Teen says brother innocent in slayings

TOWNSEND, Ga. - Relatives of a Georgia man charged with slaying his father and seven others in a mobile home insisted yesterday that he would never harm his family, and the suspect's brother speculated that a dispute over drugs could have prompted the killings.

The relatives spoke outside the mass funeral for seven of the eight people massacred a week earlier in the home they shared near the Georgia coast.

Their grief was mixed with shock after police charged Guy Heinze Jr., 22, on Friday with eight counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of his father, an uncle, aunt, and four cousins. The eighth victim was a boyfriend of one of the cousins, and his funeral arrangements were pending.

"I know my brother didn't do this. My brother has a conscience," Tyler Heinze, 16, told reporters outside the rural cemetery where seven caskets sat topped with roses.

"I can say there was drug involvement in the house, and I think somebody ripped somebody off, and somebody needed to get their money back," Tyler Heinze said.

Police have refused to say how the victims died or what evidence they have against Heinze Jr., who reported the gruesome scene to authorities Aug. 29 in a chilling 911 call, frantically telling a dispatcher, "My whole family's dead!" He said they appeared to have been beaten to death.

Heinze was jailed soon after the slayings on charges of illegal possession of prescription drugs and marijuana, lying to police, and evidence-tampering.

William Heinze said his jailed grandson worked construction jobs hanging drywall and wanted to be a truck driver like his father. He said the family called him "Little Guy," until he outgrew his father.

"He loved his dad. I know in that 911 call that we heard on the news, he was devastated to find his dad dead like that," William Heinze said. "I just can't believe it, unless they really had some proof."

Dozens gathered yesterday for the funeral at the Young's Island Community Church of God in McIntosh County, about 20 miles north of the mobile home park where the slayings occurred in neighboring Glynn County.

The copper-colored casket of the family patriarch, 44-year-old Rusty Toler Sr., sat beneath a green tent with the caskets of his sons Russell Jr., 20, and Michael, 19 on either side. In front of them were two white caskets containing Toler's daughters, 22-year-old Chrissy and 15-year-old Michelle.

Beside the remains of the Toler men sat the casket of Toler Sr.'s sister Brenda Gail Falagan, 49. Draped in an American flag, a nod to his Army service, was the casket of Guy Heinze Sr. He and Toler Sr. had been inseparable since childhood and referred to each other as brothers, though they were not blood relations, William Heinze said.

One victim, identified by police as Chrissy Toler's 3-year-old son, Byron Jimerson Jr., survived and remains hospitalized with critical injuries.