LOUISA COUNTY, Va. -- A jury convicted Louisa County landlord Jackie Bledsoe, 56, of killing her tenant Melvin Hansen, 59, in a June 2022 shooting on her Belle Meade Road property in Bumpass.
Louisa County Commonwealth's Attorney Rusty McGuire said law enforcement said modern technology played a role in Bledsoe's conviction.
"Twenty years ago she would've walked on these charges," McGuire said. "She came up with a story that was very well crafted. She had staged a crime scene. She called law enforcement and said 'he'd been beating me, assaulting me. I had no choice but to shoot him.'"
But McGuire and Louisa Sheriff's investigators were able to poke holes in Bledsoe's story by mixing modern technology with old-fashioned police work.
"Notice her elbows. There's nothing wrong with them," McGuire said. "So the detective was like, 'You are telling me this story that he pushed you in the gravel and choked you and you had to shoot this man. But you don't have any injuries.'"
Bledsoe shot and killed Hansen with a 20 gauge buckshot. After the shooting, she called the sheriff's office. Not 911, but non-emergency dispatch.
Louisa County released that call to CBS 6.
Bledsoe: "UM I SHOT SOMEONE EARLIER "
Dispatch: "IS HE DEAD?"
Bledsoe: "YES, MA'AM."
McGuire said Bledsoe's tone and her admission that she moved Hansen's body were additional red flags.
"She says she drug him out of the barn so as to not upset her show dogs," McGuire said. "They are beagles. Beagles are hunting dogs and have a greater sense of smell than most dogs. I'm pretty sure moving the body closer to their pens will upset them just as much as when you shot him in front of them."
Suspicions were confirmed when investigators got a hold of additional evidence.
"She had to have that new car and that's what got her," Hansen's sister Faye Powell said.
Evidence from her car helped prosecutors squash Bledsoe's self-defense claim and allowed prosecutors to charge her with second-degree murder.
"But for modern-day technology both from mobile phones and what we've used for the first time in Louisa County which is the vehicle forensics, we found her story didn't add up," McGuire said.
"We know that specifically, she left her house at 11:27 p.m. on June 4, 2022. She drove to a rural area in Hanover County. Not many houses and a lot of trees, a good place to dump a body. She then drove back to a house three doors down from her to a man who had a love interest in her and stayed at his place with the engine running. Then they went back to her house, then his house. What did that tell us? She picked him up and brought another person to the scene of the murder."
Bledsoe tried to tell the court that she and Hansen just had a landlord/tenant relationship.
But text messages between the two proved they were romantically involved.
In fact, hours before the shooting, text messages showed Hansen sent Bledsoe a text to end their relationship.
"I confronted her with [another] text that she sent to a co-worker in February 2022," McGuire said. "In that text, she talked about a sexual episode involving Melvin Hansen and said that was the second time they'd been engaged in similar behaviors and after that, I asked her if he was working off the rent or are you lying about the relationship?"
McGuire said she gave him "the meanest look" before answering.
"She said it was just sex. The point is, I don't think the jury found her very credible," McGuire said. "In fact, it was the second fastest jury verdict I've had on a murder case in my career."
Faye Powell called her brother, who was also a father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, a good man.
"He really was," she said. "He got taken out of this world way too soon and for someone like her to do that, I mean."
Bledsoe faces 43 years in prison when she is sentenced in January 2024 on charges of second-degree murder and the use of a firearm during the commission of a felony.
This is a developing story, so anyone with more information can email newstips@wtvr.com to send a tip.
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