An Atlanta-area man has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of his influencer girlfriend, whose body and car he set on fire in a nearby forest.
Eugene Louis Jacques was found guilty of stabbing 22-year-old Beauty Couch 81 times in August 2023. A jury in Cobb County convicted him of six counts, including murder, arson, and aggravated assault, on Friday.
Jacques received a life sentence without the possibility of parole, with an additional 20-year term. His trial, which began on May 19, concluded swiftly.
Couch, a roller skating influencer known to her 150,000 Instagram followers as Beauty Katera, was tragically killed.
Her remains were discovered next to her charred vehicle, buried beneath sticks and debris in a wooded area of Austell, near Atlanta, Georgia.
Prosecutors linked Jacques to the crime scene using cellphone location data, license plate reader information, and a traffic ticket issued in his name, found just feet from Couch’s body, alongside his white Nissan Altima’s license plate number.
During the trial’s opening statements, Cobb County Assistant District Attorney Stephanie Green said that the victim’s body was located about 191 feet from her car.
Defense attorney Bryan Lumpkin unsuccessfully argued that there was no DNA evidence linking his client to the crime and that the investigation had unfairly only focused on Jacques because he was Couch’s boyfriend.
Eugene Louis Jacques was accused of fatally stabbing 22-year-old Beauty Couch 81 times in August 2023
On Friday, Couch’s boyfriend, Eugene Louis Jacques, was convicted of murdering the influencer and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole
According to Atlanta News First, Lumpkin conceded that Jacques was in the area but attempted to raise doubt by saying: ‘He’s in Austell. No doubt. He was there a lot because he went over to see Beauty all the time.’
Jacques was arrested in St Tammany Parish, Louisiana, which is about 450 miles away from Austell, two days after Couch’s body was discovered.
Police had put out an alert for the now-convicted murderer’s license plate number, and he was pulled over by Louisiana police.
In court, prosecutors showed body camera footage from the traffic stop in which Jacques can be heard telling an officer his name was Mykael Waters, an alias.
‘I elected to run the name and date of birth, Mykael Waters, that was provided to me, during which time, I learned that that person did not exist,’ St Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office Detective Chance Cloud testified on the witness stand.
Detectives quickly determined that the man they had stopped was Jacques, and they searched his car, where they found clothing, bedding, towels, scissors and a map of the parish.
They also found receipts in the car for a Boost Mobile phone under his alias, as well as a completed job application for a local golf course under the false name.
Katie Garby, another detective with the St Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office, testified that she found a burned piece of paper in the vehicle and a pair of bloody tennis shoes, though testing revealed that the blood belonged to Jacques.
Beauty Couch, 22, a roller skating influencer with around 150,000 followers on Instagram, was murdered in August 2023. Her body was found burned and stabbed 81 times
Evidence is seen at the scene where the woman’s body was found
Couch went by the handle Beauty Katera online. Her body was found buried under a pile of sticks and debris in a wooded area of Austell, a city just west of Atlanta, Georgia
Couch’s mother described her daughter as a ‘sweet girl’ and said ‘she was a friend to everybody’
Shortly after Couch was killed, her mother, Kimberly, told WSB-TV: ‘She was a sweet girl, she never bothered nobody. She was a friend to everybody.
‘She loved going skating. She loved going to work. She loved her clothes. She loved wearing her hair so pretty.’
Regarding Jacques, she said: ‘Bad vibe about him. Period. I want to really just look at him and say, “Why? WHY?” How could you do that to an innocent, beautiful person?’
