The man convicted of killing a 13-year-old girl he groomed and allegedly impregnated in Detroit, Michigan, was found dead in his prison cell.
Corrections officials said Michigan State Police are investigating the death “as a suicide,” Fox 2 reported.
The Michigan Department of Corrections confirmed that 43-year-old Jarvis Butts died Thursday at the Charles Egeler Reception and Guidance Center in Jackson, Fox 2 said.
“MDOC staff provided life-saving measures which were unsuccessful. The Michigan State Police have been called to the facility to investigate; the death is currently being reported as a suicide,” authorities stated.
The pedophile was sentenced two weeks before his death for the killing of Na’Ziyah Harris and the sexual assaults of other young girls. Jarvis, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Harris’s death, was sentenced to 35 to 60 years and five 10- to 15-year sentences for sexually assaulting the other child victims.
Authorities are still searching for Na’Ziyah’s body, and part of the pedophile’s plea deal said he must divulge where he left her body, but he never did, according to People.
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said text messages showed the girl met with Butts on the last day she was seen alive in January 2024 when she exited a bus in Detroit.
“The prosecutor said evidence also showed that Butts, who knew Harris’s family members, allegedly groomed the girl starting in 2022. Harris was pregnant when she was killed, and Butts was allegedly the unborn child’s father,” the Fox article read, adding, “According to the prosecutor’s office, Butts searched for abortions, abortion pills, and drinking red anti-freeze before Harris’s death.”
Family members and victims of Butts’ crimes gave impact statements in court when he was sentenced. His sister said, “My brother knows that I have been a victim of sexual assault, and he knows the pain it caused. I can’t understand why he would have caused that to an innocent child.”
Harris’s family members are concerned they will never find her body now that her killer is dead:
“I think it was a bit of a cowardly way out, but he made his bed so he has to lay in it, you know?” the child’s cousin told Fox. “I still feel like we didn’t get answers for Ni’Ziyah. I feel like there were a lot of unanswered questions still about the case.”
The outlet said Butts raped children as young as four, and some of his victims were family members.
