GRAYSON — Amid extra-heavy security, a West Virginia man accused of murdering a Carter County woman and her two young daughters, then setting their home on fire to cover up the crime, made his first appearance in a Kentucky courtroom on Thursday.
Flanked by several Kentucky State Police troopers and Carter County sheriff’s deputies, Robert Lee Drown, 27, pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, rape, arson and burglary at his arraignment in Carter Circuit Court.
Drown, clad in a black-and-white uniform, did not speak during Thursday’s brief proceeding. His attorney, Theodore Shouse, from the state Department of Public Advocacy’s Capital Trial Branch, entered the pleas on his behalf.
Drown is accused in the May 9 slayings of 31-year-old Jennifer Ison and her daughters, Shannah Ison, 10, and Marissa Ison, 3. The three were killed in their home on Canoe Run in the Hitchins area.
Drown, a registered sex offender in Ohio, also allegedly raped one of the girls, Kentucky State Police said. The family’s home was then set ablaze.
According to the KSP, Jennifer Ison, a labor and delivery nurse at Cabell Huntington Hospital, was strangled and Shannah Ison died from blunt-force head trauma. Marissa Ison was killed in the fire.
Carter Commonwealth’s Attorney David Flatt has already filed the paperwork necessary to seek the death penalty for Drown.
Earlier this month, Drown agreed to waive extradition from West Virginia, where he was being held on a charge of failure to register as a sex offender, and return to Kentucky voluntarily.
A number of the victims’ family members were in the courtroom for Drown’s arraignment. Several wore T-shirts with a family portrait of Ison and her daughters on it. “In Loving Memory” was emblazoned above the photograph. Below it were the words “Let Justice Be Done.”
Sharlene Williams, Ison’s former mother-in-law and Shannah and Marissa’s grandmother, and her husband, Darrell Williams, were among those sporting the shirts. The couple traveled all the way from Atlanta in order to be at Thursday’s hearing.
Sharlene Williams said seeing the man accused of killing her grandchildren and their mother in a courtroom was “worse than seeing Satan himself.”
“I think the son-of-a-bitch is as a guilty as sin and he deserves to suffer,” she said. “He raped my 10-year-old granddaughter.”
Williams said she and her family would be at every proceeding in the case “until we see him die.”
Prior to Drown being led into the courtroom on Thursday, Carter Circuit Judge Rebecca Phillips admonished those in the audience to keep their emotions in check.
“I realize this is an emotional time for many of you,” she said. “But, this is a formal court proceeding.”
Drown is being held without bond in the Carter County Detention Center.
Phillips scheduled a pre-trial conference in the case for 10 a.m. Oct. 29.
KENNETH HART can be reached at khart@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2654.
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