Death sentence in real estate killings

BRUNSWICK, Ga. - A jury sentenced a man to death by lethal injection Sunday for the 2003 murders of two real estate agents he robbed, stripped naked and shot in the head at their office.

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Stacey Ian Humphreys, 34, was convicted Tuesday by the same jury in the slayings of 33-year-old Cyndi Williams and 21-year-old Lori Brown. The trial lasted two weeks and deliberations on the death sentence took nearly 19 hours.

The victims' families cried and embraced when a court clerk read the verdict Sunday morning. Humphreys showed no emotion.

"A terrible crime deserves a terrible punishment," Brown's father, Wayne Brown Sr., told reporters outside the courthouse.

Williams' sister, Teri Marks-Brunner, said the jury's decision wouldn't erase her family's pain but offered some relief.

"There's still a lot of healing," Marks-Brunner said. "In that part of our lives, there will always be a hole there. But it's the next step in healing."

Humphreys' attorney, Jimmy Berry, said his client told him that his attorneys had done everything they could to spare his life.

The death sentence will be appealed automatically.

Prosecutors said Humphreys attacked Brown and Williams to steal money for a $565 payment on his SUV. A co-worker found the women's naked bodies Nov. 3, 2003, in their sales office in the Atlanta suburb of Powder Springs.

When police sought him for questioning a few days after the slayings, Humphreys fled to Wisconsin, where he was captured after a chase.

Ballistics tests matched a 9 mm handgun inside the vehicle he drove in Wisconsin to bullets fired in the killings, and a blood stain on the gun matched Williams' DNA. Police found more blood, matching Brown's DNA, on the floor mat of Humphreys' SUV.

Humphreys told investigators in a recorded interview after his capture that he believed he had killed the women but couldn't recall doing it.

Asked why the women were found naked, Humphreys told police he had read that women could be controlled by making them undress during a robbery. He was not charged with any sex crimes.

The trial was moved more than 300 miles from Cobb County to Brunswick on the Georgia coast because of pretrial publicity.