A woman who lied to protect her boyfriend in the murder of his 2-year-old son is free after serving just more than four months of a 10-year prison sentence.
Lesley Sue Marcotte, who was sentenced to prison July 6 for her role in the aftermath of Malik Drummond's death, was released from the Arkansas Department of Correction's boot-camp program Nov. 18, agency spokesman Solomon Graves said in an email Friday. She pleaded guilty in White County Circuit Court in Searcy to hindering apprehension or prosecution, a felony.
Graves said Marcotte, 28, was released under the supervision of Arkansas Community Correction and would complete her sentence July 6, 2026. Graves said he would not be able to get further details Friday, when many state and local offices were closed for the Thanksgiving holidays.
Marcotte's release was two days shy of the second anniversary of Malik's slaying -- Nov. 20, 2014. That was the day, police said, Marcotte's boyfriend and Malik's father, Jeffery Clifton, 44, beat the toddler to death because the boy drank another child's drink.
[MALIK DRUMMOND: Timeline of the 2-year-old boy's disappearance]
Marcotte and Clifton had conspired to conceal Malik's death for three days. At that point, Clifton disposed of the body in a vacant lot in another town, and the couple then told police the child walked away from home.
Hundreds searched the Searcy area for the missing toddler. It was a year before Marcotte changed her story and implicated Clifton in the murder, in the body's disposal and in previous beatings of Malik and his twin sister.
Clifton was sentenced in May to 40 years in prison after he pleaded no contest to second-degree murder and abuse of a corpse.
Malik lived with his mother, Tanya Drummond, but was spending some time at his father's home in Searcy when the killing took place.
Drummond was never implicated in the killing even though Marcotte told police that Clifton at one point tried to come up with a way to implicate the boy's mother in his disappearance.
Drummond has since had her own legal troubles and pleaded guilty in late September to second-degree terroristic threatening, a misdemeanor, for threatening a child-welfare worker. An online court information site indicated Drummond was fined $250, which also included court costs. It wasn't clear whether Drummond was sentenced to any jail time. She was jailed for a while after her arrest in April.
Recently, though, she has made Facebook posts, including a link Friday to an article in The Daily Citizen of Searcy about Marcotte's release.
Neither Prosecuting Attorney Rebecca Reed McCoy nor Drummond could be reached for comment by phone Friday. Drummond did not immediately reply to a Facebook message, and a residential phone listing for McCoy was unavailable.
The Correction Department's "military style boot camp" in Jefferson County is "for first-time, non-violent inmates and work release for female inmates," the agency's website says.
Community Correction's website indicates it provides "basic supervision" for former inmates on parole or probation. Marcotte was living in Springdale before she went to prison. No information on her current home was available Friday.
"Parole and probation community-based supervision provides the opportunity for offenders to live and work in the community while completing the remainder of their sentence," the website says. "Random drug screening is generally required and offenders are required to pay a supervision fee."
Vinelink.com, which helps victims or their relatives keep track of criminal offenders, shows that Marcotte is "out of custody" but says the reason is "unknown." The site has a provision where victims can ask to be notified if the offender's status changes. But Marcotte's listing says, "Registration for notification is not currently available for this offender."
Marcotte's release was especially surprising because her sentence was an upward departure from sentencing guidelines, according to her sentencing order.
An aggravating factor cited in that order was the "extreme nature of cover-up." She also "attempted to cover offense by intimidation of witnesses, tampering of evidence, or misleading authorities," the order said, and she committed the offense "to avoid arrest or effect escape," according to the order.
A Section on 11/26/2016