Timeline of The Crime
At 9 p.m. on March 14, after finishing work in Winter Haven, Skipper met friend Karl von Hahmann for dinner. They left the restaurant at 10:30 pm. Skipper returned home where Von Hahmann spoke to him on the telephone at 11:10 pm, after which roommate Kelly Evans saw him go into his bedroom.
Some time around midnight, according to the Polk County, Florida Sheriff's Office, Skipper met Bearden, a convicted car thief who also pleaded no contest to a battery charge in 2004. Sometime afterwards, Skipper, Brown and Bearden drove away in Skipper's car; 15 minutes later Brown and Bearden returned alone.
It is not fully known how Skipper met Bearden and Brown, but Skipper's roommate Joyce Fraley claims to have seen Brown at their house on several occasions. Friend Stephanie Strickland also says that Brown knew a previous tenant of Skipper's home, and lived two blocks away. Allegedly, Brown had visited the home a few times just weeks before he and Bearden murdered Skipper.
Skipper was beaten, stabbed 20 times and his throat slit. His body was dumped by the side of a road in Wahneta, a small town outside Winter Haven. His car was abandoned at Lake Pansy, and the fingerprints of both accused were found inside.
The first trial in the case, that of Joseph Eli Bearden, began February 16, 2009.
On February 28, 2009, after nearly two days of deliberation, jurors found Joseph Bearden guilty of second-degree murder in Ryan Skipper's death. Prosecutors had charged him with first-degree murder and sought the death penalty. Bearden was also found guilty on four other counts: theft of a motor vehicle, accessory after the fact, tampering with evidence, and dealing in stolen property. Bearden was sentenced to life behind bars for the second-degree murder charge, as well as two five-year and two fifteen-year sentences for the other charges, to run concurrently with the life sentence.
The trial of Bearden's co-defendant, William Brown Jr., began on October 26, 2009. William “Bill-Bill” Brown, Jr. was found guilty by a Polk County jury (10th Judicial Circuit) of first degree murder, robbery, arson, and tampering with evidence on November 3, 2009. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the first degree murder conviction, another life term for the armed robbery with a deadly weapon conviction, a 15-year term for arson, and a five-year term for tampering with evidence by Circuit Judge Michael Hunter on December 1, 2009.
Read more about this topic: Ryan Skipper
Famous quotes containing the word crime:
“Knowing what [Christ] knew , knowing all about mankind—ah! who would have thought that the crime is not so much to make others die, but to die oneself—confronted day and night with his innocent crime, it became too difficult to go on. It was better to get it over with, to not defend himself, to die, in order not to be the only one to have survived, and to go elsewhere, where, perhaps, he would be supported.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)