Accused killer used cellphone to plot hit from jail, cops say. Detectives were listening.
A recorded conversation from a smuggled cellphone that prosecutors say was passed around the Bibb County Jail and used by inmates to make calls to the free world produced a potentially key piece of evidence in a murder trial Thursday.
The man on trial, Keith Beddingfield Jr., 27, is accused of shooting a part-time drug dealer in the head three times and killing him two years ago this week.
The victim, Javaris Antoine Brown, 33, was found dead in a car near the intersection of Carling and Napier avenues on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 4, 2018.
Prosecutors contend the pair had met inside a Hyundai Sonata that Brown had borrowed from his girlfriend when Brown apparently went to confront Beddingfield about supposedly having him robbed of $800 the day before.
Prosecutors say Beddingfield had been driven to the meeting by his then-wife, Karen Morton. In the days after the shooting, Morton is said to have gone to the police and implicated Beddingfield, who was then charged with Brown’s murder.
About three months later, in May 2018, Bibb County sheriff’s investigators who had tapped a cellphone they knew was floating around inside the county jail were listening when Beddingfield placed a call to Kelvin D. Johnson, who had dated one of Beddingfield’s aunts.
Johnson was on the stand in Bibb Superior Court on Thursday as a recording of that roughly five-minute call was played for jurors in Beddingfield’s murder trial.
Johnson, 45, described the call as one in which he and Beddingfield conspired to have Morton, Beddingfield’s now-ex-wife, murdered for ratting out Beddingfield to the cops and to prevent her from testifying against Beddingfield, which she did Wednesday.
“He said that she folded on him, that she had told on him,” Johnson said, describing the call.
In the call, a voice prosecutors say is Beddingfield’s can be heard asking Johnson, “How much money I need to give you? ... I need it done. ... I promise you, I can have you at least $900 to $1,000.”
Beddingfield can also be heard allegedly hatching portions of a scheme for Johnson to stage a robbery at the Dollar General store where Morton worked and to kill her in the process.
After the recording played in court, prosecutor Sandra Matson asked Johnson about the call, saying, “You were laughing about it, weren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Johnson said.
“I should call you hit man, shouldn’t I?” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied.
At press time Friday, the jury was still deliberating.
This story was originally published February 6, 2020 at 5:31 PM.