Laverne Katherine "Kay" Parsons

I think most of us would agree that for someone to commit, or even plan or hire someone to commit a murder, aside from obvious self defense cases, their "moral compass" has to be "off." But then there are the cases where the moral compass takes even a more jagged turn.  This is such a case....

Kay Parsons lived in a quite suburban community of Augusta Georgia called Grovetown.  She was an Army wife (although I could not confirm her husband was still active) and a mother of a teenage son.  On the morning or March 25, 2009 she took her son to school and returned home presumably to wait on a contractor that was doing some work on their home.  A For Sale sign sat out in the yard.  What is almost certain is that Kay Parsons did not expect to be attacked in her home, only to die the following day.  But, that is what happened.  A few hours later when the contractor arrived and he did not receive an answer at the front door he walked around to the back door.  There he saw that the two french doors were smashed and were open.  Maybe the contractor is like you and I and has seen way too many true crime stories but he knew better than to enter the house and immediately called 9-1-1.  While he waited for the authorities to arrive he came across Michael Bowers who lived next door to the Parsons home with his mother, Rebecca Sears, her husband and their three children together.  Michael told the contractor that his home had also been broken into. Before the authorities got there Rebecca, and Michael's other brother, Christopher Bowers arrived on the scene.  The authorities found much more than just two homes that were burglarized and by the time it was all over one woman was dead and her former best friend and her son were in prison serving life without parole.

The Parsons and Sears had lived next door to each other for many years and had interacted together as couples. By 2009, Rebecca had two older boys by her first marriage and three younger boys with her current husband, Tony Sears while Kay and David Sears were raising their teenage son. For years it seems Kay and Rebecca were joined at the hip.  They went and did everything together.  In fact, they both worked for the same company, a Physical Therapy company called Healing Hands. They had even joined weight watchers together. Neighbors knew if they saw one of the women, they saw the other but what the neighbors did not know is why suddenly all of that had changed and the Parsons home was now up for sale.  Kay had even transferred to another office of the company and the couples, it seemed, were no longer socializing.  I cannot tell you if no-one had bothered to ask what had happened or if they had and not been necessarily told the truth, but for the most part when they later discovered the reason they were shocked.

When police entered the Parsons house on that March morning Rebecca Sears entered with them.  They sent her out of the home when they discovered a lot of blood splatter which indicated that something violent had happened in the home.  Authorities followed a blood trail leading from the living room to the garage where they found Kay Parsons laying, barely alive.  Nearby there were both a bat and a claw hammer.  Kay was rushed to the hospital clinging to life.  Apparently presumably while one team of investigators were examining the crime scene at the Parsons house, including finding the home apparently ransacked indicating a burglary had been committed, another team went to the Sears home where it too appeared to be ransacked.  Initially police believed that both homes had been robbed and that Kay Parsons had had the unfortunate timing of coming home in the middle of it and it very well may cost her her life.  It does not appear that they kept this theory for very long.

Rebecca Sears apparently raised more than a few eyebrows later that day when she went to the hospital and seemed to be very demanding in wanting to know Kay's condition.  Her demeanor caught investigators off guard as their investigation was continuing.  It appears that her behavior had them looking a little bit deeper into the two apparent crime scenes. One thing that seemed strange about the robbery scenes was that they both appeared staged, especially the one at the Sears home.  While the Parsons home had a clear point of entry, the French doors, nothing in the Sears home appeared damaged and apparently they could not come up with a list of anything stolen.  Eyes first went to Michael Bowers.  He lived in the Sears home and the contractor had told authorities that as he came out of the backyard of the Parson home waiting for the police to arrive he had come across Michael and he thought his demeanor too was strange.  While Michael remained on their radar a bit longer while they looked into his background, his interview brought in new clues. Then two more events happened that drew their attention not to Michael, but to his brother, Christopher and his mother Rebecca.  In the meantime Kay Parsons succumbed to her injuries and died at the hospital.  This had quickly become a murder investigation.

The first odd event to happen was investigators were contacted by a jail inmate claiming to want to discuss the Parsons case. While doing my research I could not officially find who this person was as they were only referred to as a confidential informant, as I recall watching and episode of Dateline (or was it 48 Hours?), this person was Rebecca Sears' brother. If anyone can confirm or deny this it would be helpful.  At any rate authorities interviewed the person who told them they should look more into Rebecca and her son Christopher.  He claimed that Rebecca was having an affair with David Parsons, Kay's husband, and that she had personally asked him a few time to kill Kay.  He also claimed that he knew she had also asked Christopher or at the very least discussed it with him and that Christopher was all but a "Mama's Boy" and did everything that was asked of him as he was still be supported by his mother.  Michael Bowers pretty much confirmed this notion.  He added that while his mother had bought his brother a house, among other things, that it all came with a price and that price was basically to do as he was asked.  And then suddenly, on the night after the attack as Rebecca Sears was leaving her work that night while talking to someone on the phone she was shot in the leg by someone.  While on the surface it looked just like it was supposed to, another attack towards the Sears family, the police were not buying it.  By the following evening investigators thought they had enough evidence to arrest both Rebecca and Christopher and that is exactly what they did.

Almost immediately Rebecca went in "save myself at all costs" mode.  I am going to give her a bit of the benefit of the doubt and assume that before she threw her son Christopher completely under the bus and admitted to the affair with David Parsons she was confronted with the evidence that the authorities had come across.  To assume that she just started singing right out of the gate, putting all the blame on Christopher would take the extremely "special" kind of stupid (and evil) criminal. At any rate, although she had been advised of her rights Rebecca willingly spoke to investigators that night without an attorney.  Her story basically went like this....  She had been having an affair with David Parsons and she had mentioned a few times about wanting Kay Parsons killed or out of the way, but of course she did not mean that but apparently Christopher did not understand that and had "overheard" her talking about it at some point.  So on the morning of the attack Christopher had hidden in her house and then went into the backyard until Kay left to take her son to school.  Christopher then went into the Parsons home and went upstairs to make it appear that a burglary had happened.  He attacked Kay when she returned home, first in the living room but then followed her into the garage.  Then Christopher had gone back to his mother's house and ransacked things there to make it look like both homes had been robbed.  Then he called his mother to pick him up and when she did he was covered in blood and had told her that he had "taken care of everything."  She wanted to protect her son at this point.  He changed his clothes in the car and put them in a backpack that they later disposed of and pretended to go on with their day.

So what about her (Rebecca) being shot the officer's wonder.  Oh that... yeah, according to Rebecca that was an accident.  Rebecca and Christopher had set that up except she was not supposed to get shot.  She was to be on the phone speaking to someone, who would later be a witness they hoped, and she was to be threatened with a gun but Christopher had accidental pulled the trigger grazing her leg. She had helped go along with story because knowing how her son (and her son alone) was guilty of murdering her former best friend the two of them thought that if she was involved in some sort of violent altercation the police would not look at Christopher for the murder and just automatically assume that the robberies, the murder and her subsequent threatening would all be related.  Yeah, the police were not buying this story.  Her family retained lawyers for both Rebecca and Christopher so they voluntary talking to the police ended soon.  Later those lawyers (brothers that were each representing one of them) were fired although I did not find a reason.  I can only assume that it was due to financial reasons, although obviously I could be mistaken and soon the public defenders office was representing them.  However just a little over a month after their arrests their lawyers were publicly claiming that they were both innocent and had witnesses and documentation to prove so.  Rebecca and Christopher both initially entered pleas of not guilty.

The prosecutor had decided to seek the death penalty for both Christopher and his mother and because of this, according to the law in Georgia, they both required separate trials. Between the prosecutor attempting to put together the things needed for two separate capital murder cases, as well as obviously a change of defense attorneys to prepare for trial it seemed to many that the process was taking quite a bit of time.  If my timeline is correct, sometime in 2010 Rebecca's husband, Tony, who had been on deployment in Afghanistan at the time of the murder had returned and relocated he and his three young children (now 3, 6 and 14) to Nashville Tennessee, presumably near family who helped him care for the children.  Tony and one of Rebecca's sister's did an interview for the newspaper there. While neither would discuss the issue of the affair between Rebecca and David Parsons or a few other things I found it quite amazing that they both proclaimed Rebecca and Christopher to be innocent and that the authorities had allowed the "real killer" to go free while they concentrated in the wrong direction.  While the ultimate outcome of this case was yet to come I still have difficulty with their statements at that time.  How could they proclaim their innocence?  Of course in pre-trial preparations defense attorneys tried to suppress Rebecca's initial statement to the police.  They failed in that aspect but regardless if their family believed they were BOTH innocent how did they rectify this statement from Rebecca? At the very least you would think that at the very least they had to believe that statement from her, even if it was not true, and she had totally implicated Christopher in the murder, as well as admitted to not just a cover up, but setting up an incident to get the police off his trail. 

The trials were looming and both were facing lethal injection.  Prosecutors had theorized through evidence that Rebecca had picked Christopher up on the morning of the murder from his house and brought him to her house where he stayed pretty much out of the sight of others so that no one would have to say they saw him and he could try to attempt to say he was not in the area.  They also believed that, mainly for the time period they had, that Rebecca had helped with at least the ransacking of her own home to make it appear a robbery occurred.  After the attack she helped Christopher clean up, get rid of evidence and pretended to go on about their day.  They were able to determine that Rebecca's son, Michael was not in on the plan and that he was the one who first entered their house after the staged burglary.  He in turn had called his mother, who was presumably at work, or at least said she was.  She then got Christopher (who worked with her) and they loaded up and headed back home.  They had also determined that Kay Parsons had discovered the affair between Rebecca and David and had insisted on moving from the area, hence the For Sale sign, and that although David admitted to the affair and even admitted to speaking to Rebecca the night before on the phone while he was legitimately out of town on business he was not involved in the planning or the carrying out of the murder.  

Then it seems that it was a surprise to most but on May 11, 2012 Rebecca and Christopher entered a courtroom to accept plea deals offered by the prosecution.  They were each given a life sentence without the possibility of parole for murder, a life sentence for armed robbery (they had determined that jewelry had been taken off of Kay in the attack), and 20 years for burglary.  The sentences were to run consecutively, meaning one after another, giving them absolutely no chance of ever leaving prison.  Of course this deal did keep them alive and avoided the death penalty.  Strangely however, aside from answering the judge when asked if they willingly agreed with the plea, neither Rebecca or Christopher spoke at their sentencing.  This means that either the prosecutors theory is absolutely correct, or correct enough that they both knew they would likely be sentenced to death.  

There have been a few side developments to this case.  David Parsons apparently decided to no longer sell the home he shared with Kay and has since remarried while their son went on to college.  He was able to stay pretty under the radar through the whole thing.  He apparently cooperated completely with authorities in their investigation which is all he had to do.  He did attend the sentencing apparently but per usual stayed away from the media.  This is not too surprising.  For one, it seems if not he, Kay were private people since few people knew of the affair prior to the murder, or technically the reason for the house being on the market.  He obviously faced some scrutiny for having the affair with Rebecca in the first place and there are probably still those that believe he could have been involved or at least had knowledge (although I am not one of them).  He has no one to answer to except possibly his son and that is his right. 

Sometime throughout the investigation it was discovered that Michael Bowers had been fired sometime earlier from his mother's work place, Healing Hands for embezzling money. I did not find a whole lot really about this in my research but apparently they also discovered that it was not Michael who had actually stolen the money, but was his mother Rebecca.  She allowed her work place to believe it was Michael and convinced them not to file charges on him.  So once again she threw a child under the bus, but thankfully it too was eventually discovered.

When I write these blogs I do at least attempt to take a more professional approach to them and I do not know that I have ever said this about another case or criminal but... What a piece of shit.....