One of four people convicted of murdering a couple will be resentenced in light of a court ruling requiring unanimous verdicts from jurors in Florida when it comes to the death penalty. Alan Lyndell Wade, 35, was found guilty in 2007 of helping kill Carol and James “Reggie” Sumner, 61. You can watch in the player above.
The Sumners were reportedly high school sweethearts who reunited in their middle age. Michael James Jackson, Tiffany Cole, Bruce Nixon, and Wade targeted the older couple for a robbery. Jackson, Nixon, and Wade forced their way into the couple’s home with a toy gun and took their property, including a computer, jewelry, a coin collection, a bank card, and ID cards, according to the arrest report from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
The Sumners were then bound with duct tape, put in the trunk of their Lincoln Town Car, and taken to southern Georgia. The quartet demanded the couple’s pin number to the bank card. The Sumners gave it up.
“After the victims complied, the victims were placed in a [pre-dug] hole in the ground and buried there,” investigators said.
From there, the couple’s cards were used to take funds from their accounts at ATM machines. Jackson and Cole went as far as to call the sheriff’s office while pretending to be the Sumners, asking for access to their bank account. The Sumners’ computer was pawned.
Nixon, however, gave up the location of the couple’s bodies, and he testified against the other three defendants in exchange for 45 years in prison.
[Image via Florida Department of Corrections]
