JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — On Wednesday, prosecutors showed explicit messages between a Jacksonville man and the teenage niece he is accused of impregnating and murdering.
Prosecutors say Johnathan Quiles communicated with 16-year-old Iyana Sawyer through the app, Snapchat, before her disappearance in 2018. Wednesday is the fifth day of testimony in Quiles's death penalty trial.
The lead detective read aloud sexually explicit and at times, threatening messages he says Quiles sent to Sawyer. One message read: “I’m just so in love with you. I’ll kill you and cry.”
The defense pushed back, saying investigators couldn’t prove it was Quiles sending the messages. They also argued Sawyer's body was never found.
The detective says investigators did their “due diligence” searching in Georgia, where Sawyer’s grandmother lived, and that based on their information, they believed she was dead.
The court also heard from Quiles’s ex-wife, the Sawyer's aunt. She testified and told Quiles to stop talking to his nieces after her relatives flagged his behavior with them as inappropriate, but those conversations continued.
The court expects to hear a recorded wire of Quiles confessing the crime to a fellow inmate in jail.