True Crime Chronicles: Two Logan County murderers have been parole-eligible for a year but remain in prison
On the evening of April 2, 2015, a group of five people set out from the Polk and Scott County area in a maroon SUV with a single purpose in mind: to rob 60-year-old Ritchie Lee Lynch of drugs and money at his home on Glover Daniels Road north of Booneville in Logan County.
Teresa Lynn Bennett knew the area and pointed out the residence as they drove past. They parked in a cleared wooded spot down the road. The two women stayed with the vehicle while Robert Allen Lee Melton, Nick Charles Stoicu III, and Joseph Oliah Hals Brown walked toward the house.
Melton kept watch near the gate. Stoicu, then 39 and known by the nickname Turtle, carried a rifle. Brown carried a handgun.
Inside or near the residence, the situation turned fatal. Melton later told investigators he heard someone yell, followed by roughly four gunshots. Stoicu and Brown came back out carrying a black bag and told him they had shot the man and left him lying there.
One account had Stoicu saying it was done and it went bad. They returned to the SUV and drove to a residence in Waldron, where the guns were broken down. Stoicu and Brown offered Melton $800 and 17 grams of methamphetamine for his role. He declined.
Three spent 9mm shell casings were later found near Lynch’s body, along with a 9mm barrel and other gun parts recovered from the SUV that investigators linked to the shooting.
Lynch’s body was not discovered until the morning of April 6, when a friend, Terry Bollinger, called authorities after going to check on him.
Family members said they had been trying to reach him for days until his phone died. One of his sons also went to the home and found him. Preliminary autopsy results showed Lynch had been shot five times and that the manner of death was homicide.
He was a local man whose death immediately drew a multi-agency response involving the Logan County Sheriff’s Office under Sheriff Boyd D. Hicks, Arkansas State Police, the 15th Judicial District Drug Task Force, and departments from Polk, Scott, Sevier, Howard, and surrounding counties.
Authorities described him as armed and very dangerous. He had already fled once on an unrelated matter before Lynch’s body was found and fled again on foot in Polk County after the homicide. Deputies eventually took him into custody on April 9 in Howard County after he twice eluded them.
Brown was arrested around the same period in Polk County on unrelated drug and other charges. Both men, along with others, were held as persons of interest while investigators pieced the case together through interviews and evidence.
By mid-April, Logan County prosecutors charged Stoicu and Brown with first-degree murder, aggravated robbery, and possession of firearms by certain persons, and they were also charged as habitual offenders based on prior felony convictions. They pleaded not guilty at arraignment in May 2015.
Melton, Bennett, and Dave Ann Townsend were also drawn into the case. When some of them later refused to testify ahead of a scheduled trial, additional charges followed.
Bennett eventually pleaded guilty to an amended robbery charge and received 10 years, agreeing to testify. Townsend rejected a similar offer and faced the prospect of a first-degree murder charge. Melton was also charged with first-degree murder.
The cases against Stoicu and Brown were severed so they could be tried separately.
In June 2016, Brown entered a no-contest plea to second-degree murder and received 30 years. On June 27, 2016, Stoicu pleaded guilty to the same second-degree murder charge in Logan County Circuit Court before Judge Jerry Don Ramey. He was sentenced to 30 years (360 months) as well.
Remaining counts of aggravated robbery and possession of a firearm by certain persons were dismissed with prejudice.
The state had prepared to present testimony from a medical examiner, firearms examiner, crime lab experts, officers, and other witnesses establishing that Stoicu and Brown went to Lynch’s residence and that Lynch was shot and killed there.
Stoicu was already in the system on concurrent Polk County drug charges from September 2015 for possession of methamphetamine or cocaine with purpose to deliver (2 to 10 grams) and possession of drug paraphernalia, each carrying 120-month sentences.
Stoicu entered the Arkansas Department of Correction on September 17, 2015, He has one incarceration on record.
His projected PE/TE date is listed as July 9, 2025, with total time of 30 years, though actual eligibility can be affected by other laws, regulations, and good-time calculations. The murder sentence remains the longest component of his time.
Joseph Oliah Hals Brown, the other man who walked with Nick Stoicu toward Ritchie Lee Lynch’s home on the night of April 2, 2015, carrying a handgun while Stoicu carried a rifle, remains in custody under a 30-year sentence for second-degree murder.
Current records list him under the facility designation Interstate Compacts, indicating he is serving his Arkansas sentence through an interstate compact transfer arrangement rather than in an in-state unit.
He is classified C2 custody with Good Time Class I-C, carries the alias Hooligan, and has a projected PE/TE date of September 17, 2027, on the same 30-year total term that keeps both men locked up for the planned robbery that left Lynch dead of five gunshot wounds.
The killing of Ritchie Lee Lynch was a planned robbery that escalated into a five-shot homicide in a rural Logan County home. Witness statements, shell casings, gun parts recovered from the getaway vehicle, and the autopsy established the basic facts.
Stoicu’s extensive tattoos marking white-power affiliation, his prior felony record, his flight from authorities, and the concurrent drug convictions form the background of a man who, along with Brown, chose to arm himself and approach a 60-year-old man’s residence for dope and cash.
The pleas that reduced the charges from first-degree to second-degree murder closed the case without a full jury trial, leaving Stoicu serving a 30-year term that keeps him in custody well into the 2040s under current projections. Lynch’s family lost a father and friend to gunfire that began with a simple plan to steal drugs and money and ended with him left lying dead outside his own home.
