• 5 years ago
"In February 2009, Heather Strong was kidnapped and murdered in Marion County, Florida. Maintaining her innocence, and complaining of coerced confession, Emilia Lily Carr was nevertheless found guilty in December 2010 and sentenced to death by lethal injection in February 2011. Carr was one of five women on death row in the state of Florida. On May 19, 2017, Emilia Carr was re-sentenced to life without parole. Heather Strong's husband, and Carr's co-accused, Joshua Fulgham was similarly convicted of first-degree murder and kidnapping in the death. At a separate trial, where he pled guilty, Joshua Fulgham received two consecutive sentences of life in prison.

Emilia Lily Carr was born Emilia Yera, on August 4, 1984. She was the second of three sisters. A psychologist estimated her IQ to be 125. At the age of 15, she reported abuse by her father to her school but withdrew her statement to officials. In February 2004, Carr's father was convicted of attempting to solicit the murders of his family (Emilia, her mother, and one of her sisters) and was sentenced to four years in prison.

Carr had been married twice and filed a restraining order against one of her ex-husbands for domestic violence. She was sentenced to two years of probation for her involvement in her ex-husband's grand theft of exotic birds. Carr had three children at the time, one of them with ex-boyfriend Jamie Acome. At the time of the murder, she was eight months pregnant with a child presumed to be Joshua Fulgham's.

In November 2008, Carr became engaged to Joshua Damien Fulgham, who instead married Heather Strong one month later. However, Carr maintained contact with them and babysat Strong's two children, according to Carr's family. In January 2009, Fulgham was arrested for threatening Strong with a shotgun, but was released after the charge of aggravated assault with a firearm was dropped. Investigators later discovered that Carr had threatened Strong with a knife to force her to withdraw her criminal complaint. Carr and Fulgham re-established their relationship while Strong began seeing someone else. Fulgham and Strong became involved in a legal battle over the custody of their two children.

In February 2009, Heather Strong, then a 26-year-old resident of Citra, Florida, disappeared while employed at an Iron Skillet restaurant at a Petro gas station next to Interstate 75 in Reddick. She was reported missing on February 15. Her remains were discovered on March 19, in a shallow grave by a storage trailer in Boardman, near McIntosh, Florida. Carr was arrested on March 24, after investigators noted the frequency of her statements to authorities, ten in all without the presence of an attorney. Detectives also recorded undercover audio of Carr discussing details of the crime with Fulgham's sister. Carr, who at the time was seven months pregnant with Fulgham's child, tricked Strong into the storage trailer behind the home of Carr's mother Maria and placed a plastic bag over her head a

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