Bio 

Clawvern Jacobs was born in 1947. He was later associated with Knott County, Kentucky, where his most documented crime occurred. Before the 1986 killing of Judy Ann Howard, Jacobs had been linked in crime summaries and court discussions to a prior 1974 killing. 

Murder Story

On September 16, 1986, Judy Ann Howard, a student at Alice Lloyd College, was walking alone back to her dormitory when she encountered Clawvern Jacobs. According to the prosecution evidence summarized by the Kentucky Supreme Court, Jacobs approached Howard, restrained her, led her to his truck, and forced her inside.

Before the abduction, Jacobs had stopped at a local store to obtain gasoline. A witness later testified that Jacobs made a statement about finding or getting a woman before driving away in the direction of the college, which was about one mile away.

After Howard was reported missing, campus police and Kentucky State Police became involved. Troopers later found Jacobs sitting in his truck on Smith Branch Hollow Road, about seven miles from the site of the abduction. Jacobs told officers that several people had come out of the mountains in a pickup truck, attacked him, and taken the young woman away.

Howard’s nude body was found down an embankment approximately 60 feet from Jacobs’s truck. Court records state that her cause of death was blunt-force head injuries. Personal items belonging to Howard were found in the roadway near Jacobs’s vehicle. Additional items were recovered from inside the truck, including women’s clothing, keys with Judy’s name on them, and a jacket with an Alice Lloyd College identification tag bearing Judy Ann Howard’s name.

Jacobs was arrested in connection with the killing. He was later charged with murder, kidnapping, and attempted first-degree rape. His first trial resulted in convictions for capital murder, kidnapping, and attempted first-degree rape. He was sentenced to death for the murder, life imprisonment for kidnapping, and 20 years for attempted first-degree rape.

In 1994, the Kentucky Supreme Court reversed Jacobs’s convictions and death sentence and ordered a new trial. The court cited several legal issues, including the trial court’s refusal to grant a change of venue, the handling of Jacobs’s defense, and the use of attempted rape as an aggravating circumstance.

After the case was retried, a jury again convicted Jacobs. This time, he was convicted of capital murder, first-degree kidnapping, and first-degree sexual abuse. The jury again recommended a death sentence for the murder conviction. The trial court also imposed a life sentence for kidnapping and a five-year sentence for first-degree sexual abuse.

In 2001, the Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed Jacobs’s convictions but reversed the death sentence. The court ruled that Kentucky law did not list kidnapping as an aggravating circumstance that could make a murder conviction death-eligible. Because the only aggravating circumstance found by the jury was kidnapping, the death sentence could not stand.

The case was sent back for non-capital sentencing on the murder conviction. As a result, Jacobs’s death sentence was removed, and he remained imprisoned under life sentences.