Jessie's Mom Looks Suspect In The Eye
"I want justice and I want Mr. Cutts to have a fair trial," Patricia Porter, mother of the woman the Canton, Ohio, police officer is accused of murdering, said on CBS News' The Early Show. "I want him tried on the facts. I think every person deserves a fair trial. And I want him to have one as well."
Porter and other relatives of victim Jessie Davis were in the court room when Bobby Cutts, 30, was ordered held on $5 million bond.
"I stood because I wanted to make eye contact with Bobby and I wanted him to make eye contact with me, which he did. We actually moved our seats right before that. I wanted to make sure I saw him. I wanted him to know we weren't going away," Porter told Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith.
"I saw nothing in his eyes. But he did — he made eye contact with me a couple different times," Porter said.
Davis, 26, was missing for about a week before her body was found in a northeast Ohio park Saturday, still carrying the unborn baby she was due to deliver July 3. DNA tests will determine if Cutts is the father of the unborn baby, reports CBS News correspondent Bianca Solorzano. Relatives say he is.
The medical examiner says determining how Davis died will take weeks because her body, found 25 miles from her home in Cuyahoga National Park, was so badly decomposed.
Any look at Cutts' life has to include the women and children in it.
His oldest daughter, Taylor, was born out of wedlock to a girlfriend in 1997. A younger daughter, Breonna, was born to another woman in 2001, shortly before Cutts married her.
His son, 2-year-old Blake, was born to Davis while Cutts was separated from his wife.
"He's doing pretty good. It's very difficult. He really misses his mom. He's definitely a mama's boy. He has an old cell phone that he carries around and the moment he's out of bed in the morning, he's calling her and talking to her," Porter said. He tells her what he's doing. It's very heart-breaking. And he asks about his mom. We tell him his mom's with Jesus in heaven. But he still talks to her on that phone."
Cutts is accused of killing Davis and the fetus June 14 at her home in nearby Lake Township. Ohio law allows a murder charge against someone accused of killing a fetus that would have been able to live outside the womb.
Cutts' attorney, Bradley Iams, declined to discuss details of the charges against his client or anything Cutts said to him during the brief court appearance.
Cutts' stepmother, Barbara Cutts, on Monday called her stepson a generous man who was good with kids and coached youth soccer, basketball and football. She said she and Cutts' father last saw him Saturday at his house in Plain Township outside North Canton, where he appeared drained and exhausted.
"It's very hard to accept," said Barbara Cutts, 46, a nurse's aide. "A lot of people are looking at him like a bad person, but he's not, he really isn't."
Cutts and Nikki Giavasis, Taylor's mother, met while attending nearby Walsh University. Taylor has lived with Giavasis for most of her life in California, but Cutts challenged the custody arrangement in 2005.
Hours before Cutts' arraignment, Stark County Family Court Judge David Stucki dismissed a custody case here, citing the charges against Cutts as one factor in his decision, said Jeffrey Jakmides, a lawyer representing Giavasis. Another custody dispute over Taylor is ongoing in a California court, Jakmides said.
"The family has deliberately tried not to burden her (Taylor) with this," Jakmides said, referring to the murder case. "They've tried as much as possible to keep her from the media storm."
Susan Hulit Burns, Taylor's court-appointed guardian, said she was bothered by how often Giavasis switched apartments and daycare providers, questioning the effect on Taylor. She said she was also bothered that Cutts "conceived a child during his separation" from his wife, according to a June 2006 court filing.
In 1998, Cutts was accused of breaking into Giavasis' home while she was inside with former NBA player Shawn Kemp of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Cutts pleaded no contest to a disorderly conduct charge and was sentenced to three years' probation.
Cutts married his wife, Kelly, in July 2001, two months after Breonna was born. They separated in 2003 while Cutts faced criminal charges after his police supervisors alleged he had given his gun to a drug-dealing cousin. Cutts was acquitted and an arbitrator ordered Canton to rehire him with back pay.
During the separation, he and Jessie Davis conceived Blake, born in December 2004. On Monday, Porter was granted temporary custody of the boy in Stark County Family Court.
It was Blake who provided investigators searching for Davis their first clues earlier this month, saying: "Mommy was crying. Mommy broke the table. Mommy's in rug." Porter found the boy home alone on June 15, with Davis missing, furniture toppled in the bedroom and a pool of bleach on the floor.
Cutts played football in high school. After he became a police officer, Cutts also played semiprofessional football with the Massillon Bengals in the Ohio Valley League and in 2005 was drafted by the Canton Legends of the Atlantic Indoor Football League.
Cutts played softball the evening of June 13 and then spent about four hours at a sports bar in Canton. He told The (Canton) Repository last week that he called Davis that night — the day before he's accused of killing her — and that it was the last time they spoke.
He's been suspended from the police force without pay, reports Solorzano. Disciplinary hearings will be set in the future.