The jury viewed gruesome crime scene photos on day 2 of Henry Segura’s 2nd murder trial on Wednesday. Segura is accused of killing his ex-girlfriend, Brandi Peters, her six-year-old twin daughters, Tamiyah and Taniyah Peters, and his own son, 3-year-old JaVante Segura.
All four bodies were found in Peters’ Tallahassee, Florida home on Nov. 20, 2010.
A medical examiner testified on Thursday that Brandi Peters, 27, was pistol whipped, beaten with a heavy, round object and shot to death. Evidence shows she fought for her life.
The bodies of her three children were found stacked in a bathtub. Tamiyah was shot in the back of the head and drowned and the other two children were drowned.
Segura was arrested 10 months later in Le Sueru County, Minnesota, where he fled after the murders.
At the time of the murders, Peters was a single, stay-at-home mother. Prosecutors claim the motive for the murders was $20,100 in child support payments Segura owed Peters for the care of his son, JaVante Segura.
Though Segura signed JaVante’s birth certificate, he later claimed Peters told him the boy wasn’t his. He said he was in the process of asking the state to perform a DNA test because he couldn’t afford the several hundred dollars for the test.
In Segura’s first murder trial in 2015, the jury was told his DNA was not found at the crime scene despite his testimony that he had sex with the victim.
The DNA of an unknown female was found under Peters’ finger nails, and the DNA of an unknown male was also present on a door handle, bolt lock, phone cradle, Peters’ purse, and a shovel at the scene.
Additionally, police recovered a mixed DNA sample from the victim’s bedroom phone that was later matched to Angel Avila-Quinones, a member of a Colombian drug cartel who had just been released from federal prison.
Avila-Quinones fled to Italy, where investigators interviewed him but were unable to bring him to the United States due to Italy’s tough extradition laws.
The jury did not hear about the DNA match because the evidence was ruled inadmissible in court. Prosecutors claimed Avila-Quinones left the country in 2009, before the murders.
Kelsey Kinard, Segura’s former cellmate in an Oklahoma jail, testified that Segura confessed to the four murders in 2011.
A judge declared a mistrial when the jury couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict in 2015.
