A man was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Monday after he admitted to murdering a Kansas City rapper in 2015, Topeka, Kansas’s local CBS affiliate reports.
According to the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office, 32-year-old Derius Taylor pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and armed criminal action for his hand in the death of 20-year-old Dominique Stafford.
Stafford was a known local rapper. Taylor created a plan to set up a robbery disguised as a fake drug deal. When he got in Stafford’s car, Taylor shot the artists, taking a rifle and a diamond-encrusted pendant. Taylor’s accomplice then got in the car with Stafford’s body and fled the scene while Taylor followed in the second car. Stafford’s car with his body in it was later found by police on April 23, 2015, in eastern Kansas City. Following the murder, detectives learned that Taylor pawned the pendant he took from Stafford.
Stafford’s death came just a month after his 22-year-old brother Arthur Stafford, Jr. was shot and killed. Both of the brothers were local artists signed to Kansas City’s Duced Out Records. As of last year, Arthur Stafford’s murder is still an unsolved cold case.
