Final Suspect in Ronnie Gammage Murder Gets Life in Prison

GILMER — The final suspect in a brutal Upshur County capital murder case has been sentenced to life in prison after entering a guilty plea on Tuesday. KETK reports Andrew Norwine, 23, appeared in the Upshur County 115th District Court at 9:00 a.m. to enter his plea in connection with the December 2012 kidnapping and slaying of Ronnie Joe Gammage.

On December 8, 2012, Gammage, 27, who lived by himself in a Longview apartment and drew disability payments, was reported missing by his mother after she failed to hear from him for four days. According to arrest affidavits, Norwine and fellow convicted murderers Sarah Haslam and Daniel Jones slashed Gammage’s tire at a local restaurant and tricked him into getting into Haslam’s car claiming they would take him to get a new tire. Instead, the trio drove Gammage to a location where he was beaten before they put him in the trunk of the car and took him out to Upshur County. Norwine, Haslam and Jones then beat Gammage again before slitting his throat and setting him on fire.

According to the Longview News-Journal, Norwine is a private first class, who enlisted for active duty in the U.S. Army in June 2011 as an infantryman. He was assigned to Fort Polk, Louisiana, in January 2012, Mark Edwards, media relations chief for the U.S. Army Human Resources Command, said after Norwine’s arrest. Norwine was arrested December 25, 2012, by military police at Fort Polk. He was booked into Vernon Parish Jail in Leesville, Louisiana, and was transferred to the Upshur County Jail on January 4, 2014. Haslam and Jones previously accepted plea agreements that resulted in each of them being sentenced to life in prison.