Sounak Sengupta
In Investigation Discovery’s ‘See No Evil: Comply or Die,’ the viewers are taken through the technicalities of the investigation by the Raleigh Police Department as they solve a string of robberies committed by an armed perpetrator from January 2008 till October 2008. The convicted robber was also behind the murder of Stephanie Powell Anderson, a store clerk and mother of three, in Raleigh, North Carolina, in April 2008.
How Did Stephanie Powell Anderson Die?
Stephanie Powell Anderson was born to Drucilla R. Powell on January 6, 1969, in Raleigh, North Carolina. She was married to Leondre Anderson of Oxford and had three children, including one daughter named Chenise Anderson and two sons named Jared Leon Anderson and Jerrel Lamar Powell. She got divorced from her husband and lived in Raleigh with her three children and her fiance, Fred Russell Hewitt, as of April 2008. Her daughter, Chenise, described her mother as a very hard-working individual and religious individual with a beautiful voice.
According to her children, Stephanie and Fred were planning on getting married soon, and everything was going smoothly for the family. Her son, Jerrel, stated they had purchased a new house and a new car, and everything seemed perfect for the family at the time. Stephanie worked at a Trade Wilco convenience store on Trawick Road and regularly opened the store each day at 4:30 am. Chenise reminisced how opening the store was a “thing her mother cherished” and seemed “very important” to her.
The children fondly recounted how Fred used to drop in at the store every day under the pretext of buying a newspaper. He spent some more time with her girlfriend before leaving for work. Little was he prepared for the shock that was waiting for him when he went to the store as a part of his ritual in the early hours of April 10, 2008. At around 5:15 am, a 911 dispatcher received a distress call from a distraught Fred, requesting an ambulance at the Wilco convenience store on Trawick Road.
He told the dispatcher he found his girlfriend unresponsive behind the counter. Medical respondents rushed to the scene to find Fred sitting down by Stephanie, and he was unsure what had occurred. Since there was very little blood at the scene, he thought she had suffered from a heart attack. Stephanie was rushed to a nearby hospital, where she succumbed to her injuries. The medical examiner found that she had sustained a gunshot wound to her chest area, and her death officially became a homicide.
Who Killed Stephanie Powell Anderson?
After launching a homicide investigation, the detectives of the Raleigh Police Department questioned Fred since he was the first person to discover the body. He informed the officers that there was no problem at home, and he did not know anyone having enmity with Stephanie. According to the show, she was liked by all, including most store patrons. The investigators found the store had surveillance footage covering the front door and the front and behind the counter.
Checking the CCTV footage, the officers saw that a 6 feet tall African American, wearing a black hoodie and a blue bandana covering their face, approached Stephanie as she was unlocking the store. The suspect pulled out a gun and forced her to open the store at gunpoint. A shaken Stephanie let out a scream which enabled the store alarm, as the perpetrator repeatedly asked her to open the safe. Given their calm composure and detailed instructions, the detectives concluded this was not their first robbery.
As Stephanie failed to open the safe, the masked perpetrator shot her before trying to open it on their own. After failing to do so, the suspect could be seen leaving the store minutes before Fred pulled up on his vehicle. With him wearing different clothes and approaching within minutes of the shooting, the investigators ruled Fred out as a suspect. Since the murder was related to a botched robbery, the detectives wanted to look into more robbery cases with a similar modus operandi to Stephanie’s case.
According to the show, the robbery unit of the Raleigh Police Department supplied the investigators with similar cases at a local WilcoHess gas station on Louisburg Road in the early hours of February 2008. The manager of the station, Mr. Pavel, was robbed twice, on February 1 and February 13, in a similar fashion when he was opening the station. He provided the authorities with a matching description of the suspect both times.
Around 27 days after Stephanie’s murder, the Raleigh Police Department received a 911 call from a Subway store on 5410 Six Forks Road on May 7, 2008. A similar robbery had taken place, and the investigators were able to retrieve a shoe print from the scene, although there was no surveillance footage. However, they got a breakthrough when the same alleged suspect committed a robbery at the Mexico Lindo check-cashing service on Wake Forest road on September 10, 2008.
The masked perpetrator was wearing camouflage but the store’s CCTV caught a distinct image of the uncovered area of their face, including the eyes. The suspect rampantly fired multiple shots at one employee, Modesta Fernandez-Lucas, before stealing around $7,000 in cash and fleeing the scene. However, the employee survived, and the investigators retrieved another clean footprint off the store counter. The authorities released an image of the perpetrator to the public, along with a $25,000 cash offer by Stephanie’s employers for any relevant information.
Armond Devega is Serving His Sentence Today
The police received a valuable tip when one woman came forward, claiming the alleged robber was one of her ex-boyfriends, Armond Devega. She identified some items of clothing and the eyes of the killer, similar to that of Armond’s. When the officers ran his name through their database, they found he had a prior criminal record of armed robbery. A search warrant was executed, and Armond was arrested on October 24, 2008, from his parents’ home.
Armond denied the charges, and the investigators had to find physical evidence tying him to the crimes. They searched his room to find shoes similar to the footprints retrieved from both crime scenes and also discovered he had searched the stores he robbed before committing the robberies. He was convicted of the first-degree murder of Stephanie, attempted first-degree murder for shooting Modesta, and six of eight counts of robbery with a firearm relating to a spree of crimes from January 2008 until his arrest in October 2008.
Armond was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole on the murder charge and 57 to 72 years for the other charges stemming from other cases. According to official court records, Armond, 41, is serving his sentence at the Richmond Correctional Institution in Hoffman, North Carolina.
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