Dismembered Torso Positively ID'd as Jaren Lockhart as body parts are washed ashore.Terry Speaks convicted of murdering Bourbon Street dancer Jaren Lockhart.

Hold on Lockhart suspect lifted by judge/Margaret Sanchez' bond set at $251,000

UPDATED 6:14 PM CDT Jun 21, 2012

HAMMOND, La. - The woman held on unrelated charges who is being investigated in the death and disappearance of Jaren Lockhart had her hold lifted by a Tangipahoa judge on Thursday.

Jaren Lockhart was reported missing on June 6. Her torso washed ashore on a beach in Bay St. Louis, Miss., and other parts of her severed body washed up days later. Authorities in Hancock County, Miss., are looking for her killer.

Some of the evidence in the investigation surrounding a Bourbon Street dancer’s disappearance and gruesome death has been taken to FBI headquarters, investigators told WDSU.

Margaret Sanchez and Terry Speaks were arrested last week on unrelated charges, but are being called suspects by investigators in the case.

Speaks and Sanchez were the last known people to have seen Lockhart alive after the three were spotted in surveillance video from the Temptations gentlemen's club where Lockhart worked.

In a hearing in Tangipahoa Parish, Sanchez' hold placed on her out of Mississippi was lifted, meaning she can now bond out of jail.

Her bond was reset on Thursday night from $1 million to $251,000. Officials said a judge thought Sanchez was going to be charged in Lockhart's death, but reduced it when the charge was found to be harboring a sex offender.

Speaks is awaiting extradition to North Carolina on a charge of failing to register as a sex offender.

Lockhart went missing on June 6. Her body parts washed ashore days later on a beach in Mississippi.

Family and friends attended Lockhart's funeral on Thursday in Hammond, La.

No one has been charged in her death.

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Published: Monday, June 25, 2012, 3:15 PM
By The Times-Picayune

Terry Speaks, a suspect in the killing and dismemberment of Bourbon Street dancer Jaren Lockhart, has been extradited out of Louisiana to face federal charges in North Carolina of failing to register as a sex offender. He is currently being held at the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City, according to the website for the federal Bureau of Prisons.

Parts of Lockhart's corpse began washing up on the shoreline of Hancock County, Miss., on June 7. The sheriff's office there has been in charge of the investigation as a result, though Lockhart was last seen alive in New Orleans. Surveillance cameras captured her leaving Temptations, the Bourbon Street strip club where she worked, with Speaks and Margaret Sanchez, whom authorities have also named as a suspect in the killing.

Don Bass, chief deputy for the Hancock County Sheriff's Office, said Speaks' extradition will not affect his office's investigation in any way. "It doesn't bother us in the least," he said. "As long as he's in custody, we know where to find him."

Bass said he expects to hold another debriefing on the case this week.

Speaks, 39, has several convictions in Surry County, N.C.: for sexually abusing a 14-year-old, assaulting a woman and committing domestic violence. Earlier this year, a federal grand jury there indicted him on charges of failing to register as a sex offender after his 2003 conviction on the sex charge.

On June 15, a federal judge in New Orleans ordered Speaks extradited to North Carolina to face that new charge.
Sanchez is being held in the Tangipahoa Parish jail on a charge of harboring a sex offender.

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by Chelsea Hoffman

Jaren Lockhart Case: Suspect Extradited
June 28, 2012 12:30 AM EDT
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The murder of Jaren Lockhart appears to be losing interest among the media and the public, so updates in the case are fewer and fewer with each day that passes. The last update in this case comes with the extradition of Terry Christopher Speaks, one of the suspects in the murder of the young New Orleans dancer. Terry Speaks is wanted in North Carolina for failing to register as a sex offender. Fittingly enough, Margaret Sanchez is being held on $250,000 bond for harboring this sex offender.

Some may be wondering how this will affect the investigation into the murder of Jaren Lockhart. Well, rest assured that there is still an investigation. Chief Deputy Don Bass of the Hancock County Sheriff's Office said the following:

"As long as he's in custody, we know where to find him."

He's absolutely right. He's in the system now, where he belongs, and so is his accomplice Margaret Sanchez. Hopefully new charges arise in the near future before public interest in this case fizzles permanently. There are far too many crimes being committed to stay on top of this case; that's to be understood. Nonetheless, Jaren needs justice to be served for what happened to her.

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Judge reduces bail for Sanchez

BY HEIDI R. KINCHEN
Florida Parishes bureau
June 28, 2012

AMITE — The bail for a Kenner woman suspected but not charged in the death and dismembering of New Orleans dancer Jaren Lockhart was reduced from $250,000 to $35,000 on Wednesday.

The counts against 29-year-old Margaret Sanchez — failure to signal, resisting an officer by giving misinformation and harboring a sex offender — are not sufficient to warrant a bail that exceeds the 21st Judicial District’s own guidelines even for defendants in a murder case, Judge Ernest Drake ruled.

The district’s “bond schedule” calls for $150,000 bail in murder cases, Drake said during a hearing on a defense motion to reduce Sanchez’s bail. Charges related to sex crimes have bail recommendations ranging from $25,000 to $50,000, he said.

Noting that no listed criminal count calls for a bail as high as $250,000, Drake asked, “Is there anything so heinous about this case as to indicate a need to go higher than what’s on the schedule?”

Assistant Public Defender Allen Harvey said Sanchez’s bail should be set at $25,000, based on a catch-all provision for felonies not specifically listed on the schedule. Harboring a sex offender is an unlisted offense, he said.

Assistant District Attorney Britain Sledge objected to that, saying Sanchez is a danger to public safety.

“There’s a 1,000-pound elephant in this room, and nobody’s talking about it,” Drake said, noting that Sanchez is a suspect in Lockhart’s death. “But that’s not what she’s charged with.”

Lockhart was reported missing June 6 after she did not return home from working at a Bourbon Street strip club. Her partial remains and clothing later washed ashore on several Mississippi beaches, beginning June 7 in Hancock County.

Sanchez and Terry Speaks, 38, a convicted sex offender from North Carolina, were found and arrested in Tangipahoa Parish on June 12 after police received calls identifying the pair as the couple seen on a surveillance video leaving the club with Lockhart around 2 a.m. the day she was reported missing.

Neither Sanchez nor Speaks has been charged in Lockhart’s death.

Setting bail higher than the $25,000 recommended under the district’s guidelines would be like giving a judicial seal of approval for holding defendants based on the mere possibility of charges elsewhere, Harvey said.

Sanchez appeared in court on June 13-14 for extradition to Hancock County.

But Mississippi authorities had not requested her extradition, Harvey said, and jail records indicate neither Hancock County nor any other jurisdiction had ever placed a hold on her.

Sanchez refused to waive extradition proceedings on June 14 and posted $1,500 bail on at 10:32 p.m. June 15, Harvey said.

An hour later, around 11:30 p.m., the jail requested a coroner’s protective order on Sanchez, Harvey said.

Sanchez remained in jail during the weekend and three days later, on the morning of June 18, she was taken to a mental health facility for evaluation, Harvey said.

She returned to the jail later that afternoon “with no indication that she was a danger to herself or others,” Harvey said, and was immediately arrested on a new count of harboring a sex offender.

Two days later, her bail was raised to $250,000, he said.

Drake said he had voted against the district’s bail guidelines when they were first proposed, believing many of them to be too low.

“But giving some credence to the schedule,” he said he reduced Sanchez’s bail to $35,000.

Sanchez was returned to custody in the Tangipahoa Parish Jail following Wednesday’s bail reduction hearing.

Drake scheduled a preliminary examination hearing, requested by the defense, for July 24 before Judge Brenda Ricks, to whom the case was assigned.

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Friday, June 29, 2012
Who Dismembered Jaren Lockhart? An Ongoing Investigation

Jaren Lockhart lived with her fiancee at the Capri Motel in New Orleans, and worked as an exotic dancer at the Temptations Strip Club in the French Quarter. She had a 6-year-old daughter but did not have custody of the child. On Tuesday night, June 5, 2012, the 22-year-old showed up for her shift at the Bourbon Street club and worked until the early morning hours of the next day. When she didn't return to the Capri on Wednesday, her fiancee reported her missing to the New Orleans police.

Late in the afternoon of Thursday, June 7, workers pumping sand onto the beach at Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, discovered a female torso that had washed up from the Gulf of Mexico. Early Saturday, June 9, a fisherman on the beach at Pass Christian came across the lower portion of a human leg. Later that day, searchers in Long Beach, Mississippi found a female head that had washed ashore.

The body parts had come from Jaren Lockhart who had been stabbed in the chest, her presumed cause of death. Investigators with the Hancock County, Mississippi Sheriff's Office didn't know where the victim had been murdered, or exactly when. Moreover, detectives didn't have a murder weapon, a motive, or any suspects. (Yes, they do. Two are in custody!) The Capri Motel, Lockhart's $50-a-day residence, mainly housed gulf oil workers and French Quarter bar employees. Maybe she had been murdered by someone living at the motel.

A review of the Temptations Strip Club's surveillance tapes showed Lockhart, on the night of June 5, walking along Bourbon Street and into the club accompanied by two people identified as 28-year-old Margaret Sanchez, and Sanchez's boyfriend, Terry Speaks, 39. The couple, who appeared to be acquainted with Lockhart, resided in Kenner, Louisiana.

Investigators, in checking out Speaks, learned that he was a federal fugitive for failing to register as a sex offender in connection with a 2003 case involving a 14-year-old girl in North Carolina. Speaks also had convictions for assault and domestic violence. Because Speaks and Sanchez were now prime suspects in Lockhart's murder, the FBI stepped up its investigation to find and arrest Speaks on the federal, North Carolina sex offender registration warrant.

On June 12, police in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, pulled Speaks and Sanchez over in a routine traffic stop. He jumped out of the car, scaled a fence, and ran into the woods. Police caught the fugitive and turned him over to the FBI. Six days later, the FBI took Sanchez into custody for harboring a sex offender. Speaks and Sanchez have been extradited to North Carolina where they are being held on $1 million bond each.

As of June 29, 2012, state authorities have not charged Speaks or Sanchez in connection with Jaren Lockhart's murder. Investigators in Louisiana are looking into the possibility that the disappearance of Michaela Shunick, a 21-year-old University of Louisiana student last seen on May 19, 2012 riding a bicycle in Lafayette, is connected to the Jaren Lockhart murder case.

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Anne Cutler
WGNO News
4:03 p.m. CDT, July 4, 2012

NEW ORLEANS—
Wednesday on ABC the show "Final Witness" features Margaret Sanchez, a suspect in the death and dismemberment of French Quarter dancer Jaren Lockhart, whose body parts washed ashore on Mississippi beaches last month. However, the interview is about an entirely different victim, Addie Hall, who was murdered in a French Quarter apartment owned by Leo Watermeier 6 years ago, at the hands of her boyfriend Zack Bowen.

Watermeier says, "I was probably the last person to see Addie alive besides Zack because she came to me and got me to sign a lease with only her name on it and then once she had that lease she went to Zack and said leave, the lease is in my name."

Bowen and Hall gained recognition for refusing to evacuate the French Quarter during Hurricane Katrina. They moved into Watermeier's apartment just days before New Orleans police say Bowen strangled, dismembered and cooked Hall, then jumped to his death from the Omni Hotel.

According to NOPD Homicide Commander Lt Gary Marchese, "There was a note in his pocket directed to the police that said it wasn't an accident. He took his life to pay for the one he took and it has directions to send the detectives to the apartment where he said they'd find the dismembered body of his girlfriend."

Sanchez was not a suspect in the case. She was a friend of the victim, among a handful of others who will recreate her story on "Final Witness." The story of Bowen and Hall has been told by countless news stations and it's even been written up in a novel, but what's different about this version is that it's told from the perspective of the victim. "Addie shouldn't be neglected, shouldn't be overlooked in this because she's the ultimate victim," says Watermeier. "So I think it's good that they're gonna try to make sure she's not forgotten."

It's the last moments of life of a murder victim…remembered through the eyes of a murder suspect.

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I HIGHLY recommend this show. Saw the season premiere and it's really good!

Posted: Jul 18, 2012 5:13 AM CDT
Updated: Jul 18, 2012 5:13 AM CDT
By Meggan Gray

Authorities in Hancock County say phone records have now identified a possible witness, someone who may be able to shed some light into what happened the night Jaren Lockhart was murdered.

But, investigators are getting no help from Margaret Sanchez, one of the two suspects in the case. She refuses to talk with investigators about this new lead.

You may recall, Sanchez was just featured in the ABC show Final Witness, talking about a similar murder case in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

Both Sanchez and her boyfriend Terry Speaks are in police custody on unrelated charges.

WLOX News hopes to learn more about this new lead, and will bring you updates on WLOX.com and WLOX news.

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Cops Still Seeking Show Footage in Jaren Lockhart Murder Probe/Crime Show Featuring Suspect Sanchez Still an Issue For Hancock Detectives

Sheldon Fox
ABC26 News
July 18, 2012

Hancock County, Mississippi— Clues in the Jaren Lockhart murder case could come from a show that aired on ABC two weeks ago, but the raw footage used to produce the program are what detectives say they really want but are having trouble getting.

Detectives from the Hancock County Sheriff's Office say they're dealing with "red tape" as they try to acquire unedited interviews and footage from a July 4th airing of "Final Witness," an ABC crime show, which featured interviews from Margaret Sanchez, one of two suspects in the June murder and dismemberment of Jaren Lockhart, the 23-year-old New Orleans exotic dancer who disappeared after a shift at the Bourbon Street strip club where she worked. Sanchez, 28, was featured on "Final Witness" as an interviewee on the 2006 murder and dismemberment of her friend Addie Hall.

Detectives say that Sanchez knew two women in the French Quarter murdered in such a similar way is a "coincidence" which "can't be ignored."

Hancock County chief deputy Don Bass says his sheriff's office has tried to subpoena the video, but learned the show's production company doesn't legally have to turn over their material.

Bass says Hancock County's District Attorney's office is working to get a New York state subpoena for the footage.

"I'm very interested," said bass. "How many people know two people in their lives (who were) murdered, dismembered and decapitated?"

A voicemail message requesting comment from show representatives was left Wednesday night by WGNO News.

Sanchez and her boyfriend, Terry Speaks are the prime suspects in Lockhart's killing, and remain in custody of authorities on unrelated charges.

They have not been formally charged with the murder.

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Suspect’s relationship to prior victim eyed

BY HEIDI R. KINCHEN
Florida Parishes bureau
July 28, 2012

A coincidence too striking to ignore is the discovery that a Kenner woman now held in the Tangipahoa Parish Jail was close friends with one dismembered young woman and the last person seen with another, Hancock County, Miss., investigator Steve Saucier said Friday.

Investigators believe the dismembered body of New Orleans dancer Jaren Lockhart, which washed ashore on several Mississippi beaches June 7, was dumped inside Mississippi state lines, Saucier said, but the events leading up to that point remain unclear.

Saucier and his team are still awaiting the FBI’s forensic analysis of evidence taken from the home of suspects Margaret A. Sanchez, 28, and Terry Christopher Speaks, 39, he said.

But in the meantime, they are poring over phone records and working to subpoena a video of Sanchez describing the brutal death of another New Orleans woman — Addie Hall — in an interview recorded just 15 months before Sanchez would become a suspect in Lockhart’s death.

Lockhart, 22, was reported missing June 6 after she did not return home from work at a Bourbon Street club. Her partial remains began turning up on beaches the next day at Bay St. Louis and elsewhere along the Mississippi coast, authorities said.

Oceanographers studying tide flow and wind currents determined Lockhart’s body could not have traveled into Mississippi waters from outside the state in the amount of time between her disappearance and the discovery of her remains, Saucier said.

Hancock County investigators are scrutinizing Lockhart’s cellphone records in an effort to reconstruct a timeline of events surrounding her death, he said.

The records indicate Lockhart’s last conversation was around the same time she left Temptations strip club in the 300 block of Bourbon Street at 2 a.m. June 6, Saucier said.

Video surveillance shows Lockhart departing with a man and a woman investigators believe to be Speaks and Sanchez, authorities said.

The Kenner couple are the primary suspects in Lockhart’s death, Saucier said, though neither has been arrested in the slaying.

Saucier declined to comment on whether Lockhart’s phone records revealed any communications with Sanchez or Speaks, but investigators have said they are reviewing the suspects’ phone records as well.

Other efforts to reconstruct events, such as studying business surveillance videos along the Mississippi coast, have revealed “nothing of evidentiary value” thus far, Saucier said. “But something of extreme importance could pop up at any time, so I certainly wouldn’t say any avenue is closed.”

In the meantime, investigators are working with New York authorities to subpoena the raw video footage of an interview ABC conducted with Sanchez about 15 months before Lockhart’s death, Saucier said.

Sanchez appeared on a July 4 episode of the network’s “Final Witness” series discussing the 2006 death and dismemberment of New Orleans resident Adriane “Addie” Hall, 30.

Hall was strangled and dismembered by her boyfriend, Zackery Bowen, 28, who later jumped from the roof of the Omni Royal Hotel and died, according to news reports at the time.

Bowen left a note in his pocket leading police to the couple’s apartment, where he had left Hall’s cooked body parts in pots on the stove and in the oven, according to news reports.

Sanchez told ABC she worked as a bartender alongside Hall in the French Quarter and called her “my best friend, my sister. ... Anything that a woman could be for another woman, she was that for me.”

Sanchez described Hall and Bowen as star-crossed lovers to whom life had dealt a bad hand that could have played out no other way.

“He just snapped,” Sanchez said of the night Bowen strangled Hall after an argument. “I can imagine, just shock. What am I gonna do to get rid of the body? That would be the first thought. What did I just do? How am I going to fix this?”

Hancock County investigators found Sanchez’s comments about the Hall case unusual and intriguing, Saucier said.

“The two cases are strikingly similar, with the dismemberment and beheading, and she (Sanchez) is best friends with the first woman and the last seen with the second,” Saucier said.

“We can’t really ascertain whether she had anything to do with this case based on the previous one, but it’s definitely something we want to go more in-depth with,” he said.

Sanchez and Speaks remain in custody on unrelated allegations following their arrest June 12 near Loranger in Tangipahoa Parish.

The couple were arrested after a traffic stop, during which Sanchez called Speaks by two different aliases and told officers she knew he had “a history or a warrant” in North Carolina, Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Detective Mike Moore said.

Speaks had outstanding warrants in North Carolina, California and with the U.S. Marshals Service for failure to register as a sex offender, Moore said.

Speaks was extradited back to North Carolina, where he pleaded not guilty Tuesday on the failure to register count, federal court records show.

His trial has been set for Sept. 10 in Winston-Salem, N.C., court records show.

Sanchez pleaded no contest to a traffic violation and resisting an officer by misinformation July 12, but remains in the Tangipahoa Parish Jail in lieu of $35,000 bail on a count of harboring a sex offender, authorities said.

Judge Brenda Bedsole Ricks, of the 21st Judicial District, found probable cause to continue to hold Sanchez on the allegation following a hearing Tuesday.

Sanchez’s attorneys intend to appeal the ruling, Assistant Public Defender Allen Harvey said Friday.

The state failed to prove that Sanchez knew Speaks was a sex offender, knew he was required to register but had not, or even knew his true identity, Harvey said.

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RIP Jaren Lockhart
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Published: Friday, August 10, 2012, 6:38 PM
By The Associated Press

AMITE, Louisiana - A woman suspected in the death of a New Orleans dancer has been released from the Tangipahoa Parish Jail.

WDSU-TV reports Margaret Sanchez bonded out of jail late Friday, shortly after the parish district attorney refused a charge of harboring a sex offender - the most serious count she faced.

Sanchez was arrested in June, along with Terry Speaks after a traffic stop. The two were the last to see Jaren Lockhart alive.

Lockhart, a Bourbon Street dancer, was reported missing on June 6. Her torso washed ashore on a beach in Bay St. Louis, Miss., and other parts of her severed body washed up days later. No charges have been filed against Sanchez or Speaks, who was transferred to North Carolina, where he faces unrelated sex offender charges.

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If this were a famous person, you can bet murder charges would already have been filed.

UPDATED 6:18 PM CST Nov 16, 2012

HANCOCK COUNTY, Miss. —
Investigators in Hancock County, Miss., are working new leads in the death of a French Quarter dancer who was gruesomely slaughtered in June.

Jaren Lockhart was reported missing on June 6. Her torso washed ashore on a beach in Bay St. Louis, Miss., and other parts of her severed body washed up days later. Authorities in Hancock County, Miss., are looking for her killer. This timeline follows the events of the investigation.

The man who was one of the last people to be seen with a Bourbon Street dancer before her body parts washed ashore in Mississippi days later has plead guilty to unrelated charges in North Carolina, according to the Sun Herald.

A woman who is under investigation in the death and disappearance of a Bourbon Street dancer and who is being held on unrelated charges appeared in court Tuesday.

Jaren Lockhart went missing on June 6 after leaving work at Temptations Gentlemen’s Club on Bourbon Street. Days later, her severed body parts washed ashore on beaches in Bay St. Louis, Miss.

Investigators admit the investigation is frustrating. Two people were developed as prime suspects – 28-year-old Margaret Sanchez and 39-year-old Terry Speaks. However, no formal charges in Lockhart’s death were made against the couple.

Friday, the lead investigator in Lockhart’s death, Steve Saucier, told WDSU that police have new leads they hope will crack the case.

“The initial fear factor is starting to wear off with them a little bit, and a few more people are starting to come forward and speak about what they know,” he said.

Saucier said Sanchez and Speaks remain the prime suspects in 22-year-old Lockhart’s death. Speaks and Sanchez were the last two to see Lockhart alive. They were all seen leaving the club where Lockhart worked together. Lockhart was never seen again.

Speaks was taken to North Carolina where he faces sex offender charges unrelated to the murder investigation. Sanchez was eventually released after being held for more than a month in Tangipahoa Parish.

“We have reason to believe she did leave the state of Louisiana,” Saucier said. “She's possibly in the southwest United States.”

With Sanchez possibly out of state and Speaks in North Carolina, Saucier believes more information will come forward.

“That you know this person, that you were aware after the fact that you were friends with them during this time that these activities occurred, it's got to be mind-blowing,” he said. “Those people that do have information will come in or will give us a call and will talk to us, like I said, a little more candidly than what they wanted to before.”

Tips from witnesses aren’t the only leads investigators are following. Evidence turned over to the FBI after a forensic search of the suspects, car found hair that can be used for comparison.

“Jaren Lockhart's hair coming from her hair brush -- we're hoping that if any hair fibers or any strands of hair were in that vehicle, we can use that for comparison,” Saucier said.

Hancock County authorities feel they know who committed the heinous crime.

Now, they said it's just a matter of bringing them to justice.

Anyone with information on the investigation is asked to call the Hancock County Sheriff's Office at 228-466-6900 or the New Orleans Police Department at 504-821-2222.

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This is one case that really gets to me.

BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 18, 2012

NEW ORLEANS — Investigators in Hancock County, Miss., are working new leads in the death of a French Quarter dancer who was gruesomely slaughtered in June.

Jaren Lockhart, 22, a native of Tangipahoa Parish, went missing on June 6 after leaving work at Temptations Gentlemen’s Club on Bourbon Street.

Days later, her severed body parts washed ashore in Bay St. Louis, Miss. Two people were detained — Margaret A. Sanchez, 28, and Terry Christopher Speaks, 39. However, no formal charges in Lockhart’s death were made against the couple.

Speaks was taken to North Carolina where he faces sex offender charges unrelated to the murder investigation. Sanchez was released from the Tangipahoa Parish Jail Aug. 10 after prosecutors decided not to try her on a count of harboring a sex offender. Now, the lead investigator said that people with new information are coming forward as fear and shock wear off.

Sanchez and Speaks were identified as the same couple seen on a surveillance video leaving Temptations strip club with Lockhart around 2 a.m. the day she was reported missing, authorities have said. Hancock County investigators have named Sanchez and Speaks, both of Kenner, as the primary suspects in Lockhart’s death, but have not made any arrests in the case.

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by Chelsea Hoffman
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November 18, 2012 08:45 AM EST

Will Jaren Lockhart ever get justice? The New Orleans stripper was brutally slain over the summertime, and her dismembered body parts washed ashore in Mississippi just days after she was reported missing. Over the course of this case there have been very few investigative updates, and it's just not known as to whether or not officials know what they're doing. Two people were arrested in the beginning, but since then one has been freed while the other remains jailed on unrelated charges. So what gives?

In the latest update, it appears that officials are "probing new leads"—which could mean a multitude of things. Either they've run into a dead end and are seeking new information, or they've gotten new information that lends to the investigation. This source says they are "working new leads" in the case—whatever that means.

There have been no arrests in this case so far, aside from the two suspects who were arrested on unrelated charges. It seems that while the Mickey Shunick case was taking over the media headlines this very sad case out of Louisiana didn't get the attention it needed. Hopefully Jaren Lockhart didn't die for nothing and officials can charge and convict the monster(s) responsible for this.

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Sheldon Fox
8:39 p.m. CST, November 19, 2012

New Orleans—
There could be some new life to nearly-six-month old murder case of Jaren Lockhart, the 22-year-old mother and Bourbon Street exotic dancer, who was stabbed and dismembered before her body parts washed ashore on beaches in Mississippi.

Hancock County Mississippi Sheriff’s Office investigators report they’ve collected a hair sample of Lockhart’s and are sending it off to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia to be examined.

The hope of investigators is that the hair will watch DNA from the confiscated car or other belongs of suspect Margaret Sanchez. Sanchez and her co-suspect ex-boyfriend, Terry Speaks were riding in the vehicle when they were stopped and arrested in connection with Lockahart’s murder. Though not formally charged with the heinous crime, the two are still said to be the only suspects, according to Hancock County investigators.

Detective Steve Saucier wouldn’t say when or where the hair sample was collected or why it’s just now being presented to federal investigators.

Saucier said Sanchez, who has since bonded out of jail, has left the state.

Terry Speaks remains jailed in North Carolina on unrelated sex offender charges.

Speaks and Sanchez are thought to be the last people seen with Lockhart in June as she left her place of work, Bourbon Street’s Temptations strip club.

Anyone with information is urged to call Crimestoppers at 822-1111.

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Written by Media Sources
Thursday, 13 December 2012 19:24

Terry Speaks, a suspect in the June slaying and dismemberment of Jaren Lockhart , was sentenced in a North Carolina courtroom on Thursday to serve two years and eight months in federal prison for failing to register as a sex offender, his attorney said. Speaks pleaded guilty to the charge after authorities arrested him in Louisiana, according to his private defense attorney Alan Doorasamy.

"He couldn't leave the middle district of North Carolina without letting his probation officer know, so he had no defense to that" charge, Doorasamy said.

Doorasamy said his client, who has been held in police custody since his arrest, had not been questioned about Lockhart's slaying since he was extradited to North Carolina in late June. WHY the Hell NOT??

Parts of Lockhart's corpse began washing up on the shoreline of Hancock County, Miss., on June 7.

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Questions remain in case of dismembered woman

Published: January 13, 2013
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HANCOCK COUNTY -- Details of the sentencing of sex offender Terry Speaks raise additional questions about his last contact with a young mother and dancer in New Orleans whose dismembered body parts began washing ashore in Bay St. Louis in June.

Speaks' sentencing order and his girlfriend's televised comments that her best friend also had been dismembered don't provide probable cause for an arrest in the killing of Jaren Lockhart. However, Glenn Grannan, chief investigator for the Hancock County Sheriff's Office, believes he's still on the right track in considering them suspects.

The 22-year-old Lockhart was last seen alive early June 6 with Speaks, 40, and Margaret Sanchez, 29.

Speaks had been wanted on a federal warrant for failing to register as a sex offender. He was convicted of indecent liberties with a child in Surry County, N.C., in 2006, and hadn't registered his address after getting out of prison. He was arrested on the registration charge during the probe of Lockhart's slaying.

A federal judge who sentenced him Dec. 13 in Greensboro, N.C., recommended "the most intensive substance abuse treatment provided by the Bureau of Prisons" and a mental health evaluation.

The judge sentenced him to 32 months in prison and ordered 15 years of post-release supervision.

While on probation, Speaks must receive specialized mental health treatment for sex offenders and take prescribed medication. He also must undergo physiological tests that may include determining if a sex offender's sexual arousal level could lead to future sex crimes.

Once out of prison, Speaks is forbidden from having contact with anyone younger than 18, except for supervised visits with his children.

Last seen with Lockhart

Surveillance pictures released to the media after Lockhart's disappearance show her leaving work at the Temptations club on Bourbon Street with Speaks and Sanchez at 2:05 a.m.

Bourbon Street dancers have told detectives and the Sun Herald that just before Lockhart disappeared, Sanchez was looking to buy drugs and to hire a dancer to go with her and Speaks to an after-hours sex party.

Lockhart, the mother of a 3-year-old girl, lived with her longtime boyfriend in New Orleans. Family and friends described her as a good friend and mother with a generous nature and a bubbly personality.

Sanchez, 29, was a street performer on Bourbon Street. Speaks had been a doorman at Stiletto's Cabaret, where Lockhart had previously worked, next door to Temptations. Sanchez and Speaks had been together at least three or four months, and he was living with her in a relative's home in Kenner, La., Grannan said.

Sanchez has since moved out of the home. She left the area, but is believed to have returned to the Greater New Orleans area.

Other friend dismembered

Authorities said they were shocked in July to learn Sanchez had taped an interview for a TV episode of ABC's "Final Witness." On the program, Sanchez talked about her best friend, Addie Hall, who was strangled, dismembered and cooked by Hall's boyfriend in October 2006. Police said he left a suicide note saying he put her body parts in various cook pots to make it easier to dispose of the remains.

Asked what she thought was going on in the boyfriend's mind, Sanchez said, "What am I gonna do to get rid of the body? That would be the first thought. What did I just do? How am I going to fix this?"

Knowing two people who were dismembered is too odd to be a coincidence, Grannan said. Sanchez and Speaks hadn't met when Hall was killed, raising further questions in the Lockhart investigation.

Most of Lockhart's body parts surfaced on beaches between Bay St. Louis and Long Beach. She was stabbed in the chest, possibly with a hunting knife. Authorities used sonar equipment to search the waters for a hunting knife, but said all they found was a crab trab.

From Philly to the Big Easy

Court papers show Speaks signed a document Dec. 31, 2008, agreeing to register as a sex offender for 10 years on his release from prison. Sometime in May 2011, he moved to Pennsylvania, and lived and worked in Philadelphia for five months. He didn't register.

Authorities said he used alias names, including the name of a man who didn't know Speaks was using his identity.

Speaks and Sanchez were arrested June 12 in a traffic stop in Loranger, La. They had dyed their hair, his red, hers blue. Speaks was held on the federal charge and Sanchez was arrested on traffic violations and a charge of harboring a fugitive. A judge ruled she couldn't be held on the felony -- there was no way to prove she knew Speaks was a sex offender or hadn't registered.

Grannan said the case hinges on receiving information that links the couple to Lockhart's death and the results of evidence held at the FBI's backlogged crime lab. He said the evidence includes items taken from Sanchez's home and vehicle and DNA provided by Lockhart's family.

"We have a direct line to someone at the crime lab so we can stay in touch on the progress on test results," Grannan said. "This is not a cold case. We are still actively investigating it."

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Charges to be filed in Jaren Lockhart case

Posted: Apr 11, 2013 9:07 PM CDT
Updated: Apr 11, 2013 9:07 PM CDT

HANCOCK COUNTY, MS (WAFB) -
Authorities are planning to file charges against two people accused of killing a New Orleans dancer.

The Hancock County Sheriff's Office is building a case against Terry Speaks and Margaret Sanchez, the last two people to see Jaren Lockhart alive.

Lockhart's mutilated body washed up in Mississippi last summer.

Sparks is in jail in North Carolina on unrelated charges.

Investigators say they don't believe there is enough evidence to try the pair for murder, so they're looking into alternate charges.

Evidence will go to the district attorney's office, then possibly a grand jury.

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Meeting with D.A. now set for Wednesday in Lockhart case
Investigators to present evidence that could lead to charges

UPDATED 1:31 PM CDT Apr 15, 2013

HANCOCK COUNTY, Miss. —Investigators building a case related to the murder of Jaren Lockhart will now meet with members of the local district attorney's office on Wednesday, officials told WDSU.

IF MISS. DA MOVES FORWARD WITH JAREN LOCKHART CASE, ARRESTS...

Officials with the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office said that arrests could be made if the District Attorney’s Office decides to move forward in the case against two people named as suspects in the gruesome death of a Bourbon Street dancer.

The Hancock County Sheriff's Office plans to deliver a presentation to the District Attorney's Office in the next week, making a case for at least one charge against a couple they call "suspects."

A man investigated in connection with the disappearance and murder of a New Orleans woman has been moved from the North Carolina jail where he has been confined and is now in the federal prison system.

Initial plans called for a presentation of the findings on Monday, but a spokesman for the Hancock County Sheriff's Office said that has been rescheduled.

WDSU first reported last week that detectives intend to present evidence that may lead to the first charges in the matter. It is likely, they said, that those charges would be desecration of a corpse, and not murder.

They expressed concern that filing any murder charges prematurely could hurt chances for convictions on those most serious counts.

Two individuals -- Terry Speaks and Margaret Sanchez -- were linked to Lockhart early in the investigation, but neither was charged. Speaks, a convicted sex offender, is currently serving time in an out-of-state federal prison.

The duo are seen on surveillance video taken at a Bourbon Street men's club days before Lockhart's remains were discovered.

Don Bass, the chief deputy of the Hancock County Sheriff's Department, said investigators aren't sure where Lockhart was killed. Her remains washed ashore on a beach within his department's jurisdiction.

Bass said investigators hope the material they share with prosecutors will be presented to a grand jury. He says an indictment would allow authorities to hold the two while the investigation continues.

The grand jury will meet on Thursday.

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Published: Tuesday, Apr. 23, 2013 / Updated: Tuesday, Apr. 23, 2013 06:22 AM

Mother of slain woman seeks closure, peace of mind
The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS --
The mother of a woman whose dismembered body washed ashore in Mississippi nearly a year ago wants the killer or killers brought to justice but not executed.

Whoever killed Jaren Lockhart, 22, should get life in prison, Donna Lockhart told WDSU-TV ( [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] But she rejected the idea of the death sentence.

"I don't want nobody to take their life because it ain't right," she said.

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The 22-year-old stripper's torso and other body parts were found on Mississippi beaches in June 2012; tattoos helped identify her. Her torso was found at Bay St. Louis, Miss. Other body parts and pieces of clothing washed up later at nearby Pass Christian and Long Beach.

Surveillance video from June 6, 2012, showed her leaving with Terry Speaks, 40, and Margaret Sanchez, 28, from the Bourbon Street club where she worked.

Both have been identified as suspects in her death, but neither has been charged.

Sheriff's investigators in Hancock County, Miss., had hoped to present evidence to prosecutors last week. Officials said such a meeting is likely soon.

Donna Lockhart said her daughter's loss weighs heavily on her.

"I think about her all the time," she said. "I dream about different people that I can see that killed Jaren. It seems to be the same people, but I (have) never seen these people before.

"But I keep dreaming about it."

She said her daughter made mistakes, but her death may have stemmed from her trusting nature.

"Yeah, she went down the wrong road in life and she did some bad things, but she was a good person and she trusted everybody," Lockhart said.

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Published: June 8, 2013
By KEVIN McGILL — Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS -- It's been a year since parts of Jaren Lockhart's body began washing up on Hancock and Harrison county beaches and almost that long since two people seen leaving a Bourbon Street strip club with Lockhart were named as suspects in her death and dismemberment.

Margaret Sanchez, 29, is free. "We think she's somewhere near Las Vegas," said Glenn Grannon, a Hancock County Sheriff's investigator.

Christopher Speaks, 40, is in federal prison awaiting a December 2014 release after a guilty plea for failing to register as a sex offender in North Carolina.

Neither has been charged in Lockhart's death, but officials say they remain the chief suspects.

On Bourbon Street, the beat goes on at Temptations, the historic French Quarter building-turned-strip club where Lockhart, 22 and mother of a small child, was last seen alive. A barker earlier this week enticed visitors in as women in lingerie wandered out onto the marble steps. None would talk about Lockhart. The club's management declined an interview.

Except for the way it ended in death, the story of Lockhart appears similar to those of other young women who dance at French Quarter strip clubs, said social worker and former New Orleans Police Department employee Cecile Tebo, who at one time was helping pregnant women, including strip club dancers, put children up for adoption.

"They had found this an easy, flexible way to make money," she said of dancing. "Many of my girls did have a background of trouble but they were pretty doggone mature."

She also said they're typically street-smart.

Let down her guard?

But Lockhart may have let her guard down when she left Temptations with two strangers after her June 5, 2012, shift. Police said her boyfriend, who lived with her at a motel in an area known for crime and drug trafficking, reported her missing the next day.

On June 7 and in the following days, officials investigated reports of body parts washing ashore on the Coast. Tattoos and body piercings helped identify the remains as those of Lockhart. Her wounds included a stab to the chest, but the weapon has not been found and police even now are withholding details on her cause of death.

Studies of Gulf currents at the time indicate the body was dumped somewhere off the Coast, Grannan said.

Still, it remains unclear where she was killed and exactly where the body parts were disposed of.

Keeping tabs on suspects

Surveillance video from Temptations put police on the lookout for Speaks and Sanchez, who shared a house in Kenner. Both were picked up later on unrelated charges in Tangipahoa Parish.

Speaks sat quietly in a New Orleans courtroom a few days later as his transfer to North Carolina was arranged. After the transfer, he was sentenced to 32 months in federal prison with extensive conditions for his December 2014 release, including registering as a sex offender, drug treatment, and prohibitions on alcohol use.

A charge of harboring a sex offender eventually was dropped against Sanchez. Grannon said authorities can keep tabs on her through family contacts she has in southeastern Louisiana.

Grannon and police in Kenner, where Sanchez and Speaks lived, say evidence has been turned over to FBI forensics experts. Grannon said some came from the house, some from the car in which the two were arrested last June. He declined to discuss the type of evidence except to say there wasn't much of it.

"We're certainly dealing with two areas that were cleaned up and cleaned up very well," he said.

'It'll really spook you'

Aside from homicide charges, Grannon said authorities are considering lesser charges, such as the illegal disposing of the body. "We're looking at these alternative charges because, you know, maybe if we can get them back incarcerated maybe we have an opportunity to visit with them again," he said.

He admits frustration in the case, stoked by a video that turned up last year: an ABC television show about Adriane Hall, who was murdered and dismembered in her French Quarter apartment in 2006 by her boyfriend, who later killed himself. That show included a 2011 interview of their friend -- Margaret Sanchez.

"I can imagine, just, shock. 'What am I going to do? Get rid of the body.' That would be anybody's first thought," Sanchez said at one point of the program, which interspersed re-enacted scenes from Hall's life with interviews of police and people who knew her.

New Orleans police have never publicly connected Sanchez to the Hall killing. The boyfriend confessed to the murder in a suicide note.

But Sanchez's comments on the Hall case strengthen Grannan's belief she was capable of such a crime.

"It'll really spook you if you listen to it close," he said. "It'll spook you."

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NO new updates.

Posted: Apr 21, 2014 8:38 PM EDT
Updated: Apr 21, 2014 8:59 PM EDT

Back in 2012, Jaren Lockhart's dismembered remains washed up in Bay St. Louis shortly after she went missing in New Orleans.

Terry Speaks is still in a New York federal prison for an unrelated charge, but is set to be released in October.

Margaret Sanchez was eventually released because of a lack of evidence linking her to the crime.

HANCOCK COUNTY, MS (WLOX) -
New evidence has been discovered in the Jaren Lockhart murder case that leads investigators to believe the killing happened in Louisiana. That comes from lead investigator Glenn Grannan with the Hancock County Sheriff's Department.

Back in 2012, Lockhart's dismembered remains washed up in Bay St. Louis shortly after she went missing in New Orleans.

Hancock County investigators have been working since then to build a case against Terry Speaks and Margaret Sanchez, the last two people to see Jaren Lockhart alive.

Speaks is still in a New York federal prison for an unrelated charge, but is set to be released in October.

Sanchez was eventually released because of a lack of evidence linking her to the crime. Investigators said they aren't sure where she is right now. So far, no one has been charged with Lockhart's murder.

Grannan told WLOX News his team presented the new evidence to the Jefferson Parish District Attorney and Kenner Police, who will be taking the case. Hancock County investigators will continue to assist, along with the FBI.

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Updated: May 27, 2014 12:38 PM EDT
Written by: FOX8Live.com Staff - email
  
Margaret Sanchez


GRETNA, LA (WVUE) -
At a Tuesday morning hearing, a judge in Jefferson Parish determined probable cause for Margaret Sanchez, 30, to be held on a charge of 2nd degree murder and obstruction of justice in the death of Jaren Lockhart, who was 22 years old at the time of her death.

U.S. Marshals arrested Margaret Sanchez at her parents house in Metairie Wednesday morning in connection to the death of Bourbon Street dancer Jaren Lockhart.

Sanchez will be charged with second degree murder. She is currently in custody in Kenner.
   
Investigators have said Lockhart was last seen alive in early June 2012 with Terry Speaks and Margaret Sanchez.

Days later, Lockhart's body parts washed ashore in Mississippi.

Terry Speaks remains in federal prison on a charge of failing to register as a sex offender in a separate case.
   
Kenner Police say they won't release any more details about Sanchez's arrest until Thursday.

The attorney for Sanchez said there is no physical or DNA evidence linking her to the murder. He claims the crime could have been committed by Terry Speaks, 41, who was with Sanchez when Lockhart disappeared.

License plate cameras picked up his car going to Mississippi a few hours after Lockhart got off of work.

Speaks was listed at the same address as Sanchez in June 2012. He is still a suspect in the case.

Speaks is in prison for failing to register as a sex offender. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website, he's being held in Otisville, New York, and is due for release in October.

Investigators have said surveillance video showed both leaving with Lockhart on June 12, 2012, from the Bourbon Street strip club where she worked. Police have said her boyfriend, who lived with her at a rundown motel in an area known for crime and drug trafficking, reported her missing the next day.

Parts of Lockhart's body began washing up along the Mississippi Gulf Coast a few days later.

Police believe Lockhart was killed in the New Orleans area. The motive is still unclear.

Officers have never said just what killed her. Her torso, with a stab wound in the chest, washed up in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Other body parts and clothing washed ashore in Pass Christian and Long Beach, Mississippi. Tattoos and body piercings helped identify her.

Detectives from Mississippi and Kenner were in the courtroom during Tuesday's hearing.

Sanchez remains in jail on $750,000 bond.

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Earlier:
Suspect confessed to Jaren Lockhart's murder, dismemberment, authorities say

on May 08, 2014 at 6:04 PM, updated May 09, 2014 at 1:20 AM

Terry Speaks, long called a suspect in a grisly 2012 murder, has admitted to killing "a girl" in Louisiana, cutting up her corpse with help from then-girlfriend Margaret Sanchez and dumping the remains into a body of water to hide the crime, a new arrest report says.

The revelations were made in the weeks before Sanchez, 30, was booked with second-degree murder and obstruction of justice in the stabbing death and dismemberment of Jaren Lockhart.

It's not clear whether Speaks, 41, is accused of making the incriminating statement to investigators or to someone else. But armed with that information and evidence from other new witnesses, Kenner police on Wednesday (May 7) made the first and only arrest in the case in the almost two years since Lockhart's remains began washing ashore along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

"Our investigators were able to develop new information on this case within the last two weeks that led to the arrest of Margaret Sanchez yesterday," Kenner Police Chief Steve Caraway said during a Thursday (May 8) news conference updating the investigation.

Caraway did not directly identify Speaks as one of the new witnesses found by Kenner police. But the chief said detectives went the Otisville, N.Y., prison where Speaks is being held to interview him.

Kenner detectives only began investigating the case in late April, taking over for the Hancock County Sheriff's Office in Mississippi, which had handled the case since Lockhart's remains were discovered in the state in June 2012.

Kenner authorities would not reveal any other information about the new witnesses, saying only, "What we were able to do was locate people that weren't located before. That's beneficial because it ended with the arrest of Sanchez."

Sanchez's arrest revealed new details about the murder of the 22-year-old New Orleans mother. Authorities have always said that Lockhart was last seen during the early morning hours of June 6, 2012, in the company of Sanchez and Speaks after she finished her shift working as a dancer at Temptations Gentlemen's Club on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

According to the arrest report, witnesses told investigators Lockhart left with the couple after they offered to pay her to "party" with them and have a sexual encounter.

Investigators used automated license-plate recognition cameras in Jefferson Parish and St. Tammany to track the couple's movements after they left the club, according to Caraway. The cameras documented the car linked to Sanchez driving into Kenner towards Sanchez's home in the 2000 block of Connecticut Avenue.

Some time later, the cameras spotted the car driving to Mississippi, where it remained for "just a brief time" before returning to the New Orleans area, Caraway said on Thursday.

Lockhart's fiancé reported her missing when she didn't return home from work, authorities have said. One day after she was last seen with Sanchez and Speaks, Lockhart's torso floated ashore on a beach in Bay St. Louis, Miss. In the days that followed, authorities recovered her head and pieces of her legs.

Caraway for the first time revealed investigators' speculation that Lockhart's remains were dumped into the Gulf of Mexico somewhere along the Bay St. Louis Bridge, a span of U.S. Highway 90 that links Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian. The bridge is located about 70 miles from Kenner.

Mississippi authorities made the determination with help from a marine mammal research group out of the University of Southern Mississippi, said Hancock County Sheriff Ricky Adam. The team, which is housed at the John C. Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, studies the life cycles of sea turtles.

"If one dies and the shell floats, they can pinpoint where it came from with tides and winds," Adam said.

Authorities speculate that Jaren Lockhart's killers put her dismembered remains into the waters along the Mississippi Gulf Coast somewhere between the Bay St. Louis Bridge and Long Beach, Miss. The bridge is located about 70 miles from Kenner. Investigators used license-plate recognition cameras to track suspect Margaret Sanchez's vehicle from her Kenner home to the Mississippi state line not long after Lockhart was last seen with Sanchez and suspect Terry Speaks.

The team determined Lockhart's remains were dumped into the water somewhere between the bridge and Long Beach, Mississippi, 11 miles to the east along Highway 90.

Authorities have said Lockhart died after she was stabbed in the chest. The fatal blow was actually a stab wound that pierced her heart, according to the arrest report.

The report also revealed that whoever dismembered Lockhart attempted to hide her identity by "strategically" removing pieces of tattoo-covered skin. But the effort wasn't successful. Investigators easily identified her from the remaining tattoos.

Speaks' fate
Speaks, a registered sex offender, is scheduled to be released in October after serving a 32-month sentence for failing to notify his North Carolina probation officer when he left the state. He was convicted in 2003 of having sex with a minor.

Kenner detectives focused on obtaining a warrant for Sanchez, first, Caraway said, because she was not in custody and could have fled the area.

Speaks, Caraway said, is not going anywhere. Kenner police have a detainer for him on local sex offender-related charges that should keep him from walking free when his federal stint is up.

The investigation into Lockhart's murder is far from over. Kenner detectives collected new physical evidence when they took Sanchez into custody Wednesday at a relatives' home located at 811 Phlox Ave., Metairie.

That evidence must be turned over to the FBI for analysis, he said. The feds' lab will also likely expedite the processing of any evidence still on hand from the initial searches two years ago.

As Kenner detectives continue their probe, Caraway said he could not rule out the arrest of additional suspects. "This case is still ongoing," he said. "We still have a lot of work to do that hasn't been done in the past."

Mississippi investigation
In the news conference on Thursday, Caraway lauded his detectives and their results after just a brief review of the evidence in the case. "In just two weeks, they were able to do something that wasn't accomplished in a year or two," the chief said.

Some of the new witnesses, he said, were not even mentioned in reports from Mississippi authorities. "You had an agency in another state who took the investigation as far as they could," Caraway said.

Adam, the Mississippi sheriff, didn't know the identities of Kenner's new witnesses in the case. But he said he is proud of the two years of work put in by his investigators, who sometimes worked without pay to help assemble the case that was eventually turned over to Kenner.

"We were a big part of the investigation," he said. The focus, according to Adam, has always been justice for Lockhart.

"Our goal from the very beginning was to get justice for this girl," he said. "Regardless of how she lived her life, she's still a human being and she didn't deserve to be killed, and cut up and dumped the way she was."

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So, Sanchez was actually arrested for 2nd degree murder on May 8th..and died of a stab wound to the heart..wish the media would get their stories straight!!

video above link.

That's what I meant to say, Nite. Thanks!!

Two years later: Questions remain with investigation of Jaren Lockhart murder
Posted: Jun 06, 2014 2:11 PM EDT
Updated: Jun 06, 2014 4:03 PM EDT
By Samantha Morgan

KENNER, LA (WAFB) -
When the family of Jaren Lockhart filed a missing person report with the New Orleans Police Department, they had no idea the gruesome story that would unfold. It's a case that has had investigators from multiple jurisdictions working double-time for two years.

"The complex issues with this case make it difficult," Chief Steve Caraway, Kenner Police Chief, said in a press conference held on May 8, 2014.

Lockhart was 22-years-old when she went missing. On June 6, 2014, This is INCORRECT! her boyfriend told Police he had not seen her since the day prior.

The following day, the dismembered torso of a woman washed ashore in Bay St. Louis, Miss, which is located in Hancock County. There were several stab wounds to the chest area. Investigators began searching the missing person's database to try and identify a possible victim.

"We started out with about five missing person cases of who it could be," Glenn Grannan, Chief Investigator Hancock County Sheriff's Office, said in a prior interview. "We had cases out of Gulf Port, Mobile, Lafayette, and one out of New Orleans."

Over the next several days, other body parts were found in the nearby area. They were able to identify Lockhart as the victim due to distinguishing tattoos and piercings. With the victim's identity established, investigators quickly turned their attention to identifying suspects.

"This was not some random shooting," Grannan said in the day's following the discovery. "Whoever did this is capable of some pretty heinous things."

Around the same time, New Orleans Police located surveillance camera footage showing Lockhart leaving from a local nightclub with two individuals. The individuals she left with were later identified as Margaret Sanchez, 30, and Terry Speaks, 41.

Evidence was mounting, but key pieces of information were missing.

"We've had our gut feelings about what happened, but we haven't had enough evidence to support it," Grannan said.

Everything changed in May of this year.

"We presented new evidence to the Jefferson Parish District Attorney several weeks ago," Glenn Grannan, lead investigator for the Hancock County Sheriff's Office, explained in a past interview. "The new information, from a circumstantial point, indicates a higher probability that the killing happened in Kenner. The evidence was strong enough to convince the District Attorney, which is huge."

With the Kenner Police Department taking the lead, the investigation gained new momentum. It was enough to secure a warrant for the arrest of Sanchez. She is charged with second-degree murder and obstruction of justice.

"What we were able to do is locate people who were not located before and obviously it was beneficial to the investigation because it resulted in the arrest of Ms. Sanchez," Chief Caraway said. "We do have evidence to show them coming to Kenner shortly after leaving New Orleans with the victim. We do have evidence to show them going to Mississippi and returning to New Orleans and Kenner shortly before the body parts were discovered."

So far, they have not established the exact location where the murder occurred.

"We believe [Lockhart] was killed here, [in Kenner]," Chief Caraway explained. "Whether or not that was in the house, that's still ongoing."

Terry Speaks remains a suspect in the case, Chief Caraway noted. He is currently being held in a Federal Prison for a charge of failing to register as a sex offender in relation to a prior conviction.

"He's not going anywhere. He is still a suspect in this and that will be addressed later," Chief Caraway said. "At this point he hasn't been charged," he said.

Sanchez made a court appearance on May 27, 2014. During that hearing, additional details regarding the new evidence were revealed. Detectives noted an email sent from Speaks to Sanchez after he was questioned by the Kenner Police Department. In that email, Speaks reportedly wrote to Sanchez, "I did everything to clean up the mess you made."

Although the case against Sanchez is making its way through the legal system, Chief Caraway says his investigators are far from closing the book on this complicated murder.

"The case is still ongoing," he said. "It is by no means over or done with. We still have a lot of work to do that hasn't been done in the past."

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on June 19, 2015 at 8:20 PM, updated June 20, 2015 at 8:32 AM

Terry Speaks was found guilty Friday night (June 19) of second-degree murder, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice in the death of Bourbon Street dancer Jaren Lockhart.

Speaks, 42, an ex-Marine and convicted felon in North Carolina, now faces life in prison at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

Earlier in the day, Speaks told a Jefferson Parish jury that the last time he saw Lockhart, she was walking toward Canal Street with a man he knew only as "Nick" to dance at a private party for $500.

He felt guilty, he testified, because he unwittingly sent Lockhart to her death. He and his girlfriend Margaret Sanchez went to two Bourbon Street strip clubs early on that morning in June 2012, trying to recruit an extra dancer for the work and easy cash. They found Lockhart, dancing on a stage at Temptations Gentleman's Club under the name Riot.

He insisted he and Sanchez did not drive Lockhart to their Kenner home, plunge a knife through her heart and cut up her body before discarding the torso, head and other parts along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

"We didn't have anything to do with this," Speaks insisted as a prosecutor hammered him with questions. "We didn't do this. We didn't do this."

The jury disagreed and after just over two hours of deliberation pronounced Speaks guilty.

As he did throughout the trial, even as prosecutors showed grisly photographs of Lockhart's dismembered body parts on the Mississippi beaches and reassembled on an autopsy table, Speaks revealed no emotion when the court clerk read each verdict. Deputies immediately escorted him from the courtroom.

Speaks will be back before Judge Stephen Grefer of the 24th Judicial District Court on July 8, to receive his punishment. Sanchez, 31, of Metairie, is charged with the same crimes. Her trial date has not been set.

Lockhart, 22, a native of Tangipahoa Parish who left behind a toddler daughter, was killed June 6, 2012, in the hours after she left Temptations with Speaks and Sanchez. Business was slow during that shift, and she jumped at the chance to earn extra money by dancing at a private party, according to testimony given during the five-day trial.

Authorities say the single stab wound to her heart killed her. Her killers disarticulated her body, meaning she was dismembered at the joints, and sawed off her head.

From the parts that were found on Mississippi beaches in the days that followed, pathologists found evidence of bruising suggesting two people were involved in her death: One held her down and the other plunged a single-edge knife deep into her chest. She also might have been struck in the head.

Her own body tells you she died fighting for her life, struggling." - Prosecutor Tommy Block
"This defendant Terry Speaks and his girlfriend Margaret Sanchez committed this crime," Assistant District Attorney Tommy Block told the jury in closing argument. "Jaren Lockhart tells you that from the grave. Her own body tells you she died fighting for her life, struggling. She died at the hands of this defendant and his girlfriend."

One juror, a woman, began to sob as Block said those words. Grefer's bailiff walked across the courtroom with a box of tissue.

Despite a detailed forensic investigation of the Kenner home where Speaks and Sanchez lived, and the car in which authorities say they transported the remains to Mississippi, investigators from Kenner, Hancock County, Miss., and the FBI found no physical or DNA evidence that linked Lockhart to the couple.

Speaks, who on Monday fired public defenders John Benz and Brad Scott and rehired them Tuesday, said he insisted on testifying "so people could know what actually happened." It's unclear whether his attorneys advised him to not testify.

"We didn't do it, so how can you have any evidence against us?" he told the jury. "We didn't do it. How can you claim to have evidence to something you didn't do?"

He said he and Sanchez went to the French Quarter that night, to speak with a friend at Stiletto's Cabaret on Bourbon Street about taking their dog. While there, they ran into Nick, who told them about the private party and the need for two dancers. Sanchez was to dance, and Speaks said he was to be paid a $100 referral fee.

After they recruited Lockhart from Temptations, they met with Nick on Iberville Street between Burgundy and Rampart, he testified. It was then that Nick said he only needed one dancer, Speaks asserted. So because she left work for the party, Speaks said he gave Lockhart the job.

He said he still took the $100, and he and Sanchez drove to their Connecticut Avenue home in Kenner, where they had sex and she became ill because of something she ate. Later, a man he identified only as "JC" was at their home, asking to borrow their car. They later learned that the dancer he and Sanchez recruited had been killed, he testified.

"Margaret and I thought we contributed to the murder of Jaren Lockhart, because when you, like if you sell drugs to someone and they end up dying off the drugs, you can be charged with that. And so my thought is," he said, pausing for several moments, "we talked this girl into doing this party and she ended up dead and we received money from that."

His voice quivered. Three people associated with Lockhart got up and left the courtroom. A fourth person walked out a minute later. And then a fifth person. Then a sixth, a man who whispered, "I'm tired of listening to his f------ lies."

The prosecutors had no physical evidence linking the couple to the crime, a point they had no choice but to confront this week. They had no DNA, no fingerprints, none of Lockhart's hair or blood despite her being stabbed and dismembered.

"It was almost a perfect crime. We were up front and we were honest," Block told jurors reminding them that prosecutors disclosed their lack of physical evidence. "The fact that no DNA or physical evidence was found in the house doesn't mean she wasn't killed in the house."

But the prosecutors had numerous witnesses whose testimony, when combined, painted a circumstantial picture that the couple could have been driven to kill any woman they could find to play out a sexual ritual.

The couple asked other dancers to leave with them. "Instead, it was Jaren, poor Jaren, who needed money, money he (Speaks) knew they were never going to pay her," Block told jurors. "They had her. They had their victim."

Their house, owned by Sanchez's father and his siblings, was ordinarily a mess. But, according to one witness, the house smelled of bleach and cleaning products just after Lockhart's death. So, too, was the 2001 Chevrolet Lumina they drove, in which authorities say they couple transported Lockhart's remains to Mississippi.

Sanchez's father, Joseph Sanchez, was one of only two defense witnesses to testify. He said he owned the Lumina and loaned it to his daughter, but he occasionally used it and insisted that it be cleaned when returned. Of the house in Kenner, he said his sister, also named Margaret, was moving in, and she didn't get along with his daughter and Speaks. They had to move out, he testified.

"I told them they were going to have to be moving, and I didn't want to hear any guff from my brothers and sisters about the condition the left it in," Joseph Sanchez testified in explaining why the house was clean.

He also acknowledged that he didn't know Speaks' real name. He knew Speaks as Allen Rice, one of three aliases authorities say he used.

"During the period of time that you know this man, he never once told you what his name was, or his real name was, correct?" Assistant District Attorney Doug Freese asked, pointing at Speaks. "That's correct," Joseph Sanchez testified.

Speaks admitted he used the aliases, because he was on the run from the law. He initially toned down the reasons for why he hid his true identity when he moved to the New Orleans area.

"I had a homeless ministry up in North Carolina that failed. I was just at a point in my life where I didn't want to be me no more," Speaks said.

Then he acknowledged his criminal past, and that he knew he had arrest warrants pending in North Carolina because he absconded from probation as a sex offender.

Explaining the contentious phone conversations he had with Sanchez while he was in jail, Speaks asserted she was trying to regain from her mother custody of her children. He said he feared Sanchez's mother was suspicious of him and had learned his true identity.

"We were in the porn industry, kind of," Speaks testified. "We were doing amateur porn. She was setting up the escort service. We were doing a little weed. I was helping her hide that from all of her family. And when all of that came out, they were looking at me."

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BY CHAD CALDER| [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
July 09, 2015

Terry Speaks was sentenced to life in prison Thursday to for the murder and dismemberment of Jaren Lockhart, the woman he was convicted of luring to his girlfriend’s Kenner apartment and killing her and cutting up her body.

Speaks’ alleged accomplice, Margaret Sanchez, had her trial date set for Dec. 7.

The sentencing followed an emotional statement read by the mother of Lockhart’s fiancé, who is now raising Lockhart’s daughter, who was 3 years old when Lockhart was killed in June 2012.

“There were many nights we had to hold and console Riley because she would be crying and missing her momma and not understanding why she had to go away,” Donna Kulick said tearfully from the witness stand.

Kulick said the girl still cries for her mother and the family dreads the day they will have to fully explain to her what happened to Lockhart, whose body parts began washing up on Mississippi beaches the day after she was killed.

“May God forgive you because right now we are not able to find it in our hearts to forgive you for what you have done to this family,” she said, as Speaks sat nearby, silently.

The fact that Speaks will spend the rest of his life in prison was virtually assured. Second-degree murder, one of three charges of which he was convicted, carries mandatory life alone. But the 24th Judicial District Court Judge Stephen Grefer gave Speaks 40 years for obstruction of justice and 20 years for conspiracy to obstruct justice. The obstruction of justice sentence will run consecutively, adding 40 years to the life sentence. The 20 year sentece will run concurrently, adding no time to the sentence.

Grefer also denied the request Speaks made for a new trial earlier this week.

Speaks contended he was never queried about his history of mental illness when Grefer asked a series of questions to determine if he was fit to represent himself at the beginning of the trial. He said he once tried to kill himself while in the Marine Corps in the early 1990s and was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. He also said television interviews given by Mississippi investigators during the trial could have tainted the jury.

Grefer ruled that Speaks gave no indication during the trial that he was mentally ill, competently representing himself for two days and participating in his defense after his lawyers resumed their representation. Echoing arguments made by prosecutor Doug Freese, Grefer noted Speaks did not request a mental evaluation at any point during the trial, nor did he do so when he pleaded guilty earlier this year to a sex offender charge.

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