GA - Eddie Lawrence wants out - Sara Tokars' murderer

angelmom

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http://www.ajc.com/news/cobb/convicts-complaint-lands-on-277435.html?cxtype=rss_news_81960

Cry me a river.

Eddie Lawrence's wife has written a book and rented two billboards in Atlanta trying to get him released from prison. Poor baby, in a college dorm type of cell, and "can only see the sky." :sick: He, personally, murdered this young mother in front of her sons...for money. He should rot!


Since June, motorists on I-20 east of Atlanta have looked up at two billboards to see an infamous blast from the past — Eddie Lawrence, the middleman in the horrific 1992 shotgun murder of Sara Tokars and now a prisoner in the federal Witness Protection Program.
<snip>
But Lawrence is in custody, Berneda Lawrence says, in a federal facility that resembles “a college dorm.”

“He’s on the third floor and stays by himself,” said his wife, who knew him before he got into trouble. “They allow him so much time outside but [he] can only look up, not out, because of the tarps on the fences [so the prisoners can’t be seen]. They can only see the sky. It can break your spirit.”
<snip>
Tokars, Lawrence contended, wanted his wife dead so she wouldn’t get his assets in a divorce. Lawrence testified he hired a hit man, a crackhead named Curtis Rower, and the two kidnapped Sara Tokars Nov. 29, 1992, when she arrived home from a trip with her young sons. She was killed by Rower by a shotgun blast to the head. It happened in front of the boys and became a sensational case for media.
<snip>
Joni Ambrusko, one of Sara Tokars’ sisters, said the family opposes parole. “All the killers deserve the death penalty,” she said. “Think of Ricky and Mike [the Tokars’ sons] running through the field with their mother’s brains on them. And these guys will watch the Super Bowl in a couple weeks?”
 
I remember this case from when it dominated the local Atlanta news stations.
I always wondered how the little boys were doing.
 
So give him what he wants. Take him out of the witness program and put him in general population. Why did they give him witness protection anyway?
 
So give him what he wants. Take him out of the witness program and put him in general population. Why did they give him witness protection anyway?

There was real concern that Fred Tokars could have him whacked at the time. Now, that possibility is extremely remote.

I agree, they should put him back in g-pop. But his wife and son just want him released. Because he was "young" when he murdered Sarah and traumatized her children for life. :snooty: I wonder if he ever thinks about how young her boys were when he took from them forever.
 
This case has always fascinated me, since it happened in East Cobb (where I live) to a family similar to mine. Recently, I watched a terrific American Justice about the case. By all accounts - the boys were raised by their grandparents and aunts in Florida and are doing well. Sara Tokars came from a very close-knit family and I have always respected the way they came together and raised those boys away from all the hullabaloo.

I think the state should live up to whatever deal they made with Eddie Lawrence, but it's confusing as to what that deal was.
 
does anybody know what happened to the husband of Sarah Tokars?
 
This case has always fascinated me, since it happened in East Cobb (where I live) to a family similar to mine. Recently, I watched a terrific American Justice about the case. By all accounts - the boys were raised by their grandparents and aunts in Florida and are doing well. Sara Tokars came from a very close-knit family and I have always respected the way they came together and raised those boys away from all the hullabaloo.

I think the state should live up to whatever deal they made with Eddie Lawrence, but it's confusing as to what that deal was.

If there was a deal, then yes they should live up to it. There are 2 problems; first, there was never a deal in writing that anyone can produce. Did he just have a crappy lawyer, or was the deal in "good faith." Second, and on the same note, he recanted after the guilty verdicts and wanted to retract his guilty plea. Luckily the judge wasn't falling for that, but by claiming he had lied he put the Tokars verdict in jeopardy. He also probably negated any deal he did negotiate by claiming he had testified falsely.

The guy is a heartless, lying murderer who should do the whole sentence. He's had the parole board review him twice and both times they sent him back. For once they are doing their jobs.
 
If there was a deal, then yes they should live up to it. There are 2 problems; first, there was never a deal in writing that anyone can produce. Did he just have a crappy lawyer, or was the deal in "good faith." Second, and on the same note, he recanted after the guilty verdicts and wanted to retract his guilty plea. Luckily the judge wasn't falling for that, but by claiming he had lied he put the Tokars verdict in jeopardy. He also probably negated any deal he did negotiate by claiming he had testified falsely.

The guy is a heartless, lying murderer who should do the whole sentence. He's had the parole board review him twice and both times they sent him back. For once they are doing their jobs.

It's true that, based on his self-serving, conniving behavior, Lawrence doesn't have many friends associated with the justice system! From reading the article, it seems to me that he helped cause this issue. He's up for parole again in 2015.

In any event, I do find it amazing that his attorney didn't get his plea agreement in writing or pinned down in some immutable way...that almost seems to me like it would be malpractice, but I don't know very much about criminal law. Things probably work a little differently than in civil.
 
I live very close to where this murder took place. I often drive past the subdivision where the Tokar's house is, and I always mean to drive by the house and see what it looks like now. Maybe I will actually remember to do that one of these days.

As in the Laci Peterson house, I always hope that someone will make a good warm home out of a place where so much pain and sorrow surely happened.
 
Mike Tokars: Boy who witnessed mother’s murder, set up by evil father Fred Tokars, has died
^ https://www.crimeonline.com/2020/04/09/mike-tokars-boy-who-witnessed-mothers-murder-set-up-by-evil-father-fred-tokars-has-died/ April 9, 2020
More info here:
https://www.ajc.com/news/local/opinion-another-victim-the-tokars-murder-decades-later/WAHjcND5CImzLeCRBMhW3M/
Mike passed away from a pulmonary embolism. Sad, sad, sad death of 31 y/o man.

W a quick search, I did not find main thread -- for husband/murderer Fred Tokars or victim/wife Sara Tokars, in Georgia, 1992. If anyone does, pls alert mod to move this post or to add a pointer post to prompt readers to here. Thx in adv.
 
@Seattle1 :) Thanks for the link. Two more.
Is He Now Facing Additional Form of Justice, Elsewhere? besides bbm & prison?
Marietta Daily Journal article has 20th anniversary pic (2012) of trial judge & those involved in prosecution & appeal.
Tokars' def. atty said:
“He was not in good shape,” Froelich said Thursday. “He had not walked in 10 years. He had several diseases, including a form of MS (multiple sclerosis). He was not able to urinate without a catheter. He had been beaten up in prison for cooperating with the government.”
"... an attorney in Fulton County, Tokars was helping criminals launder money and was worried his wife was going to tell authorities, Charron said, which proved a likely motive for murder....
“He had a business partner get a hitman to kill her,” Charron said.
"She was a really nice lady, a stay-at-home mom with her children, murdered in her own vehicle by an intruder who met her as she drove into her garage.”

More about others involved in her murder, in this article. BTW, 67 y/o.
Notorious Cobb murderer dies in prison, lawyer confirms

and from ajc.com
"He had been held in secret custody and the federal prison system didn’t even list him, nor would discuss if he was still a prisoner when the AJC asked about him over the years."
^ Fred Tokars, lawyer who set up murder of his wife, dies in prison


Sara Tokars RIP.

(Fred, well not so much.)
 

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