Two men have been charged by a Jefferson County grand jury with the murder of a woman who was taken from the Shell station on Third Avenue West in Birmingham in January and later found naked and dead on a dead-end street.
Jayden Gildersleeve, 21, and Michael Spellman, 62, were both charged with capital murder by the grand jury. The charges were announced on May 17 and were made public on Friday.
Heartbreaking facts about the case were shared in court for the first time since Genise Carter’s body was found on January 25 in the 1300 block of 17th Street North. The case was then sent to the grand jury.
Carter, who was 43 years old, had been hit and shot in the head.
Birmingham murder At the hearing in March, Det. John Finke was the only witness and told the terrible events that led to Carter’s death.
A reason for killing Carter was not found. At least one of the suspects was someone Carter knew.
A Birmingham Streets and Sanitation worker found Carter face down and naked that Thursday morning, Finke said. Carter only had a pair of socks on.
After four days, cops got a tip that Carter might have been taken from the Shell gas station at 800 Third Ave. West. The person who gave the information said that detectives should watch the store’s security tape.
Finke said of the tape, “I saw that the woman who was beaten and taken from the store was actually Genise Carter.”
Finke said Carter got to the Shell station at 4:17 a.m. on Thursday. After three minutes, Gildersleeve and Spellman drove into the store from the parking lot in a Chevrolet Malibu.
Gildersleeve went straight to where Carter was, and Spellman sent some kind of hand signal to the store clerk.
Carter was locked out of the store by Gildersleeve at 4:22 a.m. Spellman went away with them.
At that point, Carter was dragged into the car by a gun. The two men got in their cars and drove off.
Finke said that the suspects came back to the store’s parking lot at 4:32 a.m. Before going into the shop, Gildersleeve talked to some people near a gas pump.
He said that there were many cars in the parking lot.
At 4:36 a.m., Carter got out of the suspects’ car and jumped into a white SUV, where she asked a man she didn’t know for assistance.
He then got out of the car and stood between the SUV and the Malibu.
Gildersleeve then got Carter out of the car. Carter tried to fight back. After that, Carter got out of the car again and ran into the shop. Finke told her that Gildersleeve chased her inside. He was also in the shop with Spellman.
Gildersleeve picks up the victim from the ground with a gun and pushes her back into the car, he said. “The victim was beaten on the ground in the doorway of the store.”