Abbott found guilty of murder
Emerson Mack Abbott Jr. is convicted by a Floyd County Jury in the double murder of James and Myra Reeves in their Terhune Road home in January 2015.
With the photos of the bloodied bodies of James and Myra Reeves on a table before him, Emerson Mack Abbott Jr. told Floyd County police Sgt. Rusty Williams, “I think they knew exactly what they were going to do when they went in there.”
“They did,” Assistant District Attorney Natalee Staats said Monday while giving her closing remarks in the murder trial of Abbott. “He did.”
Over four hours after Staats made the comment, a Floyd County jury convicted Abbott of gunning down the couple in their Terhune Road home in January 2015.
A week after his trial began, he was found guilty of two counts of malice murder, felony murder, armed robbery, theft by deception, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime.
Abbott’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for July 10, following a presentence investigation.
According to information presented in court:
Both Staats and Assistant District Attorney Luke Martin gave closing arguments and painted Abbott as a calculated killer who weaved his way into the lives of James and Myra Reeves — who he introduced himself to 19 days before their deaths — to get a $7,500 check, written out to him by Myra with a gun trained on her.
“You’re in the room with a cold-blooded killer,” Martin said. “Emerson Abbott took his time to plan this out.”
And after their bodies were discovered, Abbott built a tower of lies to mislead an investigation — which started without a clear suspect — only for it to come tumbling down, they said.
Staats counted up to over 50 lies Abbott told, mentioning each with detail as jurors looked on.
“The devil’s in the details,” Staats said, like the stressed handwriting on the check — perhaps a clue left by Myra Reeves — or the painted threat “you are next” on his door.
“Killers don’t usually advertise they’re coming for you,” she continued.
Martin labeled him a scammer, with the killing of this couple as his final act.
“It’s obvious this was not just a random killing,” Martin said. “He had a reason for it.”
The reason was to beat the clock running out on his scheme of defrauding his then-girlfriend, as he needed to make a $4,431 payment to get her car back from a local title pawn business,
which had the car repossessed for a payment default. The last day he had to make that payment to keep her from finding out he transferred the car title to his name without her knowing was Jan. 23, 2015 — the day of the murders.
Abbott’s defense attorney Wade Hoyt IV used his closing remarks to tell jurors that prosecutors had not lived up to their burden of proof for a guilty conviction.
As he did in his opening remarks, he characterized the police investigation as a “knee-jerk reaction” to the discovery of the check, which prompted investigators to toss away other leads to fit Abbott to their theory.
In the lead-up to her final statement, Staats told of what the family and friends of the couple lost in their deaths.
“Then he took the most precious thing of all, the lives of James and Myra Reeves,” Staats said. “Find him guilty.”