At 2:30 p.m. on November 8, 2004, 7-year-old Javier Martinez and 9-year-old Jorge Martinez returned home from school to find their parents, Jaime and Katrina Resendez, shot to death on the floor of their house on the outskirts of Moultrie, Georgia.
The children ran for help, and the police quickly arrived. They found three other people shot to death in the house: Betty Watts, who was Katrina’s mother; Lilliana Rodriguez, a housekeeper; and 3-year-old Juan Resendez.
Officers with the Colquitt County Sheriff’s Office would later say that the house looked like it had been ransacked. The doors on the kitchen cabinets and a freezer were open, and the closets had been rifled through.
Investigators recovered bullets from a 9 mm pistol at the crime scene that were consistent with the bullets recovered during the autopsies of the five victims.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) assisted Colquitt County in the investigation, and they quickly connected the killings with drugs. At the time of their deaths, Katrina and Jaime were awaiting trial on drug charges in nearby Berrien County.
The investigation led to Jerry Johnny Thompson Jr., an associate of Jaime Resendez. Thompson had been arrested in Texas about 10 days before the murders, and he would later testify that the DEA released him after he agreed to help the agency build a case against Hector Valdez, Resendez’s supplier, who was based in the Houston area.
On August 17, 2006, police charged Thompson and his girlfriend, Wilma Stover, with five counts of malice murder and related crimes in the Moultrie killings. The state sought the death penalty against Thompson. At the time of the arrests, Thompson and Stover were already in prison, having pled guilty in September 2005 to charges of conspiracy to distribute marijuana.
Thompson had been cooperating with investigators long before the charges had been brought, naming Anthony Davis as an accomplice and providing a description of a third man whom he said had participated in the killings. He described this man as a “Black male, 24 to 28/29 years of age. Pecan brown, light brown complexion, clean shaven, medium to husky build, shorter face, not fat. Worms, not long, short twists, short on the sides and more on the top, and big lips, Donald Duck, smirky looking, wide across his face.”
A sketch artist worked with Thompson to create a composite drawing, which was released to the public at the time of Thompson’s arrest.
More than four years later, on November 15, 2010, police charged 32-year-old Alexander Woods III with five counts of malice murder and related charges. At the time, Woods was serving six years in prison for an unrelated drug conviction. Available records don’t directly indicate how Woods came to the attention of law enforcement, although he was an acquaintance of Davis’s, who had been found dead on January 16, 2005. He had been shot to death and his body burned.
Thompson pled guilty to five counts of felony murder on November 21, 2011, and was sentenced to life in prison on one of the counts. Sentencing on the remaining counts was deferred until after Woods’s trial, which began May 7, 2013, in Colquitt County Superior Court.
Attorneys William Folsom and Steve Adkins represented Woods.
There was no physical or forensic evidence connecting Woods to the crime.
Thompson was the state’s main witness. He testified that he met Resendez through an acquaintance and they began working together. He said Resendez hired him to help move money and marijuana between Texas and Georgia because Resendez had lost some shipments and owed money to Valdez.
After his arrest in Texas, Thompson testified, he tried to get Resendez to contact Valdez, but Resendez didn’t follow through.
Thompson said he devised a plan to force Resendez to reach out to Valdez. He said he hired Davis, whom he sometimes used to collect drug debts, to go to Resendez’s house and scare him into calling Valdez. Thompson said that on the morning of the murders, he called Davis at 5 a.m. to review the plan. According to Thompson, Davis said he needed to bring along his “homeboy,” whom Thompson later identified as Woods.
Thompson said he gave Davis two bulletproof vests, a 9 mm pistol, and an AK-47 semi-automatic rifle. Davis and Woods followed Thompson and Stover to the Resendez house. Thompson testified that he left Davis and Woods there while he and Stover ran an errand.
Thompson said Davis called him a few minutes later and said there was trouble at the house. He said that when he returned, he found Davis holding the AK-47 and Jaime Resendez dead on the floor. He said he saw Woods holding Rodriguez by the hair, with the pistol at her head, and that Woods was telling Thompson to ask Rodriguez in Spanish where the money was.
Thompson said he told Woods there was no money. He said drug dealers had a general rule that “We don’t keep money where we sleep.”
Thompson told Stover to leave, which she did, just as Katrina Resendez and Watts pulled up. Thompson said Woods grabbed Katrina and demanded to know the location of any money. He also said he saw Woods remove a gold chain from Jaime Resendez’s body.
Thompson said he left the house and waited for Davis and Woods outside. Later, they discussed how to get rid of the evidence. Thompson said they threw the clothes in a dumpster in the city of Tifton and tossed the weapons off a dirt road. (Thompson later led investigators to the weapons site, where the assault rifle and 9 mm magazine were recovered.) Thompson also testified that Woods regretted shooting the child but said, “He’s going to grow up some day.”
Thompson said he saw Davis take $2,000 from his pocket and give Woods half. Thompson also said he gave Davis $900.
Thompson testified that he “would never forget” Woods’s face. He said he had no motive to lie. “I’ve got five life sentences. What I say here can’t help—ain’t going to help me,” he said.
Thompson testified that he was not a violent person and during cross-examination denied telling a jail inmate that “the last time I saw Anthony Davis he smelled like burnt ham.”
Stover testified that she and Thompson met Davis and another Black man at a McDonald’s on the morning of the murder, and that she accompanied Thompson when he drove with the other men to the Resendez house, returning later after Davis called. She did not identify Woods as the Black man with Davis.
Stover also testified that Thompson had a violent streak. She said that after she threatened to call the law, Thompson hit her and said he would kill her if she contacted the police.
Devincint Douglas testified that Woods had called him in 2011 and told him to tell Woods’s girlfriend to “get rid of that necklace [because] that was all they had on him” to connect him to the crime. Douglas testified he did not relay the message to law enforcement at the time but contacted investigators after he was arrested for an unrelated crime.
The state introduced telephone records showing calls between Davis and the home of Natasha Thomas, Woods’s girlfriend, on the morning of the murder. Thomas testified that if Davis was calling the house where she lived with her mother, it was to speak with Woods.
Keyuna Bynes, Woods’s sister, testified that Woods wore his hair with twists at the time of the murder. She also said that Woods had displayed $500 in cash on November 8, 2004, and had given Thomas money to get her nails done. She said Woods had only recently started working but had yet to be paid.
Woods did not testify, and his attorneys did not present any witnesses. Through Bynes and Thomas, they tried to establish an alibi for Woods for certain times tied to the murders and their aftermath.
On May 10, 2013, the jury convicted Woods of five counts of malice murder, five counts of felony murder, and five counts of aggravated assault. Judge Tracy Moulton Jr. sentenced him to five consecutive sentences of life in prison.
On May 14, 2013, a judge sentenced Thompson on his remaining four counts of murder to four concurrent life sentences. In October 2013, Stover pled guilty to five counts of aggravated assault as a lesser included offense of felony murder and was sentenced to serve nine years of a 20-year sentence in prison, with the balance on probation, concurrently on all five counts.
Woods moved for a new trial on May 16, 2013, and attorneys Matthew Winchester and Jason McClendon were appointed to represent him after Woods asserted that Adkins and Folsom had provided ineffective representation. In amended motions filed on April 17, 2019, and September 20, 2019, Woods said that his trial attorneys had not adequately cross-examined Thompson and Stover or introduced evidence collected by the state that would have impeached their testimony.
According to the motion, the attorneys did not:
Question Thompson about a letter he wrote to a friend in early 2005, where he said he planned to kill himself. Thompson wrote: “Mike man this sucks; but you know what man, I did it. And you know what, I am going to pay for it all, I have no soul, my emotions are zeros, life has zero meaning for me.” Thompson had also confessed his involvement to others. Valdez told investigators that Thompson called him and said: “Jaime won't be able to come to the phone anymore. I just did him.”
Cross-examine Thompson about a statement Thompson made prior to telling investigators another person was with Davis. Thompson wrote that “he was going to throw investigators off in a whole different direction because he did not want to spend 27 years in prison.”
Question Thompson about his own motive for killing Jaime Resendez, whom he believed had stolen some of his marijuana.
Cross-examine Thompson about a statement he made to investigators that “he really did not remember” what Davis’s “homeboy” looked like. This ran counter to his testimony that he would never forget Woods’s face.
The unused evidence also contradicted Thompson’s characterization of himself as a peaceful person.
In addition, the motions said that Thompson was never asked about any sentencing relief he would receive for testifying. “Perhaps the most powerful motive for a witness to lie under oath about material facts is to save his own life,” the motion said. “Here, the jury never knew that the State had sought the death penalty against Thompson.”
At an evidentiary hearing on October 10, 2019, Winchester and McClendon questioned the trial attorneys about numerous documents related to Thompson. The state objected to the use of these documents, asserting they were hearsay because they had not been authenticated. Judge Moulton sustained the objection, although he did not give a reason for his decision.
One of Woods’s trial attorneys testified that there was no strategic reason for his failure to question Thompson about inconsistencies in his statements or about the sentencing relief offered by the state. “I don’t recall that I knew he’d been charged with a death penalty offense,” the attorney said.
The trial attorneys also testified that they were unfamiliar with many of the documents shown to them at the hearing. “You’re asking questions about stuff that I don’t know anything about,” an attorney said. “I don’t remember all that being in the discovery.”
On January 16, 2020, Judge Moulton denied Woods’s motion for a new trial. He said Woods failed to show how the deficient work of his trial attorneys would have led to a different outcome at trial. He also reversed himself and said that the motion exhibits were not hearsay and could be entered into evidence.
Woods appealed. On August 24, 2021, the Georgia Supreme Court remanded the case to Colquitt County. It said Judge Moulton had assumed deficiency on the part of the trial attorneys, assumed the documents were true, and assumed the trial attorneys had no strategic reasons for not using them to impeach Thompson.
“In light of all these assumptions, Woods has shown prejudice, at least as a cumulative result of all the deficiencies he alleges, and the trial court therefore erred in concluding otherwise,” the court wrote.
The case was transferred to Judge Howard McClain. The two sides stipulated that the new trial exhibits were part of the GBI files and had been given to Woods’s trial attorneys.
On May 31, 2022, Judge McClain granted Woods a new trial. He said the trial attorneys had failed to use the available discovery evidence to effectively cross-examine Thompson and Stover. He wrote that although there was a “voluminous” amount of discovery, “nevertheless it is reasonably expected of defense counsel to sift through the entire discovery, and it is also reasonable to expect defense counsel to examine witnesses as to any discrepancies found in the discovery.”
On June 12, 2025, the state dismissed the case against Woods.
Woods remained in prison on an unrelated manslaughter conviction but was paroled on August 8, 2026.
District Attorney Bradfield Shealy would later say that the murder cases couldn’t be retried, because Thompson no longer wanted to cooperate and there were no other witnesses connecting Woods to the crime.
– Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 08-24-2026
