An investigation by Fulton County District Attorney's cold case squad has produced the conviction of an Alabama woman for being the mastermind behind the 2005 contract killing of her husband.
A Superior Court jury found Constance Clark, 38, of Birmingham guilty on multiple counts including murder and conspiracy in the shooting death of William Eric Clark, 35, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
The woman was sentenced to life plus five years, prosecutors said. She currently is serving a prison term on state charges in Alabama for identity fraud in an unrelated case.
Constance Clark had taken out a $500,000 life insurance policy on her husband and had renewed a previous $100,000 policy before arranging with her cousin, Jean Pierre Devaughn, 29, to kill her spouse, prosecutors said.
Devaughn was convicted in April and sentenced to life in prison on the same counts.
William Clark had traveled to Atlanta in December 2005 to meet Devaughn to make a bulk alcohol purchase for his bartending business.
On Dec. 13, Devaughn lured the man to a partly completed subdivision in College Park, where he shot him multiple times and left the bullet-riddled body in the driveway of a home on Yupon Road.
Fulton County police arrested Devaughn in July 2006, but prosecutors determined there was insufficient evidence to convict, so they did not present the case to a grand jury.
The case sat dormant until 2008, when the District Attorney’s Multi-Jurisdictional Cold Case Squad revisited it. An investigation revealed the life insurance policies. Prosecutors presented the case to a grand jury, which returned an indictment in May 2009.
A trial is pending for Christopher Tumlin, who prosecutors said was an accomplice of Devaughn’s.
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