2 Indicted in Florida Killing of Fountain Valley Man

A Florida grand jury Friday returned indictments of first-degree murder and robbery against two men accused of hogtying a 32-year-old Fountain Valley man between two poles and beating him to death, a Palm Beach County sheriff’s spokesman said.

The naked body of Michael Shane Patterson, whose family is from Fountain Valley, was found Sept. 7 strung between the poles in an empty Boca Raton, Fla., storage lot. Patterson, described in police reports as a “drifter,” had been hitchhiking through Florida when two men picked him up along a wooded highway, authorities said.

“They were drunk and going to scare the guy, but they went too far,” said Mike McNamee, the sheriff’s information officer.

Patterson died from wounds sustained in the beating, which was inflicted “from head to feet,” McNamee said.

Investigators arrested Michael B. Whitmore, 19, of Lakeland on Tuesday after receiving a phone tip from an informant. On Wednesday, Horace K. Williams, 21, of Boca Raton was arrested. Both men are being held without bail in the Palm Beach County Jail, McNamee said.

A juvenile with the attackers watched them beat Patterson, but apparently didn’t participate, McNamee said.

The two men lived “out in redneck country,” McNamee said, and were driving home from a party when they picked up Patterson sitting on his backpack alongside State Road 7.

The men reportedly drove past Patterson, stopped, then returned and offered him a ride, “intent on teaching this hitchhiker a lesson,” McNamee said.

With Patterson in the back seat, Whitmore reportedly drove to a vacant storage lot in Boca Raton owned by Williams’ father and demanded the hitchhiker’s money.

Patterson, carrying $400 that his mother, Donna Patterson, had wired him from Fountain Valley, denied having money with him and tried to leave the car, McNamee said. But the men attacked. The $400 and Patterson’s money belt were not found, McNamee said.

Patterson “had been a drifter for several years and had spent some time in a mental hospital in California,” McNamee said.

Patterson last spoke to his mother Sept. 4, McNamee said, when he seemed in good spirits and said he was interested in doing some fishing.