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Daytona Beach Stabbing Suspect Identified By Johnny Rockets Server He Apparently Tipped Poorly
Jean Macean, who has been charged in the deaths of Terry and Brenda Aultman in Daytona Beach, was identified by the woman who served him lunch earlier in the day.
The man charged in the death of a married couple in Daytona Beach was tracked down after the woman who served him lunch the afternoon before the murders saw the pictures police released of a person of interest in the case.
Jean Macean, 32, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Terry Aultman, 48, and Brenda Aultman, 55. Their bodies were discovered on the lawn of a house in Daytona Beach, Florida around 2:00 a.m. on March 6.
Macean, who was arrested in Orlando on March 10, was transferred to Volusia County on Tuesday appeared in court Wednesday afternoon; he was ordered held without bail and appointed a public defender.
Valerie Court contacted police on March 8 — two days after the murders, on the day police released the first pictures of a "person of interest" in the case — and told them that she'd served lunch to the man in the photos at the local Johnny Rockets, according to the charging affidavit reviewed by Oxygen.com.
In an interview with Orlando NBC affiliate WESH, she shared that the man she believes is Macean paid for his lunch with a non-standard credit card.
"It didn't have his name on it," she told the station. "It said 'my temporary pay card' but he did initial sign it and initial it JM."
The receipt — an image of which Court shared with the station — is time stamped March 5 at 3:36 p.m. and shows the man paid $15.42 for his lunch using a MasterCard. On the tip line, he wrote "$1.00," which would be only a 6.5% tip, but he listed the total as $16.00, meaning that Court received a mere 58 cent tip on his $15.42 check — or a 3.75% tip.
"I thought maybe he wanted to be left alone because he was short-worded with me so I just kept his tea filled up," she said of their interactions.
After receiving Court's call, police reviewed surveillance footage from the Johnny Rockets — which is less than a mile south of the murder site — and identified the man as their person of interest, according to the charging affidavit. They then requested information on the card holder from Comdata, which identifies itself as "a leader and innovator in commercial payment solutions" for the trucking industry and offers MasterCard-based payroll, peer-to-peer payments and other payment services.
The information police received from Comdata led them to a Planet Fitness in Orlando, where the suspect was finally identified as Jean Macean. He was arrested at an apartment complex in Orlando on Thursday.
The charging affidavit provides a timeline of when police think the brutal murders occurred.
A police review of surveillance footage not previously released to the public shows a man police believe was Macean about four houses south on North Wild Olive Road from where the murders occurred, and walking south (away from the scene) around 12:58 a.m. on March 6.
Two minutes later, two people who police believe were the Aultmans are seen on the same camera walking their bicycles north on the street, in the direction of the house outside of which their bodies were eventually discovered. The Aultmans had reportedly been attending festivities for the town's "Bike Week" motorcycle festival and used their bicycles as transportation.
Around 20 second later, the man believed to be Macean is seen walking quickly in the same direction as the Aultmans. After 15 minutes, the camera captures the same lone man, once again walking south along North Wild Olive Road.
At 1:18 a.m., another security camera a block and a half south of the previous camera captures a man believed to be Macean again. The affidavit says, "Unlike in earlier surveillance footage, [the suspect] appears to have a dark-colored substance (presumably blood) saturating the left leg of his pants."
Police were dispatched in response to a 911 call from the people who found the Aultmans' bodies at 1:57 a.m., and the couple were pronounced dead at 2:06.
The charging affidavit reveals that Brenda Aultman's right pant leg was found pulled over her foot, and her "shirt and bra were pulled up to her neck, exposing her torso and breasts." Police found her purse nearby, with its contents strewn about, and a pair of glasses and a man's hat lay under their nearby bicycles — along with a "large clump of hair" tentatively identified as Terry Aultman's.
"Both victims were covered in blood and each of them appeared to be suffering from deep lacerations to their throats," the report states.
"There was a large amount of blood located in the grass under and around the bicycles," the report continues. "There were large pools of blood on the sidewalk and around the victims' bodies."
Police believe that the suspect dragged both victims on to the front yard of the home where they were eventually discovered.
One of the Aultmans' family members, after being notified by police, told them that her mother used a cell phone call called "Life 360" to help friends and family locate the user's location in case of emergency.
The app showed that Brenda Aultman's phone stopped moving north on N. Wild Olive Ave around 1:00 a.m., in front of the home where her body was found.
Macean also faces an immigration detainer filed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Orlando office stating that federal records “affirmatively indicate, by themselves orin addition to other reliable information, that [Macean] either lacks immigration status or notwithstanding such status is removable under U.S. immigration law.” The detainer, filed March 11, requests that Macean be held for at least 48 hours after he would otherwise be released to allow DHS to take custody of him, but does not specify on what basis he would be subject to removal. WESH had reported that Macean, who was born in Haiti, has U.S. citizenship.
