Police revealed that an unusual piece of evidence was key to tracking down the alleged killer of influencer Beauty Couch
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In August 2023, the 22-year-old content creator was found near her burning car in Austell, Ga.; her boyfriend, Eugene Tobi Louis Jacques, was arrested two days later
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Jacques, who faces murder charges in connection with Couch's death, is now on trial
Police have revealed that an unusual piece of evidence was key to tracking down the alleged killer of influencer Beauty Couch.
In August 2023, the 22-year-old content creator was found near her burning car in Austell, Ga., in the Atlanta area; her boyfriend, Eugene Tobi Louis Jacques, was arrested two days later. He faces six charges, including murder, arson and aggravated assault, in connection with Couch's death, perWALB News 10.
According to the outlet, his lawyer claimed in court that there is no evidence linking Jacques to the killing, when his trial first began on Tuesday, May 19.
On Thursday, May 21, an investigator with the Cobb County Police Department testified that police found a traffic ticket at the scene of the crime, mere feet away from Couch's dead body, which belonged to Jacques and included the license plate number for his vehicle,Atlanta News Firstreported.
Police then tracked Jacques's vehicle to a parish in Louisiana, where he was pulled over and arrested two days later, the outlet reported.
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During the trial, police also played previously unseen body camera footage of Jacques's arrest. In the clip, he can be heard allegedly giving authorities a fake name, Mykael Waters, per Atlanta News First. Detectives also testified that they found a Boost Mobile phone receipt and a completed job application for a Louisiana golf course, both under the alias, in his car.
Per WALB News 10, Jacques's attorney, Bryan Lumpkin, argued in court that there was no DNA evidence linking him to his late girlfriend's death. “Do they actually have evidence of Eugene at the location where that body was found?” Lumpkin said. “He's in the area. He's in Austell. No doubt. He was there a lot because he went over to see Beauty all the time.”
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Couch, who used the name Beauty Katera onInstagram, maintained a following of over 150,000, describing herself in her profile as a dancer. She often shared roller skating videos and advertised her first dance class less than a month before her death.
“She was a friend to everybody," Kimberly Couch, the internet personality's mother, said in an August 2023 interview withWSB-TV. "She loved going skating. She loved going to work. She loved her clothes. She loved wearing her hair so pretty.”
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