Perry Dewayne Griffin, a 37-year-old male, was killed in the early morning hours of June 26, 2007, at Panhandle Converter and Scrap Company in Dothan, Alabama. He had gone to work before dawn and was preparing to leave on a business trip to buy scrap products for the company. Carrying large amounts of cash was reportedly a normal part of that job, and on that morning he had about $35,000 with him.
What should have been a routine departure from the business turned into a violent ambush in the parking lot.
As Griffin prepared to leave, two armed men confronted him. Investigators later said evidence at the scene suggested the men may have planned to physically restrain him and possibly take him somewhere else. Instead, Griffin resisted. During the struggle, one of the suspects fired a weapon, fatally wounding him. The attackers fled on foot with the money, and investigators later believed a third person was waiting nearby in a vehicle. Griffin was remembered in his obituary as a husband, father, son, brother, and friend, and his death left behind his wife, Ginger, and their children.
For years, the case sat unresolved, even though police worked it heavily from the beginning. Investigators developed persons of interest, conducted numerous interviews, and later sought outside help to take another look at the cold case. The killing was long viewed as more than a random robbery. Police eventually said they believed the crime was an inside job because at least two of the suspects had worked at Panhandle Converter, where Griffin was employed, and would have known his routine and the fact that he sometimes carried large sums of cash for company business.
The case broke open in 2020, thirteen years after Griffin’s death, when Dothan police announced that new information, re-interviews, and a detailed review of the old case file had produced enough evidence to move forward. Authorities identified three suspects: Kevin Shawn Thornton, Jessie Jerome Swain, and Kendrick Fitzgerald Bryant. Thornton and Swain were both from Dothan and both had been employees at Panhandle Converter. Thornton was 35 at the time of the killing, and Swain was 34. Bryant was 17 at the time and was described as connected through Swain.
Thornton was charged in 2020 with murder, first-degree robbery, and a SORNA violation, and police said he was being held without bail on the murder and robbery charges. Swain was charged with murder and first-degree robbery and was also held without bond. Bryant was identified as another suspect and accused of murder and first-degree robbery, but because he was already in an Alabama prison on unrelated charges, authorities initially said his arrest was forthcoming rather than immediate.
The legal path after the arrests was slow and tangled. Thornton later reached a plea agreement and pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of criminally negligent homicide, receiving a one-year sentence. His deal reportedly included testimony against his alleged codefendants. Swain’s case went to trial, but in January 2026 a judge declared a mistrial after testimony raised concerns that the jury had heard information that could have unfairly influenced the case. Swain was left awaiting retrial.
In March 2026, the case took another major turn when Houston County grand jurors indicted Kendrick Bryant, who had long been identified by investigators as the suspected gunman. Reports at that time said Bryant had not been immediately charged in 2020 because he was already serving a lengthy prison sentence on unrelated robbery charges, with an earliest release date years away. His indictment marked the latest step in a case that began with a deadly ambush outside a Dothan business and, nearly two decades later, was still moving through the courts.
