Death sentence may arrive for 1991 murder of Forsyth County witness

Tommy Lee Waldrip may finally die 23 years after he brutally murdered a store clerk to keep him from testifying against his son.

Waldrip is scheduled to be executed July 10 for the April 13, 1991 murder of Keith Evans after a Dawson County Superior Court set an execution window Monday, said Lauren Kane, spokeswoman for the state Attorney General.

Evans was a key witness against John Mark Waldrip in his then-upcoming trial for armed robbery in Forsyth County, according to a Georgia Supreme Court opinion by Justice Harris Hines.

Evans’ testimony had helped cement a guilty verdict against the younger Waldrip in his first trial for armed robbery in 1990 but an appellate court overturned the conviction and freed Waldrip on bond while he was awaiting the re-trial in Cumming.

The retrial never happened. The Waldrips and Howard Livingston intimidated one witness into not testifying and prevented Evans’ testimony by first shooting him and then beating him to death with a blackjack, Hines said in his 1997 opinion upholding the death sentence.

Two days before the re-trial was to begin, Livingston, who was the elder Waldrip’s brother-in-law, and the two Waldrips ran Evans’ pickup truck off the road in Dawson County, Hines said. Evans was wounded in the face and neck with bird shot fired through his windshield by a shotgun, Hines said.

The men then buried Evans’ body in a shallow grave in Gilmer County and set his truck on fire, according to prosecutors. Near the burned vehicle, investigators found an insurance card for Linda Waldrip, the condemned man’s wife, which led them to Waldrip.