A Craigslist ad for a motorcycle led to a murder. Fingerprints led to a guilty verdict.

Julius Whigham II, Palm Beach Post
·2 min read
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WEST PALM BEACH — A 25-year-old suburban West Palm Beach man will spend his life in prison after a jury convicted him of first-degree murder and armed robbery in the 2017 shooting death of another man.

Circuit Judge Howard Coates ordered that Jeffrey Joseph serve consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole in the Jan. 10, 2017, fatal shooting of Allen Record. Joseph was also sentenced to a minimum of 10 years on the robbery conviction.

Investigators said Record and a friend had responded to a Craigslist advertisement for a motorcycle that night and were on the 300 block of Chillingsworth Drive, off Congress Avenue south of Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard, when Joseph and a masked accomplice approached and robbed Record of his cellphone.

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Record was shot and killed during the robbery, although police did not say who fired the fatal shot. Police said the cellphone was discarded as the gunmen fled the scene and Joseph's fingerprints were found on the device. A grand jury indicted Joseph on the murder and robbery charges.

During the course of his four-day trial, which ended with the verdict and sentencing on Feb. 9, the state alleged that Joseph attempted to tamper with the jury through an outside party. The state filed a motion requesting that Joseph's cellphone, mail and visitation privileges be revoked for the remainder of the trial.

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According to the motion, Joseph called a female acquaintance from the Palm Beach County Jail after the second day and read her the names of jurors, spelling each one. Coates revoked Joseph's privileges for the remainder of the trial and for 30 days after its conclusion.

Julius Whigham II is a criminal justice and public safety reporter for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at jwhigham@pbpost.com and follow him on Twitter at @JuliusWhigham. Help support our work: Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Man gets life sentence after jurors convict him in Craigslist murder