Absent dad who returned home only to kill his toddler demands jail release
Jocarl Bureau claims he has uncovered new evidence proving he is innocent of the manslaughter of his daughter Jayleah in Concord, New Hampshire
An absent father who returned home to care for his daughter and later killed her has demanded he be freed from jail. Jocarl Bureau, 26, wants to withdraw a guilty manslaughter plea he entered in 2018 over the killing of his three year-old daughter Jayleah Bureau in Concord, New Hampshire.
Bureau battered his daughter, rupturing a vein in her stomach and killing her in March 2016. But he has now claimed – without any apparent evidence – that Jayleah may have been suffering a heart infection which ultimately killed her, making him innocent of the crime he’s previously admitted.
New Hampshire Senior Assistant Attorney General Peter Hinckley – who prosecuted Bureau’s case – told a court Monday that the killer’s new evidence is completely fabricated, and that he has ‘no idea’ where Bureau obtained documents and photographs he now claims to have.
Judge Andrew Schulman dismissed Bureau’s motion to have his plea withdrawn, but appointed him a lawyer to sift through his claims and ensure due process. Bureau, who is serving 18 to 40 years in jail, claimed his daughter died after choking on breakfast eggs – although a pathologist found no food blockage in her airway.
She was later found to have died from massive internal bleeding thanks to a ruptured vein in her stomach, with Bureau convicted of doling out the beating that caused the rupture, the Concord Monitor reported.
He had been absent from Jayleah’s life, only to return to care for her. Prosecutors said during Bureau’s trial that he’d snapped after growing frustrated at his new role as ‘daddy daycare’ while Jayleah’s mom went to work.
He admitted a manslaughter charge as part of a plea deal which saw a murder charge against him dropped.
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