Man sentenced to 25 years in murder-for-hire case

An Anne Arundel County Circuit Court judge handed down a 25-year prison sentence Thursday in a 2020 murder-for-hire case in Annapolis.

During the hearing, family members painted completely different pictures of the victim — one person said Leslie Saunders was a loving family man and another described him as a constant source of abuse.

Thomas Deangelo Smith, 33, of Annapolis, received a life sentence, suspended after 25 years, for first-degree murder in a case stemming from the shooting death of Saunders, his stepfather.

Saunders was 49 years old when he was gunned down at close range in a courtyard of Annapolis’ Bay Ridge Gardens community on March 15, 2020. Shortly after, Michael Davon Gibson, 23, of Annapolis, was taken into custody and charged with shooting Saunders. Two months later, police arrested Smith on allegations he had ordered the shooting.

Smith and Gibson traveled together to the Bay Ridge Gardens neighborhood that evening, and Gibson later shot Saunders 19 times, police and prosecutors said.

In December, Smith entered an Alford plea to counts of first-degree murder and firearm use in the commission of a violent crime. An Alford plea is not an admission of guilt, but an acknowledgment that prosecutors have enough evidence to obtain a conviction.

Saunders’ close family described him as a family man who had taught Smith to play baseball during his decadeslong relationship with Smith’s mother. Saunders had periodic struggles with substance abuse but was “moving in the right direction” at the time he was killed, prosecutor Brian Marsh said at Smith’s sentencing hearing Thursday.

Smith’s defense lawyer and family spoke of a different relationship between the men. Smith and his siblings watched years of “horrible, unimaginable domestic violence, at the hands of Mr. Saunders,” said John Henry Robinson, Smith’s lawyer.

Marsh said police and prosecutors were unsure what exactly had transpired in the family in the hours before the homicide, beyond a verbal disagreement.

Smith’s family said Saunders had been threatening other family members, a regular occurrence that had gone too far. Robinson said a dispute involving Saunders before he was shot was “far from a verbal argument,” as police and prosecutors have said.

Multiple Smith family members said Saunders had been making threats that day, and had displayed a gun from his waistband. Robinson played 911 audio of Smith’s mother, Shari Simms, reporting the incident. He also cited a toxicology report that said Saunders had cocaine in his system before his death.

Saunders was not known to “play in empty threats or idle chatter,” Robinson said.

“I did feel, at times, that he was going to kill me,” said Shari Simms, who was in a relationship with Saunders for more than 30 years.

“One minute, it was love, the other minute, it was fear,” said

Sharika Aytch, Simms’ daughter.

Smith’s family members described a cycle of abuse that involved Saunders using drugs and proceeding to verbally and physically abuse Simms and the children. He had devolved into the same cycle on March 15, 2020, said his son Leslie “Chad” Saunders.

“He said that day he was going to kill me. He said that he was going to kill all of us,” he said.

“That’s not the Les that I know,” said Anthony White, the deceased’s older brother, outside the courtroom Thursday. “He loved his family, and he loved that family.”

White said he had “shed a tear” two weeks before his brother’s homicide, when Saunders had called him about getting his own apartment, and later, a credit card.

He said he knew his brother, while suffering from addiction, had acted out verbally on occasion, but said he had not heard of Saunders acting out physically.

“Nobody has the right to resort to violence,” Marsh said.

Smith told Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Stacy W.

McCormack that a friend had called him about his stepfather’s behavior that evening, prompting him to try to assist.

Lawyers disagreed on how much money, if any, Smith had paid Gibson to shoot Leslie Saunders. But Smith and Gibson were seen on surveillance video traveling to the community that afternoon, and Gibson was seen firing a gun at Saunders after a brief chase.

“You might think the murder weapon, in this case, is a handgun,” said Marsh, the prosecutor. “Mr. Smith is the murderer, and Mr. Gibson is the murder weapon. This murder does not happen without Mr. Smith.”

It was not easy to render a sentence, McCormack said, noting Smith was “not a violent person” but that she could not “authorize people” to attack alleged abusers.

“Cases like this break my heart,” the judge said. “I don’t think I’ve had two extremes like this, and I understand both sides.”

Gibson, who pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in January, is set to be sentenced April 26.