 Shawn Amos, 36, guilty of first-degree murder. (File photo)
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BARRIE -- A man received a Friday the 13th guilty verdict yesterday for a killing straight out of a horror movie.
Richard Boxall, 31, was beaten to death with a baseball bat, meat cleaver, scissors and a barbecue fork on Feb. 23, 2007.
The jury found the ringleader in the murder, Shawn Amos, 36, guilty of first-degree murder after three days of deliberations.
Amos' friends were also on trial for murder but the jury found John Preston, 38, guilty of manslaughter and a third man, Scott Dakins, not guilty.
"I can tell you my client is pretty relieved," said Dakins' lawyer, Mitch Eisen, who made an impassioned plea to the jury that Dakins was terrified when he saw Boxall being beaten.
Throughout the trial the jury heard how Boxall, 31, begged for his life when Amos accused him of stealing his bag of Ecstasy off the kitchen table -- even though Amos knew the real thief had just left in a cab.
As Boxall pleaded with the men to believe him, Amos walked behind him with a baseball bat and started swinging at his head. In a drug-fuelled frenzy, Preston grabbed other weapons and joined in.
The jury heard how Amos, a local crack and cocaine dealer, kept a baseball bat at hand and doled out punishment to anyone who tried to steal his drugs.
But it was Amos' own words just 15 hours after the killing that played a key role in his conviction. After he stuffed Boxall in a trunk and dumped him in a snowbank, he continued to do lines of cocaine throughout the day.
Later, while he was "trashed" at a Toronto bar he started babbling to a friend about what he had done, telling him it was "messy" and that his usual people who clean up weren't available.
That friend, Nathan Buress, became frightened and left the bar and went straight to police and surveillance was set up.
Boxall's cousin, Steve Cline, said he was horrified when he learned how his cousin died.
"These guys went on him like a pack of hyenas, for no reason," he said from Texas.
Cline, 38, formerly from the Barrie area who now lives in a U.S. state where the death penalty is in full force, says his cousin's killers should be put to death.
"I wish the trial were held here," Cline said. "I am in full support of the death penalty -- an eye for an eye."
He noted the Texas Department of Criminal Justice states the cost of the average lethal injection is $86 per person.
"That could be the cheapest high these addicts ever had," he said. "And justice would be done for my cousin, as well as society ... we don't need people like that on this planet."
A sentencing date for Amos and Preston has not been set.
