Dad told police his battered daughter injured herself

Rodney Reaves told Henry County police his daughter, Joella, was a troubled child who acted out and injured herself.

In a police interview given the day Joella was found dead in her bed, Henry police detective Sgt. Ken Turner suggested Rodney Reaves didn’t seek medical help for his 11-year-old daughter because he feared police involvement. Reaves disagreed.

“She never complained of being hurt,” Reaves says during the Dec. 1, 2003, interview. “She said she was fine.”

Henry District Attorney Tommy Floyd alleges that Reaves and his wife, Charlott Reaves, tortured and beat the girl to death over the five-day 2003 Thanksgiving holiday. Both are charged with murder and face the death penalty if convicted. Charlott Reaves is due for trial in April.

They have been held without bond in the Henry jail since their arrests the day Joella died.

Testimony in Reaves’ trial resumed Tuesday with Turner taking the stand and reviewing an hourlong videotaped interview with Reaves on Dec. 1, 2003. Reaves said he returned home that day and found Joella dead in her bed.

Reaves told Turner he only found out in 1998 that he had a daughter from a former girlfriend and sought custody of her in June 2002. But when Joella came to live with Reaves, his wife and their son, Mikey, who is three months younger than Joella, she exhibited bizarre behavior.

“She didn’t like to be disciplined, you couldn’t discipline her,” Reaves told Turner. “She was lying and stealing and said she didn’t even know she was doing it. It was not a constant problem, it was like a switch and she’d turn straight cold.”

Reaves said the girl pulled her hair out and flopped herself to the ground, rocking back and forth, causing injuries. He said he sought counseling for her and tried unsuccessfully to get a humanitarian transfer from his Navy ship in Virginia back to Atlanta where he used to be a Navy recruiter.

Her behavior escalated during the five-day holiday weekend in 2003, he said. Joella got into trouble for allegedly stealing loose change from her stepmother’s purse and mouthwash from her brother, he said. As punishment, Charlott ordered Joella to repeatedly write the sentence “I’m a thief, a liar, good for nothing and I stink” on notebook paper.

“She just would not write those sentences,” Reaves told police. “But my wife insisted because she said if we didn’t get control of her and make her write those sentences, what would be next?”

Once Joella refused, Reaves said, she was sent to time-out in the garage. Reaves said Joella repeatedly “flopped” herself to the concrete floor, causing head and face injuries. So Reaves tied her hands together with speaker wire, he told police. At one point, her hands were tied to her ankles and Reaves kneed her in the back to force her to comply, he said.

The family left her tied up in the garage Friday while they drove to Lithonia some 30 miles away to shop, Reaves told police. When they returned, Joella had defecated and urinated on herself.

“I told her to clean it up and she did, using water, detergent, bleach and a brush,” Reaves told police. “But we never got her to write those lines.”

After Turner interviewed Reaves, Maj. Lee Brooks interviewed him. In a profanity-laced narrative, Reaves accounted to Brooks a marriage fraught with problems.

“(Charlott) has got a … temper,” Reaves told Brooks. The night before Joella died, Reaves was on his way back to Virginia to his ship when his wife called his cell phone.

“I was on the phone two and a half hours with her,” he said. “She [complained] about being left alone with the kids. … She wanted a career and just me quit the Navy and stay home with the kids.”

Reaves again denied hurting Joella.

“I know I didn’t … do it,” he told police. “I wouldn’t have hurt my daughter that way.”

The medical examiner who performed Joella’s autopsy, Dr. Gerald Thomas Gowitt, testified Tuesday that the child was covered in bruises and did not die from just one particular injury.

“Her injuries fit the general category of being beaten to death,” Gowitt said.

Monday’s testimony showed Reaves told other detectives that his wife must have caused the injuries that killed Joella because he was away all week on a Navy ship. However, Gowitt testified that Joella’s fresh injuries were inflicted during the four-five days before she died — the same time period Rodney Reaves was home for Thanksgiving.

Defense attorney Gary Bowman said he has “lots” of witnesses but couldn’t say yet whether his client will take the stand in his own defense.

“We’ll just have to see how it all plays out,” he said during a mid-morning recess.