Martez Seay died in prison after admitting to killing five persons in the Birmingham region in 2008 and 2009.
When he pled guilty to capital murder in the seven-month crime spree, the 39-year-old Seay avoided the death penalty more than a decade ago.
He also pleaded guilty to murder conspiracy in the 2008 killing of his girlfriend, Kandi Hawkins, who was paralyzed.
Seay, the leader of a vicious gang and a “cold-blooded” killer, died Monday at Limestone Correctional Facility, where he was serving life without the possibility of release.
Officials with the Alabama Department of Corrections say Seay was discovered unresponsive in his cell on Monday. He was transferred to the prison’s health care unit, where the attending physician pronounced him dead.
Seay’s death is being investigated by the ADOC Law Enforcement Services Division. The cause of death is unknown, pending the results of an autopsy and the conclusion of the investigation.
Seay was the oldest of the renowned Seay family’s siblings. His two other brothers are already in prison for murder, and their mother, Yolanda Seay, was convicted of murder conspiracy in the Hawkins shooting.
In a 2012 episode of The First 48, Seay’s defence counsel admitted on film that his client made disturbing comments in private that raised the hairs on the back of the lawyer’s neck, telling the lawyer, “I wasn’t afraid to kill.” “I’m not afraid of dying.”
Martez Seay admitted the following in his 2011 plea:
- The shooting death of Christian Callins, 24, during a robbery attempt in November 2008, and the subsequent shooting death of Callins’ accomplice, Gregory Shelton Jr., 27.
- The shooting murders of Osmond Williams, 20, and Darrelle Sampson, 17, in December 2008. According to police, the case was a murder-for-hire committed by a drug dealer who claimed Williams stole cocaine from him. Sampson was an unintentional victim who happened to be with Williams at the time of the shooting.
- The shooting death of Lonnie Vaughn, 44, in May 2009 while robbing him with cash and a sport utility vehicle. Vaughn’s body was discovered by a man walking his dog in northeast Jefferson County. Vaughn was naked and had been shot several times, once between the eyes.
- Hawkins, 25, was charged with capital murder in that case as well, but the charge was dropped.
- The June 2009 plot to assassinate Hawkins in order to prevent her from testifying against him in the Vaughn case.
From a jailhouse phone, Seay orchestrated Hawkins’ attempted murder.
Hawkins, a security guard who aspired to be a nurse, was discovered shot in a remote north Birmingham neighborhood. She’d been shot several times.
Hawkins thought she was getting a ride to a safe house the night she was shot, but she was actually being brought somewhere to be killed.
She told police that Michael Mays and Demarious Seay drove her to a residence on 40th Avenue North.
Mays and Demarious Seay followed her out of the car. Then there was gunshots. Mays shot her again as she slid to the ground.
When authorities apprehended her, she identified Mays as the shooter.
In the days following the shooting, Hawkins, who was unable to speak, recognized both Mays and Demarious Seay as detectives pointed to letters and numbers on a chart, and she nodded her answers. Hawkins passed away in 2020, at the age of 36.
Seay, according to investigators, was the triggerman in at least four of the six shootings and a key player in all six. The group specifically targeted robbery victims who they knew would not disclose the offenses to authorities.
“It was an enterprise,” said former Birmingham homicide Sgt. Sam Noblitt. “That’s how they made their money — robbing people, and killing them when things didn’t go their way.”
“The common link in all of them,” Noblitt explained in 2009, “is Martez Seay.”
Cortez Seay, the middle Seay brother who is now 36, was 19 when he pled guilty to murdering Joe Mack Carpenter Sr., 50, and was sentenced to life in prison.
Cortez Seay was also sentenced to 25 years in prison for the attempted murders of two other people on December 14, 2004, all of which occurred at a drug house during a money dispute.
He is currently incarcerated at the St. Clair County Correctional Facility.
Demarius Seay, the youngest brother, is currently 32 years old.
In 2009, he pled guilty to attempted murder in the Hawkins shooting and felony murder in the 2008 robbery death of 17-year-old A.H. Parker High School student Brandon Ashley Donkor.
By pleading guilty, he avoided a capital murder trial in Donkor’s killing.
He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release and is now being held at the Bibb County Correctional Facility.
Yolanda Seay, now 56, pled guilty in 2010 to conspiracy to commit murder and obstructing justice in connection with the attempted murder of Kandi Hawkins.
She was sentenced to ten years in prison with 18 months to serve.
Yolanda Seay told The Birmingham News before she was charged that she ached for the families who had been harmed and was heartbroken about Hawkins’ injuries.
She claimed she did everything she could to keep her children safe from the streets.
Of their arrests, she said, “This is what I didn’t want, not in my life and not in my family. I just want to know what part I missed. I want to know what did it. I don’t know what else I could have done.”
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