Pleas of guilt resolve homcide case

Two remaining co-defendants in the case of an Oconee County homicide in 2013 are prison-bound. In court appearances this morning, Zack Daniel Patterson and Patrick Grant Covone pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact of manslaughter. Covone and Patterson were sent to prison for five years and placed on probation five years. Patterson is 24 and Covone 28. Each man receives credit for time spent in jail awaiting trial. For Patterson, the credit amounts to 448 days. Covone gets credit for 299 days. A third defendant, Joshua Michael Fulbright, is serving 22 years for the crime of voluntary manslaughter. Authorities believe the victim, Richard Alan Marszalek, was beaten to death in December 2013 at a mobile home near Westminster. While it’s believed Covone and Patterson had no direct role in Marszalek’s death, they admitted they took part in hiding the body, which was later found beneath a mobile home which caught fire. The two men said they acted out of fear that Fulbright was going to harm them and members of their family. Judge Cordell Maddox heard a statement read by the victim’s brother, Stanley Marszalek. The Chicago, Illinois resident asked the judge for the maximum sentence of 15 years apiece and said, “Both willingly participated in hiding my brother’s body, in an attempt to cover up what they had done. We will also never know whether or not Rick was dead when the defendants placed his ‘body’ underneath the mobile home.”