Father Gets Life Sentence for Killing Daughter, Her Girlfriend

GALVESTON, TX — On March 6, 2014, James Larry Cosby, 48, was sitting in the Houston home he shared with his daughter Britney Cosby, 24, her girlfriend Crystal Jackson, 24, and his grandmother Annie Lee Cosby, 92, when — for some unknown reason — he flipped out.

Witnesses to that night indicated that Cosby resented Britney and Jackson. He was upset that they were gay. He was upset that since his October 2013 release from his prison — he was originally arrested for sexual assault in 1994, released in 2004 and then picked up again in 2011 for failing to register as a sex offender — things had changed around the house.

His stuff had been moved out of the bedroom and he was sleeping on a couch in the living room. He was upset that they'd go buy pizza and he was forced to eat bologna sandwiches. He was upset that they wouldn't let him use their car.

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What set Cosby off may never be known,what is known is what happened after he snapped. He choked and clubbed his daughter to death. He beat her five times with a heavy, sharp edged object — which caused her skull to fracture and split.

The viciousness wasn't apparent in the Jackson's death. Cosby did choke her, but she died from a point blank gunshot to the head.

After he killed the women, he loaded their bodies into a silver or gray Kia Sorrento — an SUV that Britney Cosby and Jackson had recently purchased — and drove more than an hour south to Port Bolivar. Once he reached the fishing village, Cosby threw their bodies into a convenience store dumpster.i

He then drove an hour north to a Houston strip club called The Ritz, it's at the intersection of I-45 South/Gulf Freeway and Clearwood/Edgebrook. When he got to the club, Cosby ditched the car in the parking lot. He walked about 350 feet to a nearby Whataburger and called his girlfriend, Kimberly Pierce, to come pick him up.

It seems that Pierce brought some of her own baggage to the relationship. After she picked him up, Cosby called 9-1-1 to report that Pierce's ex-boyfriend was trying to run them off the road. While he was on the phone with dispatch Cosby identified himself.

The next morning, a beer truck driver found Britney Cosby and Jackson and deputies from the Galveston County Sheriff's office were called out. While the deputies were processing the scene, they found a piece of a decorative shutter with a bloody fingerprint on it.

Once word spread about the deaths of Britney Cosby and Jackson, a candlelight vigil was organized in their memory. Investigators first met Cosby at the vigil and found his behavior a little off, to say the least.

Cosby seemed utterly unmoved by the death of his daughter. Friends and family say that he treated it as a trifle. After seeing utterly nonplussed Cosby was, five-oh started looking at Cosby a whole lot closer.

When the police arrived to conduct initial interviews, they noticed that the house's shutters matched the one that had been found in Galveston. They also saw blood on the door frame and a blood stain on the sidewalk, which had been hastily covered with bricks. It was enough for a warrant.

The luminol lit up, turning the driveway into Day Glo Jackson Pollock. Brtiney Cosby's blood was everywhere, especially in her father's room. The carpet was caked in her blood and James Cosby had tried to cover it up with throw rugs.

Although the search didn't turn up a murder weapon, deputies did find a pair of Cosby's shoes that appeared to have blood on them. The Kia Sorrento also wasn't found when investigators searched the house.

The car wouldn't turn up until a month after the bodies were found, after the owner of The Ritz finally got tired of it taking up space and called to have it towed. Apparently, when the car was being processed into the tow lot it tripped a BOLO, be on the lookout.

When the crime scene techs got their hands on the Kia Sorrento they discovered samples of both victims' blood and a single shell casing.

After the cops found the car they had enough to arrest Cosby on evidence tampering, he was charged with moving the bodies. The arrest, along with the $500,000 bail, was enough to keep Cosby locked up while the cops worked to put more pieces of the puzzle together.

Galveston County Sheriff's Office called up the FBI to have them reconstruct Cosby's movements using his cell phone records, based on his 9-1-1 call they determined that the phone was in Cosby's possession the entire night.

To people raised on procedurals like CSI and NCIS the case against Cosby may have seemed thin, but the circumstantial evidence was enough to convince the jury who convicted Cosby of capital murder. Since Galveston County decided not to go for the death penalty, Cosby will be serving a mandatory sentence of life without parole.

All though the police were unable to establish a definitive motive for the killings during their investigation, cops sweated Cosby for six hours and he didn't break, that hasn't stopped people from claiming that the killing was gay bashing.

Another theory is that, after spending years in prison, Cosby had become institutionalized. He was used to the never back down, don't let anything slide world of Texas prisons. And for his daughter to disrespect him by making him sleep on the couch, to buy pizza and not offer him any, was too much.

As it stands now, whatever prompted Cosby to beat his daughter to death and then execute her lover remains his secret.