Until early this year, DeAngelo Fisher hadn’t seen his father, Henry Lee Easley, since he was 8 years old.

The now 34-year-old Columbus man was at his girlfriend’s house in January, though, when family members called to let him know his dad was at the door.

“I was shocked,” Fisher remembered.

Both Fisher and Easley had been in and out of various prisons for most of Fisher’s adult life. It seemed every time Fisher was out, Easley was in and visa versa, Fisher said.

So when he saw Easley at the door, having apparently just been released from his most recent prison sentence, he was thrilled. Easley was 17 when Fisher was born and hadn’t been around when his son was growing up. But Fisher told him he still loved him and that he forgave him.

“That did something to him because he was expecting me to disrespect him,” he said.

But the reunion — and the couple of weeks they spent getting to know one another — was short-lived. On Jan. 29, Fisher was arrested for an armed robbery and aggravated assault in north Columbus. He remains in custody at the Lowndes County Adult Detention Center where, a week ago, his mother visited and told him his father had been murdered.

The murder

Easley’s body was discovered off a rural road in Pickens County, Alabama, about two miles from the Mississippi border on Sept. 17.

According to Pickens County Sheriff David Abston, he had been shot three times in the upper torso.

The discovery of Easley’s body launched a multi-jurisdictional investigation involving Pickens County Sheriff’s Office, Columbus Police Department and Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office. Some of Easley’s family members, who had filed a missing persons report for Easley with CPD on Sept. 20, positively identified Easley’s body the next day.

Easley, 51, who was living in West Point, had attended a wedding in Caledonia on Sept. 16. Family had driven Easley from the wedding to Columbus and dropped him off in town. They never again saw him alive.

The investigation is ongoing and no suspects have been arrested. Abston said investigators are still talking to wedding attendees and others who saw Easley the night he disappeared.

For Fisher, the news that his father had been murdered came as a cruel shock.

“I didn’t really know him … like a child’s supposed to know his father,” he told The Dispatch Wednesday.

They had decided to have a relationship after their meeting at Fisher’s girlfriend’s house. About two weeks before Fisher’s arrest, they had gone for a drive.

“(We decided) we need to (plan to) do something,” he said. “Just sit back, drink a couple of beers and talk.”

Fisher, during that drive, learned his father “knew everything” about sports. He learned Easley liked music and dancing. They talked about how Easley one day wanted grandchildren.

“We would talk like we were homeboys,” Fisher said. “… I could tell him anything.”

He believes Easley was trying to get on the straight and narrow before he was killed.

“I hate it happened to him right when he was going to change his life,” Fisher said.

A checkered past

Easley’s life had often been turned toward crime.

He was convicted of an aggravated assault in 2016 after he pleaded guilty to hitting a man with a brick. That conviction followed a 2003 guilty plea for pushing a woman to the ground and snatching her purse.

According to Lowndes Circuit Court documents from the 2003 case, Easley had already committed a string of felonies including grand larceny, shoplifting and two counts of burglary, along with several misdemeanors. Fisher said his father also did time in other states.

Fisher admitted his father’s criminal past might have had something to do with his murder.

“Whoever did it had something against him,” he said. “…It was something real personal.”

He can’t think of any other reason why someone would have thrown his body on the side of the road — “like he was trash,” Fisher said.

He also thinks it’s suspicious that Easley’s body ended up in Alabama. As far as he knows, he said, his father didn’t know anyone in Alabama. He thinks the body was left off the road to make it look like the crime was committed in a different state.

“My instincts tell me he was killed here in Columbus,” he said.

Fisher’s biggest regret, though, is that he’ll never have a relationship with his father.

“I can’t be angry because they always say that God never makes mistakes,” he said. “But I’m kind of disappointed that I never got to spend more time with him.”

He still wants some closure, and some justice for his father. Even sitting in the Lowndes County jail, he pleaded Wednesday for people who might know something about the case to cooperate with law enforcement.

“I need everybody to get together and help me and my family find out who the murderer is,” Fisher said.