Convicted murderer released from prison last year charged with killing missing mom in Florida
CBSN
Police have charged a convicted murderer who was released from prison last year with the slaying of a South Florida woman whose body was found in a canal after being missing for three weeks.
Eric Pierson, 54, was charged Saturday with first-degree murder for the slaying of Erika Verdecia, 33, hours after her body was found Saturday near Fort Lauderdale. Sunrise police say Pierson confessed to stabbing the single mother four times with a screwdriver on Sept. 25.
Pierson had been released from prison in September 2020 after serving 27 years of a 40-year sentence for the 1993 beating and strangulation murder of 17-year-old Kristina Whitaker, whose death helped galvanize a push for longer prison sentences. He had pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.
Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.