Accused Osceola killer insists her mother never hurt anyone
KISSIMMEE — Her mother hadn’t been seen in two days, and Amy Day was sitting in an interview room at the Osceola County Sheriff ’s Office for hours when Detective Joel Guevara walked in and, once again, asked if she knew where her mother was.
Jurors in Day’s first-degree murder trial watched the video of the interrogation Friday, the fourth day of testimony. It was recorded the afternoon of Sept. 21, 2015, two days after Ora “Lea” Hawkins, 79, was last seen alive.
Day initially said her mother called her the night of Sept. 19 and said she was moving to Colorado for six months with a woman named Rose, whom she met at church. Day also said she was not in the Lake Shore Drive home she shared with her mother that weekend, but with her boyfriend in Chiefland, a small town west of Gainesville. Deputies were never able to find Rose and had evidence that Day never left Osceola County that weekend, records show.
Guevara asked her repeatedly where she was and what she did that weekend. He also asked her about a $2,500 check from her mother’s bank account deposited to hers. “What do you think happened to your mom?” he asked. Day shook her head. She hoped her mom was with Rose, she said. She hoped her mom was OK.
Guevara asked a few more questions, then paused. “They found your mom,” he said. “She’s been at the house the whole time.” Day looked at him silently. “But she’s dead,” Guevara said. “No,” Day said, covering her face with her hands. “No, no, no, no, no.”
Someone, Guevara said, had wrapped Hawkins’ body in trash bags and put her in the backyard.
“And then they put flowers — not natural flowers, fake plastic flowers — with fresh soil on top of her, and made it seem like it was a nice, beautiful garden,” he said. “Who would do that to this nice, sweet old lady?”
“My mother has never done anything to anybody for them to do that,” she said. “… She is a decent, good, Christian woman who would give you the shirt off her back.”
Jurors are expected to return to court Tuesday for closing arguments.