On a cold January evening in Albertville, Alabama, the life of a dedicated public servant was tragically cut short. Ernest Andrew Whitten, a 36-year-old male detective with the Albertville Police Department, was fatally shot on January 25, 1995, at his own back door. The brazen act was not random but a calculated assassination orchestrated to silence a key witness in a criminal investigation. Whitten was at home when he responded to a knock, only to be met with gunfire.
Despite his grave injuries, he survived long enough to identify the individuals responsible for the attack.
The investigation into Detective Whitten's murder swiftly uncovered a murder-for-hire plot. The scheme was masterminded by Larry Wayne Whitehead, the very suspect in a theft case that Whitten had been diligently investigating. Whitehead, facing significant jail time, hired two accomplices, James Matthew Hyde and Stephen Brookshire, to eliminate the detective and prevent him from testifying. On the night of the murder, the three men drove to Whitten's residence, where Hyde approached the house and fired the fatal shot.
The wheels of justice began to turn, and all three men involved in the murder of Detective Whitten were apprehended and charged. Larry Wayne Whitehead and James Matthew Hyde were both sentenced to death for their roles in the heinous crime. The third accomplice, Stephen Brookshire, received a 25-year prison sentence. In a later development, one of the death sentences was reduced to life in prison without the possibility of parole due to a Supreme Court ruling regarding juvenile offenders. Whitehead remained on death row until his death from natural causes in November 2025. Brookshire has been denied parole on multiple occasions and remains incarcerated.
