By the time a South Carolina judge imposed a 30-year prison sentence on Bornold Alastair Eberhart for murdering his girlfriend, prosecutors had already spent months reconstructing a trip that began as a beach vacation and ended with a hidden body, a missing person, and a trail of digital and video evidence.
TLDR
Prosecutors in South Carolina say Georgia resident Bornold Alastair Eberhart killed his girlfriend, 53-year-old Kristen Laymon, in a North Myrtle Beach hotel room in September 2023, moved her body using a luggage cart, drove her remains back to Georgia, then pleaded guilty and received a 30-year sentence.
Authorities say the case began as a couple’s getaway from Decatur, Georgia, to North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and ended as a multistate homicide investigation. The victim, 53-year-old Kristen Laymon, was a mother and church member. The defendant, 44-year-old Eberhart, is now serving a lengthy sentence after admitting to killing her.
Vacation Trip That Turned Into a Crime Scene
According to Law & Crime, Eberhart and Laymon left Decatur and checked into the Wyndham Hotel in North Myrtle Beach on September 22nd, 2023. Surveillance images later became central to prosecutors’ account of what happened over the next 48 hours.
Prosecutors said the couple went out on the night of September 22nd and returned to the hotel shortly before 2 a.m. on September 23rd, 2023. Hotel surveillance reportedly captured the two arguing as they arrived back. At one point, Laymon opened the car door while the vehicle was still moving.
Laymon exited the vehicle and took an elevator up toward the hotel room. Prosecutors have stated this was the last independent visual record of her alive. In their description of the footage, they said, using words that would become part of the case narrative, that this was “the last time Laymon is seen alive.”
Roughly 10 minutes after Laymon went upstairs, cameras showed Eberhart heading toward the room, according to prosecutors. What occurred inside that room has not been fully detailed in public filings or statements, but Eberhart eventually admitted to killing his girlfriend.
Hotel Footage, Luggage Cart, and Contradictory Texts
The next day, on September 24th, 2023, hotel surveillance captured a different scene. According to prosecutors, Eberhart was recorded taking a hotel luggage cart to the room and then pushing it back toward the parking area with what was later revealed to be Laymon’s concealed body.
Her remains, they said, were wrapped in a sheet and loaded into the trunk of Eberhart’s vehicle. Investigators later reported that testing showed the trunk was positive for Laymon’s blood.
While her body was already hidden, Eberhart sent text messages to Laymon’s phone, according to Law & Crime. In those messages, he wrote that if she did not return his vehicle, he would need to find another way back to Georgia. The messages portrayed her as alive and in possession of the car, even as prosecutors say her body was already in his trunk.
Those texts, juxtaposed with the surveillance footage and physical evidence, became part of a pattern prosecutors described as an attempt to mislead investigators and create the appearance that Laymon had simply taken off with the car.
Interstate Investigation and Recovery of the Body
After leaving North Myrtle Beach, authorities say, Eberhart drove Laymon’s body back to Georgia and disposed of her remains. For months, there was no public recovery of a body, even as local and South Carolina investigators compared information and tried to reconstruct the couple’s final trip.
According to reporting by WMBF News, detectives in Georgia worked with officers in North Myrtle Beach to piece together the case. The investigation relied on hotel surveillance, vehicle evidence, phone records, and, eventually, Eberhart’s own statements.
Law & Crime reported that Eberhart ultimately admitted to killing Laymon and led law enforcement to the location where he had left her remains. WMBF News reported that her body was recovered on March 9th, 2024, roughly six months after the trip to the South Carolina coast.
In a written statement cited by Law & Crime, Assistant Solicitor Anthony DiChiara credited the joint effort by agencies in both states. He said the defendant “went to great lengths to cover up the murder of Ms. Laymon,” but praised investigators who “left no stone unturned” and thanked law enforcement for what he called their “relentless effort in bringing this defendant to justice.”
Guilty Plea, Sentence, and Legal Context
The case moved from investigation to prosecution when charges were filed in South Carolina. The Fifteenth Judicial Circuit Solicitor’s Office announced that Eberhart pleaded guilty to murder in Laymon’s death.
According to the office and local reporting, a judge sentenced Eberhart to 30 years in prison for the murder. In South Carolina, murder is a serious felony that can carry a wide range of penalties, including long-term imprisonment. A 30-year sentence places him in custody for decades, even before accounting for any potential time credits under state law.
There has been no public indication that prosecutors pursued additional charges related to the transport or concealment of Laymon’s body, or that any plea agreement limiting such charges was disclosed in detail. The public record centers on the murder conviction, the sentencing length, and the investigative steps that led to Eberhart’s admission and the recovery of the remains.
With a guilty plea rather than a contested trial, many potential details about what happened inside the hotel room did not surface in open court testimony. The available narrative instead comes from prosecutors’ summaries, surveillance footage descriptions, and investigative findings outlined in public statements.
Remembering Kristen Laymon and Remaining Questions
Separate from the investigative record, Laymon’s family and community have described a person very different from the cropped images shown in court and news coverage. Her obituary, published by her church, said she “lived a life filled with laughter, kindness and an unwavering tenacity.” It noted that she left behind a daughter.
Those remembrances stand in contrast to the clinical language of warrants, lab tests, and surveillance logs that now define the last days of her life in the legal record. They also highlight a gap that remains. Even with a guilty plea, investigators’ reconstruction of events stops at the hotel room door, and the precise sequence of violence inside that room has not been laid out publicly.
Another unresolved area is how early, and through what channels, concern was raised about Laymon’s disappearance in the months before her body was found. Public reporting has focused more on the investigative breakthroughs than on any missing person alerts or family outreach that may have preceded them.
What is documented is that a weekend trip from Georgia to South Carolina ended with a murder conviction, a 30-year sentence, and lingering questions about the hours between a late-night argument in a hotel parking area and the moment a luggage cart rolled toward a car trunk.
