her sisters, Audrey and Amanda, and a cousin traveled to New Orleans.
The plan is to speak with detectives, but they made a stop first in Jessica's neighborhood.
Driving through, they smelled a foul odor and stopped to search on foot about two blocks from Easterly's home.
That's when Audrey found a body dressed in a black tank top, black shorts, and black shoes.
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
Her sisters, Audrey and Amanda, decide to take it upon themselves
to find their sister. Audrey, I am so sorry for what you've been through. I cannot even imagine
finding her body. First of all, you decide you're going on a road trip and you drive with your sister,
Amanda, all the way to New Orleans to look for Jessica. What led you to go look for her yourself?
Well, we decided to kind of scout out places for a future search party.
And when we drove down the road on Kenilworth and Orleans, my cousin Doug, he kind of smelled something.
But he didn't tell us, you know, what he was smelling.
And he got out the car and so you were going very slowly because if
i pass something driving quickly i may not smell it well actually i smell nothing because i had
i can't smell anything but before covid i may not have even noticed it unless i was driving
very slowly so what are you very carefully going through the neighborhood at a slow mph yes ma'am yes we were but why did
you decide to set out on your own with your sister did you feel that no one was searching for her
yes ma'am i did why well because no one was searching for her the nopd didn't search for her
they why i don't know i i don't know what's wrong with them.
I find that very odd.
I don't disbelieve you, but why wouldn't they be out searching for her?
I mean, all the time we cover cases where you've got searches by air, by land, by horseback, by ATV, cadets walking shoulder to shoulder, searching bodies of water.
Why weren't they searching for her? They told us that the reason why there was never a search conducted was because manpower
and the resources.
Okay, I will leave that for later on in our program.
So you take it upon yourself.
What was the husband doing?
I don't know.
He hasn't contacted me.
Well, I don't like that right there.
But that's a whole other can of worms.
So you and your sister, and I think you said your cousin, a male cousin was in the car?
Yes, ma'am.
His name is Doug.
And you're all just driving around the neighborhood.
I mean, what else can you do?
Just start where she was last seen and start looking. You're driving around the neighborhood. I mean, what else can you do? Just start where she was last seen
and start looking or driving around the neighborhood. And what happens?
Well, there's a canal wall there. And my cousin Doug was, me and him was walking along the canal
wall and he smelt something. And so he pointed me in another direction and said, why don't you go search over there?
I found out later it was because he didn't want me to see Jessica if, you know, if he was going to find her.
He thought for sure he was going to find her.
And I was just walking along the railroad tracks and I seen a tarp and I slid down the
rocks and I hit the tarp with my foot and I was just sitting there praying
please don't let that be Jessica and it wasn't but then I I walked about five
feet and there she was she was just laying there in the tree line.
And her knee was black, and at first I thought it was someone was burning wood or something.
Like, my eyes didn't focus.
I didn't know what it was at first.
And I thought, well, that's strange.
Why would somebody be burning wood in the woods? And so then I looked again, and then my eyes focused, and there she was.
I'm so sorry for crying.
Audrey, I want to cry too.
You know, Audrey, what you went through, I want you to speak to Dr. Bethany Marshall for a moment. Our psychoanalyst joining us from Beverly Hills.
You know, Bethany, when my fiance, Keith, was buried at his funeral, I did not want to look at his body in a casket.
And I remember at a distance, I glanced in and I saw just part of his face above the coffin and I passed out.
Of course, I was much younger then
and was not used to seeing dead bodies or crime scenes. And to this day, if I smell carnations,
I get nauseous because when I came to, you know how those funeral home flowers smell, kind of a fake floral smell. And this girl, Audrey, goes out on her own when nobody is looking for her sister.
She goes out with her sister and cousin.
And there they are out there just wandering around on their own.
Nobody's helping them.
And she sees her sister. I mean, how do you get past
something like that in your life, Bethany? Nancy, this is the pure definition of trauma.
First of all, you know, getting that message through Facebook and knowing something's amiss, having to search on your own without the police coming and helping you and then seeing your sister on the ground in the tree line.
Nothing would prepare her, Jessica's sister, to see something like this. It is a trauma scene, much like people who watch the World Trade Center go down or see the
aftermath of a plane accident. Part of what trauma is, is what we see, not just what we experience.
And then she has to think about what happened to her sister. How did the body get there? What
trauma did the sister endure before she was killed, I would suggest that you see a trauma
specialist, somebody who just specializes in treating people who have seen and witnessed
horrific events in their life. Because without that, you might find that you're having flashbacks
to the scene, nightmares, intrusive thoughts, isolation,
numbing. When people are traumatized, anything in the present that reminds them of what happened
in the past is seen as being identical. So even maybe seeing trees, looking at Facebook,
getting a phone call from out of the blue, driving past a police station.
All of these triggers are going to put you straight back to that day where you saw Jessica on the ground and you smelled those smells.
And maybe seeing an EMDR therapist or a trauma specialist would help unlink the present from the past.
Guys, we are trying to get answers in the disappearance and death of this beautiful
woman, beautiful on the inside and out, Jessica Easterly. Take a listen to our friends at WDSU TV.
It's a case that's left Jessica's neighbors and Lakeview residents on high alert after the body
was recovered near the 610 underpass. Everything seems to be hush-hush.
The police don't know anything.
The neighborhood is very upset about it,
and we would really like some answers as to what happened to our neighbor.
And more from DSU.
Monday, the coroner confirmed that a body found a couple of blocks away belonged to Jessica.
The positive ID in this case took more than two months.
This thing would not have taken as long as it has.
It should have laid in the New Orleans sun for a week and a half before her body was found.
Audrey Gutierrez, do we know the COD?
Could you confirm that for me?
Cause of death?
It's undetermined.
Undetermined. Undetermined. But I can tell you this.
She didn't go out and kill herself out in the middle of nowhere and just lie down and die of natural causes.
That did not happen.
This is a homicide.
Now all we have to do is figure out who did it. To death investigator Joseph Scott Morgan, I can't believe that we still don't have
a COD. I can't either, Nancy. We're talking a year or more now downrange from when this tragedy
occurred. And still, we don't have any answers. The only trauma indications that they actually
talked about in public that I can find reference to is trauma to her head and her face. We're
talking about nose and jaw. You're right again. Listen to Tyler Hunt Crime Online.
It would be three months before the body was identified by the Orleans Parish Coroner's
Office as Jessica Easterly Durning.
Two more months pass before the autopsy report is released to the family.
Orleans Parish Coroner's Office finds evidence that Jessica sustained a nose injury as well as a small linear fracture to her jaw around the time she died.
But there is no indication how those injuries might have been sustained.
Both the cause and manner of Jessica's death are undetermined.
Ridiculous. She did not go wander out in the sun and just fall over dead and sustain a fracture
to her nose and jaw three months before an ID. Oh, and oh, absolutely not. Because when Audrey
Schmidt walked up and saw her sister, she knew there that was her sister.
Why did it take them three months before they could ID the body and two more months?
And we still don't have a cause of death. Lee Egan, Crime Online. What's the problem?
Nancy, they are saying it's undetermined. They just cannot figure out whether there was foul play or not, and that's the holdup.
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
I'm trying to figure out what a photo of Jessica's futon and headboard have to do with this.
Audrey, with me, Audrey Schmidt, this is Jessica's sister, also with me, her very best friend, Maria Krill. Why did you send us a photo of Jessica's futon and headboard?
Because he was seen throwing that out after the cops had went to his house to question him.
And a couple hours later, he threw that out and they came by and took forensics of it and that was back in october
of 2020 and we're still waiting on results for that what if anything did you observe
about the futon and headboard anything at all um it was shocking to see it looks like blood
is on there i don't know i'm not an expert, but I mean,
why would you get rid of your futon that was in the bedroom and headboard?
Daryl Cohen, you're the defense lawyer. Why would you? And let me just point out
that the husband has not been named a POI, person of interest. He has not been named
a suspect at all. And let me clear something up before Daryl speaks.
Maria Krill, when was it the husband throws out the headboard?
It was just this past October, so a good 14 months after she had gone missing.
I'm very curious about that.
Go ahead, Daryl.
Nancy, that doesn't bother me.
If he had thrown it out immediately, then it bothers me because it tells me there's forensic evidence on that headboard.
But what I keep coming back to is no one leaves on their own without their cell phone.
Their ID, they may leave.
They may leave their car keys.
But their cell phone is attached at the hip, at the hand, at the ear.
I still have a problem with throwing out the futon.
And was it Maria or Audrey that said there was a substance on the futon and it was tested at the crime lab?
I mean, for all I know, it came back as ketchup.
I don't know.
It hasn't came back yet.
We haven't gotten results on that yet.
And when did they send it into the crime lab?
How long has it been?
Since October 2020.
Well, we always know it takes over a year for anything to come back from any crime lab.
That's ridiculous.
On a good day, that's absolutely absurd.
What about it to you, Joe Scott Morgan?
You're working at the crime lab and with forensics every day.
Yeah, first off, it's nothing to test.
Let's just take the futon, for instance, this soft, malleable fabric.
You're just going to test it for fluids.
And specifically, we're going to be looking for blood or what we think might be blood.
And either you're going to get a positive or negative result.
I'm not even talking about typing, Nancy.
I'm just going to say, look, we've got the presence of blood here.
Now, how do we explain that?
I don't know, but just not to simply have a response. And let me tell you one more thing that's very troubling to
me as a death investigator. It's this headboard. I can't tell you how many cases I've worked over
the years where the headboard has become involved in blood staining, because when you think about head trauma, there could be cast off,
there could be actual radiating spray that comes onto a headboard. So you want to put as much
distance between yourself and that headboard as possible and get it out of this environment
contextually. Because if we go back in and reconstruct this crime scene and it's the head
board, we think the head is adjacent to that. And we see blood on there.
You're damn right.
We're going to be looking at this thing and trying to figure out the dynamics
of what actually happened. I, you know, when I was, you know,
I was floored again, you know, I've covered this initially,
but I was floored again when I heard it was,
I was reminded of this fracture that she had to the jaw.
People talk about getting their jaw fractured periodically.
You'll see it in the news and whatnot. I got to tell you, Nancy,
the jaw itself, the mandible is a very robust bone.
It is difficult to fracture.
You see boxers that sustain tremendous impacts. They don't get
their jaws fractured. It takes specific trauma. It takes directed trauma to fracture that bone.
It's created that way to be very robotic. Yes, it is.
Again, let me say the husband, his name, Justin Joseph Durning Jr., he has not been named a suspect or a person of interest in this case.
I want to go back to Maria Creel, the best friend of Jessica Easterly Durning.
You also got a text from her, something about, I don't know what's going to happen when I go home.
Yes, ma'am, that's correct. She was on Monday afternoon.
She was at a doctor's appointment with her stepdaughter, and she had called me earlier,
and we had made some tentative plans for the following day.
And I, um, I was messaging her about those plans and she called me because while, while
she was away from the home and using her cell phone to contact me through messenger, her
messenger account was also available there at the house via her
tablet um or their or their laptop so she didn't want anything to be um in writing that could be
read from the house while she was away why because you know what would just, I couldn't care less who reads my phone or my iPad.
The twins read it, my husband if he wants to. Anybody can read it. I don't care.
So why did she not want anyone to read what she was writing you?
Nancy, the plans that we had discussed for the morning of the 13th were for me to drive to New Orleans and pick her up for her to come and stay with
me in Alabama.
And if she were...
You mean for a visit?
For a vacation?
No, ma'am.
She was hoping and planning to leave the relationship.
Why? Well, there was a fair amount of chaos and I would even
dare say abuse in the relationship and a whole lot of control going on. And she was just not happy anymore, and she was also very afraid of moving on.
She felt like that would not be met well, certainly not with enthusiasm,
and she was afraid that she would be in danger in attempting to move on with her life and leave the relationship.
Back to Audrey Schmidt.
This is Jessica's sister. Has the husband already started
dating again? I believe so. We have heard that he has. What about it, Maria? Yes, we've, I mean,
you know, I hate to, I hate to call anything a fact when you've heard it secondhand, but we have,
we have been told that he has been seen
with other individuals since she passed.
How soon did he wait before he started dating?
We were made aware of another relationship
as soon as January of 2020,
if I'm remembering correctly.
We're not sure who it was with,
but apparently there was a young lady
being seen in and out of their house.
About four months?
About four months.
Audrey Gutierrez,
what can you tell me about photos of Jessica
that her husband, Justin Durning Jr. released?
Well, after my sister went missing,
before we had found her, he was releasing
videos and pictures of her, you know, naked pictures and saying that if you donate,
then I will send you clothes, shoes, underwear, lingerie of hers. Okay, I really can't even respond to that right now.
I'm just so taken aback.
Of course, Justin Durning Jr., Jessica Easterly Durning's husband, is not a person of interest.
He is not a suspect. Why in the world would he release naked photos and videos
of his now deceased wife, Jessica? I don't get it, Maria Creel. Nancy, we were pretty horrified
just at the level of disrespect, but it goes further than actually just releasing the photos and videos. you know, compensation for the videos as if he were her when, in fact, she was she was just down
the road lying in the sun. Dead, decomposing. I mean, here you've got this guy, Justin Durning,
Jr., Jessica's husband, and he's offering to give away her clothing and her, I guess, what would you say?
Her clothing, her pajamas, her underwear.
What's he offering to sell or give away, Audrey?
He was wanting for donations to help bury her.
Clothes, shoes, lingerie.
You mean underwear?
Yes.
Underwear and bras.
Okay.
But at the same time, Maria Creel,
you're telling me he was, I guess,
disseminating videos of her and photos of her naked
as if she were still alive. Before he revealed to their followers, I guess you would say,
that she was no longer with us, he was still carrying on as if she was alive and well and
active on adult sites and selling videos and photos of her,
or at least attempting to, to people as if nothing was wrong.
Guys, the disappearance and then discovery of Jessica Easterly Durning
has devastated her family.
And again, I don't care what the woman did for a living
we're not here to judge her morally
we're here to solve a crime
help solve a crime and in that vein
is it true Audrey Gutierrez's sister
Maria Creel best friend
you guys have gone online at change.org
and raised over 68,000 signatures to get the case.
Another look?
Yes, ma'am.
Whose idea was that?
It's brilliant.
That would be mine.
Is that Audrey or Maria?
Audrey.
Oh, sorry.
Well, I've got to tell you something.
It's brilliant. It's a it's a sorry day, I might add, when you have to get out there and beat the streets and get people to sign a petition at change.org to get the district attorney to pay any attention.
But the good news is this district attorney, Jason Williams, has reached out and spoken to you, has he not, Audrey?
Yes, ma'am. He has.
And?
He is investigating it.
So what can you tell me about what the District Attorney, Jason Williams,
has said, Audrey and Maria?
Nancy, we actually, we've had a very productive conversation with him, and we're very optimistic.
We don't want to get too far into the details because at this point, we're trying to show some faith in the level of interest that we've been shown.
And it was somebody on your program, Nancy, when we first started this conversation that recommended we reach out to him.
And we really appreciate that guidance.
Well, it was our friend Joe Scott Morgan, death investigator, that actually said that.
And he and I talked about it a great deal off the air.
And I'm glad to hear that the district attorney who says he is the, quote, people's DA, is reexamining the case.
So now let's see if he puts his money where his mouth is.
If you have information, please call Crime Stoppers at 877-903-7867.
There's also the New Orleans Police Department, 3rd District, 504-658-6030.
Let me give you Crime Stoppers again, 877-903-7867,
or go on Twitter at Justice for the number four, Jess, J-E-S-S underscore,
or Justice for Jessica Easterly on
Facebook.
And again, at
CrimeOnline.com, our
crack reporter, Lee Egan, has
reached out to
the husband, Justin Durning
Jr.
Still no response, but oh how I
would love to talk to him.
But I want to be clear.
He's not a suspect.
He's not a person of interest.
Still want to talk to him.
We wait as justice unfolds.
So Jessica Easterly may finally rest in peace.
Nancy Grace Crime Story signing off.
Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.