McCalla man faces life sentence for role in 2019 killing
Two months after being convicted of murder in the 2019 death of a Jefferson County woman, a McCalla man now faces a sentence of life in prison.
Kendal Tyler Battles, 31, was given the sentence Wednesday by the Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court.
District Attorney Hays Webb said Battles will be eligible for parole.
Battles was convicted by a jury on Sept. 15 for his role in the death of Marka Willoe Watkins, who was found dead at the bottom of an abandoned well in Vance in Tuscaloosa County on June 29, 2019.
“I hope that this verdict helps provide some peace for Willoe’s family,” Webb said after the jury made its decision. “I know they have suffered greatly since her tragic killing, and nothing can make up for her loss.
“As always, I am very proud of our staff and lawyers. They work hard and with great spirit for the people of our community.”
Watkins’ grandmother reported the 20-year-old woman missing on June 25, 2019, saying she had last heard from her a week before on June 17.
Soon after, authorities received a tip from her brother that led them to the well on vacant property off Will Walker Lane in Vance.
There, investigators and county road workers excavated and found Watkins’ body buried 35 feet down, under concrete blocks and fast-setting concrete.
Authorities believe Watkins was beaten with a baseball bat and strangled with a cord before her body was wrapped in garbage bags.
A medical examiner with the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences ruled that Wakins’ cause of death was by blunt force trauma and asphyxiation.
Statements and evidence collected during the investigation led to the arrests of Battles, Joseph Brandon Nevels, now 22, and Devon Trent Hall, now 30, on charges of murder and abuse of a corpse.
Hall accepted a plea deal from county prosecutors in July, agreeing to a 30-year prison sentence.
Trials still await for Nevels and Monic Mochell Battles, Tyler Battles’ wife, who was charged with murder almost three months after Watkins disappeared.
During their initial interviews, Tyler Battles and his wife told officers that Watkins had been staying with them at their home on Tanya Drive in McCalla around Father’s Day weekend in June 2019. They said they left one day for Monic Battles to see a doctor, but Watkins was gone when they returned.
However, their account eventually changed, according to court testimony from the lead investigator in the case.
Investigators searched the Battles’ home, taking blood samples from a chair and the floor in the kitchen and confiscating a pink, youth-sized softball bat that had been thrown onto a burn pile.
Authorities charged Tyler Battles and the two men who were staying at their home – Nevels and Hall – but sent Monic Battles’ case to be reviewed by a grand jury, which eventually returned an indictment accusing her of murder.
According to testimony, Nevels told investigators that Watkins had stolen his phone in December or January and he was angry because it contained photos of his deceased grandmother. He admitted to hitting her in the head with a shotgun and told police the others then beat her and struck her with an aluminum bat.
Nevels reported going into another room and later walking out to see Hall strangling Watkins with a cord. Tuscaloosa Violent Crimes Unit Investigator J.C. Bryant testified that Hall said Nevels strangled Watkins, but his cellmate later told police that Hall said Tyler Battles had strangled her.
Reach Jason Morton at jason.morton@tuscaloosanews.com.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: McCalla man faces life sentence for role in 2019 killing
