LAKELAND, Fla. – The half-brother of a 14-year-old murder victim has been arrested in the teen’s 2018 shooting death.
The backstory:
On July 3, 2018, the victim’s older brother, Rex Honors III, 21, called police shortly before 4:30 a.m. and reported that he got home late and couldn’t find his younger brother, 14-year-old Rex Honors IV, who went by the name Stuffy.
Honors told police that a table was broken and the sliding glass door to the backyard was opened.
Officers checked the home and found the 14-year-old brother in the backyard, deceased.
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The case went cold but was recently reopened by LPD’s cold case investigators in May.
Gary Gross, a civilian investigator who retired as a sworn officer with 32 years of experience, along with a sworn officer, began looking into the case.
“This isn’t a one-hour thing you see on CSI, this is real life,” Lakeland Police Chief Sammy Taylor stated.
Cracking the cold case
By the numbers:
On the suspect’s cell phone, they looked at 26,378 pieces of digital evidence such as photos and videos. On the victim’s cell phone, there were 28,338 pieces of digital evidence. A witness’s cell phone had 17,886 pieces of digital evidence.
“That’s over 72,000 pieces of digital evidence to look at,” Gross explained. “Just one piece of evidence can make a case. In this case, there’s quite a few.”
Pictured: Rex Honors III. He was charged in his brother’s 2018 cold case homicide.
According to Gross, Rex Honors III had been a suspect since day one.
He was arrested in Albany, Georgia, for stabbing someone in August and is still in jail.
Accused killer’s confession
Dig deeper:
Cold case detectives went to Georgia last month to interview him.
“During that interview, we got a full confession to what took place,” Gross stated. “Things that he told us that were law enforcement sensitive that had never been released to the public before, he knew.”
On the night of the murder, the Honor brothers were hanging out playing video games and searching social media when they began fighting and broke a table, according to Gross.
A 16-year-old witness said he knew there were guns in the home, and he was scared, so he left the home.
Gross said he went a short distance down the driveway and as soon as he got to the road, the witness heard one gunshot go off.
Rex Honors IV a.k.a ‘Stuffy’ was killed in 2018.
“He knew in his heart that Stuffy got shot and he was scared to death,” Gross said. “He was 16 years old. He didn’t know what to do. He took off on foot and got the heck out of there.”
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Gross said Stuff was shot at close range, about 2-4 inches away from his forehead.
“The suspect then picked him up under his arms in the bedroom, in the northeast bedroom, dragged him out of the bedroom, down the hallway, through the living room, where he stopped briefly and then through the kitchen and out a sliding glass door, out to the yard,” Gross explained. “When he took him outside, the grass was at least 4-5 feet high. He dragged him through the grass and left him lying out there in the grass.”
Gross said Honors III admitted to cleaning up the crime scene with rags, towels and bleach. Gross added that Honors III claimed to have gotten rid of the gun and the evidence in a neighbor’s trash can, but he didn’t say which one.
Phone call forensics
Afterward, Gross said Honors III made a series of phone calls.
“He called girlfriend No. 1, made several calls and attempts to reach her and she realized this when she looked at her phone and called him back at 3:38 in the morning,” Gross stated. “Remember, he didn’t call police until 4:22 a.m. She said he was crying on the phone and he said his brother was dead. This is before he called police and said his brother was missing…He then made several phone calls to girlfriend No. 2 and at 3:57 in the morning he talked to her for 16 minutes and three seconds and that ended at 4:13 in the morning, pretty close to when he called police to report his brother missing. She said he was out of breath. That stuck out in her mind. She thought that was strange. He said he was looking for his brother. He said he got to the house and it wasn’t broken into because there was no broken glass. Of, there he is and he hangs up. She doesn’t know why he hangs up but this is what he was telling her at that time of the morning.”
Gross went on to say that a nearby home installed a surveillance camera the day before the murder. That camera, according to Gross, caught Honors III talking on the phone in a panic.
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Honors III suggested to the police that morning that a burglary may have occurred, but Gross said there was no evidence to support that claim.
Honors III also sent several text messages on the morning of the murder saying that his brother had been shot in the head, but that information had never been shared with the public, according to Gross.
“Only the person who did this would know that and that’s Rex Honors III,” Gross shared.
On the morning of the murder, police said Honors III denied having any guns in the home, but Gross found video on his phone that was taken about four hours before the murder occurred that showed Honors III and his brother recording a rap video with guns.
“Some of the lyrics in that video are ‘you’re fixing to die tonight,’” Gross explained.
What’s next:
Honors III is still in jail in Georgia, but he is expected to eventually be brought back to Lakeland.
Chief Taylor said Honors III could spend the rest of his life in prison.
The Source: This article was written with information found in a press release from the Lakeland Police Department, a press conference on the cold case and previous FOX 13 News reports.