In the quiet suburbs of Acworth, Georgia, the lives of a young family were tragically cut short in November 2021. Amber Michelle Boggs Hicks, a 31-year-old female, and her husband, Timothy Justin Hicks, also 31, were found deceased in their home on November 18, 2021. The couple had been fatally shot. Their 2-year-old son was discovered unharmed inside the residence, left alone for an unknown period after the brutal events unfolded.
The investigation into the double homicide led authorities to their neighbor, Matthew Scott Lanz. Evidence presented during the trial revealed a strange and unsettling fixation Lanz had with the Hicks' home, a property he and his brother had reportedly harassed even before the Hicks family moved in just 73 days prior to the murders. Surveillance footage captured Lanz on the Hicks' property on the night of the killings. Prosecutors argued that Lanz used his own 9mm pistol to commit the murders, with ballistic evidence linking the weapon to the crime scene.
Following the murders, Lanz's erratic and violent behavior continued. The day after the Hicks' bodies were discovered, he was involved in a break-in at a home in Sandy Springs, where he stabbed a police officer before being shot and apprehended. This subsequent crime helped solidify him as the primary suspect in the Acworth double homicide. Despite his defense attorney's claims that Lanz believed he was being set up by a government agency, a judge found him competent to stand trial.
In November 2025, a Cobb County judge found Matthew Scott Lanz guilty on all charges related to the murders of Amber and Justin Hicks, including malice murder. He was subsequently sentenced to two consecutive life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole, ensuring he would spend the rest of his life incarcerated for the senseless act of violence that left a young child an orphan. During the sentencing, where Lanz chose not to appear, family members delivered emotional victim impact statements, remembering the loving couple and decrying the cowardice of the man who took their lives.
