The suspect accused in the gruesome murder of Javonnta Murphy, whose body was found in a barrel in the Malibu Lagoon last summer, is now charged with a second murder. Police say Joshua Lee Simmons, charged with fatally shooting Murphy, 32, an aspiring rapper/musician, then dumping his body stuffed in a 55-gallon drum in the Malibu Lagoon, also is responsible for another murder last year.
Simmons was charged this week in the fatal shooting of 50-year-old Anthony Soloc in Inglewood last January. Simmons has been in custody since his arrest in October tied to Murphy’s murder that happened in late July. Maintenance workers and then lifeguards discovered the barrel floating in the lagoon days later. Upon opening the barrel, they made the gruesome discovery of Murphy’s body.
An alleged accomplice in that case, Dennis Eugene Vance, was released on a $50,000 bond.