On a cold December day in 1987, the quiet of an Atlanta, Georgia neighborhood was shattered by a brutal crime that would leave a family torn apart. Inside her Miller Grove Road home, 72-year-old Willie Myrt Lowe was found dead, the victim of a fatal shooting. Alongside her lay the body of her 15-year-old grandson, Tony Kilgore, who had also been shot and killed. Both had been shot in the head at close range.
The grim discovery on December 30th launched an investigation that would soon focus on a member of their own family. Suspicion fell upon Eric Lynn Ferrell, another of Willie Myrt Lowe's grandsons. Ferrell, who had been on probation at the time, had spent the night at his grandmother's home with his cousin Tony. Investigators believe that Ferrell committed the murders to get money from his grandmother. Evidence uncovered by DeKalb County police pointed to Ferrell as the perpetrator. They found $676 in cash and four spent. 22-caliber rounds in his pockets. A. 22-caliber revolver, later identified as the murder weapon, was discovered in his home.
Eric Lynn Ferrell was arrested and charged with the murders of his grandmother and cousin. In September 1988, a jury found him guilty of the double homicide and armed robbery. He was subsequently sentenced to death for his crimes. Years later, in 2011, a federal appeals court in Atlanta overturned Ferrell's death sentences. The court found that his defense attorneys had been ineffective by failing to present significant mitigating evidence during his trial. This evidence included details of Ferrell's troubled past, such as suffering from organic brain damage, bipolar disorder, and epilepsy, as well as a history of severe abuse at the hands of his father and a suicide attempt at a young age. The appeals court ruled that there was a reasonable probability that the jury would not have sentenced him to death had they been aware of these factors, and he became entitled to a new sentencing trial.
