Daytona Beach AA Member James Maxwell Suspect In Murder Of Holly Hill Chasity Starr

Mandated Daytona Beach Alcoholics Anonymous and Daytona Beach Narcotics Anonymous Member James Maxwell is the prime suspect in the murder of Chasity Starr. The body that was found in the backyard of Maxwell’s mother’s home Dixie Maxwell is believed to be Chasity Starr.  Joanna Bertram called police after speaking with Maxwell in prison after he became nervous at the idea of work being done in the backyard. Bertram and Maxwell have a 3 month old child together, but she does not have custody.

James Maxwell is one of many violent criminals who the courts routinely mandate to 12 step programs like AA and NA. He had already done time for attempted murder in the past and had drug arrests. He has been charged with attempted murder with his violent past against a former prostitute where he stabbed her in the chest, the Volusia County Courts mandated him to AA/NA meetings knowing that minors are referred there by Stewart-Marchman and court related agencies. Maxwell is in jail for raping a 9 year old girl last year during the time he was on probation and mandated to Daytona Beach AA and NA Meetings.

Even though the Governor has recieved complaints about this practice of co mingling minors with violent felons and sexual offenders, no changes has been made to this practice. There are Juvenile Drug Courts in other parts of the state of Florida that also mandate juveniles to Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings. This is with the full knowledge of the judges and probation departments that sexual offenders, prostitutes and felons attend these meetings as well!  AA and NA are both on a campaign themselves to bring more minors to these very dangerous meetings.

Family believes backyard remains are missing Holly Hill woman

By LYDA LONGA, Staff writer
June 21, 2012

PORT ORANGE — Family members of a woman who disappeared from Holly Hill in 2011 say they believe she is the person whose remains were unearthed from the backyard of the home of a man accused of raping a child.

The uncle of Chasity Starr — a prostitute who was 27 when she was reported missing Jan. 15, 2011 — said that Holly Hill investigators have been in touch with the family and told them the remains found are those of a small adult. In addition, Ed Jandreau — who lives in Bunnell — said police told him that shortly after Starr disappeared investigators tried to track her cellphone location and found that it was being used in Port Orange.

Holly Hill Police Chief Mark Barker said Wednesday that his detectives have been in contact with Port Orange police and, “We’re awaiting the results of the forensic examination.” If the body found Monday in the Port Orange backyard of 44-year-old James Lee Maxwell belongs to Starr, it would show another definite link between Maxwell and prostitutes.

The suspect, accused of raping a 9-year-old girl who lives on his street in December, served time in state prison in 1988 after he was convicted of attempted first-degree murder. His victim was a Daytona Beach prostitute Maxwell stabbed in the chest, a booking report shows. Maxwell is in custody at the Volusia County Branch Jail on the child rape charge with no bail allowed. Port Orange police, since Monday, have been digging in the suspect’s yard at 180 Brandy Hills Drive. On Tuesday afternoon, Port Orange Police Chief Gerald Monahan said the remains of an adult had been buried in Maxwell’s yard.

Monahan said investigators received a call last week that provided them with enough information and probable cause to dig behind Maxwell’s house. Armed with a search warrant, investigators also entered the Maxwell home on Wednesday in search of evidence. Lt. Dave Meyer said Wednesday that he could not discuss what kind of evidence has been found. Starr’s family, however, is waiting by the phone and bracing for the news, Jandreau said. “Absolutely we think it’s her,” Jandreau said Wednesday. “The whole family is just waiting for the positive confirmation from police. It’s pointing in that direction.”

Jandreau said Starr was not a big woman. He said she stood about 5 feet 7 inches and was “very thin.” When he was told by Holly Hill police that the remains belong to a small adult, Jandreau said he immediately thought of his niece. “We’re all calling each other,” Jandreau said, regarding relatives telephoning each other about the discovery. The corpse had been hidden away on Maxwell’s property for more than a year, Monahan said. The police chief said detectives had known about the body since Monday. “We’re not going to say who it is, but we have a good idea who it is,” Monahan said at the scene Tuesday. “This is a homicide investigation and James Maxwell is a suspect in that homicide.”

Starr’s disappearance and possible death is one of six area cases of prostitutes whose killers have not been caught. Daytona Beach police still have no idea who killed four prostitutes in the city between December 2005 and December 2008. Police Chief Mike Chitwood on Wednesday said that Maxwell’s DNA has been in the national database known as CODIS since 2000. But it does not match the DNA left behind by the person who killed at least two of the four Daytona Beach women. Ormond Beach has an unsolved case of a South Daytona prostitute whose decomposed body was found in an industrial park in January 2011. The remains of Pamela Will, 48, were found in a ditch near Ormond Beach’s airport. Will’s last known location was Sept. 8, 2010, at the Red Carpet Inn, 1855 S. Ridgewood Ave. in South Daytona. Police there said Will was asked to leave the motel for lack of payment. Ormond Beach detectives were at the Port Orange scene Tuesday, but declined to say why.

In the 1988 stabbing, Maxwell told police that he had picked up prostitute Cathryn Ann Carnes on South Ridgewood Avenue in Daytona Beach. He admitted that he had plunged a knife into her heart and said he had “planned it all along,” a report shows. Maxwell told arresting officer Douglas Yuill that he had been robbed by another prostitute the week prior to the stabbing, the report states. Maxwell was 23 at the time. Joanna Bertram, the woman who has been living with Maxwell since last summer, was also convicted of prostitution in 2005, court records show.

Bertram is the one who telephoned police last week after she spoke to Maxwell in the Branch Jail and told them that there was possibly a body in the back yard of the Port Orange residence. Maxwell and Bertram have a 3-month-old child together. Maxwell’s neighbor Colt Wainwright said he met the suspect two years ago and always had an uneasy feeling about him. While the two men borrowed tools from each other regularly, Wainwright said he had a “gut feeling” that there was something askew about Maxwell.

Wainwright said that before Maxwell was accused of raping his young neighbor, he eked out a living cutting the lawns of other residents along Brandy Hills Drive. “It’s unsettling to know that there was a body in his backyard,” Wainwright said Wednesday. Port Orange investigators wrapped up their search of Maxwell’s property on Wednesday afternoon. The house, neatly kept and painted white, is owned by Maxwell’s mother, Dixie Maxwell.

A woman believed to be Dixie Maxwell arrived at the home shortly after 3:30 p.m. Wednesday in a silver Dodge Neon, which she parked along the street. She was guided inside by officials and taken in the house through the side door. She was inside of the house less than 30 minutes, and when she walked back to her car, she had the hood of her jacket up over her head and held her jacket up to cover most of her face. The woman did not speak to reporters. Officials removed the crime scene tape shortly thereafter. If the remains do belong to Starr, Jandreau said the family would be relieved. He recalled that the young woman — who worked as a prostitute along the Ridgewood Avenue corridor — always waved and “hollered” at relatives if she saw them drive by to check on her.

“It would bring closure and she would have a proper burial,” Jandreau said. “She (Chasity) was a good person, honest to God she was.”

http://www.news-journalonline.com/news/local/east-volusia/2012/06/21/family-believes-backyard-remains-are-missing-holly-hill-woman.html

Suspect’s panic over work scheduled in Port Orange yard leads girlfriend to call police

By LYDA LONGA, Staff writer
June 22, 2012
PORT ORANGE — Shaking violently as she stood in the front door of the home she shared with homicide and rape suspect James Lee Maxwell, Joanna Bertram denied knowing before last week that human remains had been buried in her boyfriend’s backyard. “And when I found out, I took care of it,” Bertram said firmly Thursday morning.

Earlier this week, Port Orange police said they discovered the remains of a person buried in Maxwell’s yard at 180 Brandy Hills Drive. Detectives said a tipster called them last week and gave them information that was so credible they obtained a search warrant and began digging. That tipster was Bertram. She made the call after she spoke with Maxwell in the Volusia County Branch Jail. Bertram told detectives that Maxwell panicked after she told him some work was going to be done in the back of the house. Maxwell is accused of kidnapping and raping a 9-year-old neighbor in December, and has been in the Branch Jail since, held with no bail allowed. But Port Orange Police Chief Gerald Monahan said the human remains looked as if they had been in Maxwell’s yard for more than a year.

Port Orange police, with the help of the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office, spent three days working on the property. Police also searched the inside of the Maxwell residence, which is owned by the suspect’s mother, Dixie Maxwell. Port Orange Lt. David Meyer said he could not discuss what additional evidence was taken from the house or the backyard. Monahan said investigators have a good idea whom the remains belong to and how the person died. But he did not want to reveal that information until the body is identified. Wednesday, the relatives of missing Holly Hill prostitute Chasity Starr said they think the remains belong to her. The 27-year-old Starr plied her trade along Ridgewood Avenue, between Holly Hill and New Smyrna Beach, and she vanished in January 2011.

There are a few reasons why Starr’s uncle Ed Jandreau and other relatives believe Starr was the one hidden in Maxwell’s yard: Jandreau said Holly Hill police called him after they met with Port Orange investigators and told him the remains are those of a small adult. Jandreau said Starr was thin. Perhaps most significant, Jandreau said, is the fact that when Holly Hill detectives tried to track down Starr’s cellphone location after her disappearance, they found it was being used in Port Orange where Maxwell lives. In addition, police records show Maxwell has a history with prostitutes, some of it violent. In 1988, Maxwell was convicted of attempted first-degree murder after he stabbed a Daytona Beach prostitute in the chest, a booking report shows. When he was arrested, Maxwell confessed, telling police he did it because he had been robbed by another prostitute the week before.

The 38-year-old Bertram — who has an infant with Maxwell but does not have custody of the child — was convicted of prostitution in 2005 in Daytona Beach. Court records show Bertram was arrested at Shady Place and Ridgewood, half a block from where Maxwell picked up prostitute Cathryn Ann Carnes in 1988. Jandreau also said Holly Hill detectives told him they had turned over all their files on Starr to Port Orange investigators. Police Chief Mark Barker would only say his agency has spoken with Port Orange police and his agency is awaiting the results of the forensic examination. Monahan said it would take about a month before the remains are identified. Maxwell, meanwhile, declined a request to be interviewed at the Branch Jail on Thursday. His mother  came to the front door of the family home on Thursday morning, the expression on her pale thin face one of bewilderment. She begged two reporters to leave her alone. At that point, Bertram stepped in front of the older woman. Before she talked about the remains in the yard, she said Dixie Maxwell is the only family she has left.

Photo Gallery

http://www.news-journalonline.com/news/local/east-volusia/2012/06/22/suspects-panic-over-word-of-yard-work-leads-girlfriend-to-call-police.html

Here he pleads guilty to raping her and gets 3 life sentences

http://nadaytona.org/2012/11/10/daytona-aa-member-james-maxwell-pleads-guilty-to-rape-of-9-year-old-girl/

3 thoughts on “Daytona Beach AA Member James Maxwell Suspect In Murder Of Holly Hill Chasity Starr

  1. Are these public officials in AA? NA? Do some digging…I bet one or more are… and I bet they have 30 years or more too. I smell a rat. oh I mean an AA rat!

  2. Man accused of burying body has violent past
    Brother of live-in girlfriend talks about suspect in case

    UPDATED 5:27 PM EDT Jun 22, 2012

    PORT ORANGE, Fla. –
    The family of James Maxwell’s live-in girlfriend wasn’t at all surprised when Port Orange police found human remains in his yard. Law enforcement found human remains Tuesday afternoon in the backyard of a man accused of rape in Port Orange. The family said he had bragged about killing, and they’re afraid there may be at least one other victim out there. The girlfriend, Joanna Bertram, confirmed she was one of two people to call police about a body buried in the backyard of the home she shared with Maxwell.

    Bertram had specific information that led police to dig earlier in the week, but her brother, Alfred Bertram, said long before that she told them horror stories about Maxwell. “They were very afraid of him,” Alfred Bertram said.
    Alfred Bertram said his sister was blind to the evils of Maxwell, and he said she wouldn’t leave him. But Alfred Bertram said his family managed to get Joanna Bertram’s children out of the house in August — and just in time, from what the children said. “He would get drunk and hang out on the back porch, as they said, and would brag about how he killed two prostitutes,” Alfred Bertram said. Investigators found the body of an adult that had been buried more than one year earlier in Maxwell’s yard. Sources have said the victim is a woman, and the family of a prostitute, Chasity Starr, who has been missing from Holly Hill since January 2011, believes it’s her.That fits with something else Alfred Bertram said Maxwell told the children-

    “He told my niece and my sister that the last time he killed was in January. When he would brag about it, he would say the last time he killed was in January 2011, which was when Chasity Starr went missing exactly,” Alfred Bertram said. Law enforcement found human remains Tuesday afternoon in the backyard of a man accused of rape in Port Orange. Bertram actually went to police twice last year about Maxwell’s claims that he killed, but with no specific details, little could be done. In December, Maxwell was arrested for kidnapping and raping a young neighbor. That troubles Alfred Bertram.
    “If they had found evidence to maybe get Jim Maxwell off the street, maybe it couldn’t have happened to that little girl,” Alfred Bertram said.

    Read more: http://www.wesh.com/news/central-florida/volusia-county/Man-accused-of-burying-body-has-violent-past/-/12983450/15213732/-/p0bjqo/-/index.html#ixzz1ygEkxU99

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