The Sept. 25, 2006, slaying of 21-year-old New Smyrna Beach resident Lisa Memro -- beaten and stabbed to death, her throat cut deeply from ear to ear and nearly decapitated -- could qualify as the most gruesome murder in the history of Southeast Volusia. But there are yet even more twisted facts that make it that more disturbing. Her attacker bent over her lifeless body into his family tub and drained her blood before he had sex with her corpse in a bed.
This is undeniably the biggest case locally since the Trull brothers -- Jonathan, Christopher and Joshua -- went on trial in 2001 on capital murder charges in the slayings of two Maryland Spring Breakers and the near killing of a third at a New Smyrna Beach time share resort. Jonathan Trull, the eldest at 27, was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison while his younger siblings were convicted of lesser included felonies in the attacks tht included the use of baseball bats and knives.
Seven years later, the scales of justice in the form of a jury will hear the evidence against Edgewater resident Russell Charles Bradshaw, 21, who goes on trial today at the Volusia County Courthouse in DeLand. He is charged with first-degree murder and abuse of a dead body, the latter a misdemeanor.
Bradshaw, a mere 20 at the time of the killing, could get the death penalty, if convicted of capital murder.
Bradshaw, presumed innocent by the court presided by Circuit Judge James R. Clayton, is represented by Rob Sanders and Gayle Graziano, a specialist in death penalty cases and herself a former circuit judge and chief judge of the 7th Judicial Circuit that includes Volusia County.
Prosecuting the case are Matt Foxman and Colleen Taylor.
The ultimate question for this jury could be whether Bradshaw claims insanity. The allegations alone concerning the way the victim was attacked are of the macabre. And he told police he was high on cocaine and had taken Benadryl in the hours leading up to the slaying.
According to the state's evidence, based in part on voluntary statements given by the defendant as well as forensic evidence at the crime scene, Bradshaw called and asked Memro to drive over to his parents' Edgewater home while they were out of town because he wanted to talk about a recent break-up with his girlfriend.
While there, she was attacked from behind -- first struck in the back of the head. Then her attacker tried strangling her. When that didn't work, her killer got a large serrated carving knife from the kitchen and repeatedly stabbed, then sliced her throat -- from jugular to jugular in the bathroom.
Defensive wounds to her body -- including bruising and cut marks -- show she suffered the repeated knife cutting up to the point of death. Her lifeless body was draped over the side of the tub face down on the inside to her waist so her blood would drain. The bloodied knife was thrown into the sink. The stripped corpse -- except for her shirt wrapped around her neck -- was then carried over to a bedroom where the attacker performed sexual intercourse and ejaculated into the body.
According to police reports, the killer waited nearly two hours before turning himself in.
When police arrived, they found the bathtub stopped up with blood from her wet clothes sealing the drain. And of course, they found the body in the bedroom and the knife in the sink.
At first glance this would seem an open and shut case of insanity. But is it?
The accused made no attempt to get rid of the body or the weapon and even sought out the police. When he didn't get an answer at the police station sat 10 p.m. that night, he called 911 and told an operator he just "killed someone. I'm turning myself in."
When asked by the 911 operator who the victim was, he responded: "I guess she was a stranger."
Bradshaw confessed to police and later when asked by State Attorney Investigator Shon McGuire if the motive behind the attack was to have sex, Bradshaw responded, according to the taped confession: "That actually never occurred to me until I killed her."
In a pre-trial suppression hearing to try and quash the confession, Graziano said Bradshaw was "suffering from shock or post-traumatic stress disorder and unable to make any rational decisions at the time." The motion to have his voluntary statements tossed were denied.
Bradshaw was described at a pre-trial hearing by a forensic psychiatrist -- who examined him days after his arrest -- as "distinctly abnormal" and "like a zombie."
During jury selection today, Bradshaw, dressed in a plaid green shirt and dark pants with his long brown hair tied with an elastic in a pony tail, showed no outward signs as earlier described.