A former DeKalb County Sheriff’s deputy brutally killed his wife and a day laborer, shooting both of them several times in a staged robbery, a jury found Wednesday.
The jury returned four guilty verdicts against Derrick Yancey, 51, on Wednesday afternoon.
He is guilty of killing his wife, detention officer Linda Yancey, and day laborer Marcial Cax-Puluc inside the couple’s Stone Mountain home in 2008.
The couple were high school sweethearts, who married and had two sons. They worked together at the sheriff’s department. They raised their children with other deputies and were known in their prestigious Southland subdivision for being dedicated law enforcement officers.
On Wednesday, Derrick Yancey stared straight ahead as the judge read the four guilty verdicts: two counts of murder and two counts of weapon possession. He remained quiet and showed no emotion as his former colleagues -- some of his best friends -- handcuffed him and led him back to his cell.
His former boss sat behind him.
“This brings closure to both families: the family of Linda Yancey and the family of the DeKalb Sheriff’s Office,” Sheriff Thomas Brown told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Justice has been done, and nothing else needs to be said in that regard.”
Sentencing has not been scheduled. Yancey asked for it to be delayed because his mother was not in the courtroom.
He faces between 30 and 70 years in prison, according to the district attorney's office.
The verdict came after more than three days of deliberations.
After waiting those three days, Cax-Puluc’s older brother, Jose, said he was eager to call their mother in Guatemala.
“My mother said she wanted justice. My brother didn’t know anything about guns. Yes, we feel there is justice now,” he said Wednesday through an interpreter.
The older brother said he called their mother every day last week to report on the trial.
Linda Yancey’s family declined to talk to reporters, saying they wanted to wait until after sentencing. They are discussing a possible civil suit.
Prosecutors spent last week telling jurors how Derrick Yancey shot his 44-year-old wife several times in the chest and once in the neck before a final shot as the gun was pressed into her heart.
“That shot would blow away a portion of her heart,” Assistant District Attorney Ken Hutcherson told jurors last week.
On Wednesday, prosecutors and defense attorneys said they could not comment until after sentencing.
Todd Shakur, who lived behind the Yanceys, sat through the trial because he wanted to see the evidence.
“This guy used to come to my house and eat dinner. He was a friend of mine, a neighbor. He was in law enforcement and I trusted him,” Shakur told the AJC. “For this to happen, it’s a hard pill to swallow. He slaughtered that woman. And now there are two kids involved who will never see their mother or father again.”
Prosecutors told jurors Yancey staged the scene to look like Cax-Puluc, a 20-year-old laborer from Guatemala, robbed the wife.
The ex-deputy picked up the laborer outside a Stone Mountain gas station on the morning of June 9, 2008. After doing yardwork outside the Yanceys’ Southland subdivision home, the men went inside for a snack.
That’s when Derrick Yancey shot the laborer and Yancey's wife inside his basement, the jury found. He used two different guns and placed one of them near Cax-Puluc’s left hand as he lay bleeding on the floor.
The laborer was right-handed.
Yancey told police he had just given his wife some cash and the laborer tried to rob her. He had to fire back in self-defense, Yancey’s attorneys said.
Prosecutors say that was just a story he used to cover up the murders. The couple’s 20-year-old son told jurors last week that his parents frequently argued and Derrick Yancey talked of getting a divorce.
Investigators later charged Yancey after finding blood splattered on his hand and legs matched the shooter. Medical examiners testified that he didn’t perform CPR on his wife, despite pleading for help to a 911 dispatcher.
Despite 18 years of watching defendants as a courtroom deputy, Yancey decided to ignore the system and cut off his ankle bracelet, prosecutors said. He had been confined to his mother’s home and decided to flee to Belize.
He was later captured and returned to the DeKalb jail to be guarded by the same people who worked alongside his wife.
He returned to that solitary confinement cell Wednesday afternoon and will remain there until his sentencing.
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