Life Sentence in Tyler Cold Case
Posted/updated on: October 24, 2012 at 11:32 am
TYLER – The jury that convicted a man in a cold case Smith County murder has also given him life in prison. He was also fined $10,000. Monday afternoon, Shams Emil Masters, 34, was convicted of the 1999 murder of William Thomas Young, 19. He died at the Woodland estates subdivision, off Noonday Road, from a single gunshot wound. He was sentenced Tuesday morning to life.
At the time of the shooting, authorities suspected Masters of murdering Young, but did not have enough evidence to charge him with murder. Masters was taken into custody at the time of Young’s death for possession of methamphetamine, which law enforcement found on him. He received a 6-year prison term.
To go to trial, Masters had to be extradited from a prison in Colorado, where he was already serving time for seven bank robberies.
