At 11:25 p.m., the three St. Johns County officers arrived at 4700 Sherlock Place, a one-story suburban house in this historic seaside community. A young deputy, Jonathan Hawley, was already there. Oh my God, he cried, seeing a young woman he knew lying on the bedroom floor, an inert, bloody mess.
Michelle OConnell, 24, the doting mother of a 4-year-old girl, was dying from a gunshot in the mouth. Next to her was a semiautomatic pistol that belonged to her boyfriend, Jeremy Banks, a deputy sheriff for St. Johns County. A second bullet had burrowed into the carpet by her right arm...
Within minutes of the shooting on Sept. 2, 2010, Mr. Bankss friends, family and even off-duty colleagues began showing up, offering hugs and moral support. He huddled with his stepfather, a deputy sheriff in another county, before a detective interviewed him in a police car...
Ms. OConnells family, immediately suspicious, received a starkly different reception from the authorities. Less than two hours before she died, Ms. OConnell had texted her sister, who was watching her daughter: Ill be there soon. Yet when her outraged brother tried to visit the scene, officers blocked his way. The familys request for an independent investigation was rebuffed, as was one sisters attempt to tell the police that in the months before she died, Ms. OConnell said she had been subjected to domestic abuse by Mr. Banks...
Ms. OConnell, the sheriffs office concluded, took her own life. Detectives were so certain in their judgment that they never tested the forensic evidence collected after the shooting. Nor did they interview her family and friends, who would have told them that she was ecstatic over a new full-time job with benefits, including health insurance for her daughter.
