BAY MINETTE, Ala.—A second defendant pleaded guilty Sept. 5 to the 2004 murder of a gay Bay Minette teenager who was beaten, stabbed and strangled.

Robert Holly Lofton Porter, 21, entered the plea before Baldwin County Circuit Court Judge Lang Floyd and was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences on murder and robbery charges.

Porter’s plea came a week before he was slated for trial in the killing of 18-year-old Scotty Joe Weaver. The Mobile Press-Register reported that Porter, as he was escorted down a courthouse hallway after the hearing, said of the Weaver family: “Just tell ‘em I apologize.”

Christopher Ryan Gaines, 23, also avoided the death penalty by pleading guilty to capital murder in May. Prosecutors said a plea agreement is possible with a third defendant, Nichole Bryars Kelsay, 21, who is awaiting trial.

Weaver was beaten, strangled, cut, burned and robbed of about $80 in July 2004.

Gaines and Kelsay shared an apartment with Weaver in the Pine Grove community. Authorities have said that the three attacked Weaver when he returned from working the overnight shift at the Bay Minette Waffle House. His burned and decomposed body was found off of a rural dirt road, a few miles from his home southeast of Bay Minette.