BELTON — Some home surveillance video was deleted — with only a thumb image captured — at Michael Swearingin’s home the night he and Jenna Scott disappeared, according to testimony
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Some home video deleted after 2 disappeared, witnesses testify during Marks trial
- BY CLAY THORP | SPECIAL TO THE TELEGRAM
BELTON — Some home surveillance video was deleted — with only a thumb image captured — at Michael Swearingin’s home the night he and Jenna Scott disappeared, according to testimony at Cedric Marks’ capital murder trial Wednesday.
Marks, 48, of Killeen, was indicted by a Bell County grand jury Feb. 3, 2019, on a charge of capital murder of multiple persons. He pleaded not guilty Monday in the death penalty case.
Marks opted to represent himself in the trial that began testimony Monday, so those family members called to the stand must be cross-examined by the very man accused of killing their loved ones.
In testimony during the third day of Marks’ capital murder trial Wednesday, jurors heard Swearingin and Scott had a strong social network of friends who weren’t going to sit idly by while police investigated Swearingin and Scott’s disappearance.
“I would say there were close to 100 people looking for Michael and Jenna,” a close friend, Richie Davis, testified Wednesday.
Davis said he eventually managed to procure the passwords to Swearingin’s smart devices and computers in order to access Google and other accounts to try and gain data that might help find their missing friends.
It wasn’t long before Davis found Swearingin’s home surveillance videos only to discover the crucial minutes around their disappearance had been inexplicably deleted. There were about a dozen motion detection incidents in various parts of Swearingin’s home, many of which should have had accompanying video.
“Most of that footage had been deleted, but there were motion detection data for those rooms that hadn’t been deleted,” Davis said.
Swearingin and Scott’s social circle of friends were tackling the disappearance from multiple different angles. Soon they were able to track down Swearingin’s car.
“We found the car in Austin,” said Russel Kurtz, a longtime church friend.
Kurtz also corroborated the deleted surveillance footage.
“There were gaps in the surveillance,” Kurtz said. “...especially the times we were interested in.”
Kurtz said he was able to access Swearingin’s web browser history, which showed someone accessed Swearingin’s home surveillance system and made at least seven different deletions of footage about 8:30 p.m. Jan. 3, 2019 — a few hours after anyone saw Swearingin and Scott alive at the home.
“I saw that data missing, but someone had accessed it to delete it,” Kurtz testified Wednesday. “I had a very strong sense of dread.”
After days of searching, Kurtz started to lose hope of finding his friends.
“Without expressing it out loud, I suspected they wouldn’t be found alive,” Kurtz said.
When an informant led police to two fresh graves in Oklahoma that coroners confirmed belonged to Swearingin and Scott, Kurtz was emotional.
“I cried,” Kurtz said Wednesday. “Then I prepared myself to administer to a grieving family.”
Upon cross examining Davis and Kurtz, Marks pried testimony from the friends that there was no video, text or other media in which he made threats of violence or harassment.
Marks also pointed out Davis and Kurtz have no advanced computer forensics expertise or IT training. On Monday, Marks said none of Jenna’s friends ever came forward to her family members alleging abuse.
Marks sought to insert doubt that his thumb was in one of the only night vision doorbell footages that exists from the day Swearingin and Scott disappeared.
“Because I have an African American hand, you can see the difference, right?” Marks said to Kurtz during cross examination.
Police say an informant admitted to being present before and after Scott and Swearingin’s death at Swearingin’s home — and present during the transport and burial of their bodies.
Testimony Monday revealed Scott had tried to obtain a restraining order against Marks after their relationship became abusive, but that was denied by a judge. Marks also represented himself in that hearing, according to testimony Monday.
“You were obsessed with her and you couldn’t stand the fact she broke up with you,” Karen Scott, Jenna’s mother, told Marks during cross examination Monday.
After at least one escape from custody which culminated in a nine-hour manhunt when Marks had fled to Michigan in 2019, Marks has been in the Bell County Jail for some four years awaiting trial, unable to post a bond of more than $1.7 million.
Testimony will resume Thursday morning in Judge Steve Duskie’s 426th courtroom at the Bell County Justice Center in Belton
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