Nine days before Jessie Lee Jr. and his wife were found dead in a Greenwood motel room on Thanksgiving Day, his 17-year-old son had come forward to Georgia authorities to detail alleged abuse at the hands of his father.
The juvenile told authorities in Marietta, Georgia, that Lee choked and beat him and regularly denied him and his 14-year-old sister food and clothing, according to an arrest warrant issued for Lee.
The teenage boy also told police that his father forced him to sell marijuana at his high school, which led to his expulsion in March.
Lee, 37, and his wife, Dianetra McIntyre Lee, 36, were found dead by police in a room at the Golden Coach Inn shortly before 9 a.m. Thanksgiving Day.
Greenwood police used a pass key to enter the motel room, where a chair had been propped against the door. Officers found Dianetra Lee lying face up on the bed. Jessie Lee was found lying face up on the floor near an interior wall with no apparent signs of physical trauma, Greenwood Police Chief Ray Moore said.
Numerous medications were found in the room, but the cause of death has not yet been determined pending the results of autopsies and toxicology tests conducted by the state Crime Lab in Jackson.
Lee reportedly posted a note on Facebook sometime Thanksgiving morning that he and his wife were going to take their lives because they didn’t want to go to prison. The post has since been taken down.
Jessie Lee was wanted by Georgia authorities on numerous charges at the time of his death. David Baldwin, a public information officer with the Marietta Police Department, said that no warrants had been issued for Dianetra Lee at the time of her death and that any charges against her would’ve been the result of further investigation.
The couple were natives of Greenwood. Funerals for both were held on Saturday.
The allegations against Jessie Lee by his 17-year-old son led authorities to search the couple’s home in Marietta, a suburb of Atlanta.
Once inside, authorities found a strong odor of marijuana. A further search of the home uncovered a marijuana “grow house” with more than 300 plants as well as a handgun.
According to the arrest warrant issued for Lee, his son detailed beatings using a cord, a baseball bat, a 2-by-4 and barbells. The son also told police his father punched and choked him.
Because of the large marijuana grow operation in the home, the son told police that his father kept him and his 14-year-old sister confined to just two rooms in the home, forcing him “to urinate in a bottle and pour it out the window” and, at times, sleep on the floor.
The 17-year-old told authorities about an alleged incident in September in which he attempted to use the bathroom — reportedly off-limits to the children — while his father “was smoking marijuana, sniffing cocaine, playing music and video games.” The son said that Lee “saw him in the bathroom and got upset,” pulled out a pistol and fired it at him. The shot missed and lodged in the ceiling, according to the warrant.
Lee would also allegedly punish the children by withholding food for four days and hadn’t provided clothes to the two teenagers in several months, forcing them to steal clothes or borrow them from friends.
The son also told authorities that he witnessed his father “slap his sister, put his knees in her back, bend her arms backwards and shove her face into the floor.”
The teenage boy told authorities that he was afraid to report the abuse because he feared that his father “would kill him or put a price out on him” if he told police, friends or family.
At the time of his death in Greenwood, Lee was wanted on two counts of first-degree cruelty to a child, five counts of aggravated assault, two counts of false imprisonment, child abandonment and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Lee was also wanted on drug charges stemming from the search of his home, including charges of manufacturing marijuana, trafficking in marijuana, distributing marijuana and possession of a weapon by a felon.
• Contact Bryn Stole at 581-7235 or bstole@gwcommonwealth.com.
