Background: Crime scene (YouTube screengrab WCNC). Inset: Gene Alexzander “Alex” Scott booking photo (Chester County Sheriff’s Office).
For the murders of his grandfather and great-grandmother — which prosecutors told a jury was motivated by money — former U.S. Army veteran Gene Alexzander “Alex” Scott of South Carolina, 26, was sentenced to 60 years in prison on Thursday.
Scott shot and killed his family members Billy Ruth Rogers and Gene Rogers in their mobile home on Doe Street in Richburg South Carolina on Father’s Day 2020, prosecutors and police said.
After a guilty verdict was reached unanimously by a jury this week, Scott was seen in court shaking his head, according to local Fox affiliate WJZY.
Scott maintains that he found his grandparent and great-grandparent dead inside of their home and his reported alibi for his whereabouts during the shootings was that he was having a secret romantic meetup with a friend in his Columbia, South Carolina, apartment.
‘I did not kill my grandparents and I never would. One day we will all die, and I hope there’s a God so you can all ask me if I did it. And I hope you choke on that answer when he tells you I did not. Don’t give me leniency because it’s not going to be given away. Throw me in prison and lock away the key if that makes you all happy,” he said Thursday.
Family members of the victims attended the hearing and wore shirts and pins commemorating Gene and Billie Rogers.
The trial lasted two weeks. An attorney for Scott said in court that he plans to appeal and seek a new trial.
As Law&Crime previously reported, after deputies found the bodies of Gene Rogers, 61, and Billy Ruth Rogers, 78, on June 20, 2020, it would be a year before ample evidence to charge him was established and he was arrested. Chester County Sheriffs believed Scott ran off to the Army after the killings and police were ultimately able to locate him at a U.S. military base in Germany and extradite him to the States. Scott had previously served in the U.S. Marine Corps as an ammo tech. He didn’t enter the Army until the same month that his grandparents were killed.
As the trial got underway in Chester County earlier this month, South Carolina Cox Media affiliate WSOC reported that jurors saw body camera footage from police who interacted with Scott after they responded to the mobile home.
Playing it in court, prosecutors argued it showed Scott performing for police that day.
“There’s blood all over, it’s like somebody executed them,” Scott exclaimed to police in 2020. “I can’t get it out of my head, I can’t get it out of my head.”
A police officer who testified at the trial said Scott seemed ingenuine.
“It was as though he was putting on a show. He would turn it on and off,” one deputy said.
Prosecutors argued Scott’s motivation was money and that he hoped by killing his grandparents he would be able to collect on a life insurance policy held by his grandfather as well as draw on the man’s retirement account since he was a listed beneficiary.
Scott’s grandfather had already gifted him $80,000 at the start of the year but that wasn’t enough, prosecutors said. Scott dreamed of opening a security business and wanted to use the funds for that. One witness testified that Scott’s grandfather refused to give him any more money roughly six to eight weeks before the slayings, Charleston NBC affiliate WCBD reported.
The outlet also reported that jurors heard testimony from a pathologist who said both victims were shot in the back of their heads. His great-grandmother was shot twice in the back of the head and also had a graze wound on her hand from a bullet whizzing by her.
Shell casings were found in the home and when Scott was first interviewed by police in 2020, he told them he had come to visit his grandparents, walked into the mobile home and found them dead on the floor. The shell casings, he said, he could see next to their head. He vomited and left, he claimed.
But at trial, investigators told jurors that wasn’t possible: the mobile home’s layout would make seeing the casings from the door impossible.
An attorney for Scott did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
