Jurors hear Jasper teen's statutory rape allegations

Feb. 21—A 15-year-old girl described for a jury Wednesday how Jasper resident John "Vincent" Estes raped her two years ago, an allegation his wife and other family members took the witness stand to refute.

Testimony was heard Wednesday by a jury of seven women and six men selected to hear the child sexual abuse case in Jasper County Circuit Court. Estes, 29, is charged with first-degree statutory rape of the girl when she was 13.

The girl testified that the sexual assault took place in the garage of Estes' home on the night of a sleepover with a girl she knew from school who is an extended family member of the defendant's wife.

She said she shared some drinks with Estes and her girlfriend before she and the other girl went out to the garage and smoked some marijuana belonging to the defendant. She said Estes subsequently joined the girls on two mattresses laid down for them in the living room of the home and gave them back rubs before retiring to the bedroom where his wife was sleeping.

But he returned to the living room a few hours later while they were asleep.

"I woke up in the middle of the night to Vincent rubbing my back," she told court.

He then picked her up and carried her out to an attached garage where he raped her, she said. Afterward, she went to a bathroom and cried before returning to the living room and going back to sleep.

Assistant Prosecutor Nate Dally asked the girl how she was feeling and what she was thinking in the aftermath. She replied that she was worried about the safety of her friend living in the same home with the defendant.

"Why wouldn't I be?" she asked in response to Dally's questions.

She testified that she did not tell anyone what had happened the next day when Vincent took her and her friend out and bought them some vaping devices. But her girlfriend took a photo of her and Vincent seated in the front seat of the vehicle and sent it to the alleged victim's boyfriend.

The photo concerned her boyfriend because the defendant's hand could be seen extended across the center console of the front seat near her thigh, she said. The boyfriend was troubled enough to share the photo with the girl's parents, who then asked her about it when she got home.

On the stand, the girl said she initially did not tell them the whole truth, limiting her disclosure to her stepmother to recounting the back rub Vincent had given her. Later, in a text thread to another adult friend, she acknowledged having been raped by Estes, she testified.

Jasper police showed up at her home that night, and the girl was interviewed the next day at the Children's Center in Joplin.

Defense attorney Jonathan Pierce questioned her about the alcohol they had consumed, the lighting in the garage and their positioning on the floor during the alleged rape. While the girl testified that Estes had pulled her shorts off, she expressed some uncertainty as to whether she had taken the shorts off in the aftermath and if she had washed them or her other clothes.

"It's been three years. I don't remember," she testified.

Pierce would later call a specialist from the Missouri State Highway Patrol crime lab in Springfield to testify regarding stains found on the shorts, T-shirt and hooded sweatshirt that she had been wearing and were collected by police. While there were numerous stains on all three items, none tested positive for seminal fluids, the specialist testified.

The state played a videotape of the girl's interview at the Children's Center and a video of Jasper police Chief Chad Karr's subsequent interview of Estes.

The girl told her interviewer that Estes had been sending her text messages prior to the sexual assault, ostensibly because her girlfriend did not have a phone at the time and they had to communicate through his phone. She thought the messages he sent her were "weird" for a man to be texting a younger friend of a teen in his household.

Estes acknowledged to Karr that he had sent the girl some text messages but insisted they were "nothing inappropriate." When asked about the drinking that night, he said he'd had just one. While he admitted popping the girls' backs and giving them back rubs, he denied doing anything out of line or getting up in the middle of the night and sexually assaulting the girl in the garage.

Karr wasn't buying his denials.

"Tell me what you did to her in the garage," Karr pushed him.

"I didn't do anything," Estes said.

Karr told him police had collected the shorts she had on that night and asked him point blank if they would find his DNA on them. Estes assured him they would not.

Estes never took the witness stand in his own defense, his attorney instead relying on the testimonies of the defendant's wife, the girl who lives with them and his mother to call into question the alleged victim's account.

His wife, Amanda Estes, testified that her husband came to bed shortly after she did and only returned to the living room when the other girl texted him, asking that he say goodnight with a hug. She said he returned about 11 p.m. and never left their bedroom again that night in contradiction of the girl's allegation that he returned there about 2:30 or 3 a.m. and carried her to the garage.

His wife said she would have known if he got up again because he sleeps on the side of their bed that is against the wall.

"So for him to get out, he would have had to climb out over me," she said, adding that they actually engaged in sexual intercourse themselves around the time the girl testified that she was being assaulted.

She also insisted that their garage was so crowded with belongings its access from the house was almost entirely blocked by a playpen and its interior had little remaining floor space on which the rape could have taken place.

The girl who lives with the Esteses also was called as a witness for the defense and told jurors that, due to her own recurring insomnia, she was actually awake until Amanda Estes got up about 5:30 a.m. and that she never saw never saw the defendant return to the living room and take her friend out to the garage.

The prosecution called a propensity witness during the state's portion of the case, a young woman who had stayed in the same house with Estes in Carthage in 2014 when she was 14 years old. She testified that he had done much the same with her in the middle of a night around Christmastime, entering the living room where she was asleep on an air mattress and massaging her in a manner that became more and more inappropriate.

"For several years after that, I dealt with a lot of suicidal ideation and was cutting (myself)," she said.

Judge Dean Dankelson sent the jury home for the night after the defense rested its case, with jury instructions and closing arguments to be presented when the trial resumes at 9 a.m. Thursday.