By By Kerry Whipple Bean
publisher
Brewton native Donald Ray Stallworth Jr. was back in Florida Tuesday after extradition papers were signed by the governors of Florida and Alabama.
Stallworth is one of seven suspects charged with murder in the shooting deaths of Byrd and Melanie Billings, a Beulah, Fla., couple known in their community for adopting 13 special needs children.
Stallworth turned himself in to local authorities in Brewton on July 13 and has been held in the Escambia County jail since. He declined to waive extradition at his first hearing.
At a July 20 evidentiary hearing, Circuit Judge Bert Rice ordered Stallworth held without bond.
An Escambia County sheriff’s investigator testified at the evidentiary hearing that another suspect   identified Stallworth as one of the men who entered the Billings home with a gun. The same suspect, Wayne Coldiron, told the sheriff’s investigator that Stallworth also carried a small safe out of the house.
Stallworth’s attorney, David White, has said that his client was only implicated by Coldiron, a man previously convicted of violent crimes.
Stallworth, a U.S. Air Force staff sergeant, is a 1999 graduate of T.R. Miller High School.