Current Cobb Chief Magistrate Judge Joyette Holmes has been appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp as the new Cobb District Attorney.
She succeeds Vic Reynolds, now the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and will serve out the remainder of his term, which ends in December 2020.
Holmes, a Republican, is the first woman and the first African-American to serve as Cobb DA. She is a former Assistant District Attorney in Cobb County, and also served in the Cobb Solicitor’s Office.
She has been the Chief Magistrate for the last four years and also has been in private law practice in Marietta.
A native of Valdosta, Holmes earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Georgia and a law degree from the University of Baltimore.
At a press conference, Kemp said that Holmes “is able and ready to lead” the Cobb DA’s office. “She is certainly one of our best and brightest in Georgia.”
John Melvin, who has been the acting Cobb DA since Reynolds’ departure, is expected to join him soon at the GBI.
The DA’s office said this afternoon that the transition may take another couple of weeks because Holmes’ swearing-in has not been scheduled.
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Cobb District Attorney Vic Reynolds is leaving his post to head the state’s main law enforcement agency.
On Friday Gov. Brian Kemp announced he had selected Reynolds to become director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
“Vic Reynolds is a courageous leader with unmatched experience,” Kemp said in a statement. “As District Attorney, Vic led efforts to dismantle gangs and protect local families from crime and violence. As GBI Director, he will work around the clock to ensure a safer, stronger Georgia.””
Reynolds is a Republican whose second term is up in 2020. He supported Kemp’s gubernatorial campaign and served on his transition team after the 2018 election.
“I look forward to continuing my service alongside dedicated law enforcement professionals from all across our state,” Reynolds said in a statement. “Our top priority from day one will be to ensure a safer, stronger Georgia.
Reynolds also has led numerous anti-gang initiatives in his time as Cobb’s top prosecutor. In his inaugural address last month, Kemp said one of his priorities will be to set up a statewide anti-gang task force within the GBI that would work with local prosecutors and law enforcement agencies.
More recently Reynolds has been addressing sex trafficking activity, and his office has filed a lawsuit threatening the owners of a Windy Hill Road motel with forfeiture of its property.
A native of Rome, Reynolds is a former police officer and was an assistant district attorney in Fulton and Cobb. He served as Cobb Chief Magistrate Judge and as a private criminal defense attorney before being elected Cobb District Attorney in 2012.
The Cobb DA’s vacancy will be filled by a Kemp appointee until the 2020 election.
That position is one of several countywide offices that will be up for election in two years, including Cobb Commission Chairman, Cobb Sheriff and some partisan judicial posts.
Those seats, like the DA’s office, have long been held by Republicans. But Democrats have made significant gains in recent elections across Cobb. Hillary Clinton won Cobb County in the 2016 presidential election, and Stacey Abrams carried the county over Kemp in the 2018 governor’s race.
Democratic candidates also won Cobb in last year’s elections for lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, school superintendent and other Georgia constitutional offices, although Republicans ultimately prevailed in statewide voting.
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The Cobb District Attorney’s Office said Friday that 23 people have been sentenced to long prison terms for a range of gang-related criminal offenses in the county in 2015 and 2016.
In a release, DA’s office spokeswoman Kim Isaza said that members of Get Money Squared, Wildlyfe and 2200, three criminal street gangs with roots in Cobb, pleaded guilty to drive-by shootings, drug offenses, thefts, car break-ins, assault, street-gang terrorism, criminal trespass, disrupting a public school and firearms violations.
One of the crimes tied to the defendants included a car break-in on Manning Road in the East Cobb area in January 2016.
Another case tied to the crime spree, according to prosecutors, was a drug sale at Windy Hill Road and Circle 75 Parkway in May 2016.
Isaza said Cobb Superior Court Judge Reuben Green handed down sentences ranging from 10 years to 20 years.
She said many of them were given first-offender status, which means that if they complete their custody and probation periods without further incidents, their records will be sealed.
Isaza said the defendants are between 20-27 years old and come from Cobb, Woodstock, Lawrenceville, Atlanta, and Dothan, Ala. The last of the defendants was sentenced last month, she added, and all of them pleaded guilty to racketeering.
Investigating the case were the Cobb Police Anti-Gang Enforcement Unit, Smyrna Police, Marietta Police and Cobb County School District Police.
“Members and associates of these gangs admitted that they sold drugs, broke into dozens of cars to commit thefts and committed acts of violence against people outside the gangs, all to increase their status within the criminal organization and further the gangs’ violent reputations,” said Cobb Senior Assistant District Attorney Jaret Usher, who prosecuted the case, in a statement.
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The former roommate and business partner of an East Cobb man murdered in 2014 has been arrested and charged with plotting the killing, and then conspiring to conceal it.
Ross Allyson Byrne, 55, of Woodstock, was booked on murder and other felony charges on Thursday afternoon, according to the Cobb Sheriff’s Office.
He was arrested at The Best Dang Bakery Around on Highway 92 in Woodstock and is being held without bond at the Cobb Adult Detention Center, according to jail information.
Byrne is charged with three counts of felony murder, one count of malice murder, two counts of conspiracy to commit a felony and racketeering, Cobb Sheriff’s Office records show.
According to an indictment issued by a Cobb grand jury on Thursday, Byrne is accused of orchestrating the murder of Jerry Moore, who was found stabbed 32 times at his home of Holly Springs Road on Jan. 25, 2014.
Byrne’s arrest comes nearly two weeks after Johnathan Allen Wheeler was convicted of the murder in Cobb Superior Court and sentenced to two consecutive life terms without parole.
Wheeler worked at the bakery, which was operated by Byrne, and where Moore had been an equal partner, according to Cobb prosecutors. They said the business had been struggling and Moore wanted to end the partnership.
According to the indictment, the “primary purpose” for murdering Moore “was to steal an interest in the business of Best Dang Bakery (or bakery) as well as other property and things of value,” forming the basis of the racketeering charge.
The indictment further states that Byrne and Moore, who opened the bakery in 2008, each held a $35,000 investment; Byrne oversaw day-to-day operations while Moore handled finances.
According to the indictment, the partnership agreement stated that in the case of the death of one of the partners, “the interest of the deceased member shall be transferred to the other surviving Member or Members.”
Jerry Moore was 46 when he was found stabbed to death at his East Cobb home in Jan. 2014. (Photo: Cobb District Attorney’s Office)
By late 2013, the indictment states, the partnership was troubled. There were disputes about how to run the business, and Moore was concerned about Byrne’s spending habits.
The indictment states that by January 2014, Moore was planning to end his business partnership with Byrne and concludes that “it is unlikely” Byrne would have been able to buy out Moore’s share of the bakery.
Moore had gone as far as to draft the terms of dissolving the partnership, according to the indictment.
By then, Wheeler was no longer working at the bakery but still had a “close relationship with Byrne, whom he considered a mentor, the indictment states.
By the first of the year in 2014, according to the indictment, Byrne moved out of the home he shared with Moore on Gracewood Drive, off Holly Springs Road and north of Post Oak Tritt Road.
The indictment alleges that Byrne plotted to have Wheeler—who was released from jail in 2010 after serving 10 years in Cobb and Cherokee for robbery and assault—commit aggravated assault, burglary and theft.
Prosecutors allege that Wheeler and Byrne were in contact before, during and after the murder. Afterward, prosecutors say, Wheeler went to Byrne’s new residence in Woodstock, where he showered and was offered a change of clothes.
Wheeler returned to Moore’s home and with his cousin, Cynthia Wheeler, cleaned up the premises and stole household items, according to prosecutors. She pleaded guilty in 2016 to those charges.
The indictment states that Byrne stole Moore’s partnership interest and as of his arrest still was the owner of the bakery.
Byrne also helped Johnathan Wheeler and Cynthia Wheeler pay bills and purchased a truck for the former that was returned, according to the indictment.
Johnathan Allen Wheeler
The indictment states that Byrne had been interviewed by the police shortly after the murder but denied any involvement and said nothing about Wheeler, who was arrested on Aug. 16, 2014
Byrne and Wheeler continued to stay in touch over the next four years, according to the indictment, both over the phone and in writing, and prosecutors say they have recordings of conversations between the two. The indictment also states that written correspondence from Wheeler was found in Byrne’s possession when authorities obtained a search warrant earlier this week.
The indictment didn’t detail the subject matter of that correspondence, nor did it describe the recorded conversations.
In arguments to the jury at Wheeler’s trial, Cobb assistant district attorney Jesse Evans called the murder “a relentless, sustained, malicious attack by a cold-blooded killer. . . The defendant [Wheeler] pursued, out of greed and out of malice. No human being should ever have this inflicted on them.”
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A Stockbridge man convicted for an East Cobb murder more than four years ago was sentenced to two consecutive life terms without parole on Monday.
Cobb Superior Court Judge Mary Staley Clark issued the sentence to Johnathan Allan Wheeler Monday afternoon, not long after he was found guilty of malice murder by a jury.
Wheeler, now 35, was on trial last week for the murder of Jerry L. Moore, who was found stabbed 32 times at his home on Gracewood Drive, off Holly Springs Road, on Jan. 25, 2014.
Wheeler also was convicted of felony murder, aggravated assault, armed robbery and first-degree burglary, according to the Cobb District Attorney’s Office.
Cobb prosecutors said during the trial that Wheeler worked at a Woodstock bakery run by Moore’s roommate, Ross Byrne. Moore, who was 46 at the time of his death, was a half-owner in the business but wanted to get out, according to assistant Cobb District Attorney Jesse Evans.
Evans said during the trial that Byrne had been a business mentor to Wheeler and had moved out of Moore’s home a few weeks before the murder. After the stabbings, Evans said, Wheeler went to Byrne’s residence.
Wheeler’s cousin testified during the trial that he confessed to the murder. Cynthia Wheeler agreed to testify against Wheeler after being sentenced in 2016 for helping him clean up the home after the crime and stealing household items there.
The Cobb DA also said that Wheeler confessed to the murders to his brother and stepfather, both of whom testified at the trial.
“This was a relentless, sustained, malicious attack by a cold-blooded killer,” Evans told jurors in his closing statements while showing them pictures at the crime scene, according to the DA’s office. “The defendant pursued, out of greed and out of malice. No human being should ever have this inflicted on them.”
Wheeler served nearly a decade in prison for robbery and assault in Cobb and Cherokee counties, and was released in 2010.
Over the last two years, Wheeler had written frequently from the Cobb County Adult Detention Center to the court in pleas for a speedy trial, according to documents filed with the Cobb Superior Court Clerk’s office.
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A judge has sentenced a man found guilty of serial Cobb rapes 32 years ago.
Antonio Ledell Brooks, now 48, was found guilty by a Cobb Superior Court jury on Friday and was given two consecutive life terms plus 20 years by Judge Gregory Poole, according to the Cobb District Attorney’s Office.
Brooks was convicted on two counts each of rape, aggravated assault and false imprisonment and one count of burglary.
According to information released by the DA’s office, the first victim, who was 24 years old at the time, was attacked on Sept. 1, 1986 at a Franklin Road apartment by a man wielding a knife.
A few days later, another woman, aged 23 then and living a block away at another apartment on Franklin Road was raped and severely beaten, according to prosecutors. They said both women were treated at Kennestone Hospital, where their rape kits were collected, but no suspects were identified.
On an unspecified date in 1988, another young woman was raped at an apartment on Powers Ferry Place, off Delk Road and near Powers Ferry Road, the DA’s office said. The woman told police she later saw the same man at her complex and identified him, leading to Brooks’ conviction in that case, the DA’s office said.
It was that conviction that led to the resolution of the Franklin Road rapes, according to prosecutors, a cold case investigation more than 20 years in the making.
In 2008, Georgia Department of Corrections collected Brooks’ DNA and sent it to the GBI for entry in the federal CODIS, or DNA, database.
Five years later, in 2013, the Marietta Police Department asked the GBI Crime Lab to analyze DNA from the 1986 rapes on Franklin Road.
The Cobb DA’s office said the GBI reported an initial match in those kits to Brooks, then took new swabs of Brooks’ DNA and confirmed the matches.
He was put on trial this week, and found guilty after two hours of jury deliberation, the Cobb DA’s office said.
“What happened to these women is every person’s nightmare and despite the passage of over 30 years, justice was served today,” said Cobb assistant district attorney Courtney Veal in a statement. “The defendant has forfeited his right to live in a free society, and the judge’s sentence should ensure that he can never victimize again.”
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A Northeast Cobb man has been sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to killing his wife last year, the Cobb District Attorney’s Office said.
Donny Eaton, 65, entered the plea on Monday, when jury selection for his trial was expected to begin. The negotiated deal was accepted by Cobb Superior Court Judge Mary Staley, who handed down the sentence.
He was charged with malice murder, felony murder and aggravated assault, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
Eaton was arrested on April 4, 2017 after Roxane Tenore Eaton, 66, was found with what the Cobb DA said were “countless” stab wounds about her face and neck at their home on Liberty Hill Road.
According to the DA’s office, Eaton initially cut her throat with a pocket knife. Tenore Eaton had purchased a home in Florida where she wanted the couple to live to be closer to family, but he was opposed to the move.
After the stabbings, Eaton visited his mother’s grave in Floyd County, and confessed to emergency dispatchers there that he had stabbed his wife, the Cobb DA said. A welfare check was made at the Eaton home, where Tenore Eaton was found, and he turned himself into the Bartow County Sheriff’s Office, according to the Cobb DA.
“Donny Eaton took the life of his wife in a gruesome manner, with it appearing that he was attempting to decapitate her, all because she wanted to be closer to her children and grandchildren in Florida to live out the remainder of their lives,” Cobb senior assistant district attorney Patricia Hull said in a statement. “Donny Eaton refused to leave their home in Georgia. If he couldn’t have her here with him in Georgia, he didn’t want her children to have her, either.”
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