In the winter of 2018, the community of Walterboro, South Carolina, was unsettled by the grim discovery of two missing men. Brandon D. Ferguson, a 23-year-old male, and his acquaintance, 28-year-old Alexander Blakeney, had vanished, prompting their families to file missing person reports when they failed to return a rental car and could not be contacted.
The search reached a tragic conclusion on February 2, 2018, when their bodies were found inside a partially burned rental car left in a wooded area outside the city. Both men had been shot, and their deaths were investigated as a double homicide.
The investigation into the murders soon focused on a single suspect, 18-year-old Jonathan Shamar Moore of Walterboro. Investigators pieced together the final hours of Ferguson and Blakeney's lives using surveillance footage from a church on Doctors Creek Road. The camera captured Ferguson driving the rental car with Blakeney in the passenger seat and a third individual in the back. Approximately twenty minutes later, the same vehicle was recorded traveling in the opposite direction, but with a different person behind the wheel. A crucial witness later came forward, reporting they had seen Moore with a body that he then placed in the trunk of the car where the victims were ultimately found.
Based on the evidence gathered, Jonathan Shamar Moore was arrested and charged with two counts of murder and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime. In March 2022, facing a jury trial, Moore chose to plead guilty to the murders of both Brandon Ferguson and Alexander Blakeney. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the murders, with an additional five years for the weapon charge, to be served concurrently. The successful prosecution, handled by the Fourteenth Circuit Solicitor's Office's Career Criminal Unit, brought a measure of justice to the grieving families and the shaken Walterboro community.
