PANAMA CITY — An Alabama couple has been sentenced for plotting the torture of a 90-year-old Lynn Haven veteran for his bank account information before killing and robbing him when he refused.
Circuit Court Judge Brantley Clark upheld a jury’s recommendation Friday of death for Kevin Gene Jeffries, 29, who assisted in murdering 90-year-old World War II Navy veteran Wallace Reid Scott in his Lynn Haven home. In April 2013 police discovered Scott’s body bound, beaten and strangled, initiating a manhunt for three suspects spanning three states. His girlfriend and conspirator, 29-year-old Ashley Griffin, helped the prosecution gain its conviction of Jeffries and was sentenced to 20 years in prison Friday for the murder.
David Ian Challender, 28, was the third party to Scott’s murder and pleaded outside of trial to spending the rest of his life in prison. His decision followed Jeffries’ conviction and sentencing to death.
During the trial, Jeffries’ counsel argued Challender, Jeffries’ cousin, was the architect and more malevolent party. They asked the judge to consider the “disparate sentencing of a more culpable party” before upholding the jury’s condemnation to death, but Clark gave the suggestion little weight in his decision.
Though Challender “entered a plea to the same charges as (Jeffries) and received a lesser sentence, the court is not required to do a relative culpability analysis,” Clark wrote in the judgment.
Jeffries and Griffin testified Challender committed the more heinous acts after their methamphetamine- and marijuana-fueled road trip from Challender’s Atlanta home to Lynn Haven in hopes of a “big lick.” Challender’s mother, Sheri Mercer, previously had been a caregiver for Scott and was named a beneficiary in his will. Griffin and Jeffries said they were promised riches in a plan to break into Scott’s home and coerce his ATM PIN number from him but did not know the trip was actually a head hunt.
A grander scheme was at play, they testified, later finding out Scott was in the process of removing Mercer from his will.
During their trip, the group discussed raiding Scott’s home, living there for a week and assuming his identity. They’d planned to run up his credit cards and abscond with the treasures. Scott was bound and tortured in the trio’s effort to get the man’s PIN, but he refused to give up the information before being murdered.
Each accused the other of holding a knife to Scott’s genitals as they became more desperate for his PIN, and Griffin testified to seeing Challender pour bleach in Scott’s mouth and eyes, after he’d died, to cover up the murder. The group then made off with guns, a clock and cash.
Most of the evidence at the scene was contaminated with cleaning products. A single fingertip of blue glove found at the scene led investigators to the trio after initially questioning Challender’s mother, who seemed to have the most to gain by Scott’s death.
“That’d be the first thing I’d be doing would be trying to inherit somebody else’s stuff,” Challender told investigators after being taken down at gunpoint in a Holmes County cow field. “That would be me. I would try to do something like that.”
Griffin eventually was located in Donalsonville, Ga., on April 13, nine days after Scott was killed, and brought back to Bay County. She was wearing a ring that belonged to Scott. Investigators developed her, Jeffries and Challender as suspects the previous day.
Jeffries and Challender were arrested later the same day; Challender was found at his father’s home in Caryville.
Mercer has not been charged in connection with Scott’s death. Griffin and Jeffries have offered to testify against her only in exchange for a lesser sentence, according to prosecutors.