No Bail For 'Hiccup Girl' - Judge Orders Her Held On Murder Charge
May 28 2018, Updated 10:18 a.m. ET
A Florida judge Friday refused to set bail for "Hiccup Girl" Jennifer Mee pending her trial for first degree murder, RadarOnline.com has learned. Defense attorney John Trevena sought to have the court set a bond for Mee, 19, whose unrelenting case of the hiccups at the age of 15 brought her fame in 2007.
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But Pinellas County Judge Donald E. Horrox denied the defense motion. He said the fact that Mee has lived as a transient since turning 18, moving from motel to motel, made her a flight risk.
He also said there was enough evidence against Mee to keep her in jail, where she is being held without bond.
Judge Horrox said: “Her admissions to the detective was that she was in fact involved in this felony murder, and that it was her intent for a robbery to occur for money.
“If those admissions were to be induced at trial for a jury, those alone would be sufficient for her to be convicted of the offense.”
Mee and two others are charged in the Oct. 23 death of Shannon Griffin, a 22-year-old transplant from Mississippi who relatives said was getting his life on track after Hurricane Katrina devastated the family farm.
According to St. Petersburg police, Mee lured 22-year-old Shannon Griffin so that he could be robbed by co-defendants Lamont Antonio Newton, 22, and Laron Cordale Raiford, 20.
The mother of teenage “Hiccup Girl” Jennifer Mee has told RadarOnline.com that her daughter’s Tourette’s syndrome played a role in her involvement with a horrific murder case.
Mee announced two years ago that she suffered from Tourette’s syndrome - it is an inherited neuropsychiatric disorder with onset in childhood, characterized by multiple physical (motor) tics and at least one vocal (phonic) tic; these tics characteristically wax and wane.
Mee had been living a transient life before she was charged with murder, an investigator revealed to NBC's The Today Show on Tuesday.
Maj. Mike Kovacsev of the St. Petersburg police told Today that police had records of about a dozen "contacts" with Mee throughout the past year at a series of different addresses.
'Hiccup Girl' Charged With First-Degree Felony Murder
"She didn't actually live on the street, but was transient in nature because she tended to live in different motels or apartments and moved from one location to another," he said.
"Sometimes when you live a little bit of a transient lifestyle you tend to hang around some unsavory individuals," Kovacsev said.
He said the two men charged with Mee had "minimal criminal records", but that her ex-boyfriend was in jail for robbery.
Meanwhile, Kovacsev told ABC's Good Morning America that police had talked with Mee regarding several domestic-related incidents.
"She was never a suspect in any cases, she has no criminal record up to this point, but she was a victim and a subject and several times a witness to several crimes," he said.
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