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Sentencing date set for Dayton in Marengo murder
May. 4, 2010 10:35 am
Jessica Dayton, convicted of first-degree murder in Iowa County District Court last week, will be sentenced at 1 p.m. June 14.
Dayton, , 20, of Belle Plaine, faces a mandatory life sentence for her part in the brutal beating death of her former boss Curtis Bailey, 33, of Marengo, last year.
Dayton, along with Bailey's former live-in girlfriend Denise Frei, 44, of Marengo, and Frei's son Jacob Hilgendorf, 19, of Belle Plaine, had a plan to get Bailey drunk and kill him. Evidence at the trial revealed Dayton dropped a landscaping rock on Bailey's head three times.
Frei and Hilgendorf will stand trial for first-degree murder in January.
Jessica Dayton, 19, of Belle Plaine listens to the testimony of DCI criminalist Dennis Kern during her first-degree murder trial Thursday, April 22, 2010 at the Iowa County Courthouse in Marengo. Dayton is accused in the killing of her boss Curtis Bailey, 33, of Marengo in July 2009. (Brian Ray/The Gazette)
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