CLAYTON, Mo. — Joseph Dejoie’s bedroom was cluttered. Extremely cluttered. That’s why, his defense said, Jacque Mitchell fell into a rubber container in his bedroom in March 2023 and laughed about it with Dejoie. The next morning, he woke up. She hadn’t moved. She was dead.
He freaked out and didn’t know what to do. So, he kept her body in the container for six days and used her car because she told him he could use it, defense attorney Jennifer Daniels told jurors Tuesday during opening statements in Dejoie’s murder trial.
“This case is about lies, drugs and regrets,” Daniels told jurors, adding that Mitchell and Dejoie had sex at least once before that night.
St. Louis County prosecutors had a much different version of the final moments of 39-year-old Mitchell’s life, as well as some of the most terrifying for two other women who accused Dejoie of sexual assault following Mitchell’s death.
High levels of fentanyl in Mitchell’s body show she was not a seasoned fentanyl user, and Dejoie is the one who gave her the fatal dose before sexually assaulting her and stuffing her dead body into the rubber container in his room, according to prosecutors.
“She was not a fentanyl user, and she died very quickly after she was exposed to it,” according to Assistant St. Louis County Prosecutor John Schlesinger.
Dejoie, 50, had sex with Mitchell while she was slipping in and out of consciousness, incapable of giving consent, according to Schlesinger. He put a hooded sweatshirt over her head and a trash bag after she died, and wiped her body and her car down in an effort to conceal any forensic evidence tying him to the crime, Schlesinger said.
Most of the accusations against Dejoie came from his own mouth during a four-hour-long interrogation with police, Schlesinger said.
A Maryland Heights detective was the first witness prosecutors called to the stand, who told jurors the smell of Mitchell’s decomposing remains was the strongest he had ever encountered in his 16 years on the job. He recalled how Dejoie was living with his elderly parents in the apartment where Mitchell was allegedly murdered, and they had moved out to stay with a relative because the smell was so strong.
Dejoie’s parents did not attend the first day of his trial, nor did any of his friends or family.
About 30 members of Mitchell’s friends and family did. They exchanged quick glances of disbelief at each other after Daniels suggested Mitchell fell into the plastic bin where her body was found.
Prosecutors warned jurors they would be seeing graphic photos of the crime scene during the next few days.
In all, Dejoie is facing 13 criminal charges including Mitchell’s murder. Those charges also include assault, kidnapping and sex crimes against two women who came forward after Mitchell’s death.
One of those alleged victims took the stand Tuesday, telling jurors she was born with fetal alcohol syndrome and suffers from some intellectual and developmental disabilities. She said in May 2022, she was walking along Interstate 270 at 3 a.m. to go back to her home in south St. Louis from her grandmother’s house in Hazelwood when Dejoie stopped and offered her a ride.
She said she was walking home because her estranged husband threatened to hurt her dog, and she didn't want to wake her grandmother and worry her.
She said he gave her a bottle of water that made her feel “woozy” in his car, and that he carried her inside his apartment, blocked the door to his bedroom with luggage and other clutter, raped her, punched her in her face, breaking her orbital socket. She said she escaped through his bedroom window the next day and went to the hospital for a rape exam, which rendered DNA matching Dejoie’s.
Dejoie shook his head in disbelief as the victim talked, and frequently whispered to another one of his attorneys, Jemia Steele, during her testimony.
A second alleged victim told police Dejoie forced her to perform oral sex on him inside her vehicle just days before Mitchell disappeared.
The trial is expected to last through the week.
Should the jury find Dejoie guilty, it will return to deliberations to recommend a prison sentence. Judge John Lasater cannot impose a sentence greater than the jury recommends and can decide whether to administer the recommended sentences on each crime consecutively or concurrently.