Prisoner Accused Of Stabbing, Beating Another Prisoner To Death In Cleveland County

A man already serving life in prison for murder is now charged with killing another prisoner in the same pod.

Investigators say Paul Newberry told them he planned to kill every person in the pod but settled for killing one person—a man he had never spoken to before.

Newberry was in prison because he murdered Charley Kirk, a Keys rancher, back in 2015.

Now, investigators say he beat and stabbed Timothy Alvarez to death inside the Joseph Harp Correctional Center in October.

The Cleveland County District Attorney charged Newberry with murder after Newberry admitted he stabbed Alvarez to death.

Newberry was serving life in prison without parole for pleading guilty to murder, robbery, and burglary in the death of Kirk.

Jack Thorp is the District Attorney for Cherokee County and says he hates to hear there’s been another murder.

"In our case, he pled to life without the possibility of parole,” said Thorp. “Our hopes were that the citizens and the communities would be safe from him, but unfortunately, at least those individuals that were incarcerated with him, were not safe. You don't really hear much in our area of those types of crimes happening while an individual is incarcerated. It just made me feel terrible."

Investigators say in the new case, Newberry was mad because he wasn’t being transferred to a different unit.

They say he wanted to kill everybody on the pod but then decided to just kill Alvarez.

Newberry told investigators he worshipped the devil but said his job wasn’t to populate hell.

He said he just wanted to kill someone in order to get moved.

Investigators say he admitted punching and kicking Alvarez and stabbing him several times in the face, head, and body.

Newberry then told a nurse what he’d done while he still had blood on his clothes and hands.

Thorp says they do all they can to keep dangerous people off the streets, so it’s awful to know they choose to continue to harm people behind bars.

"It's a dangerous, dangerous world,” said Thorp. “There are those individuals that will cross the line and take another life. We do everything we can to prevent crime. But people need to be aware there are those type of people that no matter what, they're going to commit crime."

Investigators say Newberry told them he would kill anyone they put in a cell with him and wanted to be in solitary confinement.