Suspect wouldn’t kill his family, relatives say

TOWNSEND, Ga. (AP) — Relatives of a Georgia man charged with slaying his father and seven others in a mobile home insisted Saturday that he would never harm his family, with the suspect’s brother speculating a dispute over drugs could have prompted the killings.

Family members spoke to reporters outside a mass graveside funeral for members of a single family massacred a week earlier inside the home they shared near the Georgia coast.

Their grief was mixed with shock after police charged 22-year-old Guy Heinze Jr. on Friday with eight counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of his kin, including the suspect’s father, uncle, aunt and four cousins. The eighth victim was a boyfriend of one of the cousins, and his funeral arrangements are pending.

“I know my brother didn’t do this. My brother has a conscience,” 16-year-old Tyler Heinze told reporters outside the rural cemetery where seven coffins topped with roses rested atop freshly dug graves.

“I can say there was drug involvement in the house, and I think somebody ripped somebody off, and somebody needed to get their money back,” Tyler Heinze said. “Maybe somebody in the house double-crossed someone. It could’ve been my brother who double-crossed somebody, and it could be part of his fault that somebody came in there and did this.”

Police have refused to say how the victims died or what evidence they have against Heinze Jr., who reported the gruesome scene to authorities Aug. 29 in a chilling 911 call, frantically telling a dispatcher, “My whole family’s dead!” He said they appeared to have been beaten to death when he found them.

Heinze had been jailed soon after the slayings on charges of illegal possession of prescription drugs and marijuana, as well as lying to police and evidence tampering.

Tyler Heinze declined to speak in detail about drug use at the mobile home.

“I’m not going to sit here and ruin my family’s name,” he said. “I don’t want people to think my family was trash. They were hard-working people.”

William Heinze said his jailed grandson worked construction jobs hanging drywall and wanted to be a truck driver like his father. He said the family called him “Little Guy,” until he outgrew his father.

“He loved his dad. I know in that 911 call that we heard on the news, he was devastated to find his dad dead like that,” William Heinze said. “I just can’t believe it, unless they really had some proof.”

Dozens gathered Saturday for the funeral at the Young’s Island Community Church of God in McIntosh County, about 20 miles north of the mobile home park where the slayings occurred in neighboring Glynn County.