Larry E. Bell Jr., 42, Will serve the rest of his life in prison
BREVARD COUNTY • PALM BAY, FLORIDA – A Palm Bay man has been sentenced to life in prison for murder in a case that hinged on digital evidence assembled by police and prosecutors.
Larry E. Bell Jr., 42, was convicted at trial last year of second-degree murder with a firearm and shooting into a vehicle for killing Bobby Knight Jr., 61, in southeast Palm Bay in November 2019.
Evidence included data from the shooter and victim’s phones, cell towers, and security cameras from homes near the crime scene.
On Dec. 17, prosecutor Bernadette Serafinowicz made the case to the jury during a penalty-phase hearing that Bell should be sentenced as a Prison Releasee Reoffender.
That status cleared the way for Circuit Judge Samuel Bookhardt III to impose the maximum sentence of life without parole. Bell previously served time for various felonies and had been free for less than a year when he killed Knight.
“I’m relieved for Bobby Knight’s family that they finally have some closure on the loss of their father,” Serafinowicz said. “I believe justice was done.”
In November 2019, Palm Bay Police responded to a 911 call about shots fired near homes on Agora Circle, southeast of Malabar Road and Interstate 95. Officers found a red Jaguar sedan parked in the middle of the road with its lights on.
The driver, Knight, was dead from multiple gunshot wounds.
The victim’s cell phone, found in the car, revealed the person with whom he had last spoken: Bell.
Meanwhile, cell tower data showed Bell and Knight’s mobile phones “pinged” in the area of the homicide at the approximate time of the shooting.
Security video from a nearby property showed two vehicles pulling up alongside each other on Agora Circle around then.
During questioning by police, Bell said he had previously lived with Knight and that the victim had called him seeking to buy drugs.
A search of the room where Bell was staying produced two .40 caliber bullets.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement later determined that those bullets had “toolmarks” showing they had cycled through the same firearm as the bullets recovered from the murder scene.
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