The murder of Vincent Binder (1980 – April 2, 2010) occurred on April 2, 2010, in Tallahassee, Florida, after three male detainees escaped from a Louisiana state prison and carried out a violent crime spree across Florida. Binder, a 29-year-old graduate student at Florida State University, was kidnapped by the trio while walking home from a gathering with friends. He was brutally murdered through a combination of stabbing and beating, and his body was later abandoned near St. Augustine.
All three men were arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Quentin Marcus Truehill (born April 16, 1987)[1] and Kentrell Feronti Johnson (born October 4, 1976)[2] were tried, convicted, and sentenced to death, while Peter Marcus Hughes (born October 31, 1987)[3] reached a plea agreement and received a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. However, in 2018, Johnson’s death sentence was commuted to life without parole on appeal, leaving Truehill as the only perpetrator who remains on death row for Binder’s murder.
Background and murder
On March 30, 2010, three inmates – 22-year-old Quentin Marcus Truehill, 22-year-old Peter Marcus Hughes and 33-year-old Kentrell Feronti Johnson – escaped from the custody of Avoyelles Parish Sherriff’s Office in Louisiana after they held a knife to a corrections officer’s throat.[4] At the time of their escape, Truehill was serving a jail term of 30 years for manslaughter and armed robbery; Hughes was serving 4 years for unlawful entry into an inhabited dwelling; and Johnson was serving 10 years for armed robbery and a parole violation.[5]
After breaking out of jail, the trio first stole a black Chevrolet truck with tools, a knife, and a machete inside, and also stole a woman’s purse outside a restaurant in Marksville, Louisiana. After which, they would flee to Florida, where they would embark on a crime spree, which included several robberies across the state and the murder of a student in St. Johns County, Florida. In one of these robberies, on April 1, 2010, Brenda Jo Brown was assaulted and robbed at one of the apartments where she worked as a housekeeper in Pensacola, while in the evening of April 2, 2010, the trio committed two more robberies in Tallahassee, first robbing a man in an apartment complex’s car park and later robbed two women behind a local pharmacy.[6]
The abduction and murder of the student, 29-year-old Vincent Binder, occurred that same evening after the trio committed these two robberies. Binder, who was a graduate student of Florida State University, was last seen walking back home after he attended a dinner and gathering with his friends. The disappearance of Binder was first noticed by one of his friends, who could not reach him by phone or text message, and he also did not show up to teach in his classes, and eventually, on April 8, 2010, Binder was reported missing.[6]
According to court and media sources, Binder was abducted while on his way back to his apartment in Tallahassee, and he was forced into the stolen truck. After the kidnapping, Binder was being hacked and stabbed multiple times by his abductors, and as a result of the brutal attack, Binder died. His body was abandoned near St. Augustine. According to an autopsy report, there were four stab wounds on Binder’s back and blunt-force injuries to his left side of his head, which penetrated the cranium, and also ten injuries inflicted by hacking at the back of Binder’s head, which caused a four-inch hole and fractures on the skull. Apart from these wounds, Binder also sustained multiple defensive wounds on his arms and rib fractures.[7][8]
Ten days after the murder, on April 12, 2010, all the three fugitives were arrested at a parking lot of a hotel, after the investigations revealed that the trio tried to use a card stolen from Binder at a store. On April 28, 2010, the police managed to find the body of Binder at the location where it was supposedly disposed of, after Johnson told the investigators where they could find the body.[6][9] The police eventually identified and confirmed the body to be that of Binder’s.[10][7]
Charges and pre-trial developments
After their arrests, the trio were charged with the kidnapping of Vincent Binder after they were linked to his disappearance.[11][12] The trio were later charged with murder after the death of Binder.[5]
On May 11, 2010, a St Johns County grand jury indicted all the three men for charges of kidnapping and first-degree murder.[13][14]
On June 4, 2010, State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced that he would seek the death penalty for the trio.[15][16]
The trial dates of the trio were tentatively set in the summer of 2013.[17] However, in August 2013, the trials were postponed to February 2014,[18] and eventually, in January 2014, it was granted that the trio shall be tried separately for the murder of Binder.[19]
Credit by: Reddit.com
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