Second arrest in December homicide
BROOKSVILLE – The Citrus County Sheriff’s Office has made a second arrest in the December 2012 murder of Deanna Lee Stires.
Stires, 18, was reported missing on New Years Day. Her bound body was found by a hunter off State Road 24 in Levy County on Jan. 18.
Crystal Brinson’s involvement was implicated by her boyfriend, Byron Boutin, 42, who was arrested and charged with second-degree murder of the Brooksville teen.
Brinson, 36, of Forzando Drive, had been in the Hernando County Jail since Jan. 25 on charges of felony probation violation. She was on probation for an original charge of grand theft.
According to an arrest affidavit, Brinson was transported on a warrant from the jail to Citrus County, where she was booked on charges of homicide. No bond has been set.
Hernando Today previously reported Boutin confessed to the murder in mid-January after law enforcement searched his Homosassa trailer on West Brady Lane, finding blood, guns and hair samples, and placed him under arrest.
Boutin told law enforcement he picked up Stires in Brooksville, and spent about a day doing methamphetamines with her and his girlfriend, Crystal Brinson.
Boutin said he left Stires at his home alone on the evening of Christmas Day, and came home to a ransacked house, missing drugs and Stires “acting crazy.”
Boutin said he later saw Brinson give Stires what he thought to be a consensual morphine injection after she had calmed down.
Boutin said Stires was again “flipping out,” and he saw Brinson hit her in the head with a pistol.
The couple transported an incapacitated Stires to Boutin’s father’s home off Centralia Road in Brooksville, leaving her snoring and sweating in a garage. They later bound Stires, and left her alone for about an hour. The teen was dead when they returned, according to an affidavit.
The couple moved Stires’ body to the truck of his car, and left her in there for two days until Boutin found a secluded spot to leave it.
After his confession, Boutin was booked on no bond on charges of second degree murder and possessing a firearm by a felon.
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