Martin Rutrell

Homicide

4known / alleged victims

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Case Facts

Gender: male
Country: USA
Location: Florida/South Carolina, USA
Date of birth: 1955
Age at first offence: 15
Characteristics: juvenile (15), hate crime
Victim profile: White m en
Method of murder: Shooting
Date(s) of murder: May 3-20, 1970
Years active: 1970
Date of arrest: May 20, 1970
Status: Life imprisonment
Sentenced to life in prison in South Carolina

Case Summary

Background

Martin Rutrell was born in 1955 in New York City. He was 15 years old when he joined accomplice L.L.

The offence

Rutrell participated in a five-week murder tour of Dixie during which black gunmen shot and wounded three white college students in Durham, North Carolina, on April 15, 1970, and then murdered another Caucasian, J.J. Bowles, at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on May 3. On May 14, in Boca Raton, they commandeered a car with two white co-eds on the campus of Florida Atlantic University, shot both victims to death, and dumped their corpses in nearby woods. Six days later, in Hardeeville, South Carolina, they murdered the white owner of a roadside vegetable stand and wounded his clerk before the young man returned fire, killing Thompson on the spot.

Investigation

A police roadblock stopped the fugitive vehicle forty miles north of the crime scene.

Arrest

Martin Rutrell was arrested along with another black New Yorker, 17-year-old Ben Chaney, Jr.

Trial

Rutrell was convicted of murder in South Carolina. Chaney was convicted of the Nardeeville murder on November 24, despite claims that he was “mentally disturbed” by his brother's death six years earlier at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan.

Sentencing

Rutrell was sentenced to prison, with trials pending on other felony charges in North Carolina and Florida.

Outcome

Rutrell was sentenced to life in prison in South Carolina.

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