A Navy sailor was sentenced at a court martial this week to to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty the “tortuous” rape of another sailor at a barracks California in 2023, and now he is awaiting extradition to Texas to face trial for murder.
Julian Jefferson, 20, pleaded guilty on May 8 to burglary and two counts of rape in the January 14, 2023, attack on a fellow sailor stationed at Naval Air Station North Island, KGTV reported. He was in the brig on May 20 when police in Fairfield, Texas, charged him with murder in the death of 22-year-old Denise Lissette Ramos in March.
Jefferson, an aviation structural mechanic airman apprentice, had been released from detention pending the court martial on the rape charges and was on leave in his hometown of Fairfield at that time. Few details have been released about the murder, but according to KWTX, Ramos’s body was found on March 28 when police conducted a welfare check after she missed work.
Officers conducted a suspicious death investigation, which eventually included Texas Rangers and the Naval Criminal Investigative Services and ultimately led to a capital murder charge against Jefferson.
“It’s left a huge scar on our family life, not only for myself and my wife, but for my younger children,” the young woman’s father, Luis Ramos, told KWTX. “But we do feel a sense of some justice, some relief knowing that he won’t be able to hurt anybody else out there, that he’s going to be exactly where he belongs and that’s locked up for the rest of his life.”
Details about the rape case are plentiful and brutal. KWTX reported that the victim was in her barracks room on the night of January 14, 2023, and that at some point after midnight she texted Jefferson telling him she could hear his conversations in her room and asking him to be quieter. He replied with an apology and said “I’ll get it lowered down.”
Later in the night, the victim was awaked by three loud knocks on her door, but no one was there when she opened it. Throughout the night, the knocking continued, until she swung the door open in the middle of one of the knocks and “saw the accused in the hallway wearing his Navy PT sweatshirt with his hood pulled over his head and face.”
The court martial documents say Jefferson sprung up from a crouching position and rushed into the room, with the victim trying to close the door on him. He blocked the door, however, and forced his way in, wrapping his arm around the woman and throwing her to the floor. She said she punched him and dug her nails into him and screamed, telling investigators she feared Jefferson was trying to kill her.
When he got on top of her and choked her, she said that she feigned passing out and let her body go limp.
What followed was a two-hour sexual assault. Jefferson raped her on the floor, then carried her to the bed and raped her again. He dragged her to the shower and raped her there, and splashed water into her vagina in an apparent attempt to remove DNA evidence.
Then he dragged her out of the shower and left her collapsed on the bedroom floor when he left.
Witnesses heard the screaming and called 911. One later said she heard the woman “screaming bloody murder at the top of her lungs.”
The victim described the assault as “tortuous.”
Jefferson was brought back to California sometime after the murder of Ramos and returned to detention to attend his court martial on the rape charges. In addition to prison time, Jefferson will receive a dishonorable discharge.
The Freestone County District Attorney’s office in Texas told KGTV that it was awaiting a grand jury indictment before submitting extradition paperwork.
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[Featured image: Julian Jefferson/Fairfield Police Department and Denise Lissette Ramos/Facebook]
