LaGrange quintuple homicide: Man pleads guilty but mentally ill

Aug. 13--Family killer Thomas Jesse Lee isn't grinning at the camera anymore.

The 27-year-old who murdered his wife and four others this past January in Troup County, Ga., was weeping and barely audible in a courtroom Wednesday as he pleaded guilty but mentally ill to the homicides in exchange for a sentence of life without parole.

The redhead with a scraggly beard no longer looked like the man people saw on the news when the story first broke: His mugshot then showed a bright smile and a twinkle of mirth in his eyes, a stark contrast to the horrifying crime.

As he sat Wednesday before Troup Superior Court Judge John Simpson, Lee hung his head and cried as first District Attorney Pete Skandalakis and then Simpson asked whether he understood the charges against him and the consequences of his plea.

"I understand," he murmured in response, and when asked his plea, quietly said, "Guilty."

Troup County Sheriff Capt. Mike Caldwell recited the facts of the case:

At 11 p.m. on Jan. 31, deputies were called to check on the welfare of the family at 113 Woodstream Trail, and found no one answered the door. From outside the house they could smell decomposing bodies.

Inside, they found the dead: Lee's wife Christie, 33; his father-in-law William Burtron, 69; mother-in-law Sheila Burtron, 68; stepdaughter Bailey Burtron, 16; and friend Iaonna Green, 18.

But for Bailey, who died of asphyxiation, the victims were shot with a .22-caliber handgun, the rear sight from which officers found in the house, as if it had been dislodged during a struggle.

Lee, who with his wife had been living with her parents, was missing along with a car and the family dog.

Caldwell told the court investigators learned William Burtron wanted to evict Lee because he couldn't hold a job and rarely helped out around the house. His wife and stepdaughter had been welcome to stay, Caldwell said.

Authorities also learned that 10 days earlier, Lee had bought the handgun and ammunition at a local store.

The sheriff's captain said that as authorities tracked Lee's path from Troup County, they learned he hit a deer in Savannah, Tenn., where he removed the tag from the vehicle and abandoned it on Jan. 31.

Also on Jan. 31, he dropped pieces of Green's cell phone in a trash can at a Walmart in Florence, Ala., where he'd been hanging around a church.

On Feb. 1, Lee stayed with a man in Corinth, Miss., where he left his host a note that in part read, "God has let me know that it is all right.... Please pray for me and my family." He was arrested the next day at a bus station in Tupelo, Miss.

When questioned, he told investigators he had bought the gun with the intent of killing himself. But when Bailey walked in on him as he put the gun to his head, he "blacked out," having no memory of what happened next, Caldwell said.

After Lee was returned to Troup County, an Atlanta psychiatrist evaluated him, finding he had "a major depressive disorder with psychotic features," Judge Simpson said Wednesday, afterward ordering the evaluation sealed from public view.

Simpson had asked that no one in the packed courtroom in LaGrange emit any outcry during the proceedings, but many in the audience could be heard sobbing as relatives of the victims testified to how the killings had affected them.

Green's mother Jamie Ortiz said her daughter had planned to join the Army to become a nurse. Now Ortiz will never see Green marry, nor hold a grandchild her daughter had, she said: "All I have left of her is a box of ashes.

Other youngsters in the family looked up to Lee and trusted him, she said, and now they are afraid to trust others, and suffer nightmares and paranoia. They flinch "at every loud noise," and when they seem to have recovered from the trauma, she sees their "fragile strength crumble daily as they have a memory," she said tearfully.

Lee's life in prison will never repair that damage, she told him: "You have taught us that monsters are real."

William Burtron's daughter Brenda Vega first thanked the Troup Sheriff's Office and the prosecutors for their work, saying, "This has affected all of them in some way as well."

She recalled frequent telephone conversations with her father, even casual talk about her car's making a funny noise or showing a warning light on the dashboard -- nothing her father could fix over the phone.

"In my world, in my life, some of those conversations were the best," she said.

Christina Knopp, a cousin, said Christie Lee had hoped to marry a man who was "strong in the Christian faith," and had believed Lee to be that man.

"This has rocked our faith to its core," she told the court, of the victims adding, "I feel like we failed them."

Her tone of betrayal was echoed by Courtney Tucker, Bailey's older sister.

"What gave you the right to think you could play God?" she asked Lee.

She said she last saw her sister on Jan. 8, after an appointment with an eye doctor: Bailey told her dilated pupils looked "freaky," and for a while they sat together watching a court show on TV, "laughing at how crazy people could be."

Then came the day the bodies were found: Relatives went to the house because those inside weren't answering their phones. No one came the door, and the family dog wasn't barking.

Investigators initially thought Bailey was still alive -- that Lee had kidnapped her, Tucker said, but then they found her body, too.

"Our family is forever broken," she said, recalling how Bailey loved to dress up, but never got to go to her senior prom, nor to be a bride.

"All of this has been taken away," Tucker said, later adding, "An older sister should never have to speak at her baby sister's funeral."

Also lamenting what would never occur was the last relative to speak, the Burtron's son Trotsky Quinn: He said he never again would hear his father's corny jokes or wish his mom a happy Mother's Day, and never see his niece graduate high school.

The district attorney told Simpson that the state in consultation with the victims' families had decided to forego seeking the death penalty when the defense agreed to the plea deal. The mental evaluation showed Lee was ill, but still knew right from wrong when he killed the family on Jan. 28, Skandalakis said.

Lee did not make a statement, but had his attorney Jerry Word read one for him. It was brief, and asked only for forgiveness and for prayers that his family will heal.

He faced 11 charges: five counts of malice or intentional murder, one of felony murder, one of aggravated assault and four of using a firearm to commit a crime.

For the first seven, Simpson sentenced him to life without parole, and for the final four of using a gun to commit a crime, the judge sentenced him to a concurrent, additional five years.

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