Lois Sexton speaks out on abuse By Robert Patrick Of the Post-Dispatch 07/20/2005

Two days after her father was convicted of helping murder her husband, Lois Sexton sits in her Des Peres living room, steps away from the kitchen where the body of her husband, Jeffrey, was found.

Sexton won't talk about the criminal case. Her brother-in-law, Dennis Irby, still faces a first-degree murder charge after his first trial ended with a hung jury. Prosecutors say he shot Jeffrey Sexton twice in the head in late December 2002.

Her father, Ervell Hoover, is scheduled to be sentenced on second-degree murder and armed criminal action charges in September. He was accused of providing the gun and helping his son, Robert Hoover, move a car Irby allegedly used. Ervell Hoover's lawyer maintains his client's innocence and has vowed to appeal.

Lois Sexton wants to talk about what she says were years of physical and mental abuse, starting just after their marriage.

She is talking about herself but says counselors have told her that her experience is typical. And she hopes to help others who might be in her situation.

And there is the money.

Her family has spent about $500,000 on legal fees since the murder. On Wednesday, she appeared on the McGraw Millhaven show on KTRS radio. She talked about domestic abuse and her own experience. And she begged listeners for the $100,000 the family needs to get her father out on bail while his conviction is appealed. They've set up an account for that purpose at US Bank.

"How simple it starts"

But that is only a small part of her story.

"It first starts out with 'stupid,' then it got to the cursing and just belittling," she said. "That's how simple it starts, and I don't know if people really realize that. You start believing it.

"He just slowly picked away at who I was by controlling who I could see, who I could talk to, what I could do."

He would trap her in the kitchen while he worked himself into a "tizzy." He forced her to write letters to friends and relatives telling them she didn't want to see or talk to them again.

The individual incidents of violence blur together. There was the hit across the face during a road-rage incident. A full coffee cup brought down with enough force on her head to cause her to bleed for three days.

She explained away the bruises to coworkers and family members as something she got wrestling with her daughter.

"When it became really, really bad, it was like it was too late then," she said. She did not want to put her husband in jail. And she did not want to fail at marriage.

She fled twice but came back.

The second time, her in-laws drove her to a safe house. Then everyone knew, and the abuse got worse.

In court, prosecutor Ed McSweeney told jurors that the abuse started just months before Jeffrey Sexton's death, when he started taking steroids. He was planning to sell them at a gym and had to look the part, according to testimony.

McSweeney also said Sexton's relatives overreacted to the abuse by killing Jeffrey Sexton after his wife was already safe, 850 miles away.

But she says she never felt safe.

When Jeffrey Sexton started verbally abusing their daughter, Lois Sexton said, she knew it was time to go because she knew the hitting soon would follow.

She fled the next morning to relatives in North Carolina. Her husband was killed 15 days later.

Lois Sexton returned to the house on Devonshire Drive eight to ten weeks after the murder.

"I was leery of coming back," she said, before adding, "It was important for me to come back to this house because I wanted Lesley to feel safe here. And to know that what was missing was the violence and Daddy."

She redid her daughter's room and the kitchen. She got rid of the bedroom and living room furniture, including the couch that was the scene of her final beating Dec. 13, when her husband asked her, "Do you wanna die now, or do you wanna die tomorrow?"

She also replaced the gravel and stone border around the fireplace because it brought back memories of being dragged across it by her husband.

But she still feels some of the "old ghosts" and won't go to bed without the lights and TV on in her bedroom.

In the weeks before his wife left for the last time, Jeffrey Sexton screwed doors and windows shut and stapled and pinned the curtains closed. The screw holes still are on the inside of the doors, and four neat screw holes are the first thing to greet visitors when they walk up to the front door - left over from the hasp he used to lock her in when he left. Asked why she hasn't filled in the holes or replaced the door she pauses.

"Maybe I left it to remember where I came from and how far I've come today. Because I can go in and out that door now anytime I want."

Reporter Robert Patrick E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 314-621-5154