March 5, 2019
Convict in Notorious Hate Crime Murder is Killed in Prison
Kilian Melloy READ TIME: 2 MIN.
Steven Eric Mullins was sentenced at the age of 25 to life in prison after being convicted of the horrific Feb. 12, 1999 murder of a gay man named Billy Jack Gaiter.
Two decades later, at the age of 45, Mullins has died in prison, himself the victim of violence. Another inmate – Christopher Scott Jones, 50, already serving a 50-year sentence after being convicted of killing five men in 2008 – is the suspect in Mullins' death, al.com reports.
News outlets reported the Mullins was found with multiple stab wounds on Feb. 26, and was taken to a hospital. He died on Feb. 28. Jones now faces murder charges, area news station WBRC reported.
Jones was found guilty of killing five men in 2008 in what reportedly was a hit job involving nearly half a million dollars in "missing drug cartel money," the al.com story said.
Mullins was convicted in Gaiter's hate crime murder along with Charles Monroe Butler, then 21 years old. The two men initially told authorities they plotted the death of Gaiter, who was 39 years old because Gaither had come on to Mullins some days before the crime. Later on, they changed their story and claimed that the killing took place directly after Gaither made advances not on Mullins, but on Butler.
In changing their story, the men denied having planned Gaither's murder, but the method and viciousness of Gaither's slaying belie that. As recounted by al.com, the duo "lured Gaither from a Sylacauga bar to a boat launch, stabbed him, beat him with an ax handle, put him in a car trunk and drove him to a creek."
Once at the creek, a second beating followed before the men splashed kerosene on a pair of tires, lit them on fire, and then threw Gaither on the makeshift pyre.
Gaiter's ghastly death and the viciousness with which he was killed sparked an outcry across the nation and prompted demands in Alabama for the state's hate crimes law to be expanded to cover LGBTQs. Despite the gruesome circumstances of Gaither's slaying, officials in Alabama refused to extend the law's protections to sexual minorities. Yearly protests ensued, with the latest annual Vigil of Victims of Hate and Violence of Alabama taking place less than two weeks before Mullins was slain in prison.
