Police said cell phone records and video evidence showed the man delivered drugs that led to a fatal overdose.
A Pinellas grand jury has handed up a first-degree murder indictment against a Seffner man who is accused of delivering drugs that killed a man in Clearwater three years ago.
John Franklin Murray, 51, was indicted last week and taken into custody on Wednesday. He was being held at the Pinellas County Jail Thursday without bond, court records show.
Murray is accused of delivering drugs to a man in the 2000 block of Sandra Drive on Sept. 19, 2021. The man who received the drugs was found dead two days later along with fentanyl and drug paraphernalia, court records state.
Clearwater police used cell phone records and surveillance videos to connect Murray to the drug transaction. He later told an investigator that he had delivered what he thought was heroin to the man who overdosed, court records state.
An autopsy determined that fentanyl was the "proximate cause" of the man's death, records state. He also had alprazolam, often known as Xanax, and alcohol in his system, according to the autopsy report.
Murray is the second man indicted this week in Pinellas County on a murder charge in connection with a fatal drug overdose. A Pinellas Park man also was indicted for first-degree murder in connection with a fatal fentanyl overdose earlier this year.