A Florida man nearly got away with the murder of his half-brother. Now, he faces spending the rest of his life behind bars after authorities solved the 7-year-old cold case.
On July 3, 2018, the Lakeland Police Department responded to the home of Rex Honors III, which he shared with his younger brother, 14-year-old Rex “Stuffy” Honors IV, after Honors III reported his brother missing. Upon arrival, officers searched the premises and found the body of the teenager in the backyard of the resident with a gunshot wound to the head.
Though authorities suspected Honors III, who was 21 at the time, from the beginning, they hit a dead end, and the case went cold. However, in May, retired Sworn Officer Gary Gross, a veteran of the LPD with 32 years of experience, reopened the case as a civilian investigator.
Initially, the defendant told investigators that he had returned home to find a broken table and that the sliding door was open. Honors III claimed a burglary took place, and he had no guns in the house. However, Gross and another sworn officer pored through 72,000 pieces of digital evidence, which led them to identify the defendant as the killer responsible for his brother’s death.
Honors III was charged with second-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence, and resisting an officer without violence, according to AOL.
At the time Gross reopened the case, Honors III had been arrested in Albany, Georgia, for stabbing a man. Some phone records showed the defendant called two of his girlfriends and told them his brother was dead before calling 911 and reporting his brother missing. A security camera installed a day before the fatal incident by a neighbor captured Honor III's panicked conversation. There were text messages from the defendant’s phone stating he shot Honors IV in the head. That information was never released to the public.
In addition, a 16-year-old witness who had been at the residence with both brothers as they played video games and searched social media, told investigators that a fight started between the brothers. The witness told investigators he got scared knowing there were guns in the house and left the residence abruptly. Just as the 16-year-old got down the road, he heard one gunshot and fled the scene on foot.
"He knew in his heart that Stuffy got shot and he was scared to death. He was 16 years old. He didn’t know what to do. He took off on foot and got the heck out of there," said Gross, reported FOX 13.
Video footage found on the defendant’s phone showed him rapping with his brother just 4 hours before the murder, with some of the lyrics stating “you’re fixing to die tonight."
Albany detectives interviewed Honors III in jail, and he confessed to the killing and admitted to cleaning up the crime scene and getting rid of the murder weapon in a neighbor’s trash.
Honors III is currently awaiting extradition to Lakeland, Florida, to await trial.
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