A Gwinnett County jury convicted 52-year-old Carmen Marie Hunt of malice murder and two counts of felony murder in the 2019 stabbing death of Ray Anthony Neal, a case that sat unsolved for more than five years before a fingerprint match brought it back to life. Jurors deliberated for about three and a half hours before finding Hunt guilty on all charges, and she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The case dates back to July 19, 2019, when Neal's sister dropped him off at his Lawrenceville home, according to CBS News Atlanta. The next day, she found him dead inside the home. He was 61. When police first arrived at the scene, they suspected Neal may have died of natural causes or an underlying medical condition, since blood was present in the room but there were no obvious signs of a violent crime, according to True Crime News.
A Funeral Home Discovery Changed Everything
It wasn't until funeral home staff were preparing Neal's body for burial that they noticed suspicious injuries to his neck, prompting the medical examiner to order an autopsy. That autopsy determined the neck injuries were in fact stab wounds, and Neal's death was reclassified as a homicide, per the CBS News Atlanta report. The chronic medical conditions Neal had been dealing with had initially obscured the violent nature of his death, allowing the case to stall for years.
The cold case investigation went nowhere until late 2024, when a relative of Neal's contacted Gwinnett County police with a tip pointing toward Hunt, according to FOX 5 Atlanta. That tip prompted detectives to re-examine crime scene fingerprints and surveillance footage from 2019. Per prosecutors, investigators ultimately matched Hunt's fingerprints to a print recovered from the murder scene, and Gwinnett County prosecutors said that fingerprint helped crack the cold case.
A Separate Stabbing Led Police Back to Her
By the time detectives connected Hunt to Neal's death, she was already behind bars for a different violent crime. In 2022, Hunt stabbed a man in Lawrenceville — later identified as 58-year-old Derrick Gray Young — in front of a witness, according to the Gwinnett County government's account of the case. Hunt initially claimed she acted in self-defense against an attempted sexual assault, but she ultimately pleaded guilty to aggravated assault. Young survived the attack and later testified against Hunt at her murder trial.
Gwinnett County police formally charged Hunt with felony murder and aggravated assault in Neal's death on January 23, 2025, while she was already incarcerated for the 2022 stabbing. Hunt denied attacking Neal, per prosecutors, but investigators said she made incriminating statements while in police custody — reportedly muttering, “You didn't get away with this murder.” Hunt, who lived in Dacula, Georgia, had admitted to seeing Neal the night before he was found dead.
Prosecutors Point to a Drug Deal Gone Wrong
Following the verdict, Gwinnett County prosecutors disclosed that Hunt fatally stabbed Neal during an interaction in which she was attempting to buy drugs from him. The murder trial was led by Managing Assistant District Attorney Angela Mattozzi, a veteran prosecutor in the Gwinnett County District Attorney's Office who has handled numerous major violent crime cases in the judicial circuit. District Attorney Patsy Austin-Gatson said she was thankful the cold case team consistently worked the case to a successful conclusion.
Austin-Gatson established a dedicated Cold Case Unit and Conviction Integrity Unit after taking office in 2021, assigning full-time investigators specifically to re-evaluate backlogged homicides, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. As of mid-2025, the DA's office reported a 100% conviction rate in homicide trials, alongside an overall 94% felony conviction rate across the judicial circuit. Hunt's case follows other major convictions secured under Austin-Gatson, including a Duluth Red Lobster murder case and a Lawrenceville double-murder that ended in two life sentences.
What Georgia Law Required Prosecutors to Prove
Under Georgia's malice murder statute, O.C.G.A. § 16-5-1, prosecutors had to prove Hunt unlawfully caused Neal's death with express or implied malice aforethought — a charge carrying mandatory penalties of life imprisonment with or without parole, or death. Georgia law does not divide murder into numerical degrees the way some states do. Separately, felony murder allowed prosecutors to seek a conviction for a death caused during the commission of a dangerous underlying felony, such as aggravated assault, without needing to prove Hunt specifically intended to kill Neal — which is why she faced two felony murder counts alongside the malice murder charge.
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