ATLANTA (Court TV) — A man convicted of murdering his roller-skating influencer girlfriend was sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Eugene Louis-Jacques listens as the verdict is read in court. (Court TV)
Eugene Louis-Jacques, 24, was convicted of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, arson, concealing a death and tampering with evidence in the death of his girlfriend, Beauty Couch. The 22-year-old roller skating influencer had more than 100,000 followers on Instagram at the time of her death.
Judge Kimberly Childs immediately sentenced Louis-Jacques to life without parole plus 20 years after the jury rendered its verdict.
Louis-Jacques’ defense had fought to emphasize reasonable doubt in the case, saying there was no direct evidence linking him to the victim’s brutal murder. “We don’t deny, we know it was horrible,” Louis-Jacques’ attorney, Bryan Lumpkin, told the jury in his closing argument. “There’s a lot of things about this evidence that are consistent with my client being guilty here, but that’s not proved beyond a reasonable doubt.”
While Couch was stabbed 81 times before her body was set on fire, Lumpkin emphasized to the jury that no blood evidence was found on any of the defendant’s clothing or in his car. “This is not the O.J. case. I’m not suggesting that,” Lumpkin said. “But you had that bloody glove, and you had that cut on his hand. Why? Because the brutality of that murder led to him leaving that piece of evidence on him.”
Louis-Jacques fled after his girlfriend’s disappearance and was found days later in Louisiana, where he initially tried to give officers a fake name. His attorney maintained his behaviors were only evidence that he believed he would be blamed, not of guilt for the crime.
The defense in the case tried to cast reasonable doubt on pieces of evidence that appeared to directly link Louis-Jacques to the crime scene, including a traffic citation with his name on it that was found near the victim’s body. “That piece of paper got there intentionally, by someone,” Lumpkin told the jury, suggesting that the evidence may have been planted.
After the guilty verdict, Prosecutor Jared Horowitz encouraged the judge to sentence Louis-Jacques to the maximum. “The evidence in this case has demonstrated that this defendant showed no mercy towards Ms. Couch, and this court shouldn’t allow any mercy either,” he said.
Childs agreed with the prosecution, sentencing the defendant to life without the chance of parole to be followed by 21 years.
