FLORENCE- A grand jury signed a true bill of indictment Thursday, finding that the case against a Scranton man, who is accused of killing his wife in June of 2011, will go to trial.
In late November, Florence County Magistrate Judge Belinda Timmons found that there was sufficient probable cause to send the case against Rodney Dale Ivey, to a grand jury, which heard testimony this week.
During the hearing, Ivey pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
The signing of a true bill of indictment basically means that a grand jury felt it heard sufficient evidence from the prosecution to believe that the accused person likely committed the crime, should be indicted, and that the case should then be sent to trial.
Ivey, 23, of 1684 Salem Road is charged with murder in the death of Devin Grace Ham, whose body was found June 15,2011, six days after she was last seen alive at the Budget Motel on U.S. 301 in Olanta.
During a preliminary hearing in the case, investigators said Ivey confessed to strangling his 22-year-old wife inside their motel room, wrapping her body in a sheet from the room and dumping it along Brown Road near Salem Church in Coward.
They said Ivey, who Sheriff Kenney Boone said became uncooperative with investigators and went missing before Ham’s body was found, admitted to using cocaine about the time it happened and only confessed to the crime after her body was discovered June 15,2011. Ivey was booked into the Florence County Detention Center the afternoon of June 14,2011 on a charge of giving false information in connection with the search for Ham. Ivey also is charged with a parole violation. He was charged with murder the next day.
The couple had stayed several days at the motel and with relatives before that. Ham and Ivey had been married less than a year and had experienced marital difficulties before her death, Florence County Sheriff’s Investigator Brett Camp said in a previous report.
Investigators and Ham’s family members allege Ham was the victim of physical abuse during the course of her relationship with Ivey.
In addition to deputies and local firefighters, volunteers including members of Ham’s family showed up in droves to help scour a nearly 50-square-mile area in Olanta in the days before her body was finally found.
Searchers used ATVs, a helicopter and mounted deputies from the Darlington County Sheriff’s Office. Investigators said tattoos on the body they eventually found helped them identify it as Ham’s.
Florence County Coroner M.G. “Bubba” Matthews testified June 16,2011 during a second magistrate’s court hearing for Ivey, that Ham’s body was too decomposed for the autopsy performed at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston to determine the cause of her death, though the manner of death has been ruled homicide.
He said although her body had been left out in the elements for six to seven days, pathologists were able rule out death by shooting or stabbing.
Ivey was being kept under suicide watch, investigators testified during a magistrate’s court hearing on the false information charge the morning of June 15,2011. During that hearing, investigators testified that Ivey gave them five different stories about his wife’s disappearance. He faced a $473 fine and a $2,500 surety bond on the charge.
Ivey’s criminal record chronicles a series of arrests by the Florence County Sheriff’s Office or Lake City Police Department dating back to 2006 for crimes including breach of peace, petit larceny, receiving stolen goods, driving without a license, purchase and/or possession or sale of beer or wine by a minor, non-violent second-degree burglary, felony grand larceny, malicious injury to property, stealing or killing an identifiable dog, attempt to enter a house without breaking, forgery, parole violations, obtaining a signature under false pretenses and giving false information to law enforcement.
Ivey has been incarcerated since his initial arrest June 14.
Information on a future trial date was not immediately available.
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