warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
An affluent Florida neighborhood is rocked by the shocking violence that erupted on a quiet August night in 2015. Amanda Colley and Lindy Dobbins, two mothers of young children, were discovered dead in Colley’s home from gunshot wounds.
St . Augustine ,Florida
It’s a planned community with pools it’s a very nice neighborhood,very nice area of our counties.
The entire portrait of this family just didn’t speak to something that would end in such violence and bloodshed….
Amanda and J.R colley had been married for eight years .
Amanda , she lit up a room, and she was gorgeous and confident.
James is a very peresonable man, he could easily become a friend with somebody, he worked in the banking industry ,he was working in the mortgage departement.
He spent all the time he could with the kids, he coached their teams, he took them on vacations.
but friends began to hear not everything was wounderful at the Colley home.
He was jealous of her spending time with friends you have to be a strong person to and be very self- confident to be with Amanda because she was so friendly.
James probably drank too much, if he started to drinking sometime it was hard to stop, we have all some demons but ,his probably ran a little bit deeper and he did abuse things on occassion.
She tried to make it work as long as she could and when it came to the point where the scales tipped to where his behavior was affecting the family .
Then when she decided that this needs to be over .
The separation papers were filed in the middle of July but J.R would still come to visit, it would go from 3 days of being a family to 3 days of ” don’t talk to me”, to 3 days of being a family to 3 days to “stay away from me”.
It came out in court that they had sex together and she said ,” well i felt like i had to in order to keep them happy , so i wouldn’t get hurt.”
She had a new bow even though that was something that she kind of kept to herself from her husband,he had a girlfriend, he had already moved on, but he still didn’t want to let go of Amanda.
One weekend that Amanda was away J.R sneaked into the house.
Mad that thinking whatever he was thinking about where she was and what she he was doing.
He gathered all the clothes out of the closet and burned them in the backyard.
Amanda filed for divorce and a tempory injunction to keep J.R away from the home,writting in the court papers” J.R would cut me up or kill me if he ever found out i was cheating.”
A part of te reason why it took Amanda so long to take action was because he did try to be a good father to the kids and she did not want to having a divorce , nobody wants to tear apart their family to be torn apart.
J.R had asked neighbors to keep an eye on Amanda and the house to report if anyone was visiting her.
He received this picture from a neighbor of a barechested man mowing the lawn at Amandas house,once he found out that was too much ,that was comfirmation of ” okay this is the guy”.
J.R also sent messages to the neighbor who had taken the picture.
Over the next 6 hours Colley would become increasingly enraged, a neighbor surveillance camera saw J.R Colley’s car heading to Amanda’s home.
Nobody was home ,Amanda was not there ,he ransacked the house, and destroyed TVs and furniture…
..And walls.
As he’s looking around he finds clothes , men’s cloths that he knows aren’t his and then he searched some more and he found some some sex toys that he knew that was never any part of their relationship.
This might infuriated him and he began calling Amanda to tell her that he was at the house and he found these things and he was angry.
Colley had b een in court that very morning, he was coming to court for a violation of that injunction,for having contact with her.
The night before he had been drinking ,he can’t sleep,he takes some Ambien because he’d been prescribed that.
Judge was unaware of Colley’ s rampage just a few hours earlier at Amandas home and agreed to let Colley attend anger management classes instead of being sent to jail.
So, he ended up getting a better deal than he had originally anticipated.
He had his employee badge on and he was dress in like slacks colored shirt like he’d be going to work and when he left,he tried to call Amanda.
She picks up the phone and they have about 14 minutes phone call.
Something happened in that call and instead of going to work he made one stop at a gas station ,filled up his tank, and then at that point he bought beer.
It’s now 10:11 in the morning and J.R Colley is heading to south bellagio drive.
In the car are two fully loaded guns.
Amanda had returned home and was taking stock of the damage from J.R’ s ramapge a few hours earlier with her was the man she was dating Lamar
and two friends, Lindy Dobbins and another friend Rachel Hendricks.
Rachel would later describe what happened that day at Amandas house.
The Sheriff’s office actually responded to the residents and she declined to write a report ,she didn’t wanted press charges on James because she didn’t want to have him put in jail for a year and be away from his kids for one year.
So ,the sheriff’s officer left the scene…
James is traveling to the residence at that point, he parked behind the residence .
Amanda and Rachel ,Lindy and Lamar are all in the Living room kitchen area.
They look out the window and see him.
Lamar saw and screamed gunshots and and he ran and Rachel never saw him again,surveillance video from a neighbor shows Lamar running down away from the house.
Amanda ,Lindy and Rachel run into the master bathroomsuit and hide.Amanda was on the phone with 911
And Lindy was also on the phone with 911 in the closet.
James goes to the closet door and start trying to get inside,while Rachel is holding the door from the inside and he can’t get in and so he says ” let me in or i’m going to shoot you through this door.
Well ,he did…
Rachel is standing behind the door so when the swings open she ‘s essentially concealed which point Rachel circles out of the closet and run.
It was just such a tragic and appalling and just shocking incident of domestic violence, really of the scale.
Information about a deadly Rampage in a St. John’s County neighborhood.
Investigators say James Colley..
shot and killed his wife and her best friend in the Mirabella neighborhood.
This case took over local news when it happened, they covering the aftermath. and detectives fear was that he was going to go take the kids.
The first sighting of James Colley after the murder was in Virginia,a women was driving and he was behindher and continually trying to run her off the road.
So police caught up and conducted a traffic stop on him and took him into custody ,he was intoxicated, he didn’t resist their effort but he was definitely intoxicated.
He immediately said that he wanted an attorney.
Pretty early on the horrific nature of these crimes the typ of crimes as prosecutors were already thinking ahead of, this could potentially be a death penalty case .
And then prosecutors job ultimately became proving that it was in fact a premeditated murder.
But in order to get the death penalty prosecutors have cold calculated and premeditated as afactor and a motive and exactly how many opportunities Mr Colley had to stop and change course.
“He didn’t give me nothing that he was going to do something”
Colley got the photo of Lamar mowing the lawn just a few days before the murder from his neighbor Mike Dickens.
Investigators have access to jail calls.
Colley was on the phone with his family almost every day after his arrest.
Colley wanted to know about his children, and Colley urged his family to make sure Amanda’s relatives did not get custody of the children.
It does give you a very good insigh even if they ‘re not talking about their case into their personality type.
“ i´m going to be out of here in less than 20 years” he really think he’s going to get a manslaughter conviction out of this.
While in jail ,Colley also talked a lot with one of his cellmates, Andrew Cherry and Cherry was quick to become a jailhouse infromant and tell prosecutors what Colley had to say about the victims.
The decision was made to seek the death penalty with Lindy’s 911 call a major factor.
When a victims knows of their impending doom , their impending death that’s psychologically heinous atrocious and cruel that they’re going trough that mentally and they know they’re about to die.
She clearly knew she was going to die.
Day three of a high – profile death penalty trial in St John’s County and the defense had to decide whether James Colley Jr. should testify.
It was his choice at the end of the day not to testify
All of Amanda´s family and Lindy’s family were there, they were dress in purple because that was sort of the color of domestic violence remembrance.
The jury find the defendant James Terry Colley Jr as follow:
Guilty as charged of both first premeditated murder and for first degree felony murder contrary to florida statute section 78204 and all the other counts too.
Once they started checking the guilty boxes , they just kept checking,he shook his head a little like ” i expected it”something like that.
James Colley was found guilty on all charges, he could face the death penalty that same jury will have to determine what happens to him .
Colley’s lawyer for the penalty phase Gary wood thought his best case to prevent a death sentence was to present Colley as a man who was under the infulence of ambien.
But in rebuttal the prosecution played the video of Colley’s court appearance just an hour before the murders;
Judge ” are you now under of the influence of any intox”
Colley “no”
And then called as a witness the judge who presided at the hearing Charles Tinlin
” There was no indication ,nothing in his demeanor indicated he was on the influence of anything”
So, the defense was left with an appeal to the jury from Colley’s sister Crystal who described family photos from a happier time.
” He was a wonderful father”
Prosecutor” the defense deserve the death penalty”
Defens attorney” if you oppose a life without the possibility of parole ,he’s going to die in prison “
The jury has reached a verdict as to whether or not James Colley should get the death penalty, the all 12 has to be unanimous if just one person doesn’t want to do it, your’e done , it’s a live sentence at that point.
The jury unanimously find that James Terry Colley Jr should be sentenced to death.
Judge in Florida can reduce a death sentence to life.
There was never an ounce of remorse that came from him .
What he was trying to obviously ” this is nothing that i intended to do” but it certainly didn’t help his sentencing .
Highligts
James Colley Jr. 2018 death sentences upheld in 2015 double murder
The Florida Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the first-degree murder convictions and death sentences of a St. Johns County man accused in 2015 of fatally shooting his estranged wife and one of her friends.
Justices unanimously rejected an appeal by James Terry Colley Jr., who was convicted of killing his estranged wife and her friend on Aug. 27, 2015.
He was found guilty on July 18, 2018 of killing his estranged wife Amanda Cloaninger Colley, as she tried to hide from him in a bathroom of her MuraBella home, and her friend Lindy Dobbins, who was hiding behind a chest in a closet when she was shot.
He was sentenced to death on Nov. 30, 2018.
Colley, now 40, was also convicted of attempted-murder charges related to two other people who escaped from the home, his wife’s boyfriend, Lamar Douberly, and another friend, Rachel Hendricks. He was also found guilty of two counts of burglary and a single count of aggravated stalking after injunction.
The appeal raised a series of issues, including that Colley had been impaired at the time of the shootings, in part because of taking the sleep drug Ambien. But the Supreme Court rejected that argument.