6 gang members charged with 2014 Lake Wylie murders

York County prosecutors and police will not have a role in seeking the death penalty against six North Carolina Bloods gang members accused of killing a Lake Wylie couple to keep the husband from testifying in a Charlotte murder case, because South Carolina law does not allow those charged as accessory to face the electric chair.

And for a crime that York County Sheriff Bruce Bryant and 16th Circuit Solicitor Kevin Brackett said is as heinous, brutal, and violent as any, the defendants deserve to face the death penalty.

Doug and Debbie London were gunned down at their Lake Wylie home in October five months after they were robbed at their Charlotte mattress store, in a crime police and prosecutors said was a hired hit from jail by the man Doug London shot during the robbery. But that accused robber, Jamell Cureton, who is implicated as setting up the plot and murders from his Charlotte jail cell, does not qualify for the death penalty under South Carolina law, Brackett said.

“There would be no death penalty eligibility for Mr. Cureton for accessory before the fact to murder, so the best place for justice to be done where the death penalty can be sought is the federal court,” Brackett said.

Only the alleged shooter, Malcolm Hartley, and his girlfriend, who drove Hartley to the crime, Brianna Johson, would be eligible for the death penalty in state court in South Carolina. So Brackett and York County Sheriff Bruce Bryant, whose detectives put together the plot with help from the FBI and Charlotte police, gave all their investigation materials to federal prosecutors that led to Wednesday’s indictment of 12 people in a far ranging plot – including six for murder who face the death penalty in federal court.

York County deputies, who have spent six months on the case, are still an integral part of the murder investigation.

Hartley and Johnson, in jail in York County since arrest, will be taken to a federal jail in Charlotte within days.

Both Brackett and Bryant said at a news conference Wednesday in Charlotte with the other agencies involved that the venue is not as important as the justice seeking a hard and swift response to the killing of a witness to keep Cureton from being held accountable at trial for the May mattress store robbery.

The killing of the Londons was an attack on the rule of law and a civilized society, Brackett said.

“These defendants attacked the right of society to defend itself from these kinds of crimes,” Brackett said.

In all, six suspected Charlotte gang members are facing charges in the Londons’ deaths. Two were arrested Wednesday after an early morning FBI raid on the Charlotte cell of UBN, an East Coast gang with strong criminal ties across the region, while four others already were in custody.

According to the indictment, Cureton, who went by the gang names “Murda Mel” and “Assassin,” ordered and planned the Londons’ killing last October from his cell in the Mecklenburg County Jail.

Gang members made at least one trip to the couple’s South Boulevard store to “intimidate or kill them” in order to block their testimony at the upcoming robbery trial. It’s not clear whether the Londons were present when the gang members showed up at their store in October.

By Oct. 7, Cureton had given the go-ahead for the killings, the indictment says, and he sent two letters to Hartley ordering that the hit be made.

Gang members met by phone on Oct. 15 to discuss the upcoming killings with the final planning meeting taking place on Oct. 23, the indictment says. Later that night, the Londons were killed as they answered the door of their lakeside home. Afteward, Hartley and Johnson met with other gang members to celebrate the couple’s deaths, the indictment says.

This story was originally published April 23, 2015 at 7:17 AM with the headline "6 gang members charged with 2014 Lake Wylie murders."