NC man hoarded gold. Telling his gardener led to his death, police say
A 38-year-old man was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday for torturing and killing a man who hoarded gold and cash in his Charlotte lakeside home.
David Doyle, the victim, told everyone he knew about his mistrust of government and how the economy would one day collapse, The Charlotte Observer reported in May. He told people that’s why he stockpiled gold and cash, the Observer reported.
Telling his gardener cost the 64-year-old Doyle his life, prosecutors said.
Doyle, a Wyoming car dealer who moved to Charlotte in 2009, was found dead in his home in the RiverPointe community on Lake Wylie in July 2015, the Observer reported at the time. He was tied to a living room chair with parachute cord and was burned, stabbed and beaten, according to police search warrants at the time, the Observer reported.
Police arrested three men, including Doyle’s gardener, 41-year-old Peter Gould, and half-brothers Daniel Blakney and 34-year-old Tardra Bouknight.
Gould, described in court as a former methamphetamine addict, later pleaded guilty to lesser charges that got him a 20-year prison sentence, in exchange for cooperating with prosecutors, the Observer reported in May.
Mistrials were declared that month in the trials against Blakney and Bouknight, after juries deadlocked.
In Blakney’s retrial, a jury on Thursday found him guilty of first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping, first-degree burglary and common law robbery, the Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release.
Charges against Bouknight are pending, according to the news release.