On the night of Sunday, November 10, 2013, police officers in Florence, Alabama, were dispatched to the area of Marion Avenue and Chisholm Road following reports of shots fired. Upon arriving at the scene shortly after 11:00 p.m., investigators discovered a vehicle containing the body of Eric Monte Watkins, a 32-year-old Black male resident of Muscle Shoals. He had sustained multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene.
The investigation into the shooting commenced immediately, with detectives suspecting that the incident was not a random act of violence but likely committed by an acquaintance of the victim.
For several months, the case required extensive investigative work as authorities pieced together evidence linking a specific suspect to the crime. By April 2015, police announced that they had identified the alleged shooter as Justin Antonio Butler, also known by the nickname "Poppa Molly." Detectives determined that the motive for the killing was likely robbery related to drugs and money. At the time of this identification, Butler was not in Alabama; he was already incarcerated in a South Carolina detention center, awaiting trial for a separate and unrelated murder that had occurred in that state months after the death of Watkins.
A Lauderdale County grand jury subsequently indicted Butler for the murder of Watkins, and the legal process to bring him to justice in Alabama began while he remained in custody in South Carolina. In 2016, a jury in Lexington County, South Carolina, convicted Butler of the 2014 murder of Tycus Toland, resulting in a 55-year prison sentence. Following the resolution of his South Carolina case, Butler was extradited to Alabama to face the charges regarding Watkins. In late 2018, Butler entered a guilty plea to the murder charge in Florence. He was sentenced in January 2019 to serve 20 years in prison, with the judge ordering the time to run concurrently with the lengthy sentence he was already serving in South Carolina.
