Billy Joe Nelson admitted killing Jay Collins and Donny Shipp after an argument involving money escalated at a rural Crawford County home.

VAN BUREN, Ark. — An Arkansas man will serve two consecutive 80-year prison sentences after pleading guilty to killing two older men during a confrontation that investigators said grew from a financial dispute between families.

Billy Joe Nelson, 45, pleaded guilty May 13 to two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Jay Collins, 66, and Donny Shipp, 70. He also entered a plea connected to his status as a habitual offender, according to reports citing court records. The court ordered the two murder sentences to run one after the other, producing a total term of 160 years in the Arkansas prison system. A second defendant, Eddie Sterling, 54, later pleaded guilty to hindering apprehension and tampering with physical evidence and received a 20-year sentence.

The pleas closed the central criminal cases nearly a year after Collins and Shipp were shot at Collins’ home on Lands End Road near Chester, a small Crawford County community in the Ozarks. Authorities found the men inside the home late on June 24, 2025. Collins died at the scene. Emergency crews transported Shipp by air to a hospital, where he later died. Investigators said the killings were not random and quickly focused on Nelson and Sterling, who were arrested the following day at a home in nearby Uniontown.

Crawford County Sheriff Daniel Perry said during the original investigation that the conflict appeared to involve a debt between the families. Nelson and Sterling had gone to Collins’ home earlier on the day of the shootings, authorities said. A disagreement followed, and the two men left. Perry said investigators learned that one side had warned of consequences if the debt was not addressed. Officials also said at the time that money and possibly drugs were among the matters being examined, but the public accounts of the plea proceedings did not establish drugs as a proven cause of the killings.

The men later returned to the Chester-area property, according to investigators. Perry said words were exchanged before gunfire erupted. Authorities identified Nelson as the person who entered the home and fired multiple rounds. Sterling remained outside in the vehicle, according to an account he later gave detectives. The sheriff said Sterling had retrieved the firearm before the men went back to the residence, a step investigators viewed as an important part of his role even though they did not accuse him of firing it.

Investigators initially treated both defendants as participants in a capital murder case. They were booked into the Crawford County Detention Center without bond and faced an initial court appearance shortly after their arrests. The capital murder accusations exposed them to the most serious level of homicide prosecution under Arkansas law. Their eventual pleas, however, reflected sharply different legal outcomes. Nelson admitted two counts of first-degree murder, while Sterling resolved his case through offenses tied to what he did before and after the shooting rather than through a murder conviction.

Sterling told investigators that he and Nelson had driven to Chester while looking into obtaining a transmission for their vehicle, according to an affidavit described by local news outlets. Sterling said Nelson went inside to speak with Collins while he stayed in the vehicle. His account also showed that he had positioned the vehicle for a rapid departure in case something happened. Sterling said he heard more than five shots from the home before Nelson returned and told him to drive away.

Sterling also told investigators that the trip involved an effort to work out an arrangement that would protect him and his family. He maintained that he did not know Nelson intended to hurt anyone. Authorities nevertheless said Sterling acknowledged getting the firearm used in the confrontation. His later convictions for hindering apprehension and tampering with physical evidence indicate that prosecutors ultimately held him criminally responsible for assisting after the killings and for conduct involving evidence, rather than establishing through a trial that he shared Nelson’s intent to kill.

The different sentences mark the legal distinction between the man who admitted firing the fatal shots and the man whose plea covered assistance and evidence-related conduct. Nelson received 80 years for Collins’ murder and another 80 years for Shipp’s murder. By ordering the terms to run consecutively instead of at the same time, the court treated each death as the basis for a separate block of punishment. Sterling’s 20-year term is substantial but far shorter because the offenses to which he pleaded guilty did not include murder.

The case moved from accusation to resolution without a jury trial. Guilty pleas generally eliminate the need for prosecutors to present their full evidence in open court and for jurors to decide whether the state has proved each charge beyond a reasonable doubt. As a result, many details that might have been explored during testimony remain outside the public record summarized by news reports. Those include the exact nature and amount of the alleged debt, which family members were connected to it, and the complete sequence of statements made during the two visits to the home.

The public record also does not establish that Collins or Shipp fired a weapon or posed a threat when Nelson entered the residence. Investigators described a renewed argument followed by Nelson’s gunfire, but the available reports do not provide a complete forensic reconstruction of the scene. Authorities searched the area for the weapon after the arrests. Perry said at that stage that investigators were not seeking additional suspects, signaling that they believed Nelson and Sterling accounted for the criminal activity under investigation.

Nelson’s habitual-offender status was part of his plea and sentencing record. Such a designation reflects prior qualifying convictions and can increase the available punishment for a new felony. The court records summarized in news reports did not provide a full account of Nelson’s earlier cases, so the nature and dates of those convictions were not publicly detailed in the coverage of this sentencing. The decisive outcome in the present case remains the pair of consecutive 80-year terms imposed for the two admitted murders.

For the victims’ families, the pleas remove the uncertainty of a pending capital murder prosecution but do not answer every question about why the confrontation reached the point of deadly violence. The sheriff’s early description centered on a debt and a threat of consequences, while Sterling’s statement portrayed the return trip as an effort to negotiate protection for his relatives. Nelson’s guilty pleas establish his criminal responsibility for both deaths, but the available reports do not include a public statement from him explaining his actions or addressing the families of Collins and Shipp.

The sentences also complete the main prosecution that began with an overnight response to a rural home and a search for two suspects. Collins was pronounced dead where investigators found him, while Shipp survived long enough to be flown for emergency care. By the next day, Nelson and Sterling were in custody. Investigators searched for the gun, interviewed Sterling and built the case that ultimately led to the two different plea agreements.

Nelson is now serving a sentence that extends far beyond a normal lifetime, while Sterling faces 20 years in state prison for his admitted role. No additional suspects have been publicly identified, and the available sentencing reports did not indicate that another criminal case remained pending in connection with the deaths of Collins and Shipp.

Author note: Last updated July 13, 2026.