November 6, 2010
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CrossRoadsNews
Yancey was on the lam for five months before he was captured in Belize and returned to jail on Sept. 26, 2009.
Yancey is guilty of double murders Long responds to all Derrick Yancey is facing two life sentences plus 10 years for the murder of his wife, Linda Yancey, and day laborer Marcial Cax Puluc in the couple’s Stone Mountain home two years ago. Yancey, 51, a former DeKalb County sheriff ’s deputy, was found guilty Nov. 3 after a weeklong trial for the June 9, 2008, murders in the basement of couple’s Southland subdivision home. After deliberating for three days, the jury returned four guilty verdicts – two counts of murder and two Linda Yancey counts of weapon possession – against Yancey, who was accused of staging a robbery to explain away the murders. Yancey told police that Cax Puluc killed his 44-year-old wife during a robbery and that he killed him, but prosecutors told jurors that Yancey staged the scene to look like the 20-year-old day laborer from Guatemala had robbed his wife. There was little talk during the trial about a motive in the shootings other than that the Yanceys were having marital troubles. The couple’s 20-year-old son, Karron, testified that his parents argued a lot and that his father had talked of divorce. While on house arrest at his mother’s Jonesboro home, Yancey cut his ankle monitor and fled April 4, 2009, on a Greyhound bus. Surveillance video at the Atlanta bus station showed that Yancey, who used to be cleanshaven, had grown his hair and a beard. He was on the lam for five months before he was captured in Belize in South America and returned to jail on Sept. 26, 2009. Yancey and his wife, who was a DeKalb sheriff’s detention officer, were high school sweethearts. They were married for 17 years and had two sons. Yancey worked for the Sheriff ’s Office for 18 years. Most of his time was spent securing DeKalb courtrooms like the one where his trial was held. Yancey often picked up Hispanic day laborers to do work at his home.
lawsuits, denies sex By Carla Parker
The changing face of Derrick Yancey. From left, in court this week, when he was captured in Sept. 26, 2009, and 2008.
Prosecutors said he used two different guns for the killings and placed one of them near Cax Puluc’s left hand as he lay bleeding on the floor. The laborer was right-handed. When the police arrived, Yancey told them he had just given his wife $2,000 and Cax Puluc tried to rob her. He was arrested and charged with the murders on Aug. 14, 2008, after investigators found blood splattered on his hand and legs that matched the shooter. Even though he pleaded for help to a 911 dispatcher from his home, medical examiners testified that Yancey did not perform CPR on his wife. During the trial, prosecutors told jurors that Yancey shot his wife several times in the chest and once in the neck before pumping a final shot into her chest that blew her heart apart. When the verdict was read Wednesday, Yancey stared straight ahead. He showed no emotion as his former colleagues and friends handcuffed him and led him back to solitary confinement to await sentencing. Sheriff Thomas Brown, who was in court for the verdict, said the healing can now begin for Linda Yancey’s family and for the DeKalb Sheriff ’s Office family, who lost two colleagues with the murder. “Justice has been done,” he said, adding that Yancey became a suspect early when his story did not match the evidence at the scene. Superior Court Judge Linda Warren Hunter, who heard the case, has not scheduled sentencing.
Bishop Eddie Long said he shared rooms with his four accusers and gave them gifts, but that he did not have sex with them. Long filed four separate responses in DeKalb County State Court on Nov. 1, denying all allegations made by Maurice Robinson, Anthony Flagg, Jamal Parris and Spencer LeGrande, and asked for the four lawsuits to be dismissed with prejudice. “The plaintiff ’s claims of sexual misEddie Long conduct are not true,” he said on each of his responses. In September, the four men filed lawsuits against Long, New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, and the Longfellows Youth Academy, a program based at New Birth that caters to young males ages 13 to 18. They allege that Long coerced them into sexual acts in exchange for lavish trips, cars and money. The four allege the sexual relations occurred when they were 16 or older, the legal age of consent in Georgia. All are seeking a trial by jury and unspecified damages. In the documents filed in DeKalb State Court, Long said he traveled with the four men and other members of his congregation, and that he “often shared a room with other members, including the plaintiffs.” He said that other members of his travel party, including Andrew Moman – who serves as athletic director at New Birth – “were familiar with his practice of sharing a room with members of his congregation.” Long also admits to giving gifts to the men and providing “sporadic financial assistance to the plaintiffs, as he does to many other members of New Birth,” but denies exchanging those gifts and financial assistance for sex. He also denies that he “encouraged” the young men to call him “Daddy.” He said that the entire New Birth membership calls him “Daddy” or “Bishop,” that Longfellows participants call him “Pop,” and members of other churches often call him “Granddaddy.”
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