By NewsOne Staff
James C. Brown, 25, was convicted of first-degree murder Friday afternoon in the killings of four Detroit women he met through Backpage.com, reports USA Today.
Brown—who was convicted of murdering Vernithea McCrary, Natasha Curtis, Demesha Hunt and Renisha Landers—faced 10 charges, including first-degree murder, disinterment and mutilation of a dead body and arson.
It took a jury less than four hours of deliberation before finding him guilty of all charges.
Brown is accused of killing the women in two separate incidents at his mother’s Sterling Heights home, loading their bodies into cars and leaving them in a blighted area in his old neighborhood in Detroit. Prosecutors said he caught rides home after dumping the women, who were found in pairs. The bodies of one pair of women were set on fire.
Prosecutors said blood, DNA evidence and cell phone records will help prove Brown killed the women. Brown told police that he smoked marijuana with the women, had sex with some of them and passed out. When he awoke, they were dead.
Brown admitted to putting their bodies in cars and driving them to Detroit and pouring gasoline on two of the bodies in the trunk and setting it on fire.
Judge James Biernat Jr. instructed the court not to display emotions when the verdict was read, but the victims’ families still erupted with relief.
Though they received some measure of justice, there are still unanswered questions and voids that no verdict can fill.
“I wish they had the electrocutin’ chair. I want a life for a life. He needs to die,” said Chikita Madison, the mother of one victim and the aunt of another.
Denise Higgins, the mother of another victim, said: “Why God has put us through this, I don’t understand.”
Brown, who faces life without the possibility of parole, will be sentenced on April 15.
