A Richmond County jury took just under three hours Friday to find Sandra Dales guilty of felony murder and concealing the 2019 death of her husband, Edward Cruey, but not malice murder, opting for the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.
Superior Court Judge Jesse Stone said he’ll sentence Dales in 30 days. She faces up to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the felony murder charge.
Cruey, 55, disappeared just before Thanksgiving 2019. Dales told family members and police that the disabled truck driver had wandered off from their Glenn Hills-area home with a bag and some money.
Not until Dales, 57, confided in a neighbor Jan. 31, 2020, did authorities find his body, curled up and covered in lime, buried in a cubic-yard-sized hole in the ground.
Defense attorneys Jennifer Cross and Jay Kim called nearly a dozen witnesses to attempt to show Dales suffered from Battered Person Syndrome and killed Cruey in self-defense after years of abuse, including the abuse of her dogs.
Felony murder means Dales killed Cruey while committing the felony of aggravated assault. It lacks the intent to kill or disregard for human life required for malice murder.
While Dales’ lawyers focused on her history with Cruey, prosecutors highlighted the two months in which she took his life, buried his body in the yard then told everyone – his family, media and law enforcement – that Cruey had simply left town.
“Were those seven wounds to the head necessary?” asked Assistant District Attorney D.K. Huff. “Was burying him necessary? Was telling his family and law enforcement that he went missing, was that necessary?”
No one disagreed that Cruey was chasing Dales around the house with a knife when she struck him with a metal pole, or that he asked what she would do next.
“The defendant took that statement as a challenge,” Huff said. “She beat that man to death.”
Cross railed on law enforcement who knew of instances of Cruey’s abuse but did little about it.
“Maybe investigators should ask questions when you’re in trouble,” she said. “This is not just about one desperate woman’s struggle for survival. This is about the systemic failure of law enforcement.”
Neighbors testified they’d seen Cruey carrying a machete around in the yard and strike Dales in the head with a shovel. She’d thrown her body between him and the dogs to protect him, while he asked another neighbor for a gun to kill them, they testified. Another neighbor, Lucas Johnson, had asked Cruey to stop beating one of the dogs.
Huff invoked Edgar Allen Poe in his closing, saying Dales was haunted by the body in the yard, much like the murderous narrator of the Tell-Tale Heart, to the point he confesses to investigators.
“She knew what she did was wrong every day for two months,” Huff said, thinking “how will I live with a body in my front yard? She should have told them the night of.”
