More suspects arrested in 2006 torture-murder

Two more suspects in the brutal torture-slaying of a man inside a James Island apartment were charged Wednesday.

Charleston police announced the arrests, which are tied to the March 2006 death of Gerard Roper, who police said was kidnapped and suffered several agonizing forms of torture before he was strangled and dumped on a kitchen floor.

Lead suspect William Oliver Dickerson Jr., 31, is scheduled to go on trial this spring in what would be Charleston County's first death penalty trial since 2002.

Police contend Dickerson confronted Roper, 29, at gunpoint after he left his girlfriend's Indigo Creek apartment on Ashley Hall Road. He forced Roper into a car and drove him to an apartment complex at 311 Fleming Road on James Island, police say.

Dickerson had been living at the complex with relatives after his release from prison a few months earlier. At the time of his arrest, no additional suspects were publicly named.

Arrested this week were Armon R. Dickerson, 28, of Cypress Avenue, who is charged with murder and kidnapping, and Selena K. Rouse, 28, of Sanford, Fla., who is charged with accessory after the fact of murder. The Dickersons are brothers, police said.

Read more in Thursday's edition of The Post and Courier.