‘There’s a smell in this car that’s awful’: Hitchhiker who strangled woman to death, then decapitated her a day later receives fate

Background: Keegan Phillips is seen in handcuffs (YouTube/WXIA). Inset: Phillips (Hall County (Ga.) Sheriff’s Office).

A Georgia man who killed a woman and then returned to the scene of a crime a day later where he decapitated her and dumped the victim’s head in another location is headed to prison.

Keegan Cleve Plumer Phillips III, 25, pleaded guilty to murder, aggravated assault and two counts of abandonment of a dead body in the August 2023 death of 22-year-old Martha Angela Ledford. On Monday, a judge sentenced Phillips to life in prison plus six years, the District Attorney for the Mountain Judicial Circuit said in a press release.

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Prosecutors said Phillips strangled Ledford to death with a belt in early August 2023 at a home in Rabun County, Georgia. Phillips, with the help of his boss, Robert Lee Peppers Sr., moved Ledford’s body to another location. The next day Phillips came back to where they dumped the victim’s body and decapitated her. He then moved her head elsewhere, according to prosecutors.

At that point, cops didn’t even know she was missing or deceased. Pepper called law enforcement on Aug. 6, 2023, to detail what he and Phillips had done. Cops found Ledford’s body in both locations the next day.

Meanwhile, the Georgia Bureau of Investigations and other law enforcement agencies tracked down Phillips in Hall County, some 55 miles to the southwest of Rabun County on Aug. 8.

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As Law&Crime previously reported, a man told a local TV station about how he picked up a hitchhiker, having no idea he was a murder suspect.

According to Russell Jimmerson, Phillips, who hails from Otto, North Carolina, had been in his car just hours earlier.

Jimmerson was picking up his paycheck when he saw a man walking, local NBC affiliate WXIA reported. He didn’t know who the man was, but he decided to pick him up when it appeared that the man was looking for a ride.

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