NEWS

Two Missouri men arrested in murder of Teresa Sievers

MICHAEL BRAUN, MELISSA MONTOYA, and BEN BRASCH

A longtime friend of the husband of a slain Bonita Springs doctor, and a 25-year-old on parole for gun violations, were arrested in Missouri for the murder of Dr. Teresa Sievers in her home nearly two months ago.

The two men, Jimmy Rodgers, 25, and Curtis Wayne Wright, 47, were arrested by authorities Thursday. Sievers' sister Annie Lisa told The News-Press Wright is a long-time friend of Sievers' husband Mark Sievers. It's unclear whether Rodgers knew either Sievers.

The arrests were announced within three hours of each other by Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott in two news conferences that lasted less than five minutes. He took no questions from the media.

The homicide was one of the most high-profile cases the sheriff's office has undertaken and one of the most complicated cases the office had ever encountered, he said.

"We engaged with a tenacious focus like no other," Scott said.

As of Thursday, Rodgers was booked in the Missouri St. Francois County Jail, according to the Daily Journal newspaper in Missouri.

Rodgers had a hearing in a St. Louis district courtroom about 10:30 a.m. Friday.

He waived his preliminary hearing and his detention hearing, according to a Eastern District of Missouri courts employee.

Rodgers has his final revocation hearing is Sept. 2 in front of a district judge. That's when the judge will make a decision about what to do with Rodgers' complicated legal situation.

Rodgers is being represented by Joan Miller, a St. Louis attorney, but remains in jail.

In Florida, the sheriff's office and the state attorney's office both declined to comment further after a frenzy of media attention Thursday.

As for Wright, he is also in a Missouri jail. Both men are charged with second-degree murder.

Wright and Rodgers are friends on their Facebook pages.

The investigation into Sievers' death on June 29 led authorities to Rodgers who was on probation for gun violations, records show.

Rodgers did not have permission to travel out of the state, but court records show he was in a Lee County Walmart on Six Mile Cypress Parkway the day before Sievers was killed. The documents don't say how authorities knew he had been in the store.

Rodgers was first convicted of a felony in Missouri when he was 17. He was found guilty of resisting arrest.

"The conviction was the result of Mr. Rodgers going very fast in a 'hotrod' vehicle on a rural blacktop highway and not initially stopping when law enforcement encountered him," court documents said.

The federal conviction came two years later, in June 2011, for having guns while on probation. In a petition to depart from federal sentencing guidelines for a lower sentence, his attorney said:

•The guns were inherited and he didn't understand that having the guns were a violation.

•He had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and couldn't afford to buy the medication.

•He didn't have a criminal history and most of the guns were from the time he was a young boy and were not used to make money.

The court still sentenced him to 57 months in prison and two years of supervised released. His supervision was supposed to run from Sept. 24, 2014 to Sept. 23, 2016, according to records.

Neighbors said they were told by authorities that Sievers, 46, was beaten to death with a hammer. Rodgers' nickname on his Facebook page is Jimmy the Hammer.

Sievers was found at her Jarvis Road home after she didn't arrive for work at her Estero-based alternative medicine practice. Sievers had spent the weekend in Connecticut with family. She flew back alone on June 28. Sievers, was a well-known specialist in internal medicine, and a prominent member of the community . She volunteered with Our Mother's Home, a transitional home for teen mothers and their babies near San Carlos Park.

Wright was a friend of Mark Sievers from grade school, Lisa said, but she had first met him just a few days after her sister was killed. Mark Sievers lists Wright as a "brother" on his Facebook profile page. It's unclear if the two are relatives.

Mary Benton lives in the mobile home across from Wright and his wife Angie in Missouri.

She said she saw Wright on Thursday morning. He waved at her and said how bad he felt about all that has been going on.

"He felt bad about everything that was going on," Benton said. "He's embarrassed about it."

She was filling up her coffee pot early one recent Sunday morning when she saw police tape encircling Wright's mobile home.

"It took my breath away because there was yellow tape around the lot," said Benton, 75.

She said she knows they left Missouri on a trip to Florida because "one of his school friends' wives died and they were going to a funeral."

Benton said Wright works from home.

She attended the May 2 wedding of the couple, who moved into the mobile home park a year and a half ago. She added: "They just act like a really nice couple."

Benton said, when the pair moved in, "they were just working like beavers" to clean up the property.

"I can't even imagine that this would happen in our neighborhood or so someone I know," she said. "I couldn't imagine he would be mean."

Since the murder the sheriff's office has declined to say much about the case because it was an ongoing investigation. Officers assured neighbors that there was no threat in the area, but they reminded residents to lock their doors.

Scott lauded the help of the FBI and the state attorney's office on Thursday, introducing representatives from both. James Rankin, supervisory senior resident agent in Fort Myers for the FBI, deferred comments to the Tampa office.

Dave Couvertier, spokesman for the FBI in Tampa, said the agency is ready to "supply the investigation with any assistance they need outside the area or the state."