LUFKIN — With the help of two San Jacinto County prosecutors, a serial sex offender will be spending the rest of his life in jail.
Robert Cheshire, 56, a Diboll resident and former Angelina County Commissioner, received an 80-year sentence on Nov. 8 on four counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child, first-degree felonies, and one charge of indecency with a child, a second-degree felony, after an investigation showed “a pattern of molestation of his young children,” according to Robert Freyer, First Assistant District Attorney in the SJC courthouse.
Freyer and Alyssa Marshall, another assistant DA, prosecuted the case after Freyer was asked to assist, as he was familiar with the defendant from a previous prosecution.
“I was a prosecutor in Montgomery County, and I was selected to prosecute Cheshire in 2021,” he said. “I got him convicted for beating wife and kids, after which he spent four years in prison. He also lost his County Commissioner’s seat for Angelina County.”
Cheshire was indicted in December 2023 on the sexual assault charges after an investigation was started at the request of the mother of the children.
Freyer said that the youngest girl was at a treatment facility in Colorado for an eating disorder, and counselors searched her journal and found entries of her writing about being molested.
“(The investigation showed) a pattern of molestation of his young children, and assaults going back 35 years,” Freyer said. “This is the worst case I’ve seen in 28 years; he really made the lives of many people in Angelina County a living hell.”
He said the jury deliberated for just a few hours, and when the verdict was delivered, the court went immediately into a sentencing phase. After several witnesses testified, the judge in the case levied the maximum sentences.
