A convict waited until he finished serving a 15-year sentence Tuesday to admit he was responsible for the unrelated 2002 stabbing deaths of a pregnant mother and her 6-year-old son.
Lewis Ladon Spivey, 39, was immediately taken back into custody in Florida after confessing to butchering Monica Rollins, 23, and Dalton Rollins in their Alabama home 21 years ago.
Rollins was 8-and-a-half months pregnant when she was ruthlessly stabbed to death, Heflin Police Capt. Scott Bonner said at a Friday press conference.
She and Dalton were killed several days before their bodies were found in September 2002 in Heflin, a city 75 miles east of Birmingham.
Rollins’ 3-year-old son had survived alone in the house alongside his family’s mutilated bodies and was found hiding unharmed in a closet by investigators.
They continued chasing down potential suspects over the past two decades, but the case remained cold, according to Bonner.
Spivey, who has a swastika neck tattoo, allegedly kept the sordid secret to himself until he was released Tuesday from a Florida prison, where state records show he had just completed a 2010 sentence for unrelated robbery and aggravated assault charges.
“Spivey has since cooperated with the investigation and has given a complete confession wherein he outlined the timeline of the events that day and taken sole responsibility for both murders,” said Bonner.
Bonner described Spivey as an “acquaintance” to Rollins and said the two “had a relationship,” but did not reveal a motive or circumstances leading up to the killings.
The cold case investigator gave few details on what led to the break in the case, saying only that the department was given a grant for DNA analysis and several items were processed by a state lab and private labs in Canada.
Bonner did say that Spivey was investigated in the immediate aftermath of the stabbings, but that detectives had run into a dead end.
“We didn’t have surveillance, pictures or cameras,” said Bonner. “We didn’t have the things that you would have nowadays.”
Spivey has since been transported to Alabama and is being held at the Cleburne County Jail.
He is being held without bail under the state Aniah’s Law, which denies bail to violent offenders accused of crimes ranging from human trafficking to murder
