Five gang members were convicted of the brutal rape and murder of a former police informant in the fall of 2016. The blood-soaked body was left in the trunk of a car parked at an Atlanta MARTA station.
Christopher Lockett, 30, Xavier Gibson, 23, Quatez Clark, 21, Joshua Rooks, 27, and Jasper Green, 27, were convicted Monday, April 1, of murder, participating in criminal street gang activity and other felony charges, according to the Fulton County District Attorney's Office.
33-year-old Dean was a former police informant in California.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports Lockett and his brother lured Christopher Dean to a home they shared on Sandy Springs Drive in October 2016 under the pretense that he was there for a drug transaction.
When Dean arrived at the Atlanta address, he was set upon by three members of the notorious Gangster Disciples street gang.
According to the DA's office, Dean was tortured, sodomized, beaten with a crowbar and 2-by-4 wood plank and shot twice in the back of the head.
Investigators also said he was anally raped with an object similar to the wooden or metal handle of a toilet plunger. Additionally, the DA said seminal fluid was discovered in Dean's rectal cavity. The source of the seminal fluid was not disclosed.
The gang members beat Dean for more than an hour to "show other gang members that working as a police informant would not be tolerated, the DA's office said in a statement.
Rooks picked up two men - Green and Lamar Almon - who he paid to clean up the murder scene and dispose of Dean's body, prosecutors said.
But after witnessing the condition of the victim's body, Green and Almon decided instead to leave Dean's body at the MARTA station.
Dean's body was stuffed into the trunk of Lockett's Toyota Camry and the car was parked at the H.E. Holmes MARTA station, the D.A. said.
The body was partially decomposed when police discovered it in the trunk. The car was traced back to Lockett.
Lockett, Gibson, Clark, Rooks and Green will be sentenced April 19. Almon and Gibson's brother are awaiting trial, according to the AJC.
