STARKVILLE – News that the state Supreme Court has granted convicted quadruple murderer Willie Jerome “Fly” Manning of Starkville a new trial in two of those murders rocked this community this week.
Emotions for and against Manning’s journey through the appellate process in the two murder cases runs high. The inmate’s supporters take heart from his recent victories in the courts. The law enforcement community and those who remembers his victims are angered by the rulings.
Sid Salter
Manning’s sojourn has been anything if not dramatic. In 2013, Manning came perilously close to meeting the executioner as punishment for the 1992 murders of Mississippi State University students Jon Steckler and Tiffany Miller. Manning got an 11th-hour stay of execution on an 8-1 decision by the state’s highest court after issues were raised by Manning’s attorneys challenging the testimony of FBI agents regarding ballistics and hair analysis used to convict him in the Steckler-Miller murders.
At the same time, statements by state Attorney General Jim Hood, District Attorney Forrest Allgood and former Oktibbeha County sheriff Dolph Bryan that Manning’s conviction was based on substantially more evidence than those issues were ignored by the majority of the court.
Or at the very least, the state’s high court had a rather sudden change of heart. That 8-1 state Supreme Court ruling to stay Manning’s schedule 2013 execution came less than two weeks after the same court ruled 5-4 on April 25, 2013, that there was “conclusive, overwhelming evidence of guilt” presented to an Oktibbeha County jury during Manning’s original trial.
It’s been over 20 years since Steckler and Miller were murdered on Dec. 11, 1992. Manning was convicted of murdering the two students in 1994. According to trial transcripts, the young couple was last seen alive in the early morning hours of Dec. 11, 1992, outside of Steckler’s fraternity house near the campus. The couple left the house around 1 a.m. in Miller’s car. At 2:15 a.m., Steckler’s body was discovered in the right hand lane of a county road.
Near his body, authorities found a gold token, three shell casings, and a projectile. Steckler’s injuries were consistent with having been run over by a car at a low speed. Miller’s body was discovered in the nearby woods. She had been shot twice in the face.
Miller’s car was discovered in front of an apartment building nearby. On the pavement near the driver’s side door, coins were found as well as a ring identified as belonging to Miller, all about 100 yards away from Miller’s residence. The damning evidence against Manning was his own attempt to sell certain items belonging to his victims.
In the period between the time Steckler and Miller were killed and when Manning went to trial and was convicted for their murders, he was accused of a second grisly murder. Less than six weeks after the students were killed — on the evening of Jan. 18, 1993 — elderly mother and daughter Emmoline Jimmerson and Alberta Jordan were found dead in their Brooksville Gardens apartment. Police found no signs of forced entry, and the apartment was not ransacked. Both women had been beaten about the head, and their throats were slashed.
Manning appeals in the Steckler-Miller murders remain unresolved. Now, Manning gets a new trial in the Jimmerson-Jordan murders.
Former Starkville police chief David Lindley told The Columbus Dispatch in 2013 his recollections about the murders of the two elderly women: “Lindley said Manning knew the mother and daughter, Emiline Jimmerson and Alberta Jordan, and beat them to death before he slit their throats and took a small sum of money.
“They were very nice women, just sweet little old ladies,” Lindley said. “He beat them to death with a laundry iron and then cut their heads almost off. He slaughtered them for very little money.”
Manning’s criminal record goes back to the mid-1970s, when he was broke into a store in an attempt to steal a motorcycle. “Fly” was six years old at the time.