A man who received two life sentences last year after pleading guilty in the shooting deaths of two Clarendon County woman has pleaded guilty in a similar shooting death in Charleston County.
Jeffrey Eady, 34, pleaded guilty but mentally ill Thursday to murder in Charleston County General Sessions Court, a move The Post and Courier of Charleston reported will send him to prison for a lifetime but allow him to avoid the death penalty prosecutors there had considered pursuing.
Eady, formerly of 1054 527 Subdivision Road in New Zion, pleaded guilty in September 2016 to two counts of murder and one count each of armed robbery; grand larceny of a value of $10,000 or more; possession of a weapon during a violent crime; and financial transaction card fraud of a value of $500 or less in six months.
Eady was accused of killing Clarendon County women Maybell White, 65, and Sadie Brown, 77, along with Charleston County convenience store employee Crystal Johnson, 37.
Andrew Knapp of the Post and Courier wrote Thursday that Eady at first drove past an Adams Run business in Charleston County in 2013, but that voices in his head told him to go back and commit more mayhem. He was fleeing south to Savannah, according to his public defender, when he walked into the D&V Convenience Store and fatally shot Johnson, the 37-year-old mother of three and Eady's third and final victim.
Ninth Circuit Public Defender Ashley Pennington said that Eady had attempted to get help from the state in 2012 after serving a sentence for armed robbery. At the time, the voices told him to attack his roommate. Most people, he said, told him he was crazy and then looked the other way.
Eady reportedly said, however, that his condition was no excuse for what he did.
"It broke me down and put me in such a state of confusion where those crimes occurred," he said, speaking without a script during a hearing. "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.
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 has found a new purpose in life.
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."
