WEST PALM BEACH — Days before the start of their criminal trial, two people accused of shooting a man to death outside a Royal Palm Beach restaurant pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.
Circuit Judge Sarah Willis sentenced Brandon Gracey, 26, and Benson Charles, 31, to 20 years in prison on Sept. 2. Theirs are the second and third convictions in the death of 34-year-old Frederick Stockton, a work-release prison inmate who was ambushed by masked gunmen behind Hilary’s Diner on July 7, 2018.
Witnesses said Stockton and his coworker were taking garbage to a dumpster outside the restaurant when two people emerged from a gray Honda Accord and began shooting. Stockton, shot in the chest, legs, arms, hips and head, collapsed. The gunmen returned to the Honda and fled.
Onlookers are overcome by grief after one man was killed and another man was taken to the hospital in a shooting in Royal Palm Beach in July 2018. (ALLEN EYESTONE/PALM BEACH POST)
Lynn Elliott, Stockton’s girlfriend of 10 years, told Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputies there were numerous attempts on Stockton’s life. Hours before his murder, Stockton called his girlfriend to say a black Audi was following him.
Elliott said Stockton “had been on edge for some time.” He was adamant that a man named Delson Marc wanted him dead.
Man suspected of orchestrating murder was already under investigation
Marc was already on authorities’ radar. Deemed by federal prosecutors “one of, if not the biggest” heroin dealers in Palm Beach County, he was under investigation by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration months before Stockton’s murder.
Agents had staged controlled buys and gathered evidence of large-scale drug trafficking but never took him into custody. Later, Assistant U.S. Attorney Rinku Tribuiani told a federal judge Marc had evaded justice so many times that her office stopped prioritizing his arrest.
“When the agents would bring up Delson Marc’s name, I literally said to them: Move on. You’re never going to get this guy. He’s too smart,” she said, according to a 2019 hearing transcript.
Onlookers are overcome by grief after one man was killed and another man was taken to the hospital in a shooting in Royal Palm Beach in July 2018. (ALLEN EYESTONE/PALM BEACH POST)
The day after Stockton’s murder, deputies watched from afar as Marc drove a Cadillac Escalade into an apartment complex parking lot, followed by a flatbed tow truck. The truck stopped in front of a gray Honda Accord, believed to be the same one used in the murder one day earlier.
A passenger of Marc’s car stepped out and handed the tow truck driver the key to the Honda, which was loaded onto the flatbed and driven away. When deputies stopped the tow truck, Marc doubled back, spotted the marked patrol units and sped away.
He and his passengers abandoned the Escalade and fled on foot, leaving behind a Crown Royal bag stuffed with heroin capsules packaged for sale.
Two codefendants maintain innocence in Stockton murder
Inside the Honda, detectives found .40-caliber Smith & Wesson ammunition beneath the driver’s seat — the same caliber as shell casings scattered around Stockton’s body outside the restaurant, along Southern Boulevard west of State Road 7.
According to federal court records, investigators believe Marc ordered Stockton’s execution as payback for a 2015 shooting carried out at Marc’s recording studio either by Stockton or his associates. Deputies arrested Marc on July 18, 2018, paving the way for drug and murder charges in state and federal court for both him and his suspected accomplice, Balmy Joseph.
Afterward, state prosecutors pursued additional murder charges against Gracey, Charles and Williamson Fleury, a prison inmate housed at the same facility as Stockton. Detectives said Fleury told Charles and Joseph when Stockton left the facility to begin his work-release shift.
Fleury was the first of the five codefendants to negotiate a deal. He pleaded guilty in January to second-degree murder in exchange for a 12-year prison sentence, with credit for the nearly five years he spent in jail following his arrest.
Charles and Gracey followed suit. Had they maintained their innocence and lost at trial, they risked mandatory life sentences for first-degree murder. Joseph, who prosecutors suspect was one of the two gunmen, lost his federal drug trial and was sentenced to 22 years in prison.
He is scheduled to appear in state court for his own plea negotiations in the murder case on Oct. 14.
Marc pleaded guilty to his federal drug charges, in exchange for a 20-year prison sentence. His jury trial on the state murder charge is scheduled to begin Sept. 5.
Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hphillips@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Pair pleads guilty to retaliatory murder of Frederick Stockton in 2018