I had previously written about how the man convicted of killing Donna Jou was about to get early release from prison. He had only been sentenced to five years anyway, because without Donna’s body and other crucial evidence, they were forced to just accept his story that she’d died of a drug overdose. And then he was going to serve just half of those five years.
Not so fast.
John Burgess, to the relief of everyone, is not getting out after all. He will be released from prison, but delivered immediately to the custody of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and spend at least a year in their jail. The article I linked to provides a great summary of Donna’s disappearance and Burgess’s crimes.
It’s better than nothing, I guess.
The Charley Project Blog 
Here’s something I don’t understand. Okay, so Donna is so scared of him she locks herself in the bathroom and calls or texts her friend to say that’s what she did. If she was so afraid of him why did she not call 911 from that bathroom?
I know her family says she would never use drugs b/c she was such a good student and so responsible and all but I have to wonder if the reason she didn’t call 911 was b/c she was using drugs and was afraid of it being found out if she called. Or was too messed up to know to call for help.
I think she didn’t call 911 because there wasn’t a real emergency. If Steven was just drunk or high or whatever and hitting on her, and that “creeped her out,” that’s not really a 911 situation.
Once there was a man staying at my boyfriend’s house temporarily. I knew he was severely mentally ill, really messed up. One day while we were alone together, I was reading in Michael’s room and the guy came to the doorway and said something to me, I can’t remember what, that made me feel really nervous. So I locked myself in the room until Michael came home. It never occurred to me to call 911.
Locking yourself in a room is not the safest thing to do in Donna’s situation. Just leaving would of been smarter. Then if he wouldn’t let her leave, then that would be a real 911 emergency.
Pretty difficult to leave when you’re far from home and have no transportation.
It’s easy to have all the answers from a distance, isn’t it, Shantae?
You don’t need to take that tone. People are always getting into trouble by doing stupid things. It doesn’t mean they deserve to be in trouble, but it doesn’t mean the things they did weren’t stupid either.
Fine, but like I’ve learned over the years and I hope you remember this: a lot of good people are in the ground and no longer with us because they exercised poor judgment and made bad choices. It’s a terrible and unfortunate realization, but it shouldn’t take away who they were in life. Donna was, as mentioned, an honor student and she and her older sister were the center of their parents’ universe and they had a lot of hopes and dreams for her, including her own of becoming a neurosurgeon. Now she won’t get to do them. It’s sad and a real shame, but it happened and it can’t be taken back.