Sheriff: Man faces murder charge for giving woman deadly drugs
A 26-year-old man is facing a first-degree murder charge after a woman he was doing drugs with fatally overdosed in January, according to the Seminole County Sheriff ’s Office.
Daniel Ryan Bachert was arrested Tuesday on first-degree murder by distribution of a controlled substance in the death of 19-year-old Jessica Ackerman, Sheriff Dennis Lemma said.
“He administered the drugs, then went to bed and allowed her to die in his living room,” Lemma said Wednesday at a press conference. “He was contacted by his roommate several times and really did nothing.”
Investigators say that Bachert bought the drugs that both he and Ackerman used at his home in the Altamonte Springs area Jan. 21. According to text messages between the two, Ackerman had asked Bachert to purchase the heroin.
But after Bachert and Ackerman used the heroin, which investigators said was laced with the much more potent synthetic opioid fentanyl, Ackerman began showing signs of overdose, officials said. Bachert realized Ackerman was overdosing, but did not immediately seek medical help, his roommate told detectives.
“[D]espite being advised multiple times throughout the night by a roommate to call 911, Bachert failed to do so,” SCSO wrote in a statement. Lemma noted that Florida’s Good Samaritan law protects people from drug possession or distribution charges when they call 911 for medical help during an overdose.
At his first appearance hearing Wednesday, Assistant Public Defender Larry Kowal assailed the case, arguing there is a total “lack of any evidence” to show Bachert purchased the drugs that killed Ackerman or gave them to her.
“It’s a mystery how a judge could read [the arrest affidavit] and find probable cause for murder,” Kowal said.
Authorities said Bachert and his roommate dropped Ackerman’s “lifeless body” at a hospital the morning after she overdosed, but she never regained consciousness and was later pronounced dead. She died as a result of ingesting a lethal amount of heroin laced with fentanyl, officials said.
“It is chilling to think about all of this could have been prevented,” Lemma said. “This is no accidental overdose. … These are death investigations that need to be handled as such.”
Ackerman’s mother, Nancy Ackerman, thanked the Sheriff’s Office for its work on her daughter’s case. She described her daughter as a former cheerleader who always looked out for others.
“This is not about getting revenge,” Nancy Ackerman said. “Our hope, and I think Jessica’s too, is that, in pursuing this case at least one child can be saved and no other family has to go through this loss. We feel this is the best way to honor her memory.”
Though her daughter had struggled with drug use, Nancy Ackerman said she didn’t think Jessica Ackerman had used heroin before the dose that claimed her life. The young woman had only recently met Bachert, her mother said.
Upon his arrest Tuesday, authorities found Bachert with several syringes and bags filled with fentanyl, and he was also booked into jail on possession of fentanyl, Lemma said.
Assistant State Attorney Dan Faggerd, who is prosecuting the case, said that Bachert was a small-scale dealer as well as a drug user, typically selling to feed his own addiction. Bachert’s roommate is not being charged in the case because he is cooperating as a witness, officials said.
Investigators say the dealer who provided the drugs to Bachert is currently in jail in Orange County, after he was arrested in February on drug trafficking charges, unrelated to this case. They said they haven’t determined yet if anyone higher in the drug chain can be charged in Jessica Ackerman’s death.
Lemma said Bachert showed no remorse upon his arrest and was nonchalant in his interviews with detectives. But text messages cited in his arrest reports show that he apologized to Ackerman’s family after the death.
“I’m so sorry about what happened,” Bachert texted Ackerman’s mom. “I hope you can find peace. Your daughter is a very kind, caring, generous and beautiful girl.”
Kowal, the assistant public defender, asked a judge to allow Bachert’s release from jail on bond, arguing there were no witnesses or physical evidence that he bought the drugs.
While Bachert’s 15-page arrest affidavit chronicles a timeline using Ackerman’s phone calls and messages as well as surveillance video from a Walmart, Bachert’s house and the hospital, there is no specific evidence of Bachert buying the heroin-laced fentanyl that killed Ackerman, Kowal said.
Detectives in the affidavit detailed Bachert and Ackerman meeting another car in the Walmart’s parking lot the night of Ackerman’s death. That’s when they say the drug transaction took place. Later, witnesses said Bachert and Ackerman were doing drugs together at Bachert’s house.
But Kowal noted that investigators in the affidavit named the man who they believe sold the drugs to Bachert — yet arrested Bachert for her death, not the actual distributor.
County Court Judge Debra Krause, who oversaw first-appearance hearings Wednesday, said she did not disagree with Kowal. But she determined the judge assigned to the case should address his concerns. She ordered Bachert held in the jail without bond for the time being.