Inset left: Derek Lennon Bradley (Orange County Sheriff”s Office). Inset right: Casie Lynn Graves (Orange County District Attorney’s Office). Background: The train tracks where Graves’ body was found in Orange, Tex. (Google Maps).
A Texas man will be spending several decades behind bars after murdering the mother of his children and trying to hide his involvement by having a mechanic remove his truck’s GPS, authorities announced.
On Tuesday, Derek Lennon Bradley, 47, was found guilty of murder by a jury in Orange County. Then, in quick succession, jurors sentenced the defendant to 30 years in prison.
The punishment was meted out for the September 2023 death of 38-year-old Casie Lynn Graves, who was killed in the City of Orange, a small town located roughly equidistant between the large city of Beaumont in the Lone Star State and Lake Charles, Louisiana.
On Sept. 16, 2023, an employee at the since-shuttered International Paper facility on Old Highway 87 discovered a body near the railroad tracks as they made their way into work just before 3:45 p.m.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Office sent investigators to the scene. They quickly ascertained the woman’s identity, according to a report by Beaumont-based ABC and NBC affiliate KBMT. The medical examiner determined the woman had died from strangulation.
Graves, a mother of four, shared two children with Bradley. The victim’s two youngest girls were both under 6 years old at the time, KBMT reported.
The couple had been together for several years before the murder, police said.
“They’re as close to a monster on this earth as you can be,” Graves’ brother told Beaumont-based CBS, The CW, and Fox affiliate KFDM in 2024, describing the intentional violence against his sister.
The investigation came along slowly but surely.
“You’re just really wanting justice,” the slain woman’s brother said in February 2024. “To kind of get some closure.”
Authorities reviewed surveillance footage showing the defendant’s truck leaving his residence around 12:30 a.m. the morning of the murder and traveling to the crime scene near the train tracks, according to Orange County District Attorney Krispen Winfree. Then, at around 12:57 a.m., the truck is seen returning to Bradley’s home.
On Sept. 18, 2024, a grand jury heard the case against Bradley. An indictment was issued and he was arrested the very next day, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office announced at the time.
“I feel empty, I don’t have any closure, I’m just lost, and broken, and sad,” Graves’ mother told KBMT when the defendant was arrested. “And I don’t know where I go from here.”
Jury selection began early last week.
During his six-day trial, prosecutors told the jury how the since-convicted man eventually contacted a mechanic to have the GPS functionality removed from his truck.
The attempt to remove the location-generating device, along with witness interviews, led investigators to obtain search warrants for Bradley’s home and vehicle. Evidence collected during those searches, along with witness testimony and the aforementioned surveillance footage, secured a conviction, Winfree said.
