More than two years after a transgender woman was found shot to death in Macon, authorities said they found her killer.
Horace Jamal Marsh, 26, of Macon, was arrested Thursday on a murder charge the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release. He was taken into custody without incident at his job, the Freddy’s Steakburgers off Zebulon Road.
He’s accused of the shooting that killed 30-year-old Candace Towns, which took place on Halloween 2017, AJC.com previously reported. On Friday, Marsh remained in jail without bond.
According to the Macon Telegraph, a recently recovered handgun was the “big lead” in the case that led to Marsh’s arrest.
Marsh had been arrested in connection with a different shooting in 2018, which left a man with multiple gunshot wounds at an apartment complex, the Telegraph reported. The aggravated assault case has been postponed indefinitely for trial due to continued investigation.
However, investigators were recently able to tie the weapon collected from that scene to Towns’ shooting death.
Sheriff David Davis told the newspaper that the same handgun appears to have been used in both shootings, crediting the discovery to the “dedicated investigative work” of his team. He specifically singled out Investigator Omar Sanders, whose work helped lead to an arrest in the cold case.
“This is a case almost three years old, but we continue to follow leads on these cases,” Davis told the Telegraph. “These cases never really go cold.”
Before this breakthrough, authorities did not have many leads in this case. Towns was last seen getting into a gold-colored, four-door sedan at 2:30 a.m. Oct. 29, 2017 at the motel where she lived, according to grainy surveillance video.
Credit: Macon Telegraph
Credit: Macon Telegraph
Two days later, she was found lying face up in a driveway between two abandoned houses in the 1500 block of Roycrest Avenue. She had been shot in the face and a shell casing was found between her legs.
Investigators are still working to determine a motive or if Marsh knew Towns, the Telegraph reported. She was the 23rd transgender person who was slain in 2017, according to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the sheriff’s office at 478-751-7500 or the Macon Regional CrimeStoppers at 1-877-682-7463.
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