Facts of the Crime:
Richard Lynch pled guilty to the March 5, 1999 murders of Roseanna Morgan and her 13-year-old daughter, Leah Caday. Lynch admitted to having an extramarital affair with Roseanna Morgan between August 1998 and February 1999. During that time, they had run up credit card bills. When Morgan ended the affair, Lynch asked her to assist in the credit card debt they had acquired together. Additionally, Lynch wrote a letter to his wife prior to the events on March 5, 1999, admitting to the affair. In the letter, he had directed his wife to letters and pictures Morgan had given Lynch during the affair. Lynch asked his wife to send the letters and pictures to Morgan’s family. He wrote: “I want them to have a sense of why it happened, some decent closure, a reason and understanding…” A doctor for the State testified that this was evidence of a murder-suicide plot.
On March 5, 1999, Lynch went to her apartment with three handguns with the intent of getting Morgan to pay off the credit card bills. When he arrived at the apartment, Morgan was not there, but Caday was. He showed her the gun he had on him and forced her to stay there with him until her mom returned. Lynch told detectives that he just planned on showing Morgan the guns to make her sit down and talk to him. He further confessed to shooting her four or five times with one gun, bringing her into the apartment and then shooting her in the back of the head with a different gun. Lynch then admitted that he shot Caday in her back. Both Morgan and Caday died of their gunshot wounds.
Lynch had called 911 and admitted to the operator all of the above events and said he was going to kill himself. He also called his wife three times during the events, and she testified that she could hear a woman screaming in the background. The second time he called, she testified that he admitted to shooting someone. A few of Morgan’s neighbors testified to the events of March 5, 1999 as well. One neighbor testified to looking out a peephole after hearing the first gunshots and seeing Morgan being dragged into her apartment by Lynch. The neighbor further testified that Morgan was screaming and appeared to be bloody from the waist down. The neighbor also testified that, after Lynch closed the door, three more gunshots were heard. Another neighbor also testified to hearing three more shots five or seven minutes after the first shots.
After a standoff with the police, Lynch was arrested. During the interview after his arrest, he confessed to all the events described.
Lynch was sentenced to death in Seminole County on April 3, 2001.
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