MACON — A man sought in the killing of a sleeping homeless man — who was stalked and prayed over in an alley before he was beaten to death with a cinder block here in May — has been arrested in a separate slaying in Tennessee.
Adam Arthur Rosenthal, 39, was arrested Nov. 26, a day after sheriff’s deputies in Giles County, Tennessee, found a man stabbed to death on a farm near the town of Pulaski, about 100 miles west of Chattanooga. According to published reports, the farm is owned by the Twelve Tribes religious sect.
On Wednesday, Rosenthal was charged with murder in the Macon slaying, a brutal assault in the predawn hours of May 24 that was captured in its entirety by security cameras.
Credit: Joe Kovac Jr.
Credit: Joe Kovac Jr.
Fairly clear images of the assailant’s face in the Macon killing were shared with law enforcement agencies and news outlets across the region in the weeks and months after the fatal attack on Albert Kenneth Knight Jr., 59, who had lived on the streets of Macon for several years.
The attack happened half a block from City Hall.
Few, if any, viable leads in the search for Rosenthal emerged until recent days when sheriff’s investigators in Macon were alerted that Rosenthal had confessed to authorities in Tennessee that he had killed Knight, law enforcement officials told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Credit: Courtesy photo
Credit: Courtesy photo
The surveillance footage of the Macon slaying was viewed by the AJC in August. It shows an attacker who appeared bent on killing the sleeping man, walk away from Knight and return a few times, striking Knight again and again with crushing blows.
In the moments before striking, the assailant stood over the homeless man and then knelt in prayer over the cinder block he used to bash Knight to death.
Credit: Courtesy Photograph
Credit: Courtesy Photograph
Rosenthal’s appearance, though his face is now heavily bearded, bears strong resemblance to the assailant recorded in the Macon attack, Bibb County Sheriff David Davis said.
“You can’t hide sinisterness,” Davis said.
The sheriff said he was relieved to hear that someone had been charged in what had been a puzzling, unsolved case. ”It’s been vexing to us how somebody could come through Macon and commit such a terrible crime and then disappear,” Davis said. “But we always sort of suspected it was a transient person. … We’re just very fortunate that he has been caught.”
In 2022, Rosenthal was one of nine candidates who ran for mayor of Gainesville, Florida. He received 232 votes in the primary, the fewest in the field.
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