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Prosecutor taking closer look at case of mom accused of slashing daughters in Hill County

Jun 19, 2009 | Tommy Witherspoon | Wacotrib

Dan Dent has been Hill County district attorney for 29 years, but it didn't take him long to categorize last week's nightmarish incident in which Debra Janelle Jeter reportedly slashed the throats of her two daughters a week after undergoing psychiatric treatment.

"In all that time, it is either one of the worst, or the worst, that I have seen," Dent said. "I have been thinking about that. It's right up there at the top."

Dent has visited the abandoned, rural Hill County ranch house where Jeter, 32, reportedly fatally slashed the throat of her younger daughter, Kelsey, 12, and critically injured 13-year-old Kiersten the day after a custody and visitation hearing in Jeter's divorce case with her husband, Lee Jeter.

Dent has listened to the 9-1-1 call in which a woman identified as Debra Jeter tells authorities that she just killed her two daughters. Nothing he has seen or heard makes any sense or answers why Jeter might have killed one daughter and tried to kill the other just weeks after she tried to kill herself in front of the girls.

"From what I understand, (Lee Jeter) agreed to the visitations, and I think no one would have thought that she would have harmed those children," Dent said. "Who contemplates that sort of thing? But then you think, who knows her better at this point in time than her husband? Who knows what people are capable of?"

At the custody hearing June 4, Debra Jeter, who remains jailed in lieu of $1.5 million bail, told Hill County Court-at-Law Judge Lee Harris that she had been living with her parents in Malakoff, Texas, since her hospitalization at the DePaul Center in Waco from May 22 to May 26. Jeter was hospitalized after her suicide attempt in front of the girls at her home on Brazos Street in Hillsboro.

She testified that she was taking 100 milligrams of the antidepressant Zoloft each morning and had been diagnosed with depression but was not bipolar.

Lee Jeter, a Hill County auto-dealership employee, told the judge that he "had no problem" with allowing his estranged wife unsupervised weekend visits with the girls. He added that he would like to have access to her medical records reflecting her time at DePaul. He also asked the judge to order that his wife tell him where the girls were going to be staying on her weekend visits. The judge approved each request, according to a transcript of the hearing.

Lee Jeter's attorney, Gregg Hill of Hillsboro, declined comment about the hearing or anything relating to the Jeters' case.

"My client does not want to talk to the media," Hill said Thursday. "He wants to be left alone."

Whitney attorney Phil Weaver, who has been appointed to represent Debra Jeter in the criminal case, would not accept a call from the Tribune-Herald, a spokeswoman in his office said Thursday.

Dent said it likely will be a month or two before he presents Debra Jeter's case to a grand jury.