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Thread: Jeffrey Clayton Kandies - North Carolina Death Row

  1. #1
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    Jeffrey Clayton Kandies - North Carolina Death Row




    Facts of the Crime:

    Kandies was tried capitally for the first-degree murder and first-degree rape of Natalie Lynn Osborne, the four-year-old daughter of his fiancée. The jury found defendant guilty on both charges and recommended a sentence of death for the first-degree murder. The trial court sentenced accordingly on the murder charge and sentenced defendant to life imprisonment for the rape, to begin at the expiration of the murder sentence.

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    December 26, 2008

    It’s impossible to forget the little girl with the beautiful smile


    Jeri Rowe used to have this photo of Natalie Osborne at his desk.

    Additional Photos I once kept Natalie Osborne’s photo thumbtacked beside my computer

    I wanted it there to remind me that every victim has a story. For years, I’d be deep into another tale about another tragedy, I’d see Natalie’s smiling snapshot, and I’d tell myself, “Remember the victim.”

    Natalie was just one such victim. But of all the crimes and all the court cases I’ve covered, I’ll always remember her. I was there in the beginning, and what I saw and what I wrote made me heartsick for years.

    She was raped and killed by her mother’s fiance, Jeff Kandies, 16 years ago. Her naked body was stuffed in a garbage bag, tossed in Kandies’ closet and hidden beneath carpet scraps and dirty clothes. Natalie was only 4.

    Since then, Natalie has stayed in the back of my mind – until this week, when I ventured into a Randolph County courtroom to hear what fate awaited Meredith Kandies, the sister Natalie never knew, the daughter Jeff will never see.

    It’s another twist to a story I can’t seem to shake.

    For me, it began on a Tuesday, in April of 1992. I was single, nearing 30, working as a reporter for the News & Record in Randolph County, when heavy rains turned a creek in north Asheboro into a river.

    As the rain fell, I found a worried Patricia Craven, Natalie’s mother, sitting on her couch, looking out her window. Natalie had disappeared.

    “There is a line I don’t want to cross about being upset because if I cross it,” she told me, “I won’t come back.’’

    A few feet away stood Jeff Kandies. He didn’t say much. He barely looked at me. He paced around the apartment, jittery as a hamster, as rescue workers and Asheboro cops searched the creek just outside.

    By Friday, everyone’s worst fears were confirmed. Natalie Osborne, Craven’s daughter from her first marriage, was dead. And Kandies was the prime suspect.

    Kandies told the cops he accidentally ran over Natalie with his pickup. He said he was trying to revive her by stripping off her clothes and putting her in the bathtub when he accidentally strangled her in an alcohol-induced panic.

    He then stuck her body in a garbage bag and hid her in a closet of his house near Randleman because he said he was scared.

    But the evidence told a different story. Natalie’s head had been fractured in seven places and a portion of bone went into her brain. Natalie’s autopsy also showed signs of what a forensic pathologist called “forced intercourse.”

    I read that report. But worse, I saw the video — the body of a blond-haired girl, curled in a fetal position, crammed into a garbage bag with a blood-splattered pink bib and a crumpled sunsuit, wadded in a ball, on top of her.

    Two years later, I sat in a High Point courtroom when Kandies was sentenced to die. Jurors found him guilty of first-degree murder and first-degree rape in the death of Natalie Osborne, the little girl with the beautiful smile.

    Kandies was adamant to the end.

    “I didn’t do it!” Kandies said to the jurors, with venom in his voice. “I said the truth, and it got twisted around, and I hope you can all … live with it!”

    Today, Kandies is 47. He’s one of 162 inmates on North Carolina’s death row.

    I don’t think about Kandies much anymore. But I do think about Natalie. A few years back — and a few jobs later — I plucked her photo from a bulletin board beside my computer and stuck it in a folder. From there, the photo disappeared.

    But this week, I pulled her photo from the News & Record library, and everything came back to me in a rush — the beautiful smile, the gut-wrenching video, the court outburst of an abusive alcoholic looking for someone to blame.

    I unearthed Natalie’s photo because of a shooting earlier this month at an Asheboro elementary school involving Meredith Kandies, the 16-year-old sister Natalie never knew.

    It sent me back to my old terrain: an Asheboro courtroom. And there, I saw Patricia Craven, her new fiance and Meredith Kandies, the girl in Craven’s womb when I first talked to Craven that rainy Tuesday 16 years ago.

    A Randolph County judge dismissed the involuntary manslaughter charge against Meredith. Testimony showed she didn’t kill her boyfriend, Jeremy McMillan. It showed McMillan struggled with Kandies for a gun after a schoolyard fight, and the gun went off.

    After the hearing, I found Craven and her daughter. They didn’t say much.

    “I’d like nothing of my father to be told,” she said to me.

    I couldn’t do that. But I did something else. Sixteen years ago, I took her father’s picture as he walked from a courtroom to an Asheboro jail cell. But this time, I kept my digital camera by my side.

    Maybe it’s because I’m older, married, with two young kids of my own. But as Meredith walked away, with her head on the shoulder of Craven’s fiancé, all I saw was a scared little girl in a black pin-stripe suit, haunted by a past she wants to forget.

    Probably, she can’t. I know I can’t. It’s because of Natalie, that little girl with the beautiful smile.

    http://www.news-record.com/content/2...eautiful_smile

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    December 26, 2008

    A playground fight turned deadly

    ASHEBORO - A few weeks ago, Meredith Kandies and Jeremy McMillan were two 16-year-olds just getting to know each other.

    Now McMillan is dead, and Kandies is in the Randolph County Jail, charged with involuntary manslaughter.

    No one disputes that Kandies shot McMillan on a dark elementary school playground Dec. 12 after he fought over her with another boy. But how and why has become the subject of rumor, innuendo and accusation.

    Asheboro police are releasing few details about the ongoing investigation. Teachers and officials at Asheboro High School, where Kandies was once a student, declined to comment.

    Friends and others who knew Kandies describe her as a pretty girl who sought attention from boys and got plenty. Many say they weren't surprised two boys were fighting over her, but they never imagined anyone would get killed.

    At school there were vague whisperings about her home life and her real father, but few knew anything for sure.

    The truth, which many in Asheboro are now remembering, is that Meredith's father is Jeffrey Kandies - the man convicted of raping and murdering his 4-year-old daughter while Meredith was still in the womb.

    One of the most sensational murders in the small town's history, it's something her family has worked hard to forget. Jeffrey Kandies has been on death row since 1994 - and according to the family, his daughter has had little contact with him.

    "He was just a sperm donor," said Bobby Clackler, the fiance of Meredith's mother, Patricia Craven. "I'm the one who's raising her with her mama, and I'm the one she calls Daddy."

    Clackler said Kandies is a good girl who had a rough childhood.

    She was born in the wake of her sister's death and in the shadow of her father, whom psychologists described as an alcoholic with a violent personality disorder.

    The family had hoped to leave that in the past, Clackler said. But now, 16 years later, Meredith Kandies is in jail.

    "She's torn all to pieces over it," Clackler said after a jailhouse phone call with Kandies last week. "This is not something that she wanted to happen. She tried to save Jeremy's life and she ended up watching him die."

    Clackler said Kandies told him the gun belonged to McMillan and that she held it to keep one from shooting the other as the boys fought. Police have not released the name of the other boy involved.

    When McMillan lost the fistfight, he tried to wrestle the gun from Kandies and it went off, shooting him in the stomach.

    Police said forensics confirm the gun, a 9mm Glock pistol recovered near the shooting, discharged in a struggle.

    "It was nothing that was intended," Clackler said. "She and Jeremy were happy and she really cared about him."

    McMillan's family disputes that account.

    "That was not his girlfriend," said Jerry Moran, Jeremy's stepfather. "That girl ... got my son in trouble, got him in with a crowd of trash and had him doing things totally out of his character."

    McMillan was seeing Kandies casually, Moran said, but had a real girlfriend near his home in Franklinville - whom Kandies didn't know about.

    Moran said Kandies should stand trial for murder. The gun didn't belong to McMillan, he said, and if she really was trying to keep it from him, he wouldn't have been shot.

    "The story of what she said happened is ridiculous," Moran said. "If you were trying to keep a gun from someone to protect them, would you point it at them and put your finger on the trigger? Think about that."

    Police said they are investigating who owned the gun and how it got to the playground at Guy B. Teachey Elementary School that night.

    For now, they've charged Kandies with possession of a handgun by a minor, possession of a weapon on educational property and felony discharge of a weapon on educational property.

    Moran said that McMillan, who recently earned his GED at Randolph Community College, was a bright boy who could have done anything with his life. But now he'll never get the chance.

    "My son is dead, and she'll probably just get a slap on the wrist for it," Moran said. "She deserves to be punished for what she's done, for what she has taken from our family."

    http://www.news-record.com/content/2..._turned_deadly

  4. #4
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    On April 5, 2011, a federal magistrate judge recommended that Kandies' habeas petition be denied.

    http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal...764/22169/124/

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