WEST PALM BEACH — A man serving decades in prison on drug trafficking charges was sentenced to several decades more for the murder of 34-year-old Frederick Stockton outside a Royal Palm Beach restaurant.
Speaking over Zoom from inside a federal prison, 31-year-old Balmy Joseph pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for 25 years in prison. His Nov. 12 plea conference marked the fourth conviction in the death of Stockton, a work-release prison inmate who was ambushed by masked gunmen behind Hilary’s Diner on July 7, 2018.
Witnesses said Stockton and his coworker were taking garbage to a dumpster outside the restaurant when two people — one of whom authorities believe to be Joseph — emerged from a gray Honda Accord and began shooting. Stockton, shot in the chest, legs, arms, hips and head, collapsed. The gunmen returned to the Honda and fled.Stockton’s girlfriend told Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputies that hours before his murder, Stockton called her to say a black Audi was following him. Lynn Elliott said Stockton “had been on edge for some time,” adamant that a man named Delson Marc wanted him dead.
Man suspected of orchestrating murder was already under investigation
Marc was already on authorities’ radar. Deemed by federal prosecutors “one of, if not the biggest” heroin dealers in Palm Beach County, he was under investigation by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration months before Stockton’s murder.
Agents had staged controlled buys and gathered evidence of large-scale drug trafficking but never took him into custody. Later, Assistant U.S. Attorney Rinku Tribuiani told a federal judge Marc had evaded justice so many times that her office stopped prioritizing his arrest.
“When the agents would bring up Delson Marc’s name, I literally said to them: Move on. You’re never going to get this guy. He’s too smart,” she said, according to a 2019 hearing transcript.
The day after Stockton’s murder, deputies watched from afar as Marc and Joseph drove a Cadillac Escalade into an apartment complex parking lot, followed by a flatbed tow truck. The truck stopped in front of a gray Honda Accord, believed to be the same one used in the murder one day earlier.
A passenger of Marc’s car stepped out and handed the tow truck driver the key to the Honda, which was loaded onto the flatbed. The tow truck driver then followed the Escalade out of the parking lot.
When deputies stopped the tow truck, Marc doubled back, spotted the marked patrol units and sped away. He and Joseph abandoned the Escalade and fled on foot, leaving behind a Crown Royal bag stuffed with heroin capsules packaged for sale.
Inside the Honda, detectives found .40-caliber Smith & Wesson ammunition beneath the driver’s seat — the same caliber as shell casings scattered around Stockton’s body outside the restaurant, along Southern Boulevard west of State Road 7.
Sister of convicted gunman: ‘My world has turned upside down’
According to federal court records, investigators believe Marc ordered Stockton’s execution as payback for a 2015 shooting carried out at Marc’s recording studio by either Stockton or his associates. Deputies arrested Marc on July 18, 2018, paving the way for drug and murder charges in state and federal court against both him and Joseph.
Marc pleaded guilty to his federal drug charges in exchange for a 20-year prison sentence. Joseph fought the charges at trial and lost.
At his sentencing hearing, federal prosecutors cast Joseph as a “significant threat” who, in addition to trafficking more than $1 million worth of narcotics, had stolen identities and credit cards, stalked the mother of his child, burglarized a home and had “no regard for the consequences of his actions.”
His older sister, by contrast, described a loving and devoted family man shaped by the murder of his own father and upbringing in impoverished neighborhoods near West Palm Beach.
“The court hearings portray Balmy as a drug dealer,” wrote Bacheline Joseph, one of seven siblings. “However, I know him as the brother who has always been there for us; I know him as a father who has always been there for his daughter; and I know him as a son who brightened our mother’s day on her worst days.”
“It has been eight months without Balmy, and I feel like my world has turned upside down,” she said.
U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas sentenced him to 22 years.
State murder charges followed federal drug trial
A year after Marc and Joseph’s federal proceedings, state prosecutors pursued additional murder charges against suspected accomplices Brandon Gracey, Benson Charles and Williamson Fleury, a prison inmate housed at the same facility as Stockton. Detectives said Fleury told Charles and Joseph when Stockton left the facility to begin his work-release shift.
Fleury was the first of the five codefendants to negotiate a deal. He pleaded guilty in January to second-degree murder in exchange for a 12-year prison sentence, with credit for the nearly five years he spent in jail following his arrest.
Gracey, 26, and Charles, 31, followed suit. They pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on Sept. 5 in exchange for 22-year sentences. Had they maintained their innocence and lost at trial, they risked mandatory life sentences for first-degree murder.
Marc is the last remaining defendant. He turned down a plea deal on the same day Joseph accepted his but is scheduled to return to court for further negotiations on Feb. 11.
Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hphillips@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Masked gunman ambushed a Royal Palm diner employee at work. How he’ll pay
Reporting by Hannah Phillips, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
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