A 50-year-old Boynton Beach man who described himself online as an intuitive healer and life coach is being held without bond after deputies say he called 911 himself to confess to fatally stabbing his 77-year-old mother inside a gated community in West Delray Beach. Alexander G. Harrington was booked into the main detention center Friday night after the call came in shortly after 2 p.m. and deputies found his mother dead inside the home with stab wounds.
According to a statement from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office reported by BocaNewsNow.com, deputies arrested Harrington without incident after he reported the killing himself, and violent crimes division detectives immediately took over the homicide investigation at the scene. WPLG Local 10 reports that Harrington had built a following of more than 5,300 people on Facebook, where he identified himself as an intuitive healer and life coach based in Boynton Beach, and had shared nine posts to the platform on the day of the killing, including one that read, “I am faith truth and love.”
The stabbing happened on the 5100 block of Monterey Lane, a street within Monterey Lake, a gated single-family home community in West Delray Beach built in the 1990s near Military Trail and Linton Boulevard, according to real estate listings on Zillow. The neighborhood borders Boca Raton and includes lakes and gated security, per the same listings.
Court Case Opens With a No-Show
Harrington now faces a charge of first-degree murder, the outlet's report notes, and remained without bond as of Saturday afternoon. Court records reviewed by BocaPost show the case was formally filed under case number 50-2026-CF-006944-AXXX-MB in Circuit Court Division X, and that Harrington failed to attend his scheduled first court appearance on Saturday. The docket was processed at the Gun Club Road courthouse complex in West Palm Beach, according to the same report.
Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office deputies arrested Harrington, and the agency's detectives investigated the killing, per BocaNewsNow.com's reporting.
What Florida Law Says About the Charge
First-degree premeditated murder is classified under Florida Statute Section 782.04 as a capital felony, punishable exclusively by life imprisonment without the possibility of parole or the death penalty, according to the Florida Senate. Prosecutors have 45 days after arraignment to file notice if they intend to seek capital punishment, per that same statute.
Since Florida Senate Bill 450 took effect in April 2023, the state has allowed a court to impose a death sentence if at least 8 of 12 jurors recommend execution, eliminating the state's prior requirement for jury unanimity — the lowest jury threshold for death penalty recommendations in the country, according to the Florida Senate. The Florida Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of that 8-4 non-unanimous standard against Eighth Amendment challenges in December 2025, in decisions arising from Duval and Bay county capital cases, as reported by WLRN; justices ruled that statutory aggravating factors provide sufficient constitutional safeguards.
A Familiar Circuit for Fatal Stabbing Cases
Serious felony cases originating in West Delray Beach are prosecuted within Florida's 15th Judicial Circuit, which handles all court filings and dispositions throughout Palm Beach County, according to the Palm Beach County Criminal Justice Commission. Circuit judges in West Palm Beach preside over all capital murder trials in the county, per the commission.
The circuit has seen fatal stabbing cases from the area before. In a case Hoodline covered in May, a Palm Beach County jury convicted 25-year-old Christopher Soto of second-degree murder for a 2023 stabbing death in which the victim's body was dumped in a canal along West Atlantic Avenue in West Delray Beach, after prosecutors initially pursued a first-degree murder charge.
Detectives have not released the identity of Harrington's mother, and the specific circumstances or motive behind the killing remain unclear. It is also not yet known whether prosecutors will pursue the death penalty or when Harrington will next appear in court following his missed arraignment.
