The 2014 murder of Lesley Woodman in Bessemer, Alabama remains unsolved a decade later

November 10, 2014.

Whitney Burr was planning a party for her son’s first birthday, which was in three days. At that time she was pregnant with her second child. Whitney and her mother, 35-year-old Lesley Woodman, were scheduled to go to Party City that day to pick up supplies for the celebration.

“The last time I spoke to her was the night before,” Whitney told Dateline. “But then I couldn’t reach her all day – and she was always answering the phone. So I just didn’t have a good feeling about it.”

Whitney’s then-boyfriend drove her and her son to the home Lesley shared with her boyfriend Ellis Lee Bentley in Bessemer, Alabama, to check on her. “The door was open and the screen door was closed,” Whitney said. “I went in alone.”

As Whitney walked through the house looking for her mother, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. “It just looked like a normal day and there was nothing missing,” she said. “Nothing was broken. Nothing was – I mean, everything was where it was supposed to be.”

Whitney then made her way to her mother’s bedroom, where she made a horrifying discovery.

“She was in bed,” Whitney said. “Someone came in and shot her in the – in the face.”

Jimmie Guyton is Lesley’s mother and was living in Florida when her daughter was murdered. However, she happened to be driving through Alabama a few days earlier. “I just decided to stop by her work,” she told Dateline. “We had a good conversation. She told me she loved me and I told her I loved her.”

Jimmie describes her daughter as a curious, talented and fun-loving young woman. “Lesley was really funny and outgoing,” she said. “People at her work always praised her for how sweet and understanding she was.”

Reflecting on her daughter’s vibrant life, Jimmie recalls her childhood as a cheerleader, gymnast and academically gifted student. “She was in a special class at school for smart kids that gives them extra work,” she said. “She was an adorable little girl. She hardly cried – she just had that old spirit.”

Whitney Burr says her mother was doing “really, really well” when her life was cut short – and that their mother-daughter bond was strong. “We were very close,” she said. “She was pretty much my best friend.”

Around 2012 or 2013, Lesley started dating Ellis Lee Bentley, who goes by Lee. Lee says he and Lesley met because Whitney was friends with his daughter. “I liked her straight away,” he said, joking that Lesley “wouldn’t go out with him” when he asked the first few times. “I asked her out about every day and finally she did. And from the day we met, we haven’t really left each other’s side.”

According to Lee, Lesley was an infectiously cheerful person. It was the many qualities that made him fall in love with her. “You’d be in a bad mood and she’d come over and, I mean – you’d be in a good mood,” he told Dateline. “She was always happy. Never – I’ve never really seen her down.”

Lee says he and Lesley moved into their Bessemer home about six months after they began dating.

Lee remembers that on the night of November 9, 2014, Lesley said she wanted to buy supplies for her grandson’s first birthday party the next day. “I remember she was really happy about it,” he said. “That was a big, big deal.” Lee told Dateline that he went to work the next morning while Lesley was still asleep. “I didn’t wake her up or anything when I left. I mean, I’m sure I gave her a kiss, you know what I’m talking about? Just like I did every morning.” He remembers leaving the house around 8:00 a.m. “I was late,” he said. “I ran out the door and didn’t lock the door. I – I always lock the door.”

What Whitney saw later that day haunted her for a decade. “A lot of times that’s the only way I can see her – when I found her in bed with a hole in her face,” she said. Whitney, who was 18 at the time, says she was hysterical after finding her mother. “I tried to call the police but I couldn’t,” she explained.

Her boyfriend at the time, who had been waiting outside in the car with her son, eventually came into the house to see what was going on. “He ended up calling her for me.” He also called Lesley’s stepfather Robert Guyton. “He picked up the phone and explained what happened because I couldn’t,” Whitney said.

It was up to Robert to tell Jimmie that their daughter was dead. “Bob picked me up from work and we walked down the street to my girlfriend’s house and he told me that she was gone – that Lesley was gone,” Jimmie recalled. “I said, ‘What do you mean ‘gone’? Where has she gone?’ And then he finally said that she had been murdered.”

The heartache of losing a child cannot be expressed in words, Jimmie told Dateline. When she heard the news, part of her brain wouldn’t let her believe it. “Of course it was terrible,” she said. “I loved her more than anything and just couldn’t bear not having her.”

For a decade, Lesley’s family has tried to think of anyone who might have wanted to harm her. “She had a lot of friends,” Jimmie said. “But no one we knew would want to harm her.” Whitney agrees. “Nobody came to mind,” she said. “Everyone loved her.”

Whitney also shared a detail about how she found her mother’s body that she still wonders about today. “The strange thing was that her pants were pulled down,” she said. “She was definitely sleeping because my mom slept with her hands closed. And that’s how – that’s how I found her.”

Lee Bentley told Dateline that the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office interviewed him several times in the months following Lesley’s murder. “I told them everything I knew,” he said. “We didn’t have anyone who would ever do something like that to us, you know? And it wasn’t a bad area.”

Lee says the only thing taken from the house was a small locker that belonged to him. “That’s all they took,” he said. “I used to keep money in it. And that’s the only thing I can think of that would make them just take that one thing.”

Jimmie and Whitney both told Dateline about a house near Lesley and Lee’s home in Bessemer that had been broken into the same day Lesley was murdered.

Dateline reached out to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office Public Information Bureau multiple times for comment on the case but received no response. In 2017, Sergeant Wayne Curry of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office told a local television station that he believed the burglary, in which he said a gun was among the stolen items, and Lesley’s murder were related. However, “we haven’t ruled anything out,” he said. “We haven’t ruled out any reason because we just don’t know.”

Lee Bentley says he felt lost after Lesley’s murder. He lived in their house for a short time until he “couldn’t stay there anymore.” He says he now chooses not to think about Lesley’s death, but rather the good memories he has, such as their first date. “We talked until dawn,” he said. “I miss her every day.”

He also longs for the day when Lesley’s case will be solved. “It consumed me for a while,” he said. “I want to know who made it so bad. I want to know who came into my house and just committed violence – I mean, yeah, I would be happy if this case was solved. I would do everything in my power to get this case solved.”

Whitney Burr, now a mother of five, knows that the pain of losing her own mother – and finding her the way she did – is something she may never fully recover from. “It was really, really hard,” she said. “It still is. I can’t say, you know – it’s been 10 years, but it’s just as hard as day one.”

Jimmie Guyton takes comfort in the knowledge that whoever killed her daughter will be brought to justice. “I would like to see her punished,” she said. “But I – I don’t need to see it to know it will be them. Because down the line, when they have to stand before God, He knows what they’ve done. And He will deal with it. “

Anyone with information about the murder of Lesley Woodman should contact the Bessemer Division of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office at (205) 481-4201.

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