Chamblee54

On July 10, 2014, Tommy Lee Waldrip is scheduled to be put to death by the State of Georgia. GDC ID: 0000204612 was convicted of the murder of Keith Evans, on Saturday, April 13, 1991. Mr. Evans was 23 years old, when he was murdered 23 years ago. Murderpedia tells the story.
Tommy Lee Waldrip was convicted of the malice murder of Keith Lloyd Evans … The jury was authorized to find that appellant (Tommy Lee Waldrip) murdered Keith Evans to prevent Evans from testifying against his son, John Mark Waldrip, at his armed robbery retrial in Forsyth County. Evans, who worked as a clerk in the store at the time of the robbery, testified as the State’s sole eyewitness at John Mark’s first trial in 1990…. On Saturday afternoon, two days before the retrial was scheduled to begin, the appellant and his co-indictees, John Mark and appellant’s brother-in-law, Howard Livingston, drove to Cleveland, Georgia …That evening, John Mark called Robert Garner, who was also scheduled to testify against him at the retrial, and threatened to harm Garner if he testified.
At approximately 9:30 p.m. appellant and John Mark left appellant’s apartment in appellant’s wife’s Ford Tempo. Sometime between 10:30 p.m. and midnight, the co-indictees met Evans at a highway crossing in Dawson County. After running Evans’ truck off the road, they shot at him through the windshield. He was hit with birdshot from a shotgun in the face and neck. Since Evans was still alive, the co-indictees drove his truck, with Evans in the passenger seat, to Hugh Stowers Road in Dawson County, where they beat him to death with a blackjack. They buried Evans’ body in a shallow grave in Gilmer County and set his truck on fire.
The fire was reported at approximately 12:30 a.m. Sunday morning. A current insurance card for the Ford Tempo, belonging to appellant’s wife, Linda Waldrip, was found near the burned truck. Appellant was interviewed on Sunday afternoon and denied any involvement in Evans’ disappearance. During the interview, Linda Waldrip was asked for her insurance card for the Ford Tempo, and she produced an expired card.
John Mark’s retrial for armed robbery did not take place. On Monday morning, Keith Evans was missing and Garner refused to testify against John Mark. Garner informed the district attorney of the threats made against him. John Mark was arrested and charged with influencing a witness.
Appellant was arrested on Tuesday, and on Thursday, confessed to shooting and beating the victim and burning his truck. He then led authorities to the victim’s body, and later, to the shotgun.
The following day, appellant gave a conflicting statement, in which he contended that John Mark and Livingston murdered the victim and burned his truck, and that he was merely a bystander. Appellant gave a third statement in which he related that all three of the co-indictees participated in the crimes.
All of the people in this case are white. The last man executed in Georgia, Marcus Wellons, was black. There seems to be a pattern. Whenever Georgia executes a man, the next one is usually of a different race. It is not known if this is intentional.
David J. Kessler is an attorney. He worked on Mr. Waldrip’s case. He wrote a piece for Toledo Law Review about his experience. It is not copy friendly, so there will be few quotes here. If you have the time, and legal documents do not cause brain damage, his story is worth reading.
Apparently, Tommy Lee Waldrip is mentally ill. How this illness manifests itself was not specified. He confessed to the murder three times, but gave a different story all three times. The confession is the centerpiece of the state’s case. Outside of the insurance card, there is little physical evidence linking Mr. Waldrip to the crime.
Mr. Kessler went through thousands of pages of evidence. The authorities did not give up the documents easily. In one of the documents, Mr. Kessler found this: “Tommy was initially interviewed by [the Sheriff], however, he asked for an attorney and the interview was terminated.”
A casual observer might wonder why this case is such a big deal. While unpleasant for Mr. Evans, the crime is not nearly as heinous as many on death row. For some reason, the state pushed this one, and Mr. Waldrip is scheduled to die Thursday night.
UPDATE On Wednesday, July 9, 2014, the state Board of Pardons and Paroles changed the sentence to life without parole.
There will be no execution. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.

June 17 is the date for the exection of Marcus A. Wellons. He was convicted of killing India Roberts, and did not deny committing the crime. His defense was insanity. Here is the story of the crime.
“Marcus A. Wellons was convicted of the malice murder and rape of 15-year-old India Roberts. The jury found as statutory aggravating circumstances that the murder was committed in the course of two other capital felonies, rape and kidnapping with bodily injury, and that the murder was want only vile and horrible in that it involved torture to the victim before death and depravity of mind. The jury sentenced Wellons to death for the murder. He received a life sentence for the rape. Wellons appeals from the judgments entered by the trial court. …
Throughout the summer of 1989, Wellons lived with his girl friend, Gail Saunders, in her townhouse apartment in Cobb County. Early that summer, Saunders’ 14-year-old son Tony also lived in the apartment. Tony and the victim, who lived in a neighboring apartment with her mother, were friends. The victim occasionally visited Tony inside Saunders’ apartment, where the two youths would watch television or play Nintendo.
Wellons encouraged Tony to date the victim, remarking several times that she was a good-looking girl. At some point during the summer, Tony moved to Chattanooga to live with his grandparents. The victim continued to spend time with Saunders occasionally. Saunders described herself as the victim’s “play mommy” with whom the victim shared confidences.
Wellons and Saunders had become acquainted at the hospital where both worked, Wellons as a counselor in the psychiatric ward. Wellons moved in with Saunders on the pretense that he owned a home but was unable to occupy it, because an ex-girl friend had moved there with her two young daughters, and he could not in good conscience turn them out.
Over the summer Wellons proposed marriage to Saunders. However, by then Saunders had become wary of Wellons, who was increasingly hostile and abusive. She verbally accepted his proposal out of fear, all the while seeking an escape from her predicament.
On the evening of August 30, 1989, Saunders told Wellons that their relationship was over and that he must move out of her apartment. Wellons, who had recently been fired from his job, purchased a one-way ticket to Miami for a flight departing on the evening of August 31. Fearing to be alone with Wellons the night before his departure, Saunders told Wellons that she was going to Chattanooga to spend the night with her parents and enroll Tony in school. Instead, Saunders went to the home of a female friend.
That evening, Wellons began making desperate attempts to reach Saunders by telephone. He called her mother in Chattanooga repeatedly, only to be told that Saunders had not arrived. Wellons then called Saunders’ friends, but no one knew or revealed her whereabouts. He called his mother and told her he suspected that Saunders was with another man. Wellons became increasingly angry and began drinking. He ransacked Saunders’ apartment. He overturned potted plants and furniture, threw flour onto the floor, and poured bleach over all of Saunders’ clothes, carefully sparing his and Tony’s belongings in the process.
After the apartment was demolished, Wellons began attempts to cover up his deed. He broke a window, from the inside out, cutting his hand in the process and smearing blood around the apartment. He stacked electronic equipment by the door. He then called 911 at approximately 3:00 a.m. on August 31 to report a burglary.
When a police officer arrived, Wellons told the officer that he had come home to find the apartment ransacked, although no items were missing. Wellons explained to the officer that he cut his hand while struggling to uncover a stash of money to determine if it had been taken. Sometime after the officer left, Wellons wrote a racial slur across the wall in Saunders’ bedroom.
Several hours later, at approximately 8:00 a.m., the victim said goodbye to her mother and walked from her apartment, past Saunders’ door, toward the school bus stop. Shortly thereafter, Saunders’ next door neighbor heard muffled screams from inside Saunders’ apartment.
The apartment building was close to a wooded area, beyond which was a grocery store. At approximately 2:00 p.m., Wellons approached an acquaintance who was employed at the grocery store and asked to borrow a car. The acquaintance refused. Wellons told the acquaintance that when he (Wellons) returned home the previous night, he encountered two white men who were burglarizing the apartment. Wellons said that he successfully fought off the intruders but explained that he had in the process sustained the injuries to his hand.
About half an hour later, Theodore Cole, a retired military police officer, was driving near the wooded area behind the apartment complex. He spotted in the distance a person carrying what appeared to be a body wrapped in a sheet. He distinctly saw feet dangling from the bottom of the sheet. Cole drove on but then returned for a second look.
He drove around in the parking lot of the apartment complex and saw nothing. As he was driving away, however, he saw a man in his rear view mirror walk along the road and throw a sheet into the woods. Cole drove directly to the grocery store, where he called 911. Police officers arrived quickly and began a search of the woods.
The police first discovered sheets, clothing and notebooks bearing Tony’s name. Then, upon close inspection of a pile of tree branches near where had seen the man carrying the sheet, Cole spotted the body of India Roberts. When the branches were removed, the officers discovered that the victim completely unclothed, with cuts on one side of her face and ear and bruises on her neck.
During the search of the woods, Cole spotted a black man with a bundle under his arm near the apartment building and identified him as the man Cole had seen carrying the sheet. Cole and an officer chased the man, but as they approached the building, the man turned the corner and Cole and the officer heard a door shut. The officer learned from a passerby which apartment was occupied by a man fitting the description given by Cole. He knocked on Saunders’ door and announced his presence, but there was no answer. He returned to join the other officers, who were investigating the scene in full force, with helicopters overhead.
Wellons, now trapped inside Saunders’ apartment with residual evidence of his crime, gave up his attempt to dispose of the evidence in the woods. He first tried to clean the apartment and his clothes. He then abandoned that project, changed into swim wear, grabbed an old, yellowed newspaper and a cup of wine, partially barricaded and locked the door, and headed for the pool.
On his way, Wellons caught sight of a police officer and stopped abruptly. The officer began questioning him. Initially evasive, Wellons did ultimately tell officers that the injuries to his hand, and new scratches to his face, were sustained during a scuffle with two men whom he had caught burglarizing Saunder’s apartment.
While investigating the scene, officers had asked Cole whether either of two black males was the man Cole had seen carrying the sheet. Cole immediately ruled out each of the men. Then, while officers were questioning Wellons, one officer standing at a distance from the questioning asked Cole whether Wellons was the man he had seen. Cole said that although Wellons was wearing different clothing from the man he had seen carrying the sheet, and whom he had again seen near the complex, Cole was 75 to 80 percent certain that Wellons was the same man.
Later that day, officers searched Saunders’ apartment. Inside, they found numerous items of evidence including the victim’s notebooks and earrings. In Tony’s room, they discovered the victim’s panties. They also found blood on Tony’s mattress and box springs. The mattress had been flipped so that the bloody portion was facing downward, and the bed had been remade.
The autopsy revealed that the victim died from manual strangulation, which in itself would have taken several minutes. The autopsy also showed that Wellons had attempted to strangle the victim with a ligature, possibly a telephone cord, and that he had bruised her and cut her face and ear with a sharp object. The evidence suggested that Wellons had dragged or otherwise forcibly moved the victim from the kitchen up the stairs to Tony’s bedroom. Finally, the autopsy revealed a vaginal tear and copious amounts of what appeared to be seminal fluid within the victim’s vagina. She had defensive wounds to her hands, and her blouse was stained with her own blood.
A not guilty plea was entered for Wellons. He did not dispute his participation in the crimes. He urged the jury to return a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity or guilty but mentally ill.”
The state of Georgia is planning to poison Mr. Wellons. By state law, the substances will be from a secret source. There have been legal challenges to this law, and the courts have upheld it.
The execution of Mr. Wellons is scheduled for June 17, 2014. On June 17, 1939, France had it’s last public execution. Eugen Weidmann was beheaded, using the guillotine.
There is a bizarre aspect to this case. The original trial was grueling, with explicit crime scene accounts. For some reason, some of the jurors gave Cobb County Superior Court Judge Mary Staley a white chocolat penis. The Bailiff, Loretta Perry, recieved a white chocolate item shaped like breasts.
UPDATE By 11:00 pm, the last minute legal wherewithal was over.@ellywyu Warden read the order and left the room at 11:32. Time of death 11:56 pm, says Rhonda Cook of AJC @ellywyu Only incident was an officer fainting 4 min before death, says Rhonda Cook of AJC.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.