(DeSoto County, MS) DeSoto Coroner Jeff Pounders called the 1993 murders of 82-year-old Betty Boyd, her 48-year-old daughter Verline, and Verline’s 13-year-old daughter Evangelo, the most heinous crime scene he’d ever seen.
The women were found hacked to death in Betty Boyd’s home in January 1993.
It still saddens the Boyd family to this day, ”My Mom has told me stories about it and how it happened and how she was saddened by it and my Dad, my Dad still hurts about his Mom and Grandma,” said Evangela Boyd.
She was born the same year as the murders and says she’s shocked to hear the man sentenced to death in the case, Sherwood Brown is getting another crack at the case.
The Mississippi Supreme Court ruled Brown can petition to have DNA examined in the case to prove or disprove the charge he assaulted the 13-year-old, leading to his death sentence.
Sherwood Brown’s father didn’t want to talk on camera about the new developments in his son’s case, but he told us he’s glad his son won the ruling and said it’s been a long time in the making.
District Attorney John Champion says, that’s exactly the point, ”That’s really what this is, delay, delay, delay”.
He says Brown’s move is exactly what he expected, ”It’s one of these deals where they just grasp at anything they can grasp at, quite frankly, to try to get something to get a hook into.”
Champion says Brown’s lawyers want to use what they find to get him off death row, ”He’s trying to get a new trial and then, another part of this, which is a “Adkins Evaluation” which is basically testing him for mental retardation.”
That’s exactly what he claimed in his original trial, which is why Champion, and the Boyd family hope it will fail, again, ”I don’t think it’s right at all, because people said he did it and they had like, blood stains and stuff like that.”
Brown is hoping those same ‘blood stains and stuff like that.’ might spare him death at the hands of the State of Mississippi.
