Woman charged in cemetery shooting that killed her child’s father

A woman arrested last week in the shooting of a man in a rural Crawford County cemetery has been charged with first-degree murder.

Jessica Ann Howard, 24, of Fort Smith was charged Thursday in Crawford County Circuit Court with first-degree murder and theft of between $1,000 and $5,000. She is scheduled to be arraigned on the charges Wednesday in circuit court, according to the prosecuting attorney’s office.

Howard was being held in the Crawford County jail in lieu of $500,000 bond.

Crawford County sheriff’s deputies were called to the Dripping Springs Cemetery between Van Buren and Cedarville on the morning of Jan. 30 on a report that someone found a body on a road in the cemetery. Deputies found the body of Gabriel Quispe, 49, of Fort Smith. He had been shot.

Sheriff Ron Brown announced Howard’s arrest Jan. 31. He said investigators believed that Howard lured Quispe, who had custody of their 3-year-old daughter, to the cemetery so she could rob and kill him.

Brown said Howard confessed to killing Quispe. She told investigators that she called Quispe and asked him for a ride to the Dripping Springs area where she has family, then directed Quispe to drive to the cemetery so they could talk about custody of their daughter, authorities said.

Initially, when deputies learned Howard was the last person seen with Quispe, they thought she might have been a victim, Brown said. But when they made contact with her in Fort Smith the afternoon of Jan. 30, she was in Quispe’s vehicle, reports said. She became a person of interest when investigators began talking to her, Brown said.

Quispe had gained permanent custody of his and Howard’s daughter Avery in Washington County Circuit Court from Howard’s parents in January 2018. According to court records, Quispe didn’t know Avery was his until more than a year after her birth, when Howard informed him in an Internet communication. Howard never contested Quispe’s petition for custody.

Howard’s parents, Alice and Gregory Carr of Springdale, had gotten permanent guardianship of the child in August 2016, arguing in court that Howard was not a fit mother because she was suicidal, violent and threatened to kill herself and Avery by driving off a bridge.