After being inseparable for their entire lives, including being jailed together for the past fourteen months in Escambia County, Florida, the Cormier twins are now taking divergent paths.
This morning, Christopher Cormier pleaded no contest to charges of accessory to murder for his part in the 2012 death of friend and Pensacola journalist, Sean Dugas. According to the Pensacola News Journal, Christopher today told a county circuit judge that he did not see his brother, William Cormier, kill Dugas, but that he found the body of his childhood friend in the garage of Dugas’s Pensacola house, where the twins had been staying while visiting from Georgia. It’s the same account that Christopher gave Atlanta during a jailhouse phone interview in February 2013, but it directly contradicts the previous statement made in Georgia’s Barrow County Jail in October 2012, when he told investigators that he saw William chase Dugas into the garage and strike him in the back of the head. That confession led to the Florida indictment of both brothers.
At his hearing today, Christopher went on to admit that he helped William place Dugas’s body in a plastic bin and U-Haul it to their father’s house in Winder, Georgia, where they buried it beneath a concrete slab in the backyard. In exchange for his plea, waiving his right to trial and any appeal, Christopher could receive a prison sentence capped at fifteen years. The PNJ, where Dugas once worked as a reporter, says the official sentencing will take place on Feb. 13.
Meanwhile, William will face trial for murder and robbery on Feb. 10. He could get life in prison.
