E-Mail
Print
tool name
closeA high-profile criminal case involving a killer sentenced to death in Baldwin County will be featured in an Investigation Discovery Channel documentary this spring.
John Anthony Esposito, who is now 33, and his girlfriend, 31-year-old Alicia Woodward, will be the subject of a one-hour episode in the “Wicked Attraction” series. The first season is airing on Investigation Discovery.
Esposito and Woodward beat a 90-year-old North Carolina woman to death with a tree limb in Morgan County on Sept. 19, 1996, after kidnapping and robbing her.
Esposito’s trial was moved to Milledgeville because of pretrial publicity. He was sentenced to death in 1998. Woodward, who was tried separately, is serving a life sentence.
The couple embarked on a deadly, cross-country killing spree in 1996 during which Esposito and Woodward robbed 90-year-old Lola Davis of Lumberton, N.C., and robbed and killed two other elderly people before they were arrested in Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado.
JoAnne Taylor, the researcher working on the episode, said a crew from Virginia-based m2 Pictures will be in Georgia this week interviewing deputies who investigated Davis’ killing.
Sunday, the crew interviewed Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit District Attorney Fred Bright, who prosecuted Esposito.
Bright said the photos of Esposito and Woodward’s victims — Davis and Oklahoma City residents 90-year-old Laurence Snider and 86-year-old Marguarite Snider — will forever be seared into his mind.
“Those are photos I’ll never forget,” he said Thursday.
Bright said the case is one of the most gruesome and heinous cases he has prosecuted.
“He savagely killed these elderly people,” Bright said of Esposito.
Taylor said the episode is scheduled to air as part of the show’s second season, which is scheduled to begin in March. The series profiles violent crimes and the psychology of the relationships between couples who partner to kill, Taylor said.
“It’s an interesting dynamic how these two people teamed up,” Taylor said of Esposito and Woodward.
Taylor said the Esposito case was chosen because producers took a special interest in why the couple focused on elderly people.
“Why didn’t they just rob them?” Taylor questioned. “Why did they kill them?”
Taylor said cameras will follow investigators as they retrace the killing spree.
“You’re seeing the investigation unfold,” she said.
Esposito is being held at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification prison in Jackson on death row. Woodward is serving a life sentence at Pulaski State Prison in Hawkinsville, according to Georgia Department of Corrections records.
Esposito and Woodward were runaways who met in their native New Jersey and drove to Lumberton, N.C., in Woodward’s car, Bright said.
Esposito told investigators that he and Woodward became stranded in Lumberton after Woodward’s mother refused to send them money. That’s why they decided to rob and kill an elderly person to obtain money, according to an FBI report of his October 2006 confession.
“Old people can’t defend themselves. They don’t have the motor skills to fight or run,” Esposito is reported to have said.
Davis was the couple’s first victim.
After spotting her in a grocery store parking lot, the couple kidnapped her, took her money and drove to Georgia.
Stopping near a wooded area, Esposito admitted he forced Davis to kneel on the ground and then he hit her in the head with a tree limb, killing her, according to Esposito’s confession.
The couple then drove to Alabama in Davis’ car and boarded a Greyhound bus headed west.
In Oklahoma City, Esposito and Woodward abducted an elderly couple in a grocery store parking lot, robbed them and then drove to Texas where Esposito beat them to death with a tire iron, Bright said.
Esposito told FBI agents the couple had planned on robbing and killing another elderly woman at a Wal-Mart in Colorado at the time they were caught, according to the confession.
He said he didn’t have any remorse for his actions.
“I don’t have a conscience. I really don’t care,” Esposito said.
Information from The Telegraph Archives was included in this report.
To contact writer Amy Leigh Womack, call 744-4398.
@Nyx.CommentBody@