The first thing my mother saw when she pushed open that trailer door was my nephew’s body. Zachary was seven years old, and he was lying just inside the entrance, stabbed to death. She backed out without making a sound and called my father. Then she called the police.
It was Mother’s Day, May 11, 2008. My sister Lisa had always come to see our mom on Mother’s Day. When she didn’t show up, we knew something was terribly wrong. Lisa was the best older sister anyone could have asked for.
She was about a year and a half older than me, and we were always together. I have cerebral palsy, and because Lisa was older and in school with me, she never let anyone bully me. She was fiercely protective, always reliable, always thinking of others before herself. She would give the shirt off her back to anyone who needed help.
When Lisa was nineteen, she gave birth to Zachary. It was a big surprise—she was so young—but it turned out to be a wonderful accident. Zachary was a caring boy, just like his mother. His father didn’t stick around, so Lisa raised him alone, with our mom teaching her everything she needed to know.
She took that knowledge and ran with it. In 2005, when Zachary was four, Lisa gave birth to a daughter. Her legal name was Heather, because that’s what her father wanted, but Lisa always loved the name Savannah. So we called her Savannah.
Zachary was overjoyed to be a big brother. You could tell those two children loved each other deeply. I was the cool uncle. I played with them, gave them horseback rides, and played video games with Zachary.
There was a lot of laughter and a lot of love. Every day felt special. Lisa worked a full-time job and did as much overtime as she could just to make sure her children had everything they needed. She was a single mother, and she was trying hard to give them a good life.
Back in 2004, before Lisa ever met him, a man named Edward Covington got married. But his drinking and drug use spiraled out of control. When he was sober, he could be personable and intelligent. But when he mixed alcohol with crack cocaine, it brought out a violent streak in him.
His wife bore the brunt of it. He broke her wrist. He strangled her. He knocked out her teeth.
Covington worked as a prison officer for the Florida Department of Corrections, and he used that position to his advantage whenever his wife called the police on him. He would manipulate law enforcement into believing him over her. He pulled that trick multiple times to get out of trouble. In 2007, his wife had finally had enough and filed for divorce.
When she left him, he took revenge by decapitating three of her cats. That’s not the action of a man in control of himself. It was violent and vengeful. And looking back, it was a clear sign he escalated quickly when challenged.
When his marriage ended, Covington moved into a trailer owned by his parents, about twenty miles from where Lisa and her children lived in Lutz. That same year, Lisa’s relationship with Savannah’s father came to an end. She decided to try online dating. She was a single mom looking for someone to share her life with, and more than anything, she was looking for a father figure for Zachary and Savannah.
The dating site matched her with Edward Covington. At first, he seemed like a great guy. When I heard Lisa was meeting him, I trusted her judgment. She was smart, and her kids meant everything to her.
But in the spring of 2008, things changed quickly. Covington’s own parents threw him out of their trailer because of his behavior. Lisa, being who she was, offered to let him move in with her and the kids in Lutz. She had only known him about six months, and she had no idea about his violent past or his serious mental health history.
She trusted him with her children. And he used that trust as an opportunity to take advantage of them. He stayed home taking care of the kids while she went to work and made the money. Once he moved in, we started noticing his temper.
He seemed to snap at Lisa quickly. There was a cloud of uncertainty in that house. The children didn’t seem to want to be there anymore. My mom told me that when Zachary was getting into the truck with Lisa, if Covington was around, Zachary would have a scared look on his face.
We started noticing mysterious bruises on the children. We took photos of the injuries, hoping to build a case against him and convince Lisa to get away from him. We had pictures. We had proof.
We just needed time to stage an intervention. We never got that time. Just two days after we took those photos, it was Mother’s Day. Lisa didn’t come to see our mother.
That was when we knew something was wrong. The next morning, Lisa didn’t show up at the childminder’s or at work. Our mom, Barbara, went over to Lisa’s home to check on her. She had no idea she was about to walk into a scene of unimaginable horror.
She saw Zachary’s body first, lying by the front door. She saw one of her grandchildren murdered on the floor in front of her. She backed out and called my dad, and then the police. When the police arrived, they found three people murdered inside the home.
Detective Troy Morgan was one of the first on the scene. When he looked in the front door, the entire house was trashed. Zachary was lying just inside. The most shocking detail was that the boy had been mutilated after death.
There was no blood because it was done postmortem. Two-year-old Savannah was lying just a few feet away from her brother. She had been decapitated. Lisa’s body was in the hallway.
She had been stabbed multiple times and her throat was cut. The family dog had been killed too. It was one of the worst scenes the detectives had ever seen. The level of dismemberment was not normal.
Officers walked in and walked out with the color drained from their faces. Some of them held each other. At first, police thought the attacker had fled. But then someone heard a noise coming from the bedroom closet.
Crouched down and covered in blood was Lisa’s boyfriend, Edward Covington. As he was escorted out of the house and put into the back of a police cruiser, he said to the officers, “I can’t believe what I’ve done. ”
That same day, my mother called me while I was pulling out of my aunt’s driveway. She told me not to go to work and to come home.
When I got home, I saw police cars in front of the house. My mom broke the news to me right in the driveway. She found Lisa and the kids, and they were no longer with us. Covington was assessed by doctors in a secure hospital.
Two days later, detectives interviewed him. He was amazingly calm. He wasn’t weeping or wailing. He confessed to everything.
He said he had been drinking and using crack cocaine the night before Mother’s Day. He wanted to take Lisa’s car to go get more drugs. She wouldn’t let him. That enraged him.
At about ten in the morning, he found little Savannah lying on the couch. She was the first to feel his wrath. When Detective Morgan asked if she was scared, if she was screaming or crying, Covington said, “Oh, no. She was so brave.
” And he seemed proud of that. Lisa was awakened by the attack on her daughter. She came out, and he turned his violence on her. Then he went into the bedroom and attacked seven-year-old Zachary as he slept.
Neither child put up a fight. Covington gave no real explanation for why he did it. When detectives asked about the mutilation of Zachary’s body, about whether it was sexually motivated, Covington was quick to deny it. But the detectives involved never believed him.
Covington’s background check revealed he had disciplinary problems at his job, along with investigations into him for abusing inmates. A neighbor’s friend even came forward as a witness. He had seen a man through an unobstructed window, repeatedly striking something inside the house. He also heard what he thought was a dog yelping in pain.
The dog had been beaten with a hammer more than fifteen times. The witness identified Covington from a photo lineup within eleven seconds. Covington was charged with three counts of first-degree murder, three counts of abuse of a dead body, and one count of animal cruelty. Despite his detailed confession, he pled not guilty at his plea hearing.
For nearly six years, he fought to be declared incompetent to stand trial, claiming he was mentally ill. He worked the system any way he could. He was deemed competent to stand trial. In October 2014, more than six years after the murders, Covington finally appeared in court.
The very next day, after opening statements were read, he changed his plea to guilty and waived his right to a jury for the penalty phase. He didn’t want the details to come out in a trial. He didn’t want a jury to hear what he had done. So he pleaded guilty at the last minute to protect himself.
At the sentencing hearing, the judge made Covington appear every day. He complained each time, saying he didn’t want to be there. The autopsies described for the court were horrifying. Savannah had radiating fractures in her legs and arms.
She had probably been picked up by her legs and thrown against a wall. She had multiple stab wounds. Lisa’s skull was fractured, her chest stabbed, her throat cut. Zachary had multiple stab wounds to his chest, back, and neck.
One of the state’s psychiatrists described Covington as threatening, aggressive, hostile, and angry. Lisa’s mother, Barbara, read a victim impact statement. She said, “I miss Lisa, Zachary, and Savannah with everything in me. The day I found them is the day I died too.
My life has never been the same. ”
We lost everything that day. Lisa was my world. She did so much for me, and I never got to tell her how much I loved her.
On May 29, 2015, Edward Covington was sentenced to death. Before this, I wasn’t sure if I believed in the death penalty. But after going through what my family went through, I came to accept it. Covington remains on death row at Union Correctional Institution in Florida, awaiting execution.
I look forward to that day. I think that’s when we can truly close the door and move on. I want this behind us.
I want the monster gone.
