Client Who Told Fla. Lawyer in 1999 She Helped Bury Body Now Tells Authorities
Almost a decade ago, a 22-year-old client of Florida attorney Jay Hebert told him she had helped bury the body of a missing real estate agent. Her own boyfriend had murdered the woman, who was his wife, the client said, and then persuaded her to help clean up.
The secret haunted Hebert as he drove to work every day past a billboard soliciting tips about the case. He had urged his client to reveal the truth to authorities, but she refused and left the state with her boyfriend, reports the St. Petersburg Times. Hebert himself couldn’t tip authorities about the case because the information was protected from disclosure by attorney-client privilege.
“A weight was lifted off Hebert’s shoulders this week when—nine years later—[his former client] finally decided to come forward and lead investigators to woods in North Florida where [the] body was buried,” the Times recounts. Her boyfriend, Robert Glenn Temple, had threatened to kill her, Lesley Stewart told Hebert when she called him out of the blue, seeking his help in contacting authorities, the newspaper reports.
Temple, 58, has been charged with first-degree murder after Pinellas County sheriff’s officials dug up the decomposed body of Rosemary Christensen on Monday, using information provided by Stewart, as the Times details in an earlier article. After matching dental records on Tuesday, they arrested him for the murder of his then-wife, who was 43 at the time of her disappearance in August 1999.
Stewart has not been charged; Hebert worked out an agreement with prosecutors that she would have immunity if she provided truthful information, showed investigators where to find the body, and no evidence develops linking her to the actual murder, according to the Times.
Hebert teaches classes on legal ethics at Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, Fla., on the state’s Gulf Coast not far from Tampa. Every year, as he has talked with students, he has thought about his own experience. This year, for the first time, he will be able to talk about it.
“In my experience practicing criminal law for almost 20 years, this is probably the most difficult case I’ve had to wrestle with,” he tells the Times.
