On a November day in 1973, Fred Edward Simmons, a 43-year-old male, and his companion, Bob Durwood Moore, extended a kindness to a pair of hitchhikers in Florida, a decision that would have fatal consequences. The two men, Troy Leon Gregg, 25, and his 16-year-old accomplice, were given a ride by Simmons and Moore. The journey continued north into Georgia, where the events took a dark turn in Gwinnett County.
On November 21, 1973, after a stop, Gregg shot both Simmons and Moore, killing
them in order to rob them of their car and cash. Their bodies were later discovered in a drainage ditch. Simmons had been shot in the head, and Moore sustained two gunshot wounds.
A third hitchhiker who had been dropped off in Atlanta earlier provided crucial information to the police after reading about the murders in the newspaper. This tip led to the apprehension of Troy Leon Gregg and his companion in Asheville, North Carolina, on November 24, 1973. At the time of his arrest, Gregg was in possession of the victims' car and a. 25-caliber automatic pistol that was later confirmed to be the murder weapon.
Gregg was tried and convicted in the Superior Court of Gwinnett County for the murders and armed robberies of Fred Edward Simmons and Bob Durwood Moore. In 1974, he was sentenced to death. His case, *Gregg v. Georgia*, became a landmark in the American legal system when, in 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Georgia's death penalty statute, a decision that effectively reinstated capital punishment in the United States.
In a final, dramatic twist, on the eve of his scheduled execution by electrocution in July 1980, Troy Leon Gregg escaped from prison along with three other death row inmates. His freedom was short-lived, however. Just hours after his escape, Gregg was killed in a bar fight in North Carolina, meeting a violent end himself.
