Eddie Lee Sexton

In October 2017, Estella May Warren died in prison of natural causes at the age of 70.

On appeal in 1997, Eddie Lee Sexton's verdict was overturned and a new trial was ordered. The appellate judges agreed with defense attorneys that some of the prior bad acts evidence regarding the child abuse and other lurid details of the family history were prejudicial and inflammatory. After the retrial Eddie was again found guilty. During the sentencing phase, a psychologist testified for the defense that Eddie "had a diminished level of self-control due to dysfunction in his prefrontal cortex". The court rejected this line of reasoning, noting that Eddie's crimes shows considerable planning and concealment over many years, thus demonstrating he possessed self-control. Eddie was sentenced to death on November 18, 1998. He died of natural causes while imprisoned at Florida's Union Correctional Institution.

Eventually, the FBI issued a national arrest warrant for Eddie and Estella Sexton for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. They were arrested in Florida on January 14, 1994 after authorities traced them by a Florida zip code on one of Sexton's self-produced videocassettes that was mailed to Attorney General Reno.

Eventually, investigators came to believe that Eddie was the mastermind of the entire Sexton family. In February 1994, Pixie was charged with first-degree murder for killing Skipper. However, she was later allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter for Skipper's death, in exchange for testifying against her father. Adult son Scott agreed to testify against Eddie regarding the Hesser murder plot, while Willie agreed to testify regarding Joel Good’s murder. Willie was found to have a borderline mentally handicapped IQ and was functionally illiterate. He was further judged unfit to stand trial due to serious psychiatric problems and ordered to a mental health facility for treatment. His condition was stabilized, and Willie eventually testified.

Eddie was found guilty after less than three hours deliberation and was sentenced to death on November 2, 1994. Jurors later said that librarian Gail Novak's testimony was the most important evidence presented at the trial. While the Sextons came across as mentally disturbed and their stories were often inconsistent, contradictory, and incomplete, Novak's account provided jurors with critical independent corroboration of the most salient details of the prosecution’s case.

Pixie smothered her son Skipper to death in the late evening of October 19,1993 or in the early morning of October 20,1993. The child was ill and Eddie refused to allow a doctor to visit, and Pixie later claimed that her father ordered her to silence the crying child to avoid drawing attention at the camp site (where the family lived in violation of both the occupancy and time-limit rules). Pixie carried the corpse with her for several days, believing her father had the power to resurrect the child. They eventually buried the boy in a peat bog near the camp site.

Pixie told Joel the boy died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), but Joel was suspicious. On November 30, 1993, Joel and Pixie visited the University of Tampa’s library, where librarian Gail Novak assisted him in finding information about SIDS. Eddie entered the library, furious that Joel and Pixie had visited without his permission. Novak would later testify that she saw Eddie assault Joel and Pixie in the library, and that she overheard an argument between father and daughter. When Pixie said that Joel was heartbroken over Skipper's death and wanted to go back to Ohio, Eddie replied that the only way Joel would return to Ohio was as a corpse. Novak reported the incident to campus police, who dismissed it as a prank.

Eddie trained his hulking adult son Willie to use a garotte in preparation for murdering Joel. Willie strangled 24-year-old Joel to death sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas 1993. They buried Joel's body in the swamp not far from Skipper's grave.

Eddie was regarded as charming and polite upon first impression, but those who knew him well saw him as a serial con artist and fraudster. Though receiving Social Security disability payments due to an allegedly serious back injury, he also worked for cash as a painter and handyman. He was suspected of having committed insurance fraud by setting three fires at his homes in the 1980s and faking burglaries and falsely reporting stolen items.

The Sexton household was long suspected of being abusive and neglectful towards their children, with county officials maintaining a file on the family from 1979 but lacking enough evidence for any further action. In early 1992, his then-18 year old daughter Machelle informed employees at a women's shelter that her father had raped her. At the time of Machelle's allegation, six of the Sexton children were minors and authorities launched an investigation. Three of the young children reported nothing unusual, but three others reported physical abuse from their parents. These three children were removed from the home and assigned to foster families pending further investigation. Machelle retracted her allegations, complicating the case.

In the 1970s he briefly worked as an independent Christian preacher, espousing a highly unorthodox doctrine emphasizing sex and apocalyptic predictions that he would later use to indoctrinate and intimidate his children. Journalist Lowell Cauffiel wrote: "Eddie Lee Sexton certainly maintained his own place of worship. But nobody could figure out what gospel he was preaching. A little general occult. A little fundamentalism. A little Satanism. A little sci-fi hustle..." Neighbor Augusta Houston would report that Eddie claimed to worship both God and the Devil.

Eddie Lee Sexton was born near rural Logan, West Virginia to a family of coal miners. His father was a part-time Baptist preacher. In 1963, he committed armed robbery of a gas station the day after marrying his pregnant 15-year-old girlfriend. He was sentenced to five years in state prison for the robbery, and his wife filed for divorce after giving birth to a son, Patrick.

Eddie Lee Sexton (May 12, 1942 – December 29, 2010) was an American convicted murderer and rapist known for compelling his children to murder and committing sexual abuse against his own family which he ruled in a cult-like manner. He fathered at least three children with two of his daughters. Rick Terrana, Eddie Sexton's defense attorney, described the Sextons as the "most dysfunctional family in America." The case earned national attention, due in part to some of the graphic and sensational details revealed in court.