In pleading guilty, triple murderer says he's 'truly sorry' for Charleston County slaying and calls for better treatment of mentally ill
Post & CourierJun 23, 2017
At first,
He had already killed two women in Clarendon County when he walked into
Eady, 34, of
The ordeal could be a teaching moment that calls on officials to examine shortcomings in treating people struggling with mental illness, said Eady, his lawyers and a judge.
He had tried to get treatment from the state in 2012 after serving a lengthy prison sentence for armed robbery, but it never happened. Then the voices were telling him to attack his roommate. But a lot of people, he said, just told him, “You’re crazy,” and looked the other way.
Eady got as close as the parking lot of one treatment center, he said, but with no one to force him to go inside, he walked away.
But his condition was no excuse for what he did, he added during a Charleston court hearing.
“It broke me down and put me in such a state of confusion where those crimes occurred,” he said, speaking without a script. “I am truly sorry. ... For every tear (the families) cried, I cried 100 times more.”
Ninth Circuit Solicitor
Eady had already pleaded guilty and been sentenced to life in the two other murders.
The killing spree started
He was fleeing southward when his lawyers said he heard the voices again and stopped at Johnson’s store on
The medication he has taken since then has made him into “a completely different person,” his lawyer, 9th Circuit Public Defender
In prison, Eady said, he had found a new purpose in life.
“There has been a miraculous change,” his lawyer added.
But at one point after the shootings, Eady’s mental illness had been so severe that he struggled to comprehend that his victims were dead, Pennington said.
Circuit Judge
“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.”