Crime Watch Daily Exclusive: Curtis Lovelace speaks out after 2 trials
03/23/2016 12:04 pm PDT
In an exclusive, Curtis and Christine Lovelace sit down with Crime Watch Daily for their first in-depth television interviews since Curtis was released.
UPDATE March 10, 2017: The Quincy Herald-Whig reports after about two hours of deliberations, 12 jurors from Sangamon County came back with a not guilty verdict Friday.
UPDATE June 6, 2016: The Quincy Herald-Whig reports Curtis Lovelace was released from jail on June 7, 2016. The judge in Lovelace's case agreed to reduce bond to $3.5 million.
Friends of Lovelace posted the 10 percent release amount of $350,000. Lovelace continues to be monitored by authorities as he waits for a new trial.
Curtis Lovelace was the golden boy of Quincy, Illinois: a football hero, ex-school board president, former prosecutor and assistant state's attorney -- until he was accused of killing his wife.
A pillar of the community suddenly on trial for the crime of murder. Did this crusader for justice really kill his own wife? Or for that matter, did anyone?
It was Valentine's Day 2006, but in the small town of Quincy, Illinois, there would be no romantic breakfast in bed for Curtis and Cory Lovelace.
According to Curt, Cory had been sick for several days with flu-like symptoms. And since it was normally her job to take the three oldest of their four children to school, Curt's morning was spent chasing kids around their cramped two-story house.
Curtis helped his wife upstairs, then rushed the kids off to school. According to Curtis, about 45 minutes later he raced through his front door and up the stairs for a quick shower before work.
That's when he saw Cory lying in bed with her arms slightly raised, hands bent toward her chest, eyes wide open. He immediately called his boss at work, who was the state's attorney.
Before long, first-responders were at the house, confirming the worst: Cory Lovelace was dead.
She was only 38. It seemed sudden, so out of the blue. But was it?
Cory was, by almost all accounts, a daily drinker, an illness she had carried for years, if not decades. When officers investigated the scene, they even found a half-empty vodka tonic on her nightstand.
When hospital pathologist Jessica Bowman examined Cory later that day, she finds a body broken down, and a possible cause of death. Cory's liver was fatty and very large, caused by alcoholism and likely exacerbated by her alleged eating disorder. Everything seemed to fit.
But there was one little thing that Dr. Bowman couldn't ignore: marks on Cory's lip and inside her lip. She had seen similar marks before in suffocation cases.
One expert would later speculate suffocation could be carried out with a pillow. But if that were the case, police should've found hemorrhaging.
Though the pathologist was fairly certain Cory's fatty liver was what killed her, it couldn't be listed as an official cause of death. With steatosis of the liver there's no "smoking gun." And because of that, Cory Lovelace's death was ruled "undetermined." Case closed, but door left open.
For the next several months, Curt and his children try their best to move on with life.
According to some people, there had been little love between the Lovelaces for a while.
Roughly six months after Cory's death, Curtis started dating again. And two years after that, he remarried.
But it was a tumultuous second marriage, and six years after the vows, they divorced.
Once again, Curtis moved. But this time things seemed different.
Third time's the charm? Soon after they got back together, not long after the divorce, Curtis and Christine got married. Christine even adopted Curt's kids.
Eight years after the tragic death of his first wife, things finally seemed to be looking up for Curtis Lovelace. But life was about to get turned upside down.
When Curt walked out of his law office for lunch on August 27, 2014, he was confronted by flashing lights and hands on guns and was arrested.
Curt had been arrested for the first-degree murder of Cory Lovelace.
Why did police reopen the files on Cory's death?
Police thought the position of Cory's arms seemed suspicious, like they'd been holding something like a pillow. And then there was that mark on Cory's lip, the kind sometimes seen in suffocation cases.
The prosecution's expert pathologists concluded that not only had Cory been suffocated with something like a pillow, but that her body had been in rigor mortis for at least 10 hours.
But all four of the couple's children reported their mom was alive that morning on Valentine's Day.
Pathologist George Nichols, a witness for the defense, testified that rigor mortis varies between people, and can set in in as little as 30 minutes.
When it came time for oldest of the Lovelace children to testify, the story suddenly changed: Lyndsay Lovelace said she couldn't say for sure whether she saw her mother alive that morning -- she wasn't saying she didn't see her mom alive, just that she couldn't be sure. Either way, it took both sides by surprise, neither knowing how it might help or hurt.
Finally, after several weeks and multiple expert witnesses, it was time to decide Curt Lovelace's fate.
Late on the second day of jury deliberations, a decision: The jury was split six to six on February 5, and a mistrial was declared. A second trial has been set for May 31, 2016. Curtis Lovelace remains jailed in the interim.
As of the time of this interview, the Lovelaces were both emotionally and financially bankrupt, unsure of how they would afford a second trial.
But since our investigation, private investigator Bill Clutter's group Investigating Innocence agreed to take on Curt's case, reaching out to the University of Chicago's Exoneration Project, who will represent Lovelace pro bono. Clutter is also raising funds for Lovelace's defense.
Crime Watch Daily affiliate WGEM-TV has continuing coverage of the #LovelaceCase.
