Audrey Marcum

On Nov. 17, 2001, Audrey Marcum and her ex-husband, Doug Marcum, attended a car auction and then went to a movie before they went their separate ways and arranged to meet back at the house they shared.

On her way home, the 31-year-old woman picked up ice cream at a local Dairy Queen before arriving back her rural home shortly after 9 p.m.

She apparently pulled her car into her garage and retrieved items from her trunk, but never made it inside the house.

Neighbors heard a single shot – apparently caused by a high-powered firearm that sent a bullet tearing through Marcum's body. Entering the victim's right side, the bullet ripped through both lungs and severed the victim's spinal cord before it exited on her left side. According to a forensic pathologist who later testified at her trial, Audrey Marcum's wound was "non-survivable," and likely caused her death within minutes or even seconds — possibly even instantly.

When Doug Marcum arrived home and discovered his ex-wife only a short time later, the ice cream she purchased had not even yet begun to melt.

MCKEE, KENTUCKY

Jackson County Clerk Jerry Wayne Dean was charged with killing a former female employee the day before he was scheduled to give a deposition on a sexual harassment suit she brought against him. Fifty-eight year old Dean was arrested and charged with shooting Audrey L. Marcum, 31, whose bullet-ridden body was found Saturday at her home. Marcum worked in the clerk's office from April 1995 until August of 1999. She said in a sexual harassment suit filed in August that Dean's alleged behavior forced her to quit. Dean, the county clerk since 1990 and fa- cing re-election next year, denied the allegation. He posted bond of $100,000 and was released.

The Monday after the Saturday night shooting marked the day in which Jerry Dean had a long-standing appointment to give a deposition in the $30 million lawsuit he was slapped with by Audrey Marcum.

Attorneys representing Audrey Marcum had filed their original complaint against Jerry Dean and Jackson County on August 4, 2000. In that document, plaintiff Marcum seeks compensatory and punitive damages for a wide variety of alleged offenses, including sexual discrimination, sexual harassment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and outrageous conduct causing severe emotional distress.

According to civil court documents, Jerry Dean was accused of a wide range of "acts of outrageous, extreme, and intolerable conduct," including verbal, sexual, and physical harassment. The suit claimed Dean repeatedly solicited sexual contact from Marcum and retaliated against her when she refused his advances. The end result, according to the plaintiff, was to create a hostile work environment in which Marcum found herself "alarmed, annoyed, [and] intimidated."

When Dean's own son told authorities that he disposed of evidence for his father and provided a false alibi, Jerry Dean was charged with capital murder and tampering with physical evidence.

In a case that pitted father against son, a Madison County jury had to decide whether to convict Jerry Dean of Audrey Marcum's murder in a trial that began on Feb. 16, 2003.

The morning after the shooting, police interviewed Jerry Wayne Dean, the former employer of the victim. Dean, then 58, was the County Clerk of Jackson County and Audrey Marcum worked for him until August 1999. Soon after her departure, she filed a $30 million lawsuit against Jerry Dean and Jackson County, claiming she was repeatedly sexually harassed by Dean during the years she worked for him.

But Dean told police that at the time of the murder, he was fishing with his son, David Dean. Police followed up that interview by questioning David Dean, who confirmed his father's account.

Investigators, however, grew suspicious that the stories by father and son were too alike, down to specific details. David Dean provided police with a parking pass he said he and his father purchased the night of their fishing trip, but investigators who checked into it grew even more suspicious when they learned the bait shop where it was purchased was not open at the time the Deans claimed they bought it.

That led authorities back to conduct another round of questioning of David Dean. Confronted with the impossibility of his parking pass story, the younger Dean told them he lied in his initial interview, claiming his father told him to do so.

Detectives then returned to Jerry Dean and relayed what his son had told him. They say the senior Dean became visibly upset and requested to speak to his lawyer, though he continued to deny any role in Audrey Marcum's murder. Returning yet again to David Dean, police say he told them that his father arrived at his home at 9 p.m. but then promptly disappeared.

David Dean claimed he saw his father, toting a rifle, walk off through a wooded area in the direction of Audrey Marcum's residence and that he did not return for about an hour. David Dean claimed his father told his son that he had taken care of his problem.

According to younger Dean's account, say police, he and his father drove 50 miles to a lake where David Dean had a boat, and saw his father throw the barrel of a firearm overboard. On the way home, David Dean claimed, his father threw out his gloves and boots as well as the wooden stock from the rifle which he had previously disassembled.

During this third interrogation with police, David Dean's cell phone rang and the caller I.D. revealed the phone number of his father. He was instructed by investigators not to answer the call, but a short time later, Jerry Dean showed up at his son's house, at which time police arrested him for the murder of Audrey Marcum.

Despite his son's account, Jerry Dean steadfastly maintained his innocence in Audrey Marcum's murder.

On Feb. 24, 2003, after three hours and twenty minutes of deliberations, the jury of eight men and four women found Jerry Wayne Dean not guilty of all charges.

Ultimately, according to the jurors, they came to acquit the defendant because of the lack of any physical evidence directly connecting Dean to shooting of Audrey Marcum.

On his way out of the courthouse, Jerry Dean told reporters, "I was telling the truth the whole time. I did not kill her; I did not."

Officially, Jerry Dean's acquittal leaves the Audrey Marcum murder case an open and ongoing investigation. In reality, however, Jackson County authorities concede there are no other serious suspects in the murder, and for all practical purposes the case is closed.