JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — WARNING: This story contains graphic images.
“It sounded like someone was getting hurt.”
When police canvassed the neighborhood around Andrea Washington’s Jacksonville home after her Sept. 16, 2018 murder, they heard a consistent story.
One neighbor “heard multiple people screaming and crying,” police reports note. Another neighbor heard “screaming and arguing.” Still, another was “awoken by a male and a female arguing outside.”
None of them called 911.
It's not clear it would have made a difference. As pages of newly released investigative documents and interviews make clear, police think the biggest missed opportunity came not hours but weeks before Andrea Washington’s murder – when she called police on her boyfriend, Danny Beard.
Two weeks before her death, on Sept. 2, 2018, Washington reported a violent assault. She told police Beard broke down doors, smashed her iPad, kicked her in the stomach and held a gun to her head.
Beard was never arrested or charged in the alleged aggravated assault. He was never interviewed or contacted by police or prosecutors.
“I wished they would’ve pressed charges on you the first time you beat her up, ‘cause she’d still be alive,” Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Homicide Detective M.P. Gibson tells Beard during a Dec. 7, 2018 interrogation. “They were still trying to get evidence … That is what they were waiting on, and it came too late.”
Beard, who has since pleaded not guilty to a single charge of second-degree murder, denied any involvement.
"I didn’t do this,” he tells the detectives “I’m tired of y’all messing with me. You looking for the wrong person, you all looking at the wrong person. … I put my right had to God, I didn’t do this.”
Detectives were not persuaded.
“You killed her, Danny, and you’re going to sit there and act like you don’t give two sh*ts," Gibson said.
During the interrogation, detectives ask Beard about a history of abuse – both of Andrea Washington and different ex-girlfriend, whose thumb he admits to breaking. He also admits using a phone app to access Washington’s home security system to spy on her.
“If you want to look like a monster and cold-blooded killer,” Gibson says, “then that’s what you’re going to look like.”
The release of case documents also includes a police interview with Marlon Jones, who was friends with both Washington and Beard. He describes a troubled relationship in which he often had to play “middleman.” He says he supported their breakup, saying they needed to make a “clean break.”
Jones went with Beard to Washington’s house the night of Sept. 16 to check on her, after Beard said he’d received worrisome text messages from her. Police believe Beard killed Washington then used her cell phone to cover his tracks with fake texts. But at the time of his first police interview, Jones believed they were real.
“One text said she was scared,” Jones told police.
The interview, recorded just a couple hours after Jones discovered his friend’s dead body, is emotional. He describes arriving at Washington’s darkened house, finding it unlocked and walking in. He said Beard entered first.
“He got to the end of the couch by the bedroom, that’s when he saw her ... and the shock ... he went ‘oh no!’ and fell,” Jones sobs. “And she was naked and all the blood on the floor, and he was trying to wake her up.”
He added, “Every time I close my eyes, I see her laying there.”
In his first police interview, Jones believed Beard’s story – but later came to believe he’d been duped. In a subsequent sworn statement, he tells officers, “I’m here to help you get him. I’m here. I’m here. Not the way I’ve been used in this situation. I have no loyalty to that shit.”
Beard is due back in court Dec. 9.
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