For the first day of jury selection in the John Evander Couey trial, Kruse brings us this: Jessica Marie Lunsford, 9½ years old and not quite 5 feet tall, in the early morning hours of Feb. 24, 2005, was taken from her room in her family's tidy, cared-for double-wide in southwestern Citrus County, raped in a nearby mobile home and buried alive in black plastic trash bags. The trial of John Evander Couey, who is accused of killing Jessica, started this week with jury selection in Tavares and testimony set to start in Inverness after that. But here in Homosassa, where it's quiet and still, now might be a particularly, poignantly appropriate time for a reminder of who she was before her name and her face became synonymous with a law and a cause.
"You want to go see Jessie's room?" Ruth Lunsford asked Saturday morning after a breakfast of bacon and biscuits and gravy.
"Come on," she said.
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