3rd man sentenced in homeless man's murder

A third and final prison sentence has been handed down in the 2008 brutal slaying of a homeless man.

Jay Oldaker, 29, was sentenced to 12½ to 16 years in prison today in the death of 41-year-old Michael Kozak.

Oldaker pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in February, but prosecutors held off his sentencing until after his co-defendants were convicted since Oldaker agreed to testify against them if he was called to do so.

Jason Allen Blackmon, 22, pleaded guilty in June to second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. He was sentenced to 37½ to 46½ years in prison.

Dustin Newcome, 23, pleaded guilty in April to second-degree murder. He was sentenced to 24 to 29 years in prison.

All three admitted in court to killing Kozak, though each one downplayed their role in his death.

Oldaker and his co-defendants said they attacked Kozak in his homeless camp behind Piney Green Shopping Center on June 23, 2008. They attacked Kozak because he supposedly "French kissed a 9-year-old female" at a party a few days earlier, prosecutors said during Blackmon's sentencing hearing.

Oldaker, Blackmon and Newcome went to Kozak's camp. They drank alcohol with him and then confronted him about the alleged incident.

Blackmon said in his statement to police that they beat Kozak with pieces of pipe, kicked and stomped him and stabbed him with a knife to teach him a lesson.

"After all of that, Dusty grabbed a beer bottle and broke it against a tree and handed it to me and said ‘gut him,'" Blackmon wrote in a statement for investigators. "After that was done, we all sat down and drank a beer while we talked and laughed about it."

Employees at USA Discounters found Kozak's body a couple of days later, and an investigation by Jacksonville police detectives and tips from Crime Stoppers turned up Oldaker, Blackmon and Newcome as suspects.

Newcome was arrested at his home on Daly Street.

Oldaker and Blackmon were trying to sell plasma and stolen puppies to raise enough money to leave town. A week after Kozak's death, they were arrested on N.C. 24, according to police reports.

Winston Anding, a retired Marine captain who offers temporary construction-type work to the homeless in the area, said that Oldaker was a good worker when he was not called off the job by Blackmon to go drink alcohol.

Oldaker was convicted of driving while impaired in 2006, according to the N.C. Department of Correction. He never recovered from the financial burden involved, Anding said.

Anding said he drove Oldaker to the required treatment assessment for his DWI conviction.

"One of the questions was ‘how much alcohol have you consumed at one time' and Jay checked one-fifth of liquor and that answer moved him into a longer class and meant he had to pay more money, like $2,000," Anding said.

He said Oldaker walked out and said, "I ain't gonna make it."

JPD detectives' first encounter with Oldaker during the Kozak investigation was to find him passed out drunk in the woods, according to police reports.

Contact Lindell Kay at 910-219-8456. Read his blog at http://onslowcrime.encblogs.com.