Fugitive Mom Caught in Child-Sex Case

A mother was arrested Tuesday near Savannah after more than two years on the run from charges of selling her daughters for sex in Cobb County.

Jeanifer Lee Segrest, 37, was caught in Port Wentworth, thanks to a tip from someone who saw her case on America’s Most Wanted, which profiled her Dec. 16, the U.S. Marshals Service announced.

The Marshals Service’s Southeast Regional Task Force, the Port Wentworth Police Department and the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office arrested Segrest just before noon, according to Chatham County Jail records.

She initially gave police the name Rosie Martinez, The Marietta Daily Journal said.

Segrest, a boyfriend and her two sons, ages 1 and 2, had moved into the house on Cantyre Street just a week earlier after her church asked the homeowner to help the family in need, America’s Most Wanted reported.

She faces misdemeanor charges in Chatham of violating a city ordinance, possessing less than an ounce of marijuana and giving a false name to police, for which her bond was set at $1,850.

But felony charges await her in Cobb County, where she will be extradited.

Segrest is accused of taking at least $30,000 in return for allowing a pedophile to repeatedly molest her two daughters, starting when they were 5 and 6 years old, the Marshals Service said.

The sexual abuse began in February 2004 while Segrest was in jail on theft charges, America’s Most Wanted said. Her sister, Rebecca Wiggins, had custody of the girls in Cobb County.

Wiggins was convicted in August of sexual exploitation of a child, aggravated sodomy, child molestation and first-degree child cruelty for providing the girls to a private tutor named David Ray for cash, the MDJ said.

She began serving a sentence of life plus 20 years in the Pulaski State Prison on Oct. 24, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.

By 2007, Ray was paying Segrest to drive the girls from Savannah to Cobb so he could keep molesting them, the Savannah Morning News said.

While previous reports put the amount at $30,000, a detective Tuesday said Ray paid more than $50,000, the Morning News reported.

Ray, 53, killed himself in April 2009 three days after Cobb police searched his home.

Cobb police obtained an arrest warrant for Segrest in January 2010 on charges of child molestation and enticing a child.

After Tuesday’s arrest, all four of Segrest’s children are in state custody, and she is pregnant again, the Morning News said.

Still on the run is Cesar Moran, one of Segrest’s exes, who reportedly admitted improperly touching at least one of her daughters in the Savannah area more than three years ago.

The years of abuse in Cobb County came to light after one of the daughters told police about the later actions by Moran, America’s Most Wanted said.