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Wilcox, Rickey W
Status: active
Profile written July 19, 2026
This profile reflects positional accountability — this individual held the leadership roles shown during the dates shown, during which the listed deaths or lawsuits occurred. Inclusion does not constitute a legal finding of personal culpability for any specific incident.
Tenure Summary
Rickey W. Wilcox rose through the ranks of the Georgia Department of Corrections, holding a series of correctional officer, lieutenant, and unit-manager roles from 2015 to 2022 before his appointment as Deputy Warden at Telfair State Prison on January 1, 2023. GPS records attribute 37 deaths to his leadership tenure at Telfair — the only facility where he held a facility‑deputy post. Those deaths spanned homicides, suicides, accidents, overdoses, and causes still pending coroner determination, making Telfair the deadliest Georgia prison under any single deputy warden in the GPS dataset. The most costly single incident was the July 2023 heat‑related death of Juan Carlos Ramirez Bibiano, which led to a $3.2‑million settlement paid by the state.What happened on their watch
Wilcox served as Deputy Warden of Telfair State Prison throughout 2023, 2024, and 2025. During that period, the prison recorded 37 deaths. Coroner records and incident reports show a concentration of homicides: at least 14 deaths were ruled homicide, including multiple stabbings and strangulations. Among them, Kwesi Jamal Stultz (December 2023) died from blunt head trauma; Deahmoz Oshmic Floyd (April 2023) bled out from a stab wound to the neck, with a subsequent claim alleging he was attacked by several prisoners when no staff were present in the dorm, according to the Atlanta Journal‑Constitution. In February 2024, Joey Lebron Kilgore was stabbed to death in his sleep inside G‑building, reportedly by another inmate high on drugs. Later that year, Zoumana Madiou Sarre (July 2024) died from multiple stab wounds to the neck and torso, and Henry Crump (September 2024) was strangled with a cell cord. The violence peaked again in December 2025 when Preston C. Phelps was stabbed during a gang fight, and in June 2026 when Timothy Wilson died after an altercation; the GDC Office of Professional Standards opened investigations into both.The Ramirez case stands apart. On July 20, 2023, the 27‑year‑old was left in an outdoor recreation cage with no shade for roughly five hours while the heat index reached ~105°F. According to a 13WMAZ report, a lawsuit filed by his family alleged that an officer responded “if he dies, he dies” when Ramirez begged for help. He arrived at the hospital with a core temperature of 107°F and was pronounced dead. The state later settled the family’s wrongful‑death claim for $3.2 million, as confirmed by a GA DOAS settlement ledger entry. Two other small state payouts tied to Telfair — $500 to Deante Gholston (2024) and $1,750 to Ryan Frank DeMon (2023) — appeared in the same ledger during Wilcox’s tenure.
The deputy warden’s watch also encompassed suicides (at least two confirmed by hanging: Robert Baker in 2025 and Anthony Mulder in 2024), drug overdoses (Clifford Bagley in 2023, Tony Morales Adame in 2025), and deaths from natural causes or still‑pending autopsies — a category that includes several men found unresponsive in their cells. Two coroner investigations into inmate deaths remained open at the time of data collection, among them those of Thaddeus Jovell Perry (July 2025) and Gary Chad Thomason (September 2025).
Broader systemic failures are threaded through the record. The AJC reported in 2024‑25 that Telfair State Prison was missing 76‑79% of its essential correctional staff, leaving as few as 32‑36 officers to supervise roughly 1,400 prisoners. The same publication documented that Sergeant Desiree Briley, a Telfair officer, helped smuggle meth into the prison for at least two years and was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison as part of Operation Ghost Busted. In March 2024, during a contraband shakedown, the warden himself was stabbed by an inmate, an incident the AJC cited as emblematic of the prison’s dire condition. While no lawsuit named Wilcox personally as a defendant, these patterns — understaffing, staff complicity in drug trafficking, and cascading homicides — ran concurrently with his tenure as the facility’s second‑highest leader.
Sources
- Atlanta Journal‑Constitution — multiple homicide reports, staffing shortages, and the Briley meth‑smuggling case (2023‑2026)
- 13WMAZ — coverage of the Juan Carlos Ramirez Bibiano heat‑death lawsuit and settlement
- Telfair County Coroner records (public record, via GPS coroner‑records scans) — cause and manner determinations for multiple Telfair inmates
- GA DOAS Risk Management settlement ledger (Open Records) — state liability payouts tied to Telfair State Prison incidents
- GPS death‑record database and intel reports — death counts, event timelines, and Telegram‑relayed incident flags
Positions Held
| Title | Facility | Tenure |
|---|---|---|
| CSM CORRECTIONAL SERGEANT | 2024-01-01 → present | |
| DEPUTY WARDEN | TELFAIR STATE PRISON | 2023-01-01 → present |
| CSM CORRECTIONAL OFFICER 2 | 2020-01-01 → 2023-12-31 | |
| CSM CORRECTIONAL UNIT MANAGER | 2020-01-01 → 2022-12-31 | |
| CORRECTIONAL OFC 1 | 2019-01-01 → 2019-12-31 | |
| CSM CORRECTIONAL LIEUTENANT | 2016-01-01 → 2019-12-31 | |
| CORRECTIONS OFFICER (SP) | 2015-01-01 → 2015-12-31 |
Deaths attributed during tenure
37 people died at facilities under Wilcox, Rickey W's leadership.
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