Bethany Bourgeois-George unlocked the door to the aluminum mailbox of her downtown Vancouver condo on the morning of August 16, 2021, only to find the letter she had been dreading: a request from the U.S. Postal Service to pick up a package. Although the notice did not state what the package was or whom it was from, Bourgeois-George already knew — she had been expecting it for over eight months.
When Bourgeois-George later picked up the box, she was shocked by how heavy it was. Then, she looked down at her hands. They were covered with a gray, dusty substance. The ashes of her father, Alfred Bourgeois, were seeping out.
“The ashes were so heavy and I didn’t expect that. It was like a punch to the gut because it just reminded me of him as a person, like a heavy human being. And then there he was, just minimized to ashes,” Bourgeois-George said.
As she looked inside the box, she realized it was the closest she had been to her father in almost 19 years, since the day of her high school graduation dinner in LaPlace, Louisiana. They had shared a deep embrace when they said their goodbyes. Bourgeois-George didn’t think much of it, but then a month passed without hearing from him.
She would eventually learn that he had been arrested in Corpus Christi, Texas, for the sexual abuse and murder of his 2-year-old daughter, Ja’karenn Gunter, Bourgeois-George’s half sister. He was convicted on federal charges in 2002 and maintained his innocence until his death. The Trump administration executed the 56-year-old Bourgeois in December 2020, despite evidence of an intellectual disability that would make his execution unconstitutional. He was the 10th out of 13 people executed in an unprecedented federal killing spree.
Bourgeois-George is convinced of her father’s innocence. For the past four years, she has waged a sometimes-lonely battle to clear his name, pointing to myriad filings by his death penalty attorneys that cast doubt on his conviction. The filings include sworn statements from medical experts stating that Ja’karenn’s death could be explained by an internal head injury due to ingestion of salt water during a recent trip to a California beach, rather than abuse.
Her advocacy ranges from media interviews and public appearances to efforts to secure a retrial of the case. Most recently, she submitted a posthumous pardon request to President Joe Biden, whose decision late last month to commute the sentences of almost all of the men on federal death row renewed Bourgeois-George’s hope in getting justice for her father. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
“The wrongful conviction and execution of Alfred Bourgeois represent a moral failure of our justice system—a failure that can and must be addressed,” Bourgeois-George wrote to Biden. “While nothing can bring Alfred back, granting a posthumous pardon would restore his dignity, acknowledge the truth, and send a message that the United States values fairness, accountability, and human life.”
Photos: Courtesy of Bethany Bourgeois-George
A Tragic Loss
In the summer of 2002, Bourgeois took a road trip with his wife at the time, Robin Batiste, and three of his daughters, including Ja’karenn. He was a truck driver, and the family traveled out west in an 18-wheeler truck in a mix of leisure and work. On the morning of June 26, when Bourgeois was making a delivery to a Corpus Christi naval base, Batiste awoke to find Ja’karenn, her stepdaughter, unconscious. The parents took Ja’karenn to the hospital, where she died the next day. The official cause of death was “an impact to the head resulting in a devastating brain injury.”
Batiste and Bourgeois’s 6-year-old daughter Alfredesha quickly identified Bourgeois as a suspect; because they were on federal property at the naval base, he was charged by federal prosecutors. Alfredesha would later testify that she saw her dad hit Ja’karenn’s head against the backseat window four times and physically abuse her. Though Alfredesha blamed her dad for the killing, she also said that she enjoyed being in her father’s truck, where on many occasions she would talk into the speaker and type on the computer for fun during their trips. She also said her dad never hit her or her younger sister and that he treated her “like an angel.”
Bourgeois vehemently denied the allegations and said he was deeply troubled by losing his daughter. At trial, he testified that he never harmed Ja’karenn, never touched her inappropriately, and did not cause her death.
He was the only witness for the defense, court documents show. In an interview, Bourgeois-George said that she, along with more than 20 others — including Alfred’s pastor, family members, and childhood friends — were subpoenaed to testify by her father’s defense team, only to be told that they would not be called. Most of them, including Bourgeois-George, weren’t even allowed in the courtroom.
When Ja’karenn was hospitalized, a sexual abuse nurse examined her and found no evidence of sexual abuse. The autopsy also showed no such evidence. Still, the government argued that Bourgeois had abused his daughter, pointing to a single forensic test that indicates the presence of p30, a prostate-specific antigen that is widely understood as faulty because it can also be found in female fluids. In the years since, the FBI has reportedly abandoned its practices of testing for p30 because it is incapable of reliably determining the presence of semen.
In closing arguments, Bourgeois’s lawyers argued to the predominantly white jury that even if they believed that he had abused and killed Ja’karenn, there was still no evidence of premeditation. After deliberating for less than two hours, the jury found Alfred, a Black man, guilty.
In the coming years, Bourgeois’s appellate lawyers would challenge his conviction, arguing that his trial counsel was ineffective in presenting readily available evidence that cast doubt on his guilt. His appellate lawyers also revealed that the prosecution did not disclose that four people in jail were promised some benefit in exchange for testifying against Bourgeois.
A month after his execution, Bourgeois’s death row attorney shared his case file with Bourgeois-George. The documents — including autopsy reports, affidavits, witness testimony, clemency, and stay of execution petitions — help form the basis of her request for a posthumous pardon.
Photo: Courtesy of Bethany Bourgeois-George
Expert Opinion
Among the key pieces of evidence against Bourgeois that his lawyers questioned was an examination of Ja’karenn’s brain after her death, which showed that she had a subarachnoid hemorrhage — bleeding between the brain and its membrane — caused by the burst of a weakened blood vessel wall, with no skull fracture. The consultation report also cited bruising and hematomas, or a collection of blood that forms outside of a blood vessel.
In 2007, Dr. Werner Spitz, a pathologist and chief medical examiner, wrote an affidavit as part of an appeal for Bourgeois’s innocence saying that the suggestion of bruising was “misleading and exaggerated,” that the photo had been enhanced, and that “dark skinned individuals frequently have variations of skin pigment and tones often mistaken for injuries.” Spitz also testified that the hematoma was at least a week old.
“I disagree with the witness testimony whereby the child’s head was struck multiple times on the interior of the vehicle,” Spitz wrote in the affidavit. “The findings place in question causation of the injuries and their timing.”
Four years later, Dr. Jan Edward Leestma, a consultant in forensic neuropathology, testified in an appellate hearing that what he observed of the subdural hematoma was not consistent with an injury that was inflicted within the 24-hour period that they were on federal grounds in Corpus Christi. While the doctors at the time found new blood (no more than three days old) in the subdural hematoma, Leestma said there was no indication that the injury occurred on the naval base. They had no reliable means to age and date it, Leestma said, noting that existing subdural hematomas from over a week can bleed without additional injury.
Bourgeois’s lawyers consulted additional medical experts as they prepared a clemency petition ahead of his scheduled execution in 2020. One doctor who reviewed the medical evidence, Roland Auer, said that there were no findings that would be expected of a fatal blow to the head in a 2-year-old girl, “especially when the skull is as thin as observed in the autopsy.” Auer explained that the injuries were consistent with venous thrombosis, a blood clot blocking a vein, which he said was possibly caused by ingestion of salt water from the family’s trip to the beach in California just over a week before the death. That could be why the brain injuries predated the day of the alleged murder, Auer said.
Elizabeth Rouse, the doctor who examined the autopsy for the prosecution at the time of the trial, reviewed Auer’s findings and said she “did not disagree” that Ja’karenn “suffered venous thrombosis, occurring more than a week before death, or that the venous thrombosis was possibly caused by the ingestion of salt water,” according to the clemency petition.
Throughout his entire incarceration, Bourgeois was held in isolation. He was not allowed visits, phone calls, or letters with his family. With all this time alone, Bourgeois-George said that he developed an intellectual disability, which his lawyers used to contest his execution. The Supreme Court has deemed it unconstitutional to execute someone with an intellectual disability, yet the justices declined to step in to spare his life.
Bourgeois was killed on December 11, 2020. “I did not commit this crime,” he said in his final statement. “I love my kids with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength.”
Bourgeois-George filed her request to Biden almost exactly four years later, on December 17. She says that as time passes, the feelings of grief get harder, not easier, especially with the possibility he might never get justice. Though she sees no end in sight, she is determined to keep fighting. “My father did not deserve this. He was a good father. He was a wonderful man,” she said. “He was tortured and tormented by his own country for 18 and a half years, and this is how his story ended.”
