The only thing I can compare this to is the Helter Skelter killings by Charles Manson. | Free

He cut her in half, slashed her neck and stabbed her heart so many times forensic pathologists could not count the wounds.

After reliving the grisly murder scene of Ashley Pearson over a two-day trial, Judge Dal Williamson sentenced Adam Mills to life in prison. A jury of four white women, five black women, two white men and one black man deliberated for two hours before finding him guilty of first-degree murder. The jury reviewed the horrific crime scene in body-cam footage, crime-scene photos, autopsy photos and heard from seven witnesses before determining Mills’ fate.

There were so many stab wounds, “They couldn’t even count them,” Assistant District Attorney Kristen Martin said during closing arguments.

“The horror that she went through was unimaginable, and she didn’t die immediately,” she continued. “She lay there and bled to death.”

Tears streamed down the faces of family members as the

images were shown in court to show the deliberate design behind Mills’ grisly slaying of Pearson. Martin said she had never seen anything as horrific like this before.

“The only thing I can compare this to is the Helter Skelter killings by Charles Manson,” Martin said in closing arguments. The autopsy indicated that Pearson had both blunt-force and sharp-force injuries, severe ones to her head, chest and abdomen. She had been beaten in the head, her neck slashed,  her heart stabbed and her torso completely separated from her lower body.

The killing took place June 4, 2020, when the Jones County Sheriff’s Department was dispatched to 20 Powers Drive with the report of a possible suicidal man, later identified as Mills. When deputies arrived, they found Mills walking the street naked, covered in blood, testimony revealed. Mills rushed the deputies and was hit with a non-lethal shotgun and taser to subdue him. While medical personnel tried to tend to Mills’ wounds, he struggled on the ground as a deputy held him down and tased him again.

After getting Mills medical attention, deputies went into the home to discover the horrific scene. Blood was in the living room, children’s room and in the kitchen. In the laundry room, deputies found Pearson’s body, cut in half and in a pool of her blood. No one else was in the residence at the time of the murder.

Before the murder

Just before Pearson was murdered, she called her and Mills' friend Jon Michael Dearman for help to calm down Mills. Dearman came to the Mills’ home. When he arrived, he found Pearson crying because, testimony showed, Mills had cheated on her. When Dearman tried to calm Mills down, he “put a knife to his own neck and started stabbing at the floor.”

"Then it was like he started to fight something invisible to me and Ashley," Dearman said. 

Dearman testified that Pearson tried to get the knife away from him before his demeanor changed.

“I saw something change in him and Ashley jumped like a foot in the air before running toward the laundry room,” Dearman said. “Then he ran after her and I decided to leave. Something told me to get out of there, and I locked the door behind me to give me a little bit more time.”

Dearman then called 911 stating that Mills was suicidal. Dearman went back to his home and that’s when deputies found Mills naked in the roadway, screaming obscenities at them. Later, John Stevenson, a toxicologist with the Mississippi Forensics Laboratory, testified that Mills had benzodiazepines, amphetamines, methamphetamine, marijuana and cocaine in his system at the time of the murder.

Getting closure

After the verdict, the family gasped in relief, shedding tears with Ashley’s mother, Loretta Pearson hugging Jones County Sheriff’s Department employees and district attorney’s staff.

Williamson said the day was a tragic day for the family and friends of Ashley Pearson and for Mills’ family.

“Mr. Mills, you made some terrible choices and I wish you hadn't made those choices,” Williamson said. “Your choices have led to horrifying, shocking results and has resulted not only in the loss of life of a young lady but a tragedy for her family and her friends as well.”

“We just wanted justice today for our daughter,” said Don Nicky, Pearson’s

father. “I have patience, but her mother, she’s just been crying since this happened every single day. It hurt me to see (the photos and video), but it hurt her mother more.”

Loretta Pearson said she was thankful for the guilty verdict.

“Praise God for that and the support from my family and friends,” she

said. “Maybe I can move on. The pain is still going to be there for a while, but I’m going to make it.”

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