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Watkinsville Resident Sentenced to Life in Prison for Murdering Parents

Athens-Clarke County

Life in prison for a 21-year-old Watkinsville man found guilty of murdering his mother and step-father in 2021.

When Peyton Moyer killed his parents, Benjamin Smith and Ashley Schutza at their home on Bouldercrest Circle in Watkinsville, his two sisters, ages 16 and 4, were also in the home and the oldest one called 911 for help.

Judge Patrick Haggard told family members attending the hearing that there was little he could say to make matters better, that unless you’ve lived this, you don’t understand it. Haggard’s father was killed in a robbery in Athens in 1992.

If Moyer is eventually released from prison, he then faces 15 years of home confinement.

Jeff has delivered morning news at WUGA Radio for more than a decade. He was among a team at CNN that won a George Foster Peabody Award in 1991 for an educational product based on the fall of the Soviet Union. He also won an Edward R. Murrow Award from Radio Television Digital News Association in 2007 for producing a series for WSB Radio on financial scams. Jeff is a graduate of the Babcock Graduate School of Management at Wake Forest University (MBA) and holds a BS in Business Administration from Campbell University, both in North Carolina.
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