In the autumn of 2017, the life of Candace Towns, a 30-year-old Black man from Macon, Georgia, was tragically cut short. On Halloween day, October 31, 2017, a Bibb County public works employee made a grim discovery in a driveway nestled between two abandoned houses on Rosecrest Avenue: the body of Candace Towns. An investigation quickly determined that Towns had been shot to death.
For nearly three years, the case of who killed Candace Towns remained a painful, unanswered question for her family and the community. Investigators worked to piece together the final hours of Towns' life, reviewing grainy surveillance footage from a motel where she was last seen getting into a car. However, the initial investigation struggled to gain significant leads.
A break in the case finally came in July 2020. The Bibb County Sheriff's Office announced the arrest of 26-year-old Horace Jamal Marsh. The key piece of evidence that implicated Marsh was a handgun. Investigators connected a gun used by Marsh in a separate 2018 shooting to the firearm that killed Candace Towns. This crucial link was established through advanced ballistics testing, breathing new life into the cold case.
Horace Jamal Marsh was taken into custody at his workplace and subsequently charged with the murder of Candace Towns. He was held at the Bibb County Law Enforcement Center without bond. While an arrest was made, the motive for the killing remained unclear to the public. For the family of Candace Towns, the arrest brought a sense of relief and a step towards justice, though the question of 'why' still lingered. Information regarding a trial, conviction, or sentence for the murder of Candace Towns has not been made publicly available. However, in a separate case, Horace Marsh was convicted of aggravated assault and other crimes and was sentenced to serve 25 years in prison.
