A former gang leader in Alabama who admitted to five homicides between 2008 and 2009 was just found dead in his Limestone Correctional Facility prison cell, the Alabama Department of Corrections said on Wednesday, August 9th.
That former gang head is Martez Seay, who was 39 at the time of his death. Seay was in prison for life after striking a plea deal with prosecutors over the five admitted homicides, all of which occurred in the Birmingham area. That deal occurred in 2010, when Seay pleaded guilty to capital murder.
In his plea deal, Seay admitted to the shooting death of Christian Callins in November 2008, the shooting death of Gregory Shelton Jr. in November of 2008, the December 2008 shooting deaths of Osmond Williams and Darrelle Sampson, the May 2009 death of Lonnie Vaughn, and the July 2009 conspiracy to kill his girlfriend, who was to testify against him in the Vaughn case.
Seay was apparently relying on his mother, Yolanda Seay, to orchestrate the attempt on the girlfriend’s life. The girlfriend, Hawkings, was paralyzed from the chest down by the attempt and Yolanda Seay was convicted on conspiracy to commit murder.
The Alabama Department of Corrections announced Seay’s death in a statement, saying, “Inmate Martez Seay was discovered unresponsive in his cell. He was transported to the health care unit where he was pronounced deceased by the attending physician.” Seay’s cause of death is yet to be determined, with an autopsy being conducted by the ADOC Law Enforcement Services Division.
Commenting on Seay in 2011, then Birmingham homicide detective Sgt. Sam Noblitt said, “In my years in law enforcement, he’s one of the most violent and ruthless persons that I’ve investigated or been involved in the investigation with.” Similarly, Seay’s defense lawyer was quoted in a Netflix episode of “The First 48” as saying that Seay made comments in private that raised the hair on his neck.
Detective Noblitt also described how the gang operated, saying that they made money by robbing people and killing people when things didn’t go quite right. “It was an enterprise. That’s how they made their money — robbing people, and killing them when things didn’t go their way,” he said.
Further, Detective Noblitt described how the evidence from the Vaughn murder led to Seay’s involvement in other murders being discovered, saying, “One lead led to another and it grew like a spider web. We were excited once everything started to unfold and we knew we would be able to bring charges. We knew this was a ruthless gang of guys we were dealing with, and we knew we had to get them off the street.”
Featured image credit: Alabama Department of Corrections
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