An evidentiary hearing that could reopen a more than 25-year-old Graves County murder case came to a close Thursday.
Jessica Currin was found dead and burned behind Mayfield Middle School in 2000. The young mother was just 18 at the time of her death.
Quincy Cross was convicted for her murder in 2008, a crime he maintains he didn’t commit.
The evidentiary hearing follows the release of an investigative podcast from an award-winning journalist and producer diving deep into the Currin murder and Cross’s case, which has helped his fight for a chance at a freedom and a shot at a new trial gain notoriety.
Attorneys with the Kentucky Innocence Project and the Exoneration Project argued on behalf of Cross in Mayfield this week, concluding the legal action that began in November after Special Judge Tyler Gill granted the evidentiary hearing at an October court date.
The first two days of the hearing that started last month focused on four witnesses from Cross’s original trial: Vinisha Stubblefield, Tamara Caldwell, Shamica Powell and Latoya Senter. Each of the women recanted their testimony from the 2008 trial, all claiming to have been threatened by members of law enforcement and “coached” to implicate Cross.
Each member of law enforcement that took the stand over the course of the evidentiary hearing denied those allegations.
O’Neil and Wise testify
Thursday, former Kentucky Bureau of Investigations (which now operates as the Department of Criminal Investigations under the state Attorney General’s office) agents Bob O’Neil and Lee Wise – the figures primarily implicated in the recanted testimonies – were called as witnesses by the state.
Stubblefield, who said during her November testimony that she suffers from multiple mental health and intellectual processing disorders including ADHD, manic bipolar disorder and a comprehension disorder, among others, claims she was repeatedly threatened by members of law enforcement to lie under oath and “coached” on how to testify during the 2008 trial that sent Cross to prison. She specifically identified the former KBI agents, and said that Wise had told her she could face lethal injection if she didn’t testify in a way that implicated Cross.
Senter and Caldwell both said that KBI agents coerced them into implicating Cross in 2008, with each woman being threatened with the possibility of jail time and losing their children. Tamara Caldwell also alleged that she was treated like “trash” and inappropriately touched by O’Neil during interrogations.
O’Neil denied each of these allegations in turn.
“We're dealing with a murder case here,” O’Neill said. “We're not trying to be nice to everybody. We’ve got to call it like we see it. We can't sanitize information. We’re preparing the facts, that’s our agenda.”
He also asserted that he doesn’t think Stubblefield could have successfully internalized and repeated a complicated false testimony in the manner they are alleging.
“Even if we’d have gave Vinisha a list of things to say, I submit to you that she wouldn't have been able to repeat it,” he said. “If you look at the specificity in the things that she talked about in the transcripts, she gives names of people that we were not even aware of. She gives times and places and things that came from her.”
O’Neil also denied allegations that he had a sexual relationship with Victoria Caldwell, another witness in the case. She briefly testified in November, for the most part invoking her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination before being dismissed by the judge.
Later on Thursday, attorneys with Cross’s team called Kenneth Nixon, who attended the hearing via Zoom. He testified that he contacted Victoria Caldwell at her Ohio home in 2023 on behalf of the criminal justice reform nonprofit Safe & Just Michigan. He said, after he told her he was there about the Currin case, she called O’Neil – who instructed her to tell Nixon to leave the property on speaker phone. Nixon said that O’Neil – who at this point was working for a city police department in Jefferson County that was not involved with the Currin investigation – then told him that he needed his approval to talk to Caldwell.
Nixon also testified that in August 2023, following his visit to Victoria Caldwell’s home, the two had a phone conversation where she recanted her 2008 testimony. Nixon said Caldwell then alleged that she had had inappropriate sexual contact with O’Neil – and claimed the investigator was the biological father of at least one of her children. The transcript of this recorded phone call was among the exhibits brought forth by Cross’s team to spur this evidentiary hearing.
The state played a September 2025 phone call between Victoria Caldwell and O’Neil in which she indicated that they had no relationship and that he had not fathered a child with her.
Wise also testified Thursday, denying allegations that he threatened witnesses in the original trial or instructed them on how to implicate Cross. He also denied knowledge of any inappropriate relationship between Caldwell and O’Neil.
As Amy Staples, an attorney for the Exoneration Project, cross-examined Wise regarding his interrogation tactics, interview style and whether or not he properly recorded his interactions with witnesses, things got heated. The former KBI agent appeared visibly frustrated with Staples and repeatedly interrupted her, prompting Gill to call for a recess so that “something bad” didn’t happen.
Wise told Staples he didn’t take the allegations lightly.
“I’ve been interviewing for 40 years. Brokers, senators, cops, lawyers, doctors, you name it,” he said. “I take offense to someone questioning my professionalism, someone stepping on my integrity. I am one of the only ones, probably, that you can check records 24/7, and there's no complaints.”
State counters Montgomery testimony
Darryl Montgomery, a new witness in the case, testified for the first time in November, alleging he’d heard Jeremy Adams – an early suspect in the case – confess to the crime in 2000 just months after it was committed.
Montgomery and Adams were both incarcerated in McCracken County at the time. Montgomery claimed Adams was talking loudly in the prison dorm they shared about how he’d killed his “baby mama” and that she’d been burned and strangled in Mayfield. Years later, when he was out of prison, Montgomery got into a relationship with Jessica Lindsay – a school friend of Currin’s – and learned more about Currin’s death through her.
Then, around 2012, Montgomery – incarcerated again – met Quincy Cross in a Kentucky prison complex and learned that he was in prison for the crime he’d heard Adams confess to.
Lindsay took the stand via Zoom. In her testimony, she said Montgomery never mentioned Adams, being incarcerated with him or the alleged confession he testified to hearing to her during their relationship. According to Lindsay’s testimony, her relationship with Montgomery lasted “less than a year” and predated his meeting Cross in prison – when he said he connected the dots regarding Adams’s alleged confession.
What comes next
After maintaining his innocence throughout the original trial and across nearly two decades in prison, Cross will have to wait until next year to hear a verdict in this evidentiary hearing.
His attorneys distributed a paper statement saying they think the arguments they presented during the hearing warrants “a new trial, since it undercuts the foundation of the Commonwealth’s case against” Cross.
As proceedings wrapped up Thursday, Gill gave Cross’s defense team 60 days to file a brief summarizing their arguments. After that, the state prosecutors will have 40 days to rebut and file their own before Gill renders his decision.
