Man convicted in Cobra Bar murders gets life, no parole after emotional testimony
Horace Palmer Williamson III was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole on Wednesday, a day after the same jury convicted him of the double murder of Jaime Sarrantonio and Bartley Brandon Teal at the East Nashville bar The Cobra in 2018.
He received life without parole sentences for both first-degree felony murder charges and both first-degree premeditated murder charges. The sentence was the maximum penalty sought by prosecutors in the case, who were not seeking the death penalty.
The decision came after an emotional morning when the parents of the two victims took the stand to share memories of their children and speak about how their deaths have affected them.
"He’s my bud. He was my best friend," Teresa Teal said of her son, who she said liked to be called Brandon. She remembered his "adventurous spirit," and all the bones he broke skateboarding and inline skating growing up. "As he got older, he stayed that adventurous soul. He was an old soul in his body. ... He had the kindest, sweetest, most loving heart of anyone I have ever seen in my entire life."
Robin Fisher remembered how Sarrantonio, her daughter, loved gymnastics, dancing and music growing up. She excelled in sports and academics, Fisher said, and never had an issue making friends.
"Everyone that knew her wanted to be with her, because she was fun. Her glass was always half-full, never half-empty," Fisher said.
Brandon Teal and Sarrantonio were 33 and 30 at their deaths, respectively. It was Brandon Teal's birthday when he died.
Teresa Teal said she saw the story on the news that morning but didn't know her son was one of the victims.
Then she got a call from her daughter on her way to work, telling her to go to Vanderbilt because Brandon had been shot. She turned around, called her husband, Bartley Teal Sr., and told him she was coming to pick him up from their house and they had to get to the hospital.
“When I got almost back to the house I called him again, and I said, 'I need to make sure you’re ready.' I said, 'We’ve got to get there now.'"
He asked if something was wrong with his mother.
"I said, 'No, Brandon’s been shot.' He just hung up," Teresa Teal said. "When I pulled in, before I ever got to the gate, he was at the road. He had ran.”
When they arrived, their son had died. Nothing will ever be the same for their family, she said.
"It’s been hell. I don’t remember at least two weeks of my life from driving away from that hospital. Everything was a blur," Teresa Teal said. She's had to go through years of counseling and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. Bartley Teal hasn't been able to focus enough to keep a job.
She said she hasn't been able to completely grieve, either, because she has to care for her children and make sure they're all right.
"We used to be so happy. We used to be such a very happy, close family. We’re still close, but we cry every birthday. It doesn’t matter whose birthday, we just cry because he’s not there," Teresa Teal said.
Fisher said she was only able to withstand the grief by leaning on the support of her husband, daughter and brother-in-law.
"If it wasn’t for my daughter and her husband, I don’t even know if Phil (her husband) and I would be around," Fisher said. "Because what is there if you don’t have your children?"
Williamson, 32, was found guilty on Tuesday of two counts of first-degree felony murder and two counts of first-degree premeditated murder for the deaths of Sarrantonio and Brandon Teal, who were shot and killed in the bar's parking lot during a robbery in the early morning of Aug. 17, 2018. Prosecutors said Williamson accompanied Demontrey Logsdon, the man they say shot the victims, during the robbery and drove the car from the crime scene.
Logsdon also face first-degree murder charges. There will be a status conference in his case on Aug. 18, when a trial date will be set.
Williamson was also convicted of two counts of aggravated sexual battery; two counts of especially aggravated kidnapping as it relates to two surviving victims of the robbery; two counts of aggravated robbery as it relates to the robbery of the surviving victims; and two counts of especially aggravated robbery as it relates to Sarrantonio and Teal. He will be sentenced for those crimes Aug. 18.
A grand jury also indicted Logsdon and Williamson in the killing of Kendall Rice in Madison on Aug. 14, 2018, three days before Teal and Sarrantonio were killed. That case is being tried separately. Police say Rice was killed as he walked to a bus stop that morning.
Evan Mealins is the justice reporter for The Tennessean. Contact him at emealins@gannett.com or follow him on Twitter @EvanMealins.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Horace Williamson gets life sentence in Nashville's Cobra Bar murders
