[3][4][5] On November 17, 1993, eight years after his first run-in with the law, Pye was involved in the rape-murder of his ex-girlfriend Alicia Lynn Yarbrough (aged 21 in 1993), with whom he had an on-again, off-again romantic relationship prior to their final break-up.

On the day in question, Pye, armed with a newly bought .22 pistol, teamed up with two accomplices, 15-year-old Anthony Freeman and 25-year-old Chester Adams, to commit robbery at the lover's house, but after finding Yarbrough alone in the house with her baby, Pye and his accomplices abducted her and would later rape her at a motel, and also stole her jewelry.

Afterwards, the trio drove Yarbrough down a dirt road, where Pye ordered her out of the car, told her to lie face down and shot her three times, which resulted in her death.

DNA tests would later confirm that the semen found on the victim's corpse belonged to Pye, which allowed the authorities to charge him as a suspect for Yarbrough's murder.

[8] During the court proceedings into the case of Yarbrough's murder, one of Pye's accomplices, Anthony Freeman, reached a plea bargain and voluntarily turned state evidence against Pye, who was convicted of murder, kidnapping, rape, burglary and robbery in June 1996.

[9] The third perpetrator, Chester Adams, was tried in a separate court for the same charges as Pye, and pled guilty in April 1997.

However, a year later, the decision was reversed by the federal appellate court, resulting in Pye's death sentence being re-instated.

[21] On March 19, 2024, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles officially announced that they would not commute Pye's death sentence, and therefore turned down his clemency petition.

[26][27] Pye reportedly ordered a last meal of two chicken sandwiches, two cheeseburgers, french fries, two bags of plain potato chips, and two lemon-lime sodas.