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In pleading guilty, triple murderer says he's 'truly sorry' for Charleston County slaying and calls for better treatment of mentally ill

Post & Courier - 6/23/2017

At first, Jeffrey Eady drove past the Adams Run business in 2013, but the voices in his head told him to go back and commit more mayhem, his attorneys said.

He had already killed two women in Clarendon County when he walked into D&V Convenience Store and fatally shot Crystal Johnson, a 37-year-old mother of three who worked there as a clerk. He didn’t know her.

Eady, 34, of New Zion, pleaded guilty but mentally ill to murder on Thursday, a move that will send him to prison for life but allow him to avoid the death penalty that prosecutors had considered pursuing.

The ordeal could be a teaching moment that calls on officials to examine shortcomings in treating people struggling with mental illness, said Eady, his lawyers and a judge.

He had tried to get treatment from the state in 2012 after serving a lengthy prison sentence for armed robbery, but it never happened. Then the voices were telling him to attack his roommate. But a lot of people, he said, just told him, “You’re crazy,” and looked the other way.

Eady got as close as the parking lot of one treatment center, he said, but with no one to force him to go inside, he walked away.

But his condition was no excuse for what he did, he added during a Charleston court hearing.

“It broke me down and put me in such a state of confusion where those crimes occurred,” he said, speaking without a script. “I am truly sorry. ... For every tear (the families) cried, I cried 100 times more.”

Ninth Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson said Johnson’s family agreed with the negotiated plea deal, considering Eady was already imprisoned and getting treatment. Several loved ones attended Thursday’s hearing, but they did not speak.

Eady had already pleaded guilty and been sentenced to life in the two other murders.

The killing spree started May 28, 2013, when he shot Sadie Brown, 77, who lived near him in Clarendon County. Two days later, he shot 65-year-old Maybell White at a recycling business and stole her car.

He was fleeing southward when his lawyers said he heard the voices again and stopped at Johnson’s store on Savannah Highway, shot her and took some lottery tickets. He was captured the next day in Florida, where he admitted to the slayings.

The medication he has taken since then has made him into “a completely different person,” his lawyer, 9th Circuit Public Defender Ashley Pennington, said. He serves food, does laundry and cleans the prison showers. He mentors younger inmates.

In prison, Eady said, he had found a new purpose in life.

“There has been a miraculous change,” his lawyer added.

But at one point after the shootings, Eady’s mental illness had been so severe that he struggled to comprehend that his victims were dead, Pennington said.

Circuit Judge Markley Dennis said Eady’s case again highlights the need for state prison facilities dedicated to the treatment of those struggling with drug addiction and mental illness.

“Where did we go so wrong by not identifying this sooner?” he said. “I’m not blaming anybody. But it’s a question that needs to be answered.”

Though Dennis praised the help Eady has gotten since the slayings, more could have been done to prevent the tragedy in the first place, he said.

The judge turned to Eady.

“Maybe your statement,” he said, “will echo from these walls ... and this city.”