Trial begins for double murder suspect

By Linda Cicoira 

      A jury was selected and testimony began Tuesday in Accomack Circuit Court in the trial of a Painter man accused of 13 felonies including robbery and the first-degree murder of a local couple four years ago.

     The defendant, 44-year-old Julian Travis Scarborough, of Linhaven Circle in Painter, a convicted drug dealer, pleaded not guilty to the crimes. The murder victims were 36-year-old Princeton Howard Bragg, whose obituary listed him as having eight children, and 38-year-old Lolita Monique Boggs, whose obituary said she was the mother of nine.

     The charges included two murders, two counts of robbery, four counts of using a firearm in a felony, two counts of concealing the bodies, two counts of willfully defiling a body, and a count of destroying evidence of a felony. 

     Scarborough was also indicted on a count of first-degree murder of the couple’s unborn child. That charge will not prosecuted. 

     The trial is expected to last for four days. At first, it was feared that a jury might not be empaneled as 26 of 65 prospective jurors did not show up for jury duty. 

     This is the first time the indictments brought against Scarborough were made public. They were directly taken to a grand jury and then sealed until the defendant could be served. When indictments are handled in this way, they can go undetected by local journalists and not passed on to the public.

     According to testimony, family members reported Bragg and Boggs missing after they failed to answer their phones, pick up children, or answer their door on March 25, 2020. They were last known to be running errands that day. Once alerted, the Accomack County Sheriff’s Office notified other law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout and pinged the victim’s cell phones. Boggs’ phone responded 3.4 miles northeast of the Belle Haven tower, which narrowed the search area. 

      Not long after that, the couple’s 2012 BMW, was found in the woods off Doughty Farm Road, a secluded muddy, hard-to-navigate path. The vehicle was discovered with two of its four doors open. Boggs’ body was found in the back seat’s floor. Bragg’s body was in the trunk.

     In opening statements, Commonwealth’s Attorney Spencer Morgan said Scarborough “participated in if not masterminded the murders.”  He said the defendant was trying to purchase narcotics from Bragg, was looking to buy a firearm, and sought information from a neighbor of the victims about “what they were driving and where they might go.” He said Scarborough offered others as suspects but the “most concrete evidence started to point at the defendant.”

     The victims lived on Coal Kiln Road. Bragg was a suspected drug dealer and was under surveillance by the local drug task force. A camera in an adjacent parcel made videos of the comings and goings from his home.

     Evidence showed the front door was kicked in after the two disappeared and a shoeprint was left behind. Morgan said cell phone data showed Scarborough was in the same locations as the victims. 

     Defense lawyer Patrick Bales told the jurors there are a small number of cell phone counters stretching over long distances. He said “the DNA evidence is a mixture.” Bales said another suspect was the defendant’s son and that the case would end with reasonable doubt.