An Alachua County jury convicted three men this week in the 2017 shooting death of 23-year-old Christin Marie Cassels of Hawthorne, closing out a case that took seven years of digital detective work to crack. Nikenson Perin was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, while Blake Jackson and Keneth Altidor were convicted of second-degree murder and now await sentencing.
The jury reached its verdict on Sept. 28, according to gainesville.com, which reported that deputies had responded to a reported shooting at a home at 7815 SE U.S. Highway 301 in Hawthorne on April 17, 2017, where Cassels was pronounced dead at the scene. Prosecutors told jurors that all three defendants were linked to a planned robbery at the home, and they identified Perin as the person who shot and killed Cassels, per the same outlet.
Cell Data and Geofencing Cracked the Case
What finally broke the case open wasn't a confession or a tip — it was data. Investigators used information pulled from the suspects' mobile devices and Google accounts to identify and arrest the three men, according to gainesville.com's reporting. WCJB reported that the defendants were arrested seven years after the killing once new cell phone data led investigators back to them, and prosecutors pointed jurors to that same cell phone and geofencing evidence as proof connecting all three men to the crime.
The trial itself was extensive. WCJB's report notes the jury heard from 17 witnesses over the course of the proceedings, including a former cellmate, crime scene investigators, detectives, and a language interpreter. Cassels' relatives and the detectives who worked the case were among those who attended the trial.
Arrests Came Two Years Ago in South Florida
The break in the case arrived in the summer of 2024, when Keneth Altidor was arrested in Fort Lauderdale on July 15, 2024, with assistance from the Broward County Sheriff's Office, and Blake Jackson was arrested the following day in Hallandale Beach, according to Alachua Chronicle. That outlet's reporting describes a seven-year investigation that began the day Cassels was shot and killed in 2017 before finally leading detectives to the three men.
Sentencing dates for Jackson and Altidor have not yet been announced. Perin's life sentence stands as the only punishment handed down so far in the case, with the other two men's fates still to be determined by the court.
Sheriff Praises Detectives' Persistence
Alachua County Sheriff Scott issued a written statement addressing the case's conclusion, saying detectives Jeremy York and Chris Weitzel showed determination throughout the investigation. He said the Cassels family can now have a small amount of peace knowing that Christin's killers have been held accountable, and added that the sheriff's office will work as long as necessary to ensure every family gets justice.
The case underscores how far cold-case investigations have evolved as digital evidence — mobile devices, Google account records, cell-phone data and geofencing — has become a central tool for detectives working years-old homicides. For Cassels' family, the wait stretched nearly a decade, but the verdicts finally answer what happened inside that Hawthorne home back in 2017.
