Sentencing helps family get closure
Every year since their son was murdered, Larry and Becky Oliver have decorated a Christmas tree for him with ornaments depicting his favorite things: soccer balls, footballs and, most importantly, red trucks.
The smiling face of Larry Neal Oliver Jr., frozen in time at age 22, looks down on the 6-foot-tall tree, an urn bearing his ashes on a table below the photo.
It’s been 22 years since Oliver was shot to death for his beloved customized red pickup, which he bought new and worked two jobs to maintain.
This year, the Olivers are looking forward to Christmas knowing their long journey through the court system is finally over. Their son’s killer, Jermaine “Bugsy” LeBron, 43, was plucked from death row and resentenced Sept. 28 to life in prison without par-
ole.
He is among dozens of Florida death-row inmates eligible for resentencing because the U.S. Supreme Court in January ruled Florida’s death-penalty statute unconstitutional. Now, juries must vote unanimously to recommend execution.
“We’ve faced it,” Becky Oliver said. “Day by day, we have tried to face it. But you never get over losing a child.”
Nobody showed up for LeBron at the hearing. His mother, Jocelyn Ortiz, who lived in New York City and last visited him in prison on Christmas Eve 2016, died about a month later at age 60.
Becky Oliver had no sympathy for LeBron, warning him that life under close prison supervision — a step below maximum security — would not be as easy as the protected, solitary existence he lived on death row.
“As you mingle among those murderers, you will have to always look over your shoulder … Now you will know just how Neal felt those last minutes before you shot him,” Oliver said, adding, “Every time you’re attacked, I pray that you will see my face and hear my voice.”
The killing, which involved a half-dozen young accomplices who burned Oliver's papers, cleaned up his blood, helped dispose of his body and pawned his truck stereo, happened Nov. 25, 1995, in the Osceola County community of Buenaventura Lakes. A seventh person tried to burn Oliver’s truck.
They're all in their 40s now, have served their time, paid restitution and moved on with their lives.
Court records show that Oliver was shot in the back of the head with a shotgun LeBron nicknamed “Betsy” after the killer ordered him to lie on the floor, where he prayed for his life.
Prosecutors said Oliver was lured to the house with the promise of a good price on wheel accessories for his truck and shot by LeBron, then 21, who coveted Oliver’s customized red 1993 Chevrolet Stepside pickup.
The Olivers agreed to the new sentence after prosecutors told them it could take another 20 years to try for the death penalty again and the likelihood of getting a unanimous jury was remote. Former Orange-Osceola Chief Circuit Judge Belvin Perry sentenced LeBron to death in 1998 and, after appeals, again in 2002 and 2005. Each time, the vote was 7-5.
In court during LeBron’s latest hearing in Kissimmee, Oliver, 69, sat in the witness box so she could address him directly, while supporters including former Orange-Osceola State Attorney Jeff Ashton, who prosecuted LeBron as an assistant state attorney, and former lead detective Andy Lang, now retired, looked on.
The Olivers lived in the south Orange County city of Belle Isle at the time, but in 2004 the couple moved to Becky Oliver’s hometown in South Carolina, where she took care of her mother until she died in 2008.
Now retired, they go on with life for the sake of their daughter, Tracey Walker, and her husband, Michael, who live nearby. They also delight in her sister’s 11-year-old grandson, whom they love as if he were their own.
“We’ve had so many people help us get through this,” Becky Oliver said. “That doesn’t mean I don’t miss my child. My children were our life.”
Oliver keeps busy speaking to church and community groups about coping with the death of a child and holding onto faith throughout the ordeal. She and her husband, Larry Neal Oliver Sr., 70, also work with funeral-home grief-support groups.
“It helps me to help others,” she said. “That’s what Neal would want me to do.”
They kept Neal’s truck and still drive it every week or two and in their town’s Fourth of July parade. They recently got it painted — it’s still red — and bought a new bed cover to keep it looking showroom-new.
They’re planning a party for their 50th wedding anniversary in September 2019, remembering how Neal walked his mom down the aisle at their home during their 25th-anniversary celebration the year before he died.
One of the guests will be Lynn Rhodes, the victim advocate who became close friends with the couple.
She was there from the day a detective notified the Olivers that their son’s body had been found in southwest Orange County. She stayed with them through numerous hearings and two trials in Pinellas County, where the proceedings were moved because of pretrial publicity.
At Becky Oliver’s request, Rhodes went to the morgue and retrieved Neal’s gold chain with a soccer ball pendant and brought it to his mother, who hasn’t taken it off since.
Rhodes said she’s relieved that the Olivers have found some peace since they decided to let LeBron live out his life in prison.
“I’m glad it’s over with because I see what it has done to them over all these years,” said Rhodes, now retired. “I think Becky and Larry have come to a better place now that they know he’s going to have to live for a long time or [until] something worse happens. I think death might have been too easy.”
On Christmas Eve, the Olivers will go to a candlelight service at their church and stay up for hours with their daughter and son-inlaw eating, opening presents, laughing and reliving good memories of Neal, the family jokester who was so like his mother.
They try to dwell on what they had and still have, not on what they lost.
“The first time I laughed, I felt guilty,” Becky Oliver said. “I thought, how can I laugh when my child is dead? But Neal was always doing something to make people laugh. I know he wouldn’t want me to sit there and grieve for the rest of my life.”