— A man who pleaded guilty this month to killing a pregnant Florida teenager a decade ago has been sentenced to 40 years in prison after sending authorities to dig up a field in rural Alabama in a fruitless search for her body.
Jacobee Flowers, 34, would have received a lighter sentence of 25 years in prison if the remains of Morgan Martin, 17, had been found, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
“I want you all to know that I am a human being.
“I hope that every day that you sleep, you have to see her,” the teen’s mother, Leah Martin, shouted at Flowers in court Thursday.
For years, her disappearance was classified as a missing persons case, and Flowers was listed as a person of interest.
In 2016 a grand jury indicted Flowers, who was in state custody on unrelated charges at the time, on a first-degree murder charge in the teen’s death.
According to court records, text messages from 2012 showed a strained relationship, with Flowers begging Martin to abort the pregnancy because having the baby could affect his existing relationship with another woman.
After Flowers pleaded guilty, he spoke with investigators in Alabama over a video chat and pointed them toward a specific location, Pike County Sheriff’s Office Lt.
“Unfortunately, whether it was because of the many years that have gone by or because of the lack of the reliability of the information that we got, we just weren’t able to find what we are looking for,” St.