Murder of Roger Honeycutt
1977 kidnapping and murder of a soldier in Georgia, U.S
On September 4, 1977, in Wayne County, Georgia, 25-year-old Fort Stewart soldier Roger Honeycutt (1952 – September 4, 1977), who was moonlighting as a taxi driver, was kidnapped by two fellow soldiers, Thomas Dean Stevens (1957 – June 28, 1993) and Christopher Allen Burger (December 30, 1959 – December 7, 1993), who robbed and sexually assaulted Honeycutt before they drowned him. The two murderers were caught for the crime after a friend of theirs got wind of their involvement and filed a report to the police. In January 1978, both Stevens and Burger were found guilty and sentenced to death.
Stevens was executed by the electric chair at the age of 36 on June 28, 1993, while Burger, who was 17 at the time of the offense, was similarly executed by electrocution five months later on December 7, 1993, in spite of widespread efforts to seek clemency for Burger, who became one of the few offenders to be executed for crimes committed as a juvenile in the United States.
Abduction and murder
On September 4, 1977, a soldier and part-time taxi driver was kidnapped, robbed and murdered by two passengers in Wayne County, Georgia.
25-year-old Fort Stewart soldier Roger Honeycutt, who moonlighted as a taxi driver to earn additional income, picked up two passengers, 17-year-old Christopher Allen Burger and 20-year-old Thomas Dean Stevens, who were also soldiers like Honeycutt. In reality, Burger and Stevens were out of money after drinking beer at a club in their military base and planned to commit robbery, while at the same time, they received a phone call from a friend, who asked them to fetch him at a Savannah airport. Upon entering the taxi of Honeycutt, Burger and Stevens threatened him with a butcher knife and a sharpening tool, which they stole from the military base's mess hall. After robbing Honeycutt of $16, they forcibly performed both sodomy and oral sex on Honeycutt, who was subsequently tied up and locked in the trunk of the vehicle.
Afterwards, the pair drove Honeycutt's taxi and fetched their friend and squad leader, James Robert Botsford, and during the trip itself, the duo informed Botsford about the robbery and sexual assault of Honeycutt, and the pair also repeatedly called out to Honeycutt throughout the journey, to which Honeycutt responded from the trunk.
The public source identifies “Murder of Roger Honeycutt” as 1977 kidnapping and murder of a soldier in Georgia, U.S. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Murder, Roger and Honeycutt.
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This entry incorporates text from “Murder of Roger Honeycutt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.