New Trial Date Set for Deepwater Horizon Fake Will Defendents

Donna Herring is accused of creating Matthew Jacobs' last will and testament days after he died in January 2015.

The four defendants accused of felonies in the case of a fake will for a survivor of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion received a new trial date last week.

The criminal trial of Camden real estate agent Donna Herring and her 22-year-old daughter, Jordan Alexandra “Alex” Peterson, and Herring’s sister and brother-in-law, Marion “Diane” Kinley and John Wayne Kinley Jr., has been moved from Sept. 11 to Feb. 5. U.S. District Judge Susan Hickey in El Dorado is assigned to the case.

The four face charges related to the will Herring allegedly created after Matthew Seth Jacobs, who had survived the Deepwater Horizon disaster in April 2010, died in a one-vehicle wreck in January 2015. The will in question left nearly all of Jacobs’ assets to Peterson, instead of to Jacobs’ only child.

Herring, Peterson and the Kinleys each face one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Herring and the Kinleys each face one count of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. Herring is also charged with five counts of money laundering.

Alex Peterson has been charged with four counts of money laundering and one count each of obstruction and making a false statement.

The defendants have pleaded not guilty.

In another motion filed earlier this month in the criminal cases, Jacobs’ estate asked that the U.S. government hand over the property it seized from the defendants.

Included in the seized assets is a bank account that has $700,900 in it, according to the motion by Bruce Tidwell, an attorney with the law firm of Friday Eldredge & Clark of Little Rock, who is representing the estate.

Tidwell said Judge Spencer Singleton of the Probate Division of Ouachita County Circuit Court had ruled in April that the seized assets should be returned to the estate.

Aaron Jennen, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, said in his response that the U.S. Marshals Service had the property and he didn’t object to Tidwell’s motion. As of Thursday, a judge had not ruled on Tidwell’s request.