In 2009, 14-year-old Emily Ball called her ex-boyfriend, 17-year-old Travis White, and asked him to come over to her apartment, where he was beaten and murdered by two men. A look at the case:
“Ball’s attorneys have done what all public defenders try not to do: They’ve become emotionally involved with their client. Amanda Jarrells Mullins handled Ball’s case from her office in sleepy Maysville, Kentucky; co-counsel Casey Holland is based in Frankfort. Where others may see a shameless, even evil girl—as the prosecution does—Mullins and Holland see a scared child who was in over her head. The attorneys quickly became attached to the tall, fair-skinned pre-teen with auburn hair and wide-set eyes not unlike those of a kewpie doll. ‘She was just a young girl that [Golsby and Dodson] used to facilitate their own agenda to beat this kid up,’ Mullins says. ‘Those two individuals are your classic bad guys.’ Indeed, what Golsby and Dodson did to Travis White was unimaginably brutal, which is perhaps Ball’s best defense. ‘There’s no question in my mind that she had no idea of the extent of it,’ Holland says. ‘The brutality of this shocked everyone. And Emily is no exception to that.’
“Whatever her motives were for calling White to the home, Ball played an undeniable role in his slaying. She witnessed the beginning of his physical assault and left him alone with his would-be killers, walking past the Covington Police Department on two separate occasions while the beating was going on without seeking help. She returned to the house at 1805 Madison during and after the attack, saw White’s beaten body in her bedroom, and left again. Later, she acted as a lookout with her friend, 19-year-old Amber Goerler, while Kasey Dodson, Brian Golsby, and two others—friends Dale Eastman and David Thompson—moved Travis’s body to the empty lot behind Jess & Sons Towing.”
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