DRY BRANCH, Ga. — A man accused of killing a Twiggs County couple will now spend the rest of his life in prison after pleading guilty to their murders.
According to Twiggs County Sheriff Darren Mitchum, Charles Rowland appeared before Judge Jon Helton Monday morning to plead guilty to two counts of malice murder.
Rowland was then sentenced to two life sentences without parole, and they are to be served consecutively.
Those malice murder charges are a result of the Sept. 2021 deaths of Peggy and Fred White.
The second person charged in the case, Wayneaire Lester, is still awaiting trial.
CASE HISTORY
The morning of Sept. 11, 2021, deputies received a call from Fred and Peggy White’s daughter saying her parents’ home in the 1100-block of Riggins Mill Road in Dry Branch had been burglarized.
Guns and money were missing, the safe had been broken into, and the home had been rummaged through, but the couple was nowhere to be found.
The daughter started trying to call her mother’s cell phone when she couldn’t find either of them. A hunter was about a quarter mile down the road on his stepmother’s property when he kept hearing a phone ringing.
He later saw a truck behind an abandoned home on the property. At first, he thought it was trespassers, until he looked in and saw a woman inside, later identified as Peggy White.
A few hours later, the body of her husband Fred was found about 200 yards away from the truck on the edge of the woods near Stone Creek Baptist Church.
Days later, a suspect was arrested after investigators saw a vehicle on Vinson Avenue in Macon that matched information they received about a car near the double homicide scene.
They spoke to the man, Charles Rowland, and saw that he matched the suspect seen on surveillance footage.
State Department of Corrections records show that Rowland served two prison terms: One from 1990-1999 for two armed robberies in Bibb County, and the other from 2001-2012 on charges that included four forgeries and assault on a police officer.
Weeks later, a second man – Wayneaire Lester – was charged. Mitchum said Lester was a former employee of White’s construction company and friends with Rowland.
Mitchum also said the pair hatched a plan to burglarize the home, in which Lester would act as a lookout while Rowland stole items.
He says Lester was supposed to notify Rowland when White was no longer on the job site, but when the Whites got back to the home sooner than expected, Rowland panicked and killed them both.
