Box Turtle Bulletin

Bearden Spared Death Penalty For Killing Ryan Skipper

Joseph Bearden, right, reacts to the verdict. (Ernst Peters/The Ledger)

Joseph Bearden, 21, has been found guilty on all counts stemming from the death of Ryan Skipper and was sentenced to life imprisonment today. After nearly two days of deliberation, a Florida jury found Bearden guilty of second degree murder, theft of a motor vehicle, accessory after the fact to robbery with a weapon, tampering with evidence, and dealing in stolen property.

Bearden was being tried for first-degree murder, But with the guilty verdict for second degree murder, Bearden was spared a possible death penalty. Judge J. Michael Hunter told Bearden that he believed he killed Ryan because he way gay. While the judge gave him the maximum penalty for second degree murder, Bearden will nevertheless be eligible for parole in twenty-five years.

Bearden’s codefendent, William David Brown, Jr., 20, will be tried separately at a later date.

In March 2007, Ryan’s body was found by the side of a rural Florida road with more than 20 stab wounds and his throat slashed. Police allege that Brown and Bearden killed Ryan and stole his car. A witness testified that Brown killed Ryan because he was gay. After finding it impossible to clean up the blood in the car to sell it, Brown and Bearden set it on fire. But because it didn’t fully burn, investigators were able to obtain fingerprints from the car.

Jury Hears Details of Ryan Skipper’s Murder

A jury in Bartow, Florida, heard evidence this week in the grisly 2007 murder of Ryan Skipper. Joseph Beardon, along with co-defendant William Brown Jr., is accused of robbing and killing Ryan, and dumping his body. Brown will be tried later at a separate trial.

The murder of of the 25-year-old gay man in Wahneta, Florida, has drawn widespread attention, not only for the grisly details of his murder, but also because the family and the LGBT community in Florida has been asked to keep a low profile during the trial. According to OA Online:

Lynn Mulder said Florida Assistant State Attorney Cass Castillo advised him that any conspicuous presence by the gay community, inside the courtroom or demonstrating outside the courthouse, could jeopardize the trial, which began Monday. So the Mulders are asking them to show their support, but silently, unobtrusively. Until the trial is over, they’re being asked to become invisible and voiceless.

On March 14, 2007, Bearden and Brown allegedly killed Ryan by stabbing him more than 20 times and slitting his throat, and leaving his body on a dark, rural road in Wahneta, Florida. The two defendants then took Ryan’s car and bragged of killing him because he was “a faggot.”

According to 265gay.com, several members of the jury were visibly shaken by autopsy photos showing that Ryan’s throat had been slashed and his torso covered with as many as twenty stab wounds. His back and shoulders were covered with blood. Associate Medical Examiner Vera Volnikh testified that Ryan’s wrists and arms also had slashes and deep cuts, indicating that he tried to fight off the attack. Volnikh testified that it was the cut to the throat that killed Ryan.The cut was 3.5 inches deep, tearing through skin, tissue, muscles and, more fatally, an artery. Ryan quickly bled to death within minutes.

Details of the events leading up to the attack are confusing and conflicting. According to testimony by John Kirchoff, a friend of Brown, Bearden had originally planned to rob Ryan at Ryan’s home. But when someone else came home, the two got into Ryan’s car and left. According to Kirchoff, they went to the home of Brown’s uncle where Kirchoff and Brown were staying to try to exchange a broken laptop for drugs. Other accounts dispute this point, saying that Ryan didn’t own a laptop, but that Ryan knew Brown because Brown knew a previous tenant at Ryan’s house.

At some point, Brown and Bearden decided to steal Ryan’s car, so they persuaded Ryan to give them a ride somewhere in Ryan’s new Chevrolet Aveo. When Kirchoff saw Brown again later that night, he had blood on his shirt.

According to Sheriff’s investigators, Bearden and Brown tried to clean and sell the car. But it was too badly soaked with blood to be cleaned and they didn’t have a copy of the car’s title to sell it, so they abandoned it on a dock on Lake Pansy in Winter Haven and set it on fire. The flames only caused minor damage, and investigators were able to retrieve both of their fingerprints from the car.

The defense is expected to present its case next week. Bearden, who is pleading not guilty to charges of robbery and first degree murder, faces the death penalty. The Sheriff’s department describes the incident as a hate crime, but because Bearden already faces the death penalty for first degree murder, adding a hate crimes enhancement will have no bearing on the case. The hate crime classification is not a separate charge but an enhancement during sentencing for existing criminal charges.