Alfred Bourgeois, 56, is scheduled to be executed on December 11 for the 2004 conviction of the brutal murder of his 2-year-old daughter. He will be the 10th federal inmate to be put to death since July, and the second federal inmate to be executed in two days.
Bourgeois only had temporary custody of his 2-and-a-half-year old daughter, “JG”, for a matter of weeks before she was killed. In 2002 he was married and raising two children and had two more children for which he was paying child support when a paternity test proved that the little girl was his, according to FindLaw.
Bourgeois, a former long-haul trucker, took JG, a child borne out of an affair he had with a woman he knew in Texas, home to live with his family for an agreed-upon seven weeks starting in May 2002, after the mother of JG took him to court over his paternity, per FindLaw.
But the little girl would never go back home. According to the website Leagle, “Witnesses testified that Bourgeois had wished for JG’s death because he did not want to have to pay child support for her and that he had made plans for disposing of her body.”
Bourgeois resentment would be lead to him systematically beating and torturing the toddler over the course of the next several weeks, until the abuse culminated in Bourgeois slamming his 2-year-old daughter’s head against the windows and dashboard of his long-haul truck cabin when she tipped over her potty seat in the truck at the Christi Naval Air Station where Bourgeois was dropping off a shipment, according to a court document.
It would be the last time he would hurt her. The brutal attack on the little girl caused a traumatic injury. JG died in the hospital the next day in her mother’s arms on June 27, 2002, according to case files on Find Law. And while Bourgeois told his wife, Robin Bourgeois, and older children to say the baby fell out of the truck, the extensive damage that had been done to the child told a different story.
The Last 7 Weeks of Bourgeois 2-Year-Old Daughter’s Life Were Filled With Pain & Fear
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The reason Bourgeois’s family knew about his treatment of JG and how she died was that he had his family in tow in his 18-wheeler as he worked his trucking route for weeks or months at a time, including while he had his youngest daughter.
According to court documents on docketbird, Bourgeois and his wife Robin had a “turbulent” relationship in which there was abuse and extra-marital affairs, and twice she took out a restraining order on the man.
She initially covered for her husband about what happened to JG at the Naval base, but she finally told the police the baby didn’t fall out of the truck, but rather, her husband had banged the girl’s head against the dashboard and truck windows out of anger. Ultimately, Robin testified about the many things she said she’d seen him do to his baby daughter.
According to the case files, Bourgeois had punched the 2-year-old in the face and left her with black eyes, whipped her with an electrical cord and a belt — one time so hard the belt broke.
“Bourgeois hit JG in the head with a plastic baseball bat so many times that her head “was swollen like a football,” the records say. He threw her against a wall, bit her hands, feet, and forehead, and even burned the bottom of her foot with a lighter.
“When others tried to clean the sores on JG’s feet, Bourgeois would stop them and jam his dirty thumb into the wounds, then force JG to walk on her injured feet,” Find Law documents report.
Besides physical torture, the family also told investigators about psychological tortures he perpetrated on his toddler. According to Find Law:
On one occasion, Bourgeois decided that it was time for JG to learn how to swim, despite her tender years and fear of the water. Bourgeois picked up the two-year-old and tossed her several feet in the air and into a swimming pool. He allowed her to sink for several seconds before pulling her out, then repeated the “lesson” for thirty minutes while JG choked and gasped for air. Similarly, when the family visited a California beach on Bourgeois’s long-haul trucking route, he forced JG into the ocean even though she was terrified of the water, holding her under the water and letting the waves roll over her. By the time they left the beach, JG had swallowed so much salt water that she had difficulty walking and was ill with a swollen stomach.
It is not clear if Robin knew about the sexual abuse prosecutors say Bourgeois perpetrated on his youngest child, but she did know that her husband slept behind a locked door with the 2-year-old and their other daughter, while she slept in a different room.
Robin also said she once took the baby to the doctor due to blood in her diaper which the doctor said could’ve been from a vaginal injury but the findings were inconclusive, according to FindLaw. In the autopsy, an anal swab was done on the child and the presence of semen was noted.
The Autopsy of JG Was ‘One of the Most Involved’ of the Medical Examiner’s Career
The unbelievable horrors inflicted on the little girl in only a matter of weeks were clear to the medical examiner, who testified that the child was chronically abused.
According to court documents:
The medical examiner described the autopsy as one of the most involved of her career, due to the sheer number and extent of JG’s injuries. There were bruises, human bite marks, scratch marks, loop marks (consistent with an electrical cord), and a circular hole on the bottom of one of JG’s feet.
The examiner also found deep tissue bruising all over JG’s body. Based on these extensive injuries, the examiner concluded that JG was a chronically abused or battered child. The ultimate cause of death, in her determination, was an impact to the head resulting in a devastating brain injury. The location of the brain injury was consistent with Bourgeois holding JG by the shoulders and slamming her head against the windows and dashboard of the truck cab.
Bourgeois Has Appealed on the Grounds of Intellectual Disability, But in October 2020 a Court Shot Down His Appeal
Death Penalty News: USA | Federal death row inmate Alfred Bourgeois seeks stay from Supreme Court t.co/GsaBDs5MEl #federalexecutions #alfredbourgeois #deathpenalty #WilliamBarr #Trump
Bourgeois was sentenced to death in 2004 but has appealed the decision, claiming intellectual disability which, if proven, would take the death penalty off the table.
However, on October 2, 2020, the United States Court of Appeals denied the claim, saying he did not meet the criteria. The court wrote:
Bourgeois’s life did not “correspond to a finding of significant intellectual limitations.” The court stressed that Bourgeois had “graduated from high school, worked for years as an over-land trucker, bought a house, managed his own finances, wrote intricate and detailed letters, communicated without difficulty, participated actively in his own defense, and otherwise carried himself without any sign of intellectual impairment.
He also looked for an appeal on the grounds that he was not fairly given the option to make the intellectual disability claim.
The court wrote, “The question in this appeal is not whether Alfred Bourgeois is intellectually disabled. It is, instead, whether he was able to litigate his intellectual-disability claim in his § 2255 motion. He was, and he did.”
Bourgeois has spent 18 years, 5 months, and 16 days in prison after being convicted of first-degree murder, according to the Bureau of Prisons. On his last day in prison, he will be executed by lethal injection.
The next scheduled federal execution is on January 12, when Lisa Mongomery will be the first woman put to death by the federal government in nearly seven decades.
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