CT man found guilty in fatal shooting of man, woman connected to double cross scheme

A jury found a New Britain man guilty of murder and other charges connected to the 2016 slayings of two people in Hartford’s North End after a scam trade of drugs for a gun.

Brandon Letman, 31, was found guilty of two counts of murder, murder with special circumstances, criminal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and three counts of tampering with witnesses, state officials announced Thursday.

The 12-person jury in his case started deliberations on Monday and reached their verdict Thursday afternoon.

The charges stem from a shooting on Enfield Street on June 21, 2016, that left 19-year-old Cameron Mounds and 21-year-old Ashley Spence dead.

The case went cold and in 2019 was turned over to the Cold Case Unit of the Office of the Chief State’s Attorney. That same year, a joint investigation between that unit, the Hartford State’s Attorney’s Office, the Hartford Police Department and the Connecticut Department of Correction led to Letman’s arrest.

Investigators reinterviewed multiple witnesses, encouraging them to tell the truth about what they saw that day.

During the trial, prosecutors called multiple eyewitnesses to the stand, including a woman who recalled hearing shots outside her home.

She said she asked Spence what happened to her before she died, and the young woman said she had been shot.

Another witness said she was in a parked car on Enfield Street when she heard shots and saw people gather around a wounded Spence, who lay in the driveway. Then she heard a woman call out from across the street that someone had been shot on her side of the street — Mounds ran away from the gunfire, but was struck as he ran across the street.

Both Mounds and Spence were pronounced dead shortly after the shooting.

The jury saw photos of the crime scene, including a part of the driveway where Spence was shot littered in shell casings and yellow evidence markers, and photos of Mounds covered in a white sheet near a back door to an apartment.

Prosecutors alleged during the trial, which began in April, that Letman opened fire outside of an apartment on Enfield Street after realizing he had been scammed in a drug deal.

Letman allegedly received a bag of fake cocaine in a trade with Mounds, who Letman allegedly duped by trading a fake gun.

Witnesses told investigators that Letman allegedly returned to the house on Enfield Street not long after the deal and announced “this gun is real” as he pulled out the weapon and opened fire.

The case was prosecuted by Robin Krawczyk, senior assistant state’s attorney, and John Fahey, Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney and head of the Cold Case Unit.

Fahey issued a statement after the conviction, saying he was thankful for the jury.

“We in the Cold Case Unit, as well as members of the victims’ families, are grateful to the jury on this case who listened attentively to the evidence and deliberated carefully in arriving at this verdict,” he said. “We are also grateful for the jury’s careful consideration of the witness tampering charges. Witness tampering interferes with the administration of justice, and jurors recognized that and held the defendant accountable.”

Judge Michael J. Gustafson, who presided over the trial, will sentence Letman in Hartford Superior Court on July 18.