GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — A gang member has been sentenced for the brutal shooting deaths of two Athens men who were lured into a storage shed in Gwinnett County, where they were missing for months.
The United States District Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Georgia sentenced 35-year-old Lesley Chappell Green to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murders of Joshua Jackson and Derrick Ruff.
He is one of three men convicted last August of the two men's killings back in December 2018 before their bodies were found months later in March 2019, despite conspiring to either burn the bodies of Jackson and Ruff or dispose of them in a landfill, according to a release issued Tuesday.
It all started on Dec. 10, 2018, when a member of their gang, Gangster Disciples, was murdered in Athens. Two members of the gang, Philmon Chambers and Andrea Browner, wanted retaliation for his murder and believed three Athens residents were responsible, the release stated.
On Dec. 14, Browner met a man named Rodriguez Rucker at a hotel in downtown Athens, where they found out that Rucker was related to one of the people that she believed killed Brown. Browner then texted Chambers, who came to the hotel and followed Rucker to his home, where he shot and killed him, the release said.
Browner was later arrested for the murder in Mt. Enterprise, Texas, a day later, but Chambers was able to get away. Chambers then became suspicious that someone was tipping off law enforcement and turned his focus to Ruff and Jackson, who were not cooperating with authorities about the crimes.
"Chambers incorrectly concluded that Ruff and Jackson were 'snitches' and directed Green, who held a subordinate position on the Enforcement Team, to carry out the murders of Ruff and Jackson," the release stated.
Authorities said through text messages and intercepted phone calls between Chambers, Green and more gang members, law enforcement discovered that Ruff and Jackson were lured from Athens to the storage shed in Lawrenceville to steal items for Chambers as "aid and assistance" as they were hiding out from law enforcement in a Gangster Disciple "safe house."
The trick worked, and Ruff and Jackson unknowingly walked straight into their cold-blooded deaths.
According to warrants filed in Gwinnett County Magistrate Court, Green and Carlisle talked about cleaning up the bodies after the murders on the phone while police were wiretapping their calls. Police said Green spoke with several people about the incident and was trying to figure out how officers were able to identify him and his vehicle.
Police said Carlisle also talked about the murders on the phone and talked about how to get rid of the bodies. He called the bodies "spoiled milk" and "needed to contact the janitor to clean it up," according to the arrest warrant.
The search for Ruff and Jackson encompassed 100 acres of land, and the bodies of Jackson and Ruff were found inside a storage unit, dead with multiple gunshot wounds. Investigators believe they were killed on or around the time they went missing in December 2021.
Chambers and Browner will learn their sentences on March 20 in Macon.
