Deputy who testified in Circle K murder case is behind bars
A Palm Beach County sheriff ’s deputy who once was a pivotal witness in a long-running local murder case is now behind bars, convicted of two battery charges in a May 2014 incident in which he spat in the faces of a nurse and a police officer at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Riviera Beach after threatening hospital staff members and police.
A jury last week convicted Will Twigg of one count each of battery and battery on a medic al employee and acquitted him of a related charge of resisting arrest. Ci rc ui t Judge Gl e nn Kel - l ey ord e re d Twig g ’s f ormer colleagues to take him to the Palm Beach County jail, where he is expected to remain until Kelley sentences him May 23.
According to an arrest report, Twigg was a patient in the hospital’s psychiatric ward when he first backed a nurse into a corner and later refused to leave a hospital dayroom before spitting on another nurse twice and on an officer as police dragged him out. A Department of Veterans Affairs officer said in the report that Twigg was belligerent through most of the exchange, threatening to kill everyone who tried to contain him before curling up on the ground in a fetal position.
In convicting Twigg, who court records indicate previously was in the military and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, jurors rejected his insanity defense.
In 2012, Twigg became a controversial figure in the murder trial of Robert Alvarez and Darnell Razz when he testified that he heard Alvarez make incriminating statements about the 2010 killings of Greenacres Circle K store clerks Michael Dean Bennett and Ralston Muller during a robbery.
Twigg said he heard Alvarez make the comments in a dayroom at the Palm Beach County Jail while watching an episode of “America’s Most Wanted.” But Alvarez’s defense attorney, Robert Gershman, pulled TV listings from the day Twigg said Alvarez made the comments and said the show didn’t air that day.
The jury convicted both Alvarez and Razz on the robbery and murders, but their convictions were overturned on another issue and Assistant State Attorney Andrew Slater decided against calling Twigg in Alvarez’s second trial.
But when that trial and another ended in mistrial after the juries in both instances failed to reach a verdict, Slater in 2015 tried to reintroduce Twigg as a witness.
Gershman, who found out about Twigg’s 2014 arrest, argued that he should be allowed to question Twigg a bout hi s ment a l heal t h issues if he took the stand again. Assistant State Attorney Andrew Slater disagreed, but both Circuit Judge Jack Cox and Florida’s 4th District Court of Appeal ultimately sided with Gershman.
Both Alvarez and Razz were ultimately convicted again in the double murders and are serving sentences of life in prison.