Jury reaches verdict in Columbus ‘trap house’ drug robbery, fatal shooting
A Columbus jury deliberated about an hour Friday before finding two men guilty on all counts in the 2018 robbery and slaying of a drug dealer in a “trap house” on Mellon Street.
Jurors found Curtis “Baby C” Williams III and Jeffery “Red” Flakes Jr. guilty of murder, armed robbery and other felonies in the Aug. 10, 2018 fatal shooting of Stanford Duane Jones, whose duplex apartment was ransacked as they took cash and drugs.
Judge Gil McBride set their sentencing for 1 p.m. on Nov. 8. Because each has felony convictions, they face life without parole, prosecutors said.
Though defense attorneys claimed grainy surveillance video recording the intruders who killed Jones was too indistinct to definitely identify their faces, prosecutor Robin Anthony was able to use other evidence linking them to the homicide:
- The video showed one of the killers had a scallop-shaped tattoo on his hand. Flakes had a matching tattoo on the same hand.
- Flakes was involved in a shooting on July 7, 2018, at Hannah Heights Apartments, 909 Farr Road, where police recovered two .45-caliber bullet casings. GBI firearms expert Catherine Jordan said her examination showed those casings matched one found at Jones’ apartment, so they came from the same gun.
- Williams in an interview with detectives admitted that he was one of the two people recorded on Jones’ security cameras, that he was at the apartment wearing gloves and holding a gun, and allowed a second person through the door.
- A man who lived in the Mellon Street Apartments next door to Jones’ duplex testified that Williams left a cell phone at his home that night, left with an empty bag, and showed up 30 minutes after the neighbor heard gunfire with blood on his clothes and items in the bag he carried.
Both Williams and Flakes denied killing Jones, when police questioned them. Flakes said he and Jones were close friends, and that he lived with Jones for months, when Flakes needed a place to stay. “This man is like a mentor to me,” he told detectives.
Anthony said Jones had kicked Flakes out, leaving him homeless and destitute, drifting between a friend’s place at the Mellon Street Apartments and his mother’s house on Garden Drive. That gave Flakes the motivation to betray, rob and kill the man who for so long had looked out for him, she said.
Williams was in similar straits, she said: The reason he left his phone at one of the Mellon Street apartments was for collateral, as the occupant was running an unlicensed store where neighbors bought drinks, candy and other goods, and he couldn’t pay his tab.
The videos
The surveillance video first showed Williams twice approach Jones’ home from the street before stopping, eyeing the residence, and then backing away. When he returned a third time, he went to the door and was allowed in.
Minutes later, Flakes came through the yard to Jones’ door, donning surgical gloves and pulling out a pistol as he waited to be let in. Williams opened the door while holding a handgun, let him in and followed behind him.
The camera system soon was disconnected, after that, but Jones’ killers did not take the security system’s digital recorder, which retained the footage police found.
Jones was found dead around 6 a.m., hours after neighbors heard gunfire between 2:30 and 3 a.m. Witnesses testifying Tuesday recalled finding his body on the floor of his ransacked apartment.
The neighbors testified that Jones was well known in the area, where everyone knew he dealt drugs in the apartment police called a “trap house,” meaning a place used only for selling drugs.
The suspects’ defense attorneys, Mike Garner for Flakes and Anthony Johnson for Williams, both said their clients’ presence in the area the night Jones died was not unusual, because they visited often.
The defense lawyers said Anthony didn’t have sufficient evidence to convict the defendants, because investigators never found the .40-caliber and .45-caliber guns used to kill Jones, and no witnesses could say they saw the suspects in Jones’ home at the time of the slaying.
Both Williams, 37, and Flakes, 33, were convicted of malice or intentional murder, felony murder for killing Jones while committing the felony of aggravated assault, and armed robbery for using firearms to take drugs and money.
Though McBride may sentence Williams to life without parole, in Jones’ case, Williams still could face a second murder trial, having been charged in the Nov. 16, 2017 slaying of Steve “Stevie” Phillips, 30, found shot through the back of the head on a cut-through trail between Winston Road and Benning Drive.
Phillips was the key witness in a murder case against Kevin Babe “Cali” Henderson, a gangster convicted in the Nov. 12, 2014, execution-style killing of Chad Herring.
This story was originally published October 28, 2022 at 5:42 PM.