Jury examines damaged car prosecutors say was used to transport Anitra Gunn’s body
Before the murder trial of the boyfriend accused of killing Fort Valley State University senior Anitra LaShay Gunn two years ago wrapped up its third day of testimony on Thursday, jurors were escorted outside the Peach County Courthouse to see the car prosecutors say Gunn’s killer used to haul and dump her body in the woods.
The prosecutorial flourish granted the jury a up-close view of Gunn’s 2013 Chevrolet Cruze, its front end badly damaged when, according to prosecutors, her boyfriend drove it into a brush-clogged pine thicket to dispose of her body on Valentine’s Day 2020.
The car was found in Fort Valley the next day, ditched near the intersection of Belle and Montrose streets, about four miles south of where Gunn’s body was discovered by a Peach sheriff’s investigator on Feb. 18, 2020, four days after she vanished.
Over first few days of testimony in the trial of Gunn’s boyfriend, Demarcus D. Little, 24, the car has been a focal point of the prosecution’s case. Parts matching those missing from the car were found near Gunn’s body, which was hidden amid brush and vines in a rain-soaked patch of woods off Greer Road in neighboring Crawford County.
Prosecutors have said that Little strangled Gunn, 22, sometime on Valentine’s Day morning while she was spending the night with him at his aunt’s house on the north side of Fort Valley. The pair were said to have had a troubled, “toxic,” on-again, off-again relationship. The authorities believe that Little, after killing Gunn, placed her body in the trunk of her car and drove it a mile and a half to the woods along Greer Road and disposed of her.
In doing so, the prosecutors contend, Little seriously damaged Gunn’s car. The small Chevy was found the following afternoon with brush, sticks and other woody debris jammed in its busted grille and banged-up undercarriage. What’s more, prosecutors have said, Little called a friend to pick him up near the spot where the car was found.
The friend, who is expected to testify against Little in the coming day or so, was also a friend of Gunn’s. Prosecutors say that when the friend showed up to give Little a ride, the friend asked him if the Chevy Cruze parked nearby was Gunn’s. Little said it was not, prosecutors noted in their opening argument Tuesday.
On Thursday, after prosecutors methodically laid groundwork hoping to prove the car’s connection to the site where Gunn’s body was recovered, jurors were led outside the courthouse to see the car themselves. The scene approached the surreal. Few words were spoken as, for about five minutes, jurors jotted notes and circled the white, compact Chevy, which was parked next to a 40-year-old relic of a John Deere 2640 tractor.
Investigators have testified that Little’s fingerprints and palm prints were found inside the car and on its trunk the day it turned up. Little’s defense attorney has yet to note it, but such a finding might not be all that unusual considering Little and Gunn were or had been in a relationship.
Prosecutors have also made a point of showing jurors surveillance footage of Little buying a pistol from a Byron gun shop the afternoon they believe Gunn’s body was ditched. They have, however, not yet suggested what the significance of that purchase may be, considering Gunn died of strangulation and was not shot.
On Wednesday, a Fort Valley police officer testified that a potentially fraudulent Google email address in the name of a northeast Texas woman was linked to an Oklahoma telephone number and a ransom-seeking text message sent to Gunn’s father three days after she vanished. The investigator said the phone used to send that message was somehow connected to someone at the house where Little was staying with his aunt.
During Thursday’s testimony, while prosecutors showed the jury and those in the courtroom photographs of Gunn’s autopsy and of her partially clad body lying amid a scattered pile of tree branches, vines and straw in the woods, a couple of people close to Gunn walked out, one sobbing heavily at the sight.
The trial was set to resume Friday morning and possibly last into the weekend.
This story was originally published March 11, 2022 at 9:43 AM.