He said he tried to save his girlfriend from drowning — but a jury didn’t believe him
A Florida Keys jury on Monday convicted a Texas man of murdering his girlfriend four years ago — while the couple was on vacation in Key West.
Billy Earl Baker, 52, strangled Candice Cooper, of Big Sandy, Texas, at Smathers Beach off South Roosevelt Boulevard on Aug. 4, 2017, prosecutors said.
The cause of the 38-year-old woman’s death was “manual strangulation with drowning,” according to the medical examiner’s autopsy report.
The jury returned the guilty verdict in the second-degree murder case within two hours at the Monroe County Courthouse in Key West.
Colton Langford, one of Cooper’s two sons, and her older sister, Christy Thurman, traveled from Arkansas to Key West to attend the trial.
“Nothing will bring her back,” Langford said, of the verdict. “This is the best sort of vindication possible.”
Langford, a third-year law student at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, said they plan to return to Key West for Baker’s sentencing — which is set for Jan. 20, 2022 — and make statements to the court.
Baker faces up to life in prison.
“He will never spend enough time in jail,” Thurman said.
Police found Cooper on Smathers Beach lying on the sand with the lower half of her body in the water. Baker told police that they were swimming when he noticed Cooper was floating facedown in the water.
He said at first he thought she was playing a joke by pretending to be in trouble but eventually thought something was wrong and pulled her out of the water. Baker said she was facedown in the water for two minutes.
Baker called 911 and the operator instructed him to perform CPR on Cooper. A woman on the beach at the time helped by holding the phone and repeating the instructions from the operator to Baker.
Baker, who was arrested on the murder charge in January 2018 in Texas, did not testify at his trial. He told police that he had known Cooper for a decade and that they were together for two years.
The jury heard that the medical examiner determined Cooper’s blood alcohol level was .40, which is five times the legal limit.
Baker told police they had been drinking that day but were not drunk.
An inmate who served time with Baker at the jail for about four months in 2019 testified that Baker had said he and Cooper had broken up before the trip.
Baker and Cooper came to the Keys, the inmate said, on a “make or break trip for the relationship and while they were down here they had another fight the day of the incident and that he killed her,” according to Assistant State Attorney Christine Poist.
Cooper, known to family and friends as Candi Joy, is remembered for her kind nature.
“Everyone she knew, she just loved them and they loved her,” Thurman said.
Poist was the lead prosecutor on the case. She was assisted by Assistant State Attorneys Joseph Mansfield and Samantha Grizzle.
This story was originally published December 14, 2021 at 3:36 PM.
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