Jurors who will decide Silver Comet Trail murderer Michael Ledford's fate got glimpses of two very different families Tuesday.
One was Ledford's dysfunctional, troubled life. He began drinking at an early age, was twice in foster care and has had run-ins with the law since his early teens.
In contrast was the life of his victim, cyclist Jennifer Ewing. Hers was marked with love, benevolence and stability.
Several Paulding County jurors - men and women - cried along with Ewing's husband, children, mother and sister as they told about the "void" in their lives since she was killed on July 25, 2006, while biking the trail that runs from Smyrna to Alabama.
The jury of 10 men and two women convicted Ledford on Monday of murder, kidnapping, aggravated sodomy, aggravated battery and aggravated assault. The case is now in the sentencing stage with prosecutors trying to show why Ledford should be sentenced to die and defense attorneys trying to get his life spared.
"Her death created a void in my life and her family," Jim Ewing said of his wife of 30 years. "Our lives and the lives of countless people ... have been diminished immeasurably since Jenny Ewing was taken from us."
His voice was calm and measured as he read his "victim impact" statement, but he could not stop his tears and trembling chin as he listened to his adult children describe their heartaches.
Ledford, who served spent 10 years in prison for a 1991 rape, knocked Jennifer Ewing off her bike just as the 53-year-old mother completed the 32nd mile of her regular 50-mile ride on the Silver Comet Trail. He dragged her 70 feet off the path and tried to force her to perform oral sex on him. Ledford, now 46, beat and stomped her dozens of times in anger because she bit him.
She was left to die on a mound of kudzu.
"She lived a life of love. She lived a life of hope. She lived a life of faith," said Margaret Ewing, the second of three children Jennifer Ewing home schooled. "This world's a darker, smaller place [since] ... her life has been prematurely taken from us. Not a day or a moment goes by that we don't miss her. Not a day or a moment goes by that we don't need her."
All three recalled how Ewing helped low-income mothers and their children with school work.
The oldest of the three, James, said one of his fondest memories was of his mother taking him to visit elderly neighbors, explaining that they didn't have company often.
"There was an old lady down the street who let me hammer nails in her porch and eat Oreos," James Ewing said.
His mother and the neighbor sat in a porch swing watching, he recalled. And when it was time to go, the mother swept her son into her arms and carried him home.
While writing what he wanted jurors to know about his mother, James Ewing said, "all I could think about was Oreos and porch swings, and I wish so much she was there to carry me home."
Then the jurors got a glimpse of Ledford's life.
His father was a drunkard who beat his children and wife often, two brothers testified. They said they changed schools more times than they could recall because they moved each time his mother and then-stepfather could not pay rent.
The brothers said they and Michael Ledford started drinking in their early teens. They stole cars and broke into houses, once using a gun a few hours later in a Florida carjacking.
The jurors heard tape recorded telephone conversations Ledford had while in the Paulding County Jail in the month after he was arrested on charges of murdering Ewing. He begged his mother for money so he could buy from the commissary, and he told his mother he would write his sister a letter ending their relationship if she didn't put something in his jail spending account.
"I feel I'm the bad guy. I don't think I am," Michael Ledford told his mother while talking about a family feud.
In another phone call, he cooed with his sister-in-law, who promised to stand by him. "So you miss me?" he asked her.
And in another call he flirted with his 14-year-old niece, his sister's daughter.
If she wrote him, he said, it should be addressed "handsome Mike."
They talked about media coverage of him and the crime.
"Y'all get to talk to a famous guy," Ledford, then 43, said to his niece in August 2006.
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