PANAMA CITY — Two men were indicted Friday on first-degree murder charges in separate slayings in Bay County, according to the State Attorney’s Office.
A grand jury indicted David Clanton, 33, in the strangling death of his father-in-law Arthur Moore, 69, of Youngstown on Sept. 8. He is charged with first-degree murder.
Damon Washington, 21, also was indicted on a first-degree murder charge, as well as being a principal in the robbery and shooting of Christopher Purswell on March 1.
Both cases will be reviewed by a panel of senior prosecutors to determine if the state will seek the death penalty against one or both of the men.
The Bay County Sheriff’s Office began investigating Moore’s disappearance after his wife Lottie Moore reported her husband missing.
But the investigators got a tip when deputies talked to a man from Minnesota who said he’d had a conversation in which David Clanton jokingly described choking his father-in-law to death in his bed and burying his body in the woods. They re-interviewed Clanton, and he confessed to killing Moore at Lottie Moore’s request and led investigators to the body, authorities reported.
Lottie Moore and Mary Clanton, who is Arthur Moore’s daughter, were charged with accessory after the fact to murder. All four lived on Stauber Road, off Campflowers Road.
In the second case, Purswell was shot to death after he was lured to East Eighth Street at Helen Avenue, near Rutherford High School, in Springfield for a drug transaction. Authorities said at the time of the arrest that Washington briefly rode with Purswell and directed him to the site of the trap.
Four others also were arrested in connection with the case on various charges.