Jakeith Latham, a 34-year-old Black/African American man from Clayton, New Jersey, was found dead on the evening of December 20, 2016, in the Darley Woods neighborhood near Claymont, Delaware. At approximately 5:50 p.m., a witness called 911 after seeing an unresponsive person lying on a sidewalk in the 1000 block of Linda Road. New Castle County police officers arrived and discovered that Latham had suffered a fatal gunshot wound to his upper body.
The normally quiet residential area became the scene of a homicide investigation as detectives worked to determine why Latham had traveled from New Jersey to Delaware and who had arranged to meet him there.
The investigation remained unresolved for nearly two years. Detectives continued following leads until their attention focused on Seth Kinderman, then 22 and associated with New Castle County. Police announced Kinderman’s arrest in December 2018, stating that multiple investigative leads had connected him to the killing. A New Castle County grand jury subsequently indicted him on first-degree murder, first-degree robbery and two counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. No additional suspect was publicly identified or charged in the available reporting and court records.
Prosecutors later described the encounter as a planned transaction involving diabetic test strips. According to the prosecution’s account, Kinderman arranged to sell the strips to Latham, but the meeting became an attempted robbery, during which Kinderman shot him. Investigators eventually strengthened the case by using a genetic-genealogy testing service to link Kinderman to evidence associated with the homicide. The resulting evidence allowed prosecutors to move forward even though the shooting had initially become a cold case.
On June 1, 2021, Kinderman pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, attempted robbery and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. The plea agreement called for prosecutors and the defense to jointly recommend 30 years of incarceration, but the recommendation was not binding on the judge. Kinderman later attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, arguing that his attorneys had not adequately explained the agreement and had failed to conduct sufficient mitigation work before he accepted it. The Superior Court rejected those arguments, finding no fair and just reason to permit the plea to be withdrawn.
The court ultimately imposed 37 years of Level V incarceration, although some news accounts described the total sentence as 38 years in prison. Kinderman appealed, maintaining that his plea had not been knowing and voluntary and that he had received ineffective legal assistance. In July 2023, the Delaware Supreme Court affirmed the Superior Court’s judgment, ruling that the record supported the finding that Kinderman understood the plea’s terms and had entered it voluntarily. The decision left his convictions and prison sentence in place, bringing the prosecution of Latham’s killing to a final appellate resolution.
