CHESTER COUNTY, N.C. — Two local families are having to relive their children’s murders 30 years after they thought they had put the cases behind them.
Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling that minors cannot be sentenced to life without parole, Robert R. Moore III and Theodore Harrison Jr. - now both 46 - must be resentenced because they were only 16 when they murdered Bryan S. Stephenson, 18, of Chester, and Renee C. Rollings, 22, of Rock Hill in 1988.
Stephenson and Rollings were sitting talking in a car parked at a convenience store when Moore and Harrison walked up with guns and forced them to drive. The couple was taken to an abandoned home near Richburg where the teens shot both of them in the head.
Rollings' mother Linda Crowl told Channel 9 Monday that she never imaged she'd see Renee's killer again.
“It’s been hell! It’s been torture!” she said. “I saw the gun that shot my daughter...again!”
A judge heard Harrison's case a month ago. He has still not made a decision about whether or not to keep him locked up. Now, Moore's case is being heard. A decision is expected in June.
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“Our lives have been put in limbo, and we just don’t know what to do about it,” said Stephenson's father Johnny.
The victims were missing for 40 days, until their remains were found by a 12-year-old boy picking up aluminum cans on Highway 9.
There are 15 cases in South Carolina and about 90 in North Carolina where sentencing will have to do be done all over again because of the Supreme Court’s decision.
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