Left: Matthew Goode (14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office). Bottom right: Rodney Watson Sr. (Allison Memorial Chapel and Funeral Home). Top right: Machete used by Good to murder Watson (Solicitor’s Office).
A 50-year-old South Carolina man will spend the rest of his days in prison for using a machete to murder another man who had just given him a ride when he was stranded in the middle of the night.
Michael Eugene Goode was found guilty Thursday of the July 2020 murder of 66-year-old Rodney Watson Sr., which took place outside a mobile home on Horton Road in Burton, the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office said in a press release. According to the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, deputies responded to the Horton Road address around 2:20 a.m. July 8, 2020, and found Watson swinging the machete toward the ground. Deputies ordered Goode to drop the weapon, which he did before running away. They found Watson on the ground suffering from stab wounds. Paramedics rushed him to the hospital where doctors pronounced him dead.
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Several people identified Goode as the suspect. He returned to the scene a few hours later and deputies took him into custody on an unrelated warrant. He was eventually charged with first-degree murder.
Prosecutors say Watson, who was visiting from Georgia, was driving with his niece to the store when they saw Goode, whom she knew as Slick. They picked him up and gave him a ride. When they arrived at the Horton Road location, Goode began attacking the niece. Watson tried to intervene and Goode started slicing him with the machete. Watson suffered at least six stab wounds, mostly to the back, with the fatal blow coming when Goode severed an artery on the victim’s left arm, a forensic pathologist testified during the three-day trial.
Investigators also collected Goode’s DNA on the machete and Watson’s blood on his clothes. Goode originally tried to give police an alibi. At trial, he admitted to killing Watson, claiming to be afraid.
“The victim in this case was simply trying to help someone who looked to be in distress, but instead was met with senseless brutality,” Jared Shedd of the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office, who prosecuted the case, said in a statement. “This defendant behaved unconscionably, and both the verdict and sentence are just.”
Goode’s criminal history dates back to 1994 and he has prior convictions for distributing crack, assault and domestic violence, prosecutors said.
Watson’s obituary said he served in the U.S. Airforce and worked at a submarine maintenance facility on the Kings Bay Naval base for several years. Watson had three children and eight grand children.
“He was a goofy, funny, gun toting true American that had a kind heart and gentle soul. He loved his family and friends and would do anything for them,” the obituary said.
