Man gets life in Officer Holley murder after testifying to unsubstantiated gang hit, police conspiracy

https://www.baltimoresun.com/2024/06/04/man-given-two-life-sentences-in-murder-of-baltimore-police-officer-keona-holley-and-another-man/

Elliot Knox stood up to address a judge facing the prospect of life in prison and repeated calls from the relatives of two people he was convicted of killing to tell them why he did it.

Knox spent an hour at his sentencing Tuesday reciting chilling details of the 2021 fatal shootings of Baltimore Police Officer Keona Holley and a 27-year-old man, while simultaneously describing a sprawling, if unfounded, conspiracy involving the notorious Black Guerilla Family gang and the city police department, leading all the way up to the mayor’s office.

At one point, Knox turned to the side of the marble-lined courtroom where Holley’s family sat and spoke directly to her sister.

“Your sister was a gang member. She was a BGF gang member,” said Knox, who apologized later.

Holley’s sister, who testified about her family being “robbed” of a mother, sister and daughter, disputed his claims after the hearing, with Baltimore law enforcement officials equally quick to dispel Knox’s story of a citywide conspiracy as dubious.

Circuit Judge Jennifer B. Schiffer said it didn’t matter to her decision regarding Knox’s punishment whether what he said was true. A jury in March convicted Knox, 34, of murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of both Holley and Justin Johnson. Schiffer handed down consecutive life sentences, meaning one served after the other, without the possibility of parole to cap the dramatic hearing.

Holley and Johnson were defenseless, “completely unaware of the danger lurking in the dark behind them,” when they were “gunned down” in the early morning of Dec. 16, 2021, Schiffer said. She added that she sympathized with the victims’ families, saying no legal analysis of the case could help to answer its greatest mystery: Why were they killed?

Lawanda Sykes, Holley’s sister, said after court that her family would continue to grapple with that question as it pertained to their late loved one, despite Knox’s lengthy statement.

“It doesn’t hold any weight with us,” Sykes said of Knox’s testimony. “It wasn’t any truth to what he was saying.”

Knox’s testimony echoed a jailhouse manifesto he submitted to the court before sentencing in which he said his co-defendant, Travon Shaw, who he alleged was in the Black Guerilla Family, was responsible for both killings. In neat cursive, covering more than 100 pages and sometimes interrupting the narrative to define gang slang, Knox laid out the story of a conspiracy based on what he says Shaw told him.

Knox claimed more than 100 Baltimore Police officers were affiliated with the BGF gang and that some, allegedly including Holley, would identify drug dealers for BGF members to rob or for officers to confiscate drugs and guns. Guns and drugs, he said, were provided to Safe Streets anti-violence program to make it look more productive.

He invoked Democratic Mayor Brandon Scott as benefiting politically from the alleged conspiracy. A spokesman for Scott denounced Knox’s claims as “ridiculous.” In separate statements, Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates and a police department spokesman said prosecutors and detectives had looked into Knox’s story and found it to be unsubstantiated.

“It is critically important to note that our office thoroughly reviewed and investigated all of the information Mr. Knox said at his sentencing, and we could not corroborate any of it,” said Bates, who is also a Democrat. “This sentence ensures that Mr. Knox will never be able to harm anyone in Baltimore again.”

In court, Assistant State’s Attorney Kurt Bjorklund described the killings as “a night of executions” and “acts of evil.” He asked Schiffer to impose the maximum penalty allowable under the law: Consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole plus 35 years in prison.

“When someone commits evil acts, there’s really not much you can do, Judge,” Bjorklund said. “They have to be punished to the fullest extent of the law.”

Knox’s attorney, Natalie Finegar, highlighted his turbulent upbringing, including an absentee father, a mother who suffered from drug addiction and a grandmother who was abusive. She noted Knox was convicted of armed robbery at 16 and sent to an adult prison, where he was stabbed by an inmate and beaten by correctional officers.

In the less than two years he was out of prison, Knox was injured badly when he was shot during a food delivery, Finegar said. She added that he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Finegar said Knox recognized the “heinous” crimes he was convicted of, but maintained his innocence. She asked Schiffer to impose a life sentence, giving Knox the opportunity to appear before the parole board.

More than two years ago, Holley was sitting in her patrol car during an overtime shift in South Baltimore’s Curtis Bay neighborhood when she was ambushed and gunned down around 1:30 a.m. After she was shot, her cruiser rolled across Pennington Avenue, through a fence, down an embankment and into a park. Bullets hit Holley in the head twice, damaging her brain and spine.

The 39-year-old mother of four died in the hospital about a week later. Family, friends and colleagues remembered Holley joining the police force to support her community.

Around 3 a.m. the morning Holley was shot, a pair of gunmen opened fire on Johnson, who was sitting in his 1997 Lincoln Town Car in the Yale Heights neighborhood of Southwest Baltimore. Six bullets tore into his back, damaging his spine, lungs and heart. He died at the scene.

Shaw, a friend of Johnson’s, visited Johnson’s family later the day of the shooting, asking how he was doing.

Johnson’s mother, Justina Lawrence, testified Tuesday that her son’s and Shaw’s relationship made it easier to place her anger. The fact that she’d never heard of Knox made it difficult to understand why he was involved.

“I don’t know if he followed Shaw and decided to do this,” Lawrence said. “To this day, they have not told the truth. Not Knox. Not Shaw. Secrets are lies. And they have secrets.”

During the investigation into the shooting of a fellow officer, the first clue for detectives came by way of a license plate reader in the Curtis Bay area that picked up the tag of a silver Hyundai registered to Knox. Security footage showed the car parking around the block from where Holley was shot. Two men could be seen getting out, going in Holley’s direction and running back to the car moments later.

Knox testified Tuesday that he agreed to drive Shaw, one of his few childhood friends, around that night without any knowledge of what he had planned. He said he drove Shaw to Curtis Bay, past a landscaping company where Knox worked, and got out at Shaw’s request after twice circling the same block of Pennington Avenue.

Knox said he saw Shaw ducking as he approached Holley’s cruiser, that he saw Holley’s face and then froze when Shaw opened fire. That’s why, he said, he was the second person pictured running back to the car.

Shaw, 35, is serving life in prison for both killings. He pleaded guilty to murder in Holley’s death in March, months after a jury convicted him of murder, conspiracy to commit murder and firearms offenses in Johnson’s killing. Online court records show Shaw appealed his conviction in the fatal shooting of Johnson.

Police stopped Knox’s car and detained him within hours of the shootings. In a small interview room in the homicide unit at Baltimore Police headquarters, Knox misled detectives for hours before confessing his presence at both shootings.

Knox directed detectives to a house where he stored guns in backpacks hidden in a bedroom closet. Investigators recovered a Glock 22 handgun and an AR-style pistol where Knox said they would be. The pistol had a homemade “brass catcher” to collect casings as the gun fired. There also were gloves, masks and extra magazines in the bags.

A police firearms examiner testified that the .40 caliber casings police recovered from both scenes were “consistent” with having been fired by the Glock 22, while the .223 caliber casing recovered from Johnson’s killing was “consistent” with having been fired by the AR-style pistol.

Knox and Shaw also matched a profile of genetic material collected from the AR-style pistol, a police DNA analyst testified. The analyst could not identify anyone’s DNA from the handgun.

Reached by phone Tuesday, Shaw’s attorney, public defender Matthew Connell, noted the pair used Knox’s car to get to both shootings, that police found the guns used in the shootings at a house associated with Knox and that the lead prosecutor told jurors he believed Knox shot Holley.

“He’s just trying to blame someone other than himself, it seems to me,” Connell said of Knox.

Connell added that he was “not aware of any evidence that would indicate there was any kind of police corruption with regard to Officer Holley.”