Jaren Lockhart , 22yrs old, New Orleans, last seen 06/05/12(BODY FOUND)

[texasmom]

http://www.bustedinacadiana.com/2013/04/authorities-will-file-criminal-charges-in-lockhart-slaying/
 
AUTHORITIES WILL FILE CRIMINAL CHARGES IN LOCKHART SLAYING
Thu, Apr 11, 2013


Terry Speaks, left, and Margaret Sanchez right

The Hancock County Sheriff’s Office says it plans to deliver a presentation to the District Attorney’s Office in the next week, making a case for at least one charge against a couple they call “suspects” in the murder and dismemberment of a Bourbon Street dancer.

The remains of 22-year-old Jaren Lockhart washed ashore in Hancock County, Miss., last June. She was reported missing days before her torso washed ashore on a beach.

 ::snipping2::

Neither Sanchez nor Speaks were charged in connection with Lockhart’s death.

However, investigators said the two remain suspects in this case and authorities have been continuing to sift through evidence and speak with witnesses.

Now, they feel they have enough to move forward with a case, but it may not bring a charge of murder. It is possible, instead, that initial charges against Sanchez and Speaks could focus on desecration of a human corpse.

“Our strongest position is an alternative charge other than homicide,” Hancock County Commander and Chief Investigator Glenn Grannan told WDSU. ”I don’t want to discuss just what that is yet, but that’s what we believe. We also have a pretty strong case for homicide. But if we charge them with homicide and I’m not successful with a conviction, then double jeopardy comes into play and I’ll never get another chance.”

In Mississippi, all felony cases must go before a grand jury. Eighteen citizens will decide whether to bring charges — whatever they are — against Sanchez and Speaks. There is no timeline for when that could happen.

After interviewing dozens of people, looking at evidence and reviewing analysis from tidal experts, Grannan said, “These things standing on their own don’t mean a lot, but as everything came together we saw this is a really classic circumstantial case — it’s very good.”

[texasmom]

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=235074109968352&set=a.106982359444195.9755.100003972947852&type=1

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=220360404773056&set=a.134388883370209.31586.100003972947852&type=1

::justice2NJ::

[Sister]

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.401301686588819.112890.100001269726603&type=1

Jaren Ann Lockhart

BUMPED

thank you texasmom for the photos.

[texasmom]

http://www.sunherald.com/2013/06/08/4720519/1-year-later-no-arrests-in-dancers.html

1 year later, no arrests in Jaren Lockhart's death
Published: June 8, 2013 Updated 13 hours ago

By KEVIN McGILL — Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS — It's been a year since pieces of Jaren Lockhart's body began washing up on Mississippi's Gulf Coast and almost that long since two people seen leaving a Bourbon Street strip club with the dancer were named as suspects in her death and dismemberment.

One, Margaret Sanchez, 29, is free. "We think she's somewhere near Las Vegas," says Glenn Grannon, an investigator with the Hancock County, Miss., Sheriff's Office.

The other, Christopher Speaks, 40, is in a federal prison awaiting his December 2014 release after a guilty plea for failing to register as a sex offender in North Carolina.

Neither has been charged in Lockhart's death, but authorities say they remain the chief suspects.

 

Except for the way it ended in death, the story of Lockhart appears familiar to that of other young women who dance at French Quarter strip clubs, says social worker and former New Orleans Police Department employee Cecile Tebo, who at one time was helping pregnant women, including strip club dancers, put children up for adoption.

"They had found this an easy, flexible way to make money," she said. "Many of my girls did have a background of trouble but they were pretty doggone mature."

She also says they're typically street-smart. "A lot of the dancers I worked with were pretty protective of themselves," Tebo said.

But Lockhart may have let her guard down when she left Temptations with two strangers after her June 5, 2012, shift ended. Police said her boyfriend, who lived with her at a rundown motel in an area known for crime and drug trafficking, reported her missing the next day.

On June 7 and over the following days, authorities investigated reports of body parts washing ashore in Hancock and Harrison counties in Mississippi. Distinctive tattoos and body piercings helped identify the remains as those of Lockhart. Her wounds included a stab to the chest, but the weapon has not been found and police even now are withholding information on her exact cause of death.

Studies of Gulf currents at the time indicate the body was dumped somewhere off the Mississippi coast, Grannan said.

Still, it remains unclear where she was killed and exactly where the body parts were disposed of.

 

Grannon and police in Kenner, La., the New Orleans suburb where Sanchez and Speaks lived, say evidence has been turned over to the forensics experts at the FBI. Grannon says some came from the house, some from the car in which the two were arrested last June. He declined to discuss the type of evidence except to say there wasn't much of it.

"We're certainly dealing with two areas that were cleaned up and cleaned up very well," he said.

Aside from homicide charges, Grannon said authorities are considering lesser charges, such as the illegal disposing of the body. "We're looking at these alternative charges because, you know, maybe if we can get them back incarcerated maybe we have an opportunity to visit with them again," he said.

He acknowledges frustration in the case - frustration stoked by a video that turned up last year: an ABC television show about Adriane Hall, who was murdered and dismembered in her French Quarter apartment in 2006 by her boyfriend, who later killed himself. That show included a 2011 interview of their friend, Margaret Sanchez.

"I can imagine, just, shock. 'What am I going to do? Get rid of the body.' That would be anybody's first thought," Sanchez said at one point of the program, which interspersed re-enacted scenes from Hall's life with interviews of police and people who knew her.

New Orleans police have never publicly connected Sanchez to the Hall killing. The boyfriend who killed himself confessed to the murder in a suicide note.

But Sanchez's comments on the Hall case strengthen Grannan's belief that she was capable of such a crime.

"It'll really spook you if you listen to it close," said Grannan. "It'll spook you."

Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/2013/06/08/4720519/1-year-later-no-arrests-in-dancers.html#storylink=cpy

[texasmom]

http://wgno.com/2014/05/08/a-confession-new-gruesome-details-emerge-in-the-jaren-lockhart-murder-investigation/

A Confession & New Gruesome Details Emerge In The Jaren Lockhart Murder Investigation

05/08/14
by Vanessa Bolano
Weekend Anchor & Reporter
Death of Bourbon Street dancer Jaren Lockhart

KENNER, La. (WGNO) - Roughly two weeks after Kenner Police take over the Jaren Lockhart murder investigation involving the murder and dismemberment of a New Orleans mother an arrest has been made, and new details about the gruesome murder are emerging.

Kenner Police Chief Steve Caraway says 30-year-old Margaret Sanchez has been booked with second degree murder and obstruction of justice.

“That pertains to the dismemberment. The cutting up of the body and throwing the body into the Gulf,” explains Kenner Police Chief Steve Caraway.

Sanchez and her suspected accomplice Terry Speaks were the last known people to see Lockhart alive. The three were seen on surveillance video leaving a Bourbon Street club together.

Chief Caraway now says Speaks has confessed to the crime saying he and Sanchez killed Lockhart, cut her up, and disposed of her. According to Chief Caraway, Lockhart agreed to leave with Speaks and Sanchez after they offered to pay her to party and have an encounter with the two. As to what went wrong, that is still a mystery.

“At this point obviously he has not been charged. He is in custody in New York,” says Chief Caraway.

Chief Caraway says the confession did not lead to Margaret Sanchez’s arrest. Instead, he says new witnesses and technology played a major role.

“The license plate recognition cameras, the same cameras we use to catch vehicle thieves, you know, picked them up coming into Kenner shortly after they left New Orleans,” says Caraway, “Then sometime later they were picked up going to Mississippi and then returning here from Mississippi after staying in Mississippi for just a brief time.”

 

The cameras are often used for amber alerts. Chief Caraway says he doesn’t believe Lockhart was kidnapped. Instead he says, “They selected this person, Jaren Lockhart, and decided she was the person that they wanted to go with them.”

Terry Speaks is in custody in New York on  unrelated charges.

Chief Caraway also tells WGNO whoever dismembered Lockhart tried to remove pieces of tattoo covered skin so that authorities could not identify her, but they were not successful.

[texasmom]

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2014/05/new_details_emerge_in_jaren_lo.html

New details emerge in Jaren Lockhart's murder and dismemberment case

By Paul Purpura, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

on May 27, 2014 at 1:41 PM, updated May 28, 2014 at 1:31 AM

Detectives investigating the murder and dismemberment of Bourbon Street dancer Jaren Lockhart say two federal inmates in New York provided information that helped them link the crime to a Kenner couple, according to testimony Tuesday.

That information in large part was used by the Kenner Police Department earlier this month to book Margaret Sanchez, 30, with second-degree murder and obstruction of justice in the two-year-old murder investigation. Sanchez was arrested May 7, at her parents' home in Metairie.

Sanchez, a petite woman whose short brown hair reveals a tattoo of a dragonfly on the nape of her neck, appeared in the 24th Judicial District Court Tuesday morning, for a hearing sought by public defender Raul Guerra, to test whether police have enough evidence to continue holding her in jail. She did not testify.

After hearing testimony from two detectives, Commissioner Patricia Joyce found police have sufficient evidence to continue holding her on both charges. Police think Sanchez and Terry Speaks, 41, who was described during the hearing as her husband, killed Lockhart on June 6, 2012, and obstructed justice by cutting up her body in an effort to eliminate evidence.

Police say Lockhart, 22, who was a dancer at Temptations Gentlemen's Club, accepted an offer from Sanchez and Speaks, on June 6, 2012, to leave with them for a party or sex in exchange for money. Most of Lockhart's body parts were found along the Mississippi Gulf Coast the following day.

 

Specific details

It was at the Otisville facility that two inmates volunteered that Speaks made incriminating statements, Kenner police Detective David Stromeyer testified. Neither inmate was identified, but both are seeking deals with the government in exchange for their information, detectives said. One provided "generic" information, while the second one gave specific details on what Speaks allegedly said, Stromeyer testified.

The informants told authorities that Speaks said he and his wife picked up a stripper at a Bourbon Street club, and used drugs and alcohol as they drove to a place near an airport, Stromeyer said. At the time Lockhart was killed, Sanchez and Speaks lived in a Connecticut Avenue home near Louis Armstrong International Airport, detectives said.

Speaks told one of the inmates that Sanchez and the victim got into a fight, "and that the female ended up dead," Stromeyer testified.

The inmate did not say who killed Lockhart. She died from a single stab wound to her chest, Hancock County Detective Steve Saucier testified.

Neither Sanchez nor Speaks has given statements to police incriminating themselves or each other, the detectives said. Sanchez acknowledged she and Speaks were at the club, and that they left the club. She remembered nothing after that, Saucier testified.

Speaks offered a similar statement, including that he was with Sanchez all evening, the detective testified. "He remembers everything up to the point of getting into the vehicle when they left the French Quarter that night," Saucier testified.

'Cleaned up the mess'

However, after FBI agents and Hancock County detectives interviewed Speaks at the New York prison last year, Speaks wrote an email to Sanchez on the night of July 5, Stromeyer testified. The content was circumstantial but highly suggestive, and it included Speaks angrily telling Sanchez that he "cleaned up the mess," but she was not jailed, that their use of drugs as an excuse would not work, and that more than one person's bodily fluids were in her panties. He appeared to threaten he would turn her in.

In another email, Speaks told Sanchez "the night in question was a very special night for them," Stromeyer said.

The detective also said authorities have other suspects. He did not elaborate.

The detectives conceded Tuesday that they have no physical evidence, including DNA, that links Sanchez to Lockhart. Detectives said the FBI is still analyzing evidence at its laboratory in Quantico, Va., and Jefferson Parish Assistant District Attorney Doug Freese said the investigation is ongoing.

Detectives found evidence that Sanchez's car was cleansed, Saucier said. From the Connecticut Avenue home in Kenner, detectives seized a rope, videos, a video camera, a mattress and drain pipes. The detectives said a substance that might be blood was found on a mattress, floorboards and an electrical outlet in a bedroom. Saucier said he knows of "at least three knives and one sword" that also are undergoing testing by the FBI.

'Make rent'

Sanchez and Speaks had gone to two French Quarter gentlemen's clubs, asking numerous dancers to leave with them, Saucier testified. "Everyone they asked declined their offer," Saucier testified.

Sanchez and Speaks found Lockhart, who told coworkers before leaving she was going "to go work a private party not sanctioned by the club," Saucier testified. She also told coworkers "that she was going to, quote, 'make rent,'" Saucier testified, suggesting she was going to earn money.

The trio left the club at 2:05 a.m., Saucier testified. Surveillance cameras at two other locations in the French Quarter captured images of Lockhart accompanied by Sanchez and Speaks, Saucier testified.

About 23 minutes later, Sanchez's green Chevrolet Lumina was at Veterans Memorial and Williams boulevards in Kenner, according to data police obtained from a license plate recognition camera at the intersection, Saucier testified.

At 10 a.m., about eight hours after leaving Bourbon Streets, Speaks dropped Sanchez off at her job, Saucier testified, citing statements from Sanchez's coworkers. "They both appeared tired, dirty, and they smelled really bad," Saucier said.

At 6 p.m., that evening, Speaks picked up Sanchez from her job. Speaks also dropped off his dog with a coworker, Saucier testified. Sanchez's car then crossed the state line into Mississippi on Interstate 10 at 9:34 p.m., and crossed back into Louisiana on I-10 at 11:51 p.m., Saucier said, citing license plate recognition cameras.

He said Speaks and Sanchez could have driven the route to Long Beach within the time frame the license plate cameras marked their entry and exit from Mississippi on I-10.

On June 7, 2012, beach restoration workers found the torso on Bay St. Louis' shore, Saucier testified. Her head was severed, as were her legs at the hips and her arms at the elbows, the detective said. Skin also was removed, from areas of the body matching where Lockhart had tattoos, Saucier testified. Police suspect the killers were trying to hide the victim's identity, which is the basis of Sanchez's obstruction of justice charge.

Other body parts washed up between Long Beach and Pass Christian, the detective testified. The arms were not found. Detectives tracked the body parts to Lockhart, because they fit the description that her boyfriend provided when he filed a missing person's report on June 6, Saucier testified. DNA confirmed the identity, he said.

Using tidal information used by University of Southern Mississippi marine biologists, detectives believe the torso was tossed from the Bay St. Louis Bridge, and the other body parts were tossed into the Gulf near Long Beach and Pass Christian, Saucier testified. Items of Lockhart's clothing also were found in Mississippi, he said.

Questioned by Guerra, the public defender, Saucier said that opiates were found in Lockhart's remains through toxicology tests done during the autopsy, but the pathologist ruled out a fatal overdose. Police sought to determine her location through her cell phone, but it was turned off "immediately prior to arriving in Kenner," Saucier testified.

[texasmom]

http://blog.gulflive.com/mississippi-press-news/2014/05/margaret_sanchez_suspect_in_ja.html



This photo provided by the Kenner Police Department shows Margaret Sanchez, arrested Wednesday, May 7, 2014 in connection with the death of Bourbon Street dancer Jaren Lockhart. Lockhart’s dismembered body parts washed onto beaches in Mississippi in June 2012, days after she was reported missing. (AP Photo/Kenner Police Department)

[texasmom]

http://www.wlox.com/story/25623551/murder-suspect-in-jaren-lockhart-case-goes-before-a-judge

Murder suspect in Jaren Lockhart case goes before a judge
Posted: May 27, 2014 4:41 PM CST Updated: May 28, 2014 5:53 AM CST
By Michelle Lady - bio | email

KENNER, LA (WLOX) -

During a preliminary hearing Tuesday morning, Margaret Sanchez's attorney told a Louisiana judge Sanchez was at work when Jaren Lockhart was brutally murdered. However, Hancock County deputies and Kenner Police investigators were able to convince the judge otherwise.

Detectives who took the stand did admit there is currently no physical or DNA evidence to link Sanchez to the crime. But investigators told the judge they have enough other evidence to show Sanchez was with Terry Speaks when Lockhart was murdered.

 

For the first time, investigators talked about an email Speaks sent to Sanchez after he was interviewed by detectives in jail. Speaks reportedly told Sanchez, "I did everything to clean up the mess you made."

Investigators also told the judge surveillance video shows Lockhart leaving a night club with both Speaks and Sanchez. License plate recognition cameras tracked Sanchez and Speaks's car from New Orleans to Kenner, and later to Mississippi.

All the evidence contradicted the defense's story that Sanchez was at work when Lockhart was murdered.

 

Terry Speaks has not yet been charged in Lockhart's murder.

"I don't know why, but it seems that will be forth coming shortly," Raspanti said. "The sounds of their case he has implicated as much as she is."

Speaks remains in a New York prison for failing to register as a sex offender. Louisiana authorities have a hold on Speaks for charges unrelated to the murder, so officials said he will not be going anywhere.

The next step in the case against Sanchez is for prosecutors to prove to a grand jury there is enough evidence to indict her and send the case to trial.

[texasmom]

http://www.wafb.com/story/25620285/judge-rules-probable-cause-to-hold-suspect-in-jaren-lockhart-murder-case

Judge rules probable cause to hold suspect in Jaren Lockhart murder case

Updated: May 27, 2014 11:38 AM CST
Written by: FOX8Live.com Staff - email

GRETNA, LA (WVUE) -

At a Tuesday morning hearing, a judge in Jefferson Parish determined probable cause for Margaret Sanchez, 30, to be held on a charge of 2nd degree murder and obstruction of justice in the death of Jaren Lockhart, who was 22 years old at the time of her death.
     
The attorney for Sanchez said there is no physical or DNA evidence linking her to the murder. He claims the crime could have been committed by Terry Speaks, 41, who was with Sanchez when Lockhart disappeared.

License plate cameras picked up his car going to Mississippi a few hours after Lockhart got off of work.

Speaks was listed at the same address as Sanchez in June 2012. He is still a suspect in the case.

Speaks is in prison for failing to register as a sex offender. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website, he's being held in Otisville, New York, and is due for release in October.

 

[texasmom]

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2014/05/friends_relatives_of_jaren_loc.html

Arrest in Jaren Lockhart's murder, dismemberment brings solace to loved ones

By Michelle Hunter, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on May 07, 2014 at 4:02 PM, updated May 08, 2014 at 5:13 PM

One month before the grim two-year anniversary of Jaren Lockhart's murder and dismemberment, relatives and friends of the young New Orleans mother received some good news: authorities finally made an arrest.

"We're just over-the-moon happy, today," said Alice Maxwell Swain, 48, a close family friend of Lockhart's. "It's closer to justice. It's the news we've been waiting for."

Authorities on Wednesday (May 7) arrested Margaret Sanchez, 30, in Metairie, and booked her with second-degree murder in Lockhart's death, said Sgt. Brian McGregor, spokesman for the Kenner Police Department.

Sanchez and Terry Speaks, 41, a federal prisoner picked up on an unrelated charge after the murder, have long been suspects in the grisly case. It was unclear if prosecutors were pursuing a case against Speaks, as authorities released no information about him.

Kenner police are expected to provide more details about the investigation during a news conference at 10:30 a.m. Thursday.

Swain had not yet spoken to Lockhart's mother as of Wednesday morning. But Lockhart's brother, Lance, expressed his joy in a Facebook post, saying woke up to most wonderful news. "I knew it would happen all in time. God doesn't sleep," he wrote.

 

The Hancock County Sheriff's Office in Mississippi had handled the murder investigation after the discovery of Lockhart's remains. The small department devoted overtime and even worked without pay to investigate the case and find Lockhart's killers.

"We had hundreds of hours of investigative time on this case," Hancock County Sheriff Ricky Adam said. "We had detectives in the French Quarter interviewing people night after night in the months following."

Investigators quickly identified Sanchez and Speaks as suspects. Authorities arrested the pair on June 13, 2012, in Tangipahoa Parish on unrelated charges. But detectives didn't have enough evidence to hold them in connection to Lockhart's murder.

 

The manner of Lockhart's death and the mutilation of her body motivated Mississippi detectives investigating the case, Adam said. The department met with Mississippi prosecutors to inquire about charges for the pair.

"It was the district attorney's opinion, and ours, too, that she wasn't killed here," Adam said. The department looked into any charges they could bring, even desecration of a human body, but the case law proved too complicated.

That's when the department turned to Kenner police and the Jefferson Parish district attorney's office. Mississippi investigators felt Jefferson Parish was the more appropriate venue for prosecution because they suspected Lockhart was murdered in Kenner, possibly at Sanchez's former Connecticut Avenue home.

"We're pleased that Kenner moved forward with the case," Adam said.

Good news for some

During the investigation, Hancock County detectives formed close ties with Lockhart's relatives and friends. Swain said she first learned of Sanchez's arrest after seeing a post on Facebook Wednesday morning from a detective on the case. She called her daughter, Andrea Maxwell Swain, 21, another close friend of Lockhart's.

"I've been crying since I found out. We've all been waiting for this day," Andrea Maxwell Swain said.

Lockhart lived off and on with the Swains for a few years. Alice Maxwell Swain described her as a bright, loveable and happy person.

"I miss her laugh the most of all. She had one of those blaring, infectious laughs. Once you heard it, you couldn't help but laugh, too," she said.

Lockhart's now 5-year-old daughter, Rylie, lives with her grandmother and is just as bubbly and spunky as her mom, Alice Maxwell Swain reports. She is a cheerleader who takes dance classes and keeps a photo book filled with pictures of Lockhart.

"She knows her mom is in heaven. She doesn't know the rest," Alice Maxwell Swain said. "She gets us all through, just to be able to look at her smile."

While Lockhart's friends and family are comforted by the news of a suspect's arrest, some of Sanchez's relatives were saddened by the latest development in the case. Courtney Odor, another close friend of Lockhart's, also has ties to Sanchez's mother and brother.

"It broke her to pieces," Odor said of Sanchez's mother.

It was Sanchez's mother who called police in Tangiaphoa Parish back in June 2013 to notify them that her daughter and Speaks had sought refuge her home, according to Odor. "She wanted to do the right thing so she turned Margaret over to the police," Odor said.

Sanchez was staying with another relative when authorities took her into custody in Metairie on Wednesday. No one answered the door at the Phlox Avenue home Wednesday afternoon.

Though relieved by the arrest, Alice Maxwell Swain expressed disappointment, not just for Lockhart, but for Sanchez, who is also a mother.

"It's sad, but they're grownups, and they make their own choices in life," Alice Maxwell Swain said. "I just didn't think it was fair that she could live life everyday, not having any repercussions."

[MuffyBee]

Thank you for the updates texasmom. 

I hope all parties that took any part in the crimes against Jaren face justice.

Waiting for justice for Jaren.   

[texasmom]

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/2nd-arrest-warrant-in-dismemberment-of-new-orleans-dancer/

ByCrimesider StaffCBS/AP
June 13, 2014, 2:10 PM
2nd arrest warrant in dismemberment of New Orleans dancer

KENNER, La. - Police have issued a second arrest warrant in connection with murder and dismemberment of French Quarter dancer, Jaren Lockhart, reports CBS affiliate WWLTV.

Kenner Police announced an arrest warrant for Terry Speaks, 41, for second-degree murder and obstruction of justice. Margaret Sanchez, 30, is also charged with second-degree murder and obstruction of justice in the case. She was arrested in May and is in the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center.

Speaks is currently in federal custody in Otisville, N.Y. on an unrelated charge, but he is scheduled to be released from the prison in October.

 

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that a detective in the case testified that inmates at the prison where Speaks is currently incarcerated provided authorities with information about incriminating statements Speaks allegedly made regarding the case.

According to the paper, the detective testified that the inmates - who were not identified - said Speaks told them that he and Sanchez used drugs and alcohol with Lockhart, and that she died after getting into a fight with Sanchez. The paper reports that another detective testified that Lockhart died from a single stab wound to the chest. But the inmates reportedly did not specify whether Speaks said who killed Lockhart.

The Times-Picayune also reports that police believe Speaks and Sanchez got Lockhart to leave the club with them for a "private party" in exchange for money.

Kenner Police Chief Steve Caraway said that Speaks will be extradited to Louisiana for the murder charge and obstruction of justice, as well as failing to register as a sex offender.
CBS/AP

[texasmom]

http://www.wdsu.com/news/local-news/new-orleans/suspects-indicted-by-grand-jury-in-jaren-lockhart-killing-dismemberment/27486174

Suspects indicted by grand jury in Jaren Lockhart killing, dismemberment
Margaret Sanchez, Terry Speaks indicted on charges of murder, obstruction of justice

UPDATED 6:42 PM CDT Aug 14, 2014

KENNER, La. —Two suspects in the death and dismemberment of Jaren Lockhart were indicted by a Jefferson Parish grand jury Thursday.

Margaret Sanchez, 30, and Terry Speaks, 41, were each charged with second-degree murder, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Speaks is currently being held in a New York state prison for failing to register as a sex offender.

He was set to be released in October, but the indictments will quash that action.

He and Sanchez were arrested in 2012 in a traffic stop, but were not charged in Lockhart’s death. The investigation has moved slowly since that time, with the lead responsibilities transferred earlier this year to the Kenner Police Department.

Lockhart was reported missing in June 2012. Her remains washed ashore along Mississippi beaches days later.

Sanchez and her boyfriend, Speaks, were the last known people to see Lockhart alive. The two were spotted on surveillance video entering a gentlemen's club where Lockhart worked. Lockhart was seen leaving with the couple.

 



http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2014/12/defendants_confession_in_bourb.html

Attorney wants confession barred in Bourbon Street dancer Jaren Lockhart's death and dismemberment case

By Paul Purpura, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on December 02, 2014 at 1:24 PM, updated December 02, 2014 at 1:36 PM

The attorney representing Terry Speaks, the former Kenner resident accused of killing and dismembering Bourbon Street dancer Jaren Lockhart, wants to bar prosecutors from using his client's purported confession.

Speaks, 42, and his former girlfriend Margaret Sanchez, 30, each is charged with second-degree murder, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice, in the June 6, 2012 death of Lockhart, 22. They have pleaded not guilty.

A chief piece of evidence authorities say ties Speaks to the crime is the confession he gave to two inmates while he was confined at a federal prison in Otisville, N.Y., in connection with an unrelated sex crime. Speaks finished serving that sentence and was extradited to Jefferson Parish in October to stand trial in Lockhart's death.

Speaks told one of those inmates that he and his wife picked up a stripper at a Bourbon Street club, used drugs and drove to a place near an airport, a Kenner police detective testified during a preliminary examination in May. There, according to one of the inmates, Speaks said his wife and the victim got into a fight, and the victim died.

That scenario jibes generally with how authorities believe the homicide played out. Lockhart left her job at Temptations Gentleman's Club, in the 300 block of Bourbon Street, and accompanied Speaks and Sanchez to the Connecticut Avenue home they shared in Kenner, near Louis Armstrong International Airport.

 

Del Rosario and Speaks were assigned to the same cell "to live together." Benz further asserts that Del Rosario was acting as "an employee or agent of the state," and so should have advised Speaks of his rights against self-incrimination.

As such, Speaks' alleged confession was illegally obtained and so cannot be used as evidence, Benz wrote. The prosecutors have not formally responded to Benz's allegations. A hearing is set for Dec. 12. The case is pending before Judge Stephen Grefer of the 24th Judicial District Court.

A trial date has not been set, but prosecutors already have announced their intent to try Speaks and Sanchez separately. They have not said publicly which one will stand trial first.

Speaks is held in the parish jail in lieu of a $1.75 million bond. Sanchez also is in the jail, but with a $1.5 million bond.


http://blog.gulflive.com/mississippi-press-news/2014/12/judge_rules_inmate_testimony_n.html

Judge rules inmate testimony not allowed in case of dismembered stripper

GRETNA, Louisiana -- A state judge has denied a request that he order an inmate at a federal prison in New York to be brought to the Jefferson Parish Courthouse to testify in the case of the death and dismemberment of Bourbon Street strip club dancer Jaren Lockhart.

The attorney for Terry Speaks, who is charged with second-degree murder in the case, wants a court order barring prosecutors from using an alleged conversation Speaks had with his cellmate at a federal prison in Otisville, N.Y., last year.

Speaks was serving a sentence there for an unrelated offense when authorities say he discussed the Lockhart case with the cellmate.

NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune reports that defense attorney John Benz wanted the cellmate brought to Jefferson Parish for questioning. The judge refused.

 

[texasmom]

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2015/01/in_bourbon_street_dancer_jaren.html

In Bourbon Street dancer's dismemberment, defendant Margaret Sanchez denied knowing the slain woman

By Paul Purpura, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on January 14, 2015 at 8:28 AM, updated January 14, 2015 at 5:46 PM

Five days after Bourbon Street dancer Jaren Lockhart's torso washed up on a Mississippi beach, Margaret Sanchez told detectives she knew nothing about the woman or the details of the killing. She said that on the morning police think Lockhart was fatally stabbed, she was in Kenner, vomiting and defecating throughout her house because of "bad shrimp" she ate the night before.

Her statements were made during an interrogation 2 1/2 years ago, and a transcript of the interview was filed into the court record Monday as Sanchez and co-defendant Terry Christopher Speaks near trial. The transcripts and other documents provide the public with the first look at the early stages of the Lockhart homicide investigation and Sanchez's initial response to being a suspect.

Lockhart, 22, was last seen leaving her job at Temptations Gentlemen's Club in the French Quarter early on the morning of June 6, 2012. Known by her stage name, Riot, she told co-workers she was "going to make rent," by dancing for pay at "a private party," according to a search warrant application.

Now Sanchez, 30, and Speaks, 42, are jailed in Jefferson Parish on charges of second-degree murder, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice. They're accused of killing Lockhart with a 4-inch-deep stab wound to her chest in their Connecticut Avenue home and trying to hide the crime by cutting up her body and discarding the pieces into the Gulf of Mexico.

When detectives first interviewed her on June 12, 2012, Sanchez indicated she didn't know Speaks by that name. She knew the man as Leslie Allen Rice and called him Allen, and she alternately described him as her husband or boyfriend, whom she had met about four months earlier and who took care of her emotional needs. The detectives told her he wasn't who she thought he was.

"He's supposed to be my husband," Sanchez told detectives. "But I guess he's not my husband, because I'm being told that Allen isn't even his real name."

The couple emerged as "persons of interest" in the Lockhart investigation shortly after the dancer vanished, according to court records. According to a search warrant application, a doorman at Temptations told investigators the morning after Lockhart disappeared that the "topless dancer" had left with Allen Rice, a former employee of Stiletto's next door.

Detectives obtained employment information and learned Speaks "had assumed another person's identity through fraudulent means," according to the application. From security video at Temptations, police could see him entering the club with a woman on the night Lockhart disappeared.

Police released a segment to the news media, hoping to identify the man and women. Sanchez's brother saw it, recognized his sister and called the police, according to the warrant application. He also identified Speaks, but as Allen Rice.

The couple was arrested during a traffic stop in Tangipahoa Parish on June 12, 2012, because of what Sanchez told investigators was her failure to signal a turn. In fact, according to law enforcement documents, police were already seeking the couple in the Lockhart investigation and received a tip that they were in the Loranger area. Sanchez was booked with harboring a fugitive, because Speaks was a convicted sex offender from North Carolina who had violated his probation there. Police later determined he had not registered his criminal record in Jefferson Parish when he moved to Kenner in early 2012, leading to his being charged with failure to register as a sex offender.

During an interview with Hancock County Sheriff's Office detectives who traveled to Tangipahoa that day, Sanchez said she was aware of Bourbon Street dancer's death. She said it was similar to the death and dismemberment of her friend Addie Hall, who was killed by boyfriend Zach Bowen before he committed suicide in 2006 in the French Quarter.

'I don't even remember that girl'

However, Sanchez denied knowing Lockhart. That contradicts assertions made by several former Bourbon Street workers, who told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune last year that the two women and Speaks knew each other.

Sanchez admitted that she and Speaks had been at Temptations, having drinks, when she met "a girl" who was seeking crystal methamphetamine. She said she escorted the girl to Stiletto's next door, for introduction to a stripper called Twacky Tracy. Tracy's boyfriend was a meth dealer known as Mid-City Charles, Sanchez told the detectives.

"I don't even remember what the girl that I was with looked like," Sanchez said. "I couldn't tell you she had short hair. I couldn't tell you if she had long hair. I couldn't tell you if she was tall or short or fat or skinny. I couldn't tell you any of that."

Sanchez said she parted ways with the girl at Stiletto's and, ill because of the shrimp she had eaten, drove home to Kenner with Speaks. She said that despite her illness, she drove, because Speaks did not have a license.

The detectives, John Luther and Glenn Grannan, were skeptical. They cited business surveillance video showing Speaks, Sanchez and Lockhart walking together blocks from Temptations and Stiletto's. "I don't remember any of that," Sanchez told the detectives.

"Well, we know," Grannan replied. "You better get a memory quick, because you're in trouble."

The detective continued pressing: "A young lady, a young lady is dead. The young lady that you left the barroom with has been murdered."

Sanchez replied, "Is that the girl I keep hearing about, that everybody keeps telling me about from the news?

"Yes," Grannan replied. "Do you understand that you left, you and Allen left the bar with her, OK?"

"I felt so bad for her family, because I had a friend, my friend was Addie Hall," Sanchez said. "She was cut up and was cooked, and her boyfriend jumped off a hotel."

The detectives asked her straight up who killed Lockhart. She said she didn't know. "I think you do," Luther said. "I think you know Allen did it."

Sanchez continued denying it. She said she remembered only that she and Speaks were in her car returning to Kenner from the French Quarter. She reiterated that she was ill from the shrimp that night.

Ill all night

At their home, she said, she was ill all night, and Speaks cared for her, giving her water and cleaning her vomit and defecation from the floor. She recalled no one else being in the house.

Later in the morning, after no sleep, she went to work. She said Speaks drove her to her job at Treasure Isle, a bar on Downman Road in eastern New Orleans. She said they arrived about 10:30 a.m., and Speaks left in a 2001 Chevrolet Lumina, registered to Sanchez' father. About 6 p.m., she got off work. Speaks picked her up, and they returned to Kenner, she said.

Because her uncle was evicting the couple from their home, Sanchez said they needed to give away their dog, Logan. She said they met with Speaks' former boss in a Winn-Dixie parking lot in Kenner at 9:30 p.m., where they gave the woman the dog.

There were two problems with that statement. Speaks' former boss had told police that Sanchez and Speaks gave her the dog that morning, not that night. And at 9:34 p.m. and 41 miles away from Kenner, a license plate camera on Interstate 10 had recorded the Chevy Lumina heading east near the Gause Boulevard exit in Slidell, police said in a search warrant application.

Sanchez insisted that they gave away the dog that night, and she maintained she knew nothing about going to Mississippi. She told the detectives that after giving the dog away, she lay on the front seat of the car and fell asleep. The next thing she recalled, she said, Speaks was waking her at their home.

When pressed about her car headed toward Mississippi, Sanchez said, "Should I ask for a lawyer now?" Luther replied, "You're going to make that decision."

Why would I want to protect the man who supposedly isn't even who he said he was?" - Margaret Sanchez, of Terry Speaks
Grannan added, "You make that decision." Sanchez then said, "But I don't want to ask for a lawyer and then seem guilty of something."

"We don't think you're guilty," Grannan said. "We think you have information and you're protecting Allen or someone else."

"I'm not trying to protect anybody," she said. "Why would I want to protect the man who supposedly isn't even who he said he was?"

The detectives pressed further. She lashed out at Luther.

"You're being mean to me, and I don't like your attitude, and I would appreciate it (if) you didn't talk to me, because you keep telling me things that I supposedly know, and I don't know them. I don't know them. So leave me alone. I don't like you. Go away."

The interview ended at 11:50 p.m., after Sanchez asked for a lawyer and to speak with her father.

 

'Everything bad in my life has gone away'

During her interview, Sanchez described herself as an emotionally and physically vulnerable petite woman who had worked on and off in the French Quarter for 10 years. She abused had drugs and had gotten out of a two-year relationship with a man who "had been cheating on me with a bunch of hookers from Bourbon Street," she said.

She said she met Speaks in mid-February 2012, and that he cared for her emotionally. He told her he had served in the Marine Corps, and he tended to household chores, including cleaning leaves from the gutters at her home and planting a garden bed.

"I love that man," she told the detectives. "But now I'm being told that he's not that same man. So I don't know what to feel about Allen anymore. I feel betrayed, heartbroken. I mean, my life was s--t when I met him.

"And slowly, through these past couple of months, everything that was bad in my life has gone away," she said. "I've gotten out of the Quarter. I don't have to go and street-perform anymore and hope I make money. I don't have to do that anymore. I have a job now. "

[texasmom]

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2015/01/terry_speaks_to_stand_trial_in.html

In Bourbon Street dancer Jaren Lockhart's dismemberment, Terry Speaks' trial set in June

By Paul Purpura, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on January 12, 2015 at 11:10 AM, updated January 12, 2015 at 5:02 PM

Jefferson Parish prosecutors confirmed Monday they will try Terry Speaks and Margaret Sanchez separately in the death and dismemberment of Bourbon Street dancer Jaren Lockhart. Speaks, 42, will stand trial first, beginning the week of June 15, but it will be May before a trial date is set for Sanchez, 30.

The former Kenner couple is jailed on charges of second-degree murder, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice in the 2012 killing of Lockhart, 22. She was last seen leaving her job at Temptations Gentlemen's Club in the French Quarter with Sanchez and Speaks. Parts of her body washed up along the Mississippi Gulf Coast days later.

Speaks is scheduled to stand trial March 9 on a separate charge of failing to register as a sex offender after he moved to Jefferson Parish in early 2012. That court date also was set Monday. He was required to register as a sex offender because of a North Carolina conviction for having sex with a 14-year-old girl in 2003, authorities say.

In the Lockhart case, Judge Stephen Grefer of 24th Judicial District Court denied the defense attorneys their requests to bar prosecutors from using a statement that Sanchez gave to Hancock County, Miss., Sheriff's Office detectives and from using other evidence. Grefer handed down the rulings after hearing testimony from two Hancock County detectives, John Edward Luther and Steve Saucier, who were involved in the early stages of the Lockhart investigation.

 

[texasmom]

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2014/10/jaren_lockhart_knew_the_couple.html

Jaren Lockhart knew the couple accused in her death and dismemberment

By Paul Purpura, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

on October 17, 2014 at 5:32 PM, updated October 17, 2014 at 8:33 PM

When Jaren Lockhart walked out onto the 300 block of Bourbon Street from her job as a dancer early one morning two years ago, hoping to earn extra cash after a night of lackluster tips, she was not being overly risky. She left with people she had known for several years and probably trusted.

And that, her friends say, makes the circumstances leading up to her stabbing death and dismemberment in Kenner even more egregious.

"She didn't leave with strangers," said Kristin Miller of Metairie, a former dancer who worked with Lockhart and her two accused killers. "She left with what she thought were friends."

 

They had been romantically involved as early as 2009, former coworkers say. The former Kenner couple also socialized and worked with Lockhart, they say. All three worked at Stilettos on Bourbon Street in 2009, the year Lockhart began dancing.

Sanchez occasionally danced there, too, and, when not on the stage, she hung out at the club to be near Speaks, said Christy Lipps, a former Stilettos dancer and Lockhart friend who now lives near Lafayette. Sanchez was known by stage names "Margo Starz" and "Nola Stars," according to her arrest report.

Speaks worked as a doorman, often walking dancers to their cars after work as part of earning his cut of the tips dancers received, Lipps said. Authorities said he, too, had aliases: Allen Rice, Leslie Allen Rice and Leslie Rice.

As a doorman, Speaks also was a barker, standing on Bourbon Street outside the club's front door, trying to lure in customers, Lipps said. Lockhart occasionally stood there with Speaks, redoubling the effort to bring in business, she recalled.

Those connections appear to have been missed in Lockhart's murder investigation in Jefferson Parish. While the investigation is ongoing, detectives in courtroom testimony have described Speaks and Sanchez as going to French Quarter clubs on June 6, 2012, seeking a stripper with whom they could have a party or even sex.

They found Lockhart, investigators said, a willing participant who left her job at Temptations Gentleman's Club with the couple about 2 a.m.

She had been stabbed in the back, the likely fatal wound, police have said. Her body parts were found days later on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, from Bay St. Louis to Long Beach. She was 22 and the mother of a 3-year-old girl.

Her friends acknowledge that the dancing nightlife in the French Quarter has inherent risks, especially when dancers agree to work private parties to supplement their income. But they say Lockhart never took undue risks, and she never left with strangers or exchanged sex for cash.

"Jaren didn't set herself up for this," said Miller, who worked with Lockhart at Stilettos in 2009. "She was in the position, yes she was a dancer. She was there. She wasn't the type of person to ask for something like that."

Lipps added, "Jaren would have never left with random people. She had a daughter. She had a family. She would never have put her self in immediate danger."

Lockhart twice danced in New Orleans, first time being in 2009, said Kristina Murphy of Springfield, who had known Lockhart from the Hammond area since she was 14 years old. She considered Lockhart "a little sister."

That same year, Murphy had a birthday party at the Hookah Café, in the Faubourg Marigny, she said. Sanchez showed up with Lockhart, Murphy recalled. "She just rubbed me the wrong way," she said of Sanchez.

Amanda Hawkins, a former bartender at Fais Deaux Deaux on Bourbon who lived in an apartment above Stilettos, said her boyfriend at the time was a friend of Speaks. It was through that association in 2009 that she met Lockhart and Sanchez. They occasionally chatted about their favorite television shows, she said.

"I went to lunch with them a couple of times, like Mr. B's and Mona's and places like that," said Hawkins, who now lives in Michigan. She remembers Lockhart as "really sweet. She was only dancing to get by."

Lockhart stopped dancing after her boyfriend got a well-paying job in the petroleum industry, Murphy said. But she returned to the business again in 2011, after her boyfriend lost that job. By June 2012, Lockhart and her boyfriend were living in a $60-per-night motel off Tulane Avenue, Murphy said. Their daughter was living with a grandmother at the time, she said.

Known by her stage name "Riot," Lockhart was supporting them with her dancing but was looking to put that life behind her, friends said. She also was wrestling with a heroin addiction, Murphy said. Authorities have confirmed that opiates were found in her body during the autopsy.

Murphy said she last saw Lockhart alive in January 2012, less than six months before she died. The drug abuse was evident, Murphy said, describing her friend as looking "drugged out."

The week before her death, they spoke on the phone. Murphy and her father were trying to steer Lockhart into an addiction treatment facility in Jefferson Parish. Lockhart appeared willing, and Murphy and her father were going to pay for it. "Instead of that, I wound up paying for her funeral," Murphy said.

She said Lockhart came from a broken home, and as a teenager lived with other families in Tangipahoa Parish. "She had a rough life," Murphy said. "She had to grow up fast. She was a regular 14-year-old girl trying to get somebody to take care of her."

Her friends can only speculate what was planned when she left with Sanchez and Speaks. Miller believes that Sanchez sought out Lockhart to help her work a private party, such as a bachelor party. "This happens all the time," Miller said. "This is what these young guys do. They can put their money together and get these girls to go to their hotel rooms."

Doormen, like Speaks, accompany the dancers, to provide them with security. "That's what they were there for, to protect us," Miller said.

She added that such party plans often fall through. "Nobody knows why, what happened between the time they left the club and Jaren's death," Miller said.

After Lockhart's death, Miller said she spoke with another dancer who worked at Temptations that night. Gentleman's clubs, like the tourism industry generally, see highs and lows. Lockhart didn't earn much money that night, the dancer told Miller.

That dancer knew Lockhart was leaving with somebody, Miller said. "She didn't know it was them."

Investigators have said Lockhart, Sanchez and Speaks were recorded walking together by two French Quarter business security systems, after leaving Temptations. About 23 minutes later, a license plate recognition system camera in Kenner picked up Sanchez's car.

Investigators also have said that Lockhart's cell phone was turned off before reaching Kenner, leaving them unable to use her mobile signal to track her movement. Authorities believe Lockhart was killed in Kenner and have focused the investigation on the Connecticut Avenue house that belonged to a member of Sanchez's family, where she and Speaks lived.

About 9:30 p.m., on Feb. 6, 2012, about 22 hours after Lockhart walked out of Temptations with Speaks and Sanchez, a license plate camera on Interstate 10 picked up Sanchez's car crossing into Mississippi. The car was picked up re-entering Louisiana on I-10 about 1 1/2 hours later, police have said. They suspect that's when Lockhart's body parts were discarded in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

Around the night after Lockhart vanished, Speaks went into Fais Deaux Deaux, Hawkins recalled. "He was out of it. He was on something. What he was on, I don't know."

Hawkins asserts Speaks said something startling. "'I f-- up. I'm going away for a while,'" she recalled. "I'm thinking he got busted (for drugs) or something." She never saw Speaks or Sanchez after that. "Now that I put two and two together, he basically admitted it to me. I didn't think anything of it at the time, anything at all."

Police released to the public a video image of their suspects walking into Temptations the morning Lockhart vanished. Lipps recalled being unable to recognize Sanchez, but she could make out Speaks. Then police announced they were seeking Sanchez and Speaks.

Lockhart and Sanchez were at the opposite ends of the personality spectrum, their friends said. Sanchez could be socially odd, fond of wearing long dresses and high heels with a top hat and a fanny pack. Miller described her as "outlandish" and brought "a weirdness" to Stilettos.

Lockhart, on the other hand, was pretty, "somebody you'd want to be around," Miller said. "Everybody just loved Jaren. She was this small bundle of happy energy."

She added: "Margaret was just a jealous person. She was a dark person, a lot of attention-seeking. Jealous, yes. Jaren just naturally had all this attention."

NOTE: This story incorrectly reported that Jaren Lockhart's 3-year-old daughter lived with her in a Tulane Avenue motel in 2012. The child was living with a grandmother at the time.