Becky Sears identified as lead assailant in 2009 murder
becky sears was identified by investigators as the lead assailant in the March 2009 beating death of Laverne Katherine “Kay” Parsons in Grovetown, Georgia. Parsons was 41 when she was found beaten to death inside her home. The case drew attention because Sears and Parsons had once been next-door neighbors and close friends.
Investigators said Parsons was beaten with a claw hammer and a baseball bat. Rebecca “Becky” Bowers Sears had lived in Grovetown with her husband, Tony Sears, her two sons, Michael “Mike” Bowers and Christopher “Chris” Bowers, and later three children they had together.
Grovetown neighbors
Before the killing, Sears became friends with Parsons after the families moved in next door to each other. Both women worked together and worked out together through Weight Watchers, and by 2009 they were described as the best of friends. That closeness is part of what makes the case unusually personal: the violence grew out of two households that had overlapped in daily life.
Sears began an intimate relationship with Parsons’s husband, David Parsons, in late 2008. David Parsons said the relationship mostly stayed in cars, but he said there were two times they were physical inside the home he shared with Kay Parsons and their son, Derek Parsons. David and Rebecca also exchanged secret letters.
Parsons family breakup
David Parsons broke up with Sears by the end of 2008 because he did not want to abandon his family. In February 2009, Sears told Tony Sears about the affair, and Tony then contacted Kay Parsons. After the affair came to light, the Parsons decided to move.
David Parsons and Sears remained in contact after the breakup. On the evening of March 24, 2009, they had phone sex while he was on a work trip in California. Sears also told David Parsons during a mixed doubles tennis match, “You know why I suck so bad at tennis is because you distract me out there,” a line that shows the pair were still tied together even after the breakup.
March 2009 killing
Parsons was found beaten to death in March 2009 in her Grovetown home. A few days later, investigators identified Sears as the lead assailant. For readers following the case now, the central fact is not the affair itself but the chain it set in motion: the breakup of one marriage, the strain on another, and the killing that followed inside the Parsons home.
The identification of Sears as the lead assailant fixes the case around a specific person and a specific household conflict. It also leaves the story centered on the neighbors, spouses and children already named in the record: Kay Parsons, David Parsons, Tony Sears, Derek Parsons, Michael Bowers and Christopher Bowers.
