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Stanley Elias Eckard is serving 50 years in prison for killing his 19-year-old brother, Sean Paul Eckard, and burying the body in the yard of their family's Spring Hill home, a Hernando County case that surfaced after their sister called 911 while their father dug at fresh dirt outside.

Eckard was 21 when deputies arrested him in June 2010 and charged him with first-degree murder. Investigators said the brothers lived with their parents at the house, and Sean's body was found on June 19, 2010, two days after a fight between the brothers.

In the call, the sister tells a dispatcher, "My brother killed my brother," and says the body is in the dirt outside. She reports that their father is in the yard digging, and says she is afraid Stanley will see them uncovering the grave.

Investigators said the brothers' father became suspicious after seeing Stanley burying something outside the home and went out with a shovel. Daniel Mello, a friend who was living at the house, testified that he woke to screaming and looked out a window. "I saw Sean's dad with a shovel in his hand," Mello said.

Eckard told investigators he choked his brother with an elastic cord during a fight and heard his brother's neck pop, according to court records. He said he never meant to kill Sean and buried the body to spare his mother, who has a weak heart. An autopsy found Sean died of blunt force trauma to the head, a skull fracture that prosecutors said he suffered when the two fell during the struggle.

Prosecutors argued that Eckard was driven by resentment over a woman his brother was involved with, and that he sent break-up text messages to her from Sean's phone while posing as him. Prosecutor Pete Magrino told jurors that Eckard did not call for help as his brother lay dying.

Eckard turned down a plea offer capped at 20 years and went to trial in April 2013. A jury convicted him of second-degree murder on April 12, 2013, after about two and a half hours of deliberation. Circuit Judge Anthony Tatti sentenced him on May 13, 2013, to 50 years in the Florida Department of Corrections, according to the state's Fifth Judicial Circuit.