The Enochville man suspected of murdering two women in South Carolina Monday had been charged with murder previously in Forsyth County.

Rowan County court documents also show that Michael James Laney was supporting a drug habit through burglary when he was only 17.

In August 1994, Laney, 33, made a deal for a lighter sentence with Forsyth prosecutors and pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, according to an official with the District Attorney’s office and the state prison system.

After serving five years of his 12-year sentence, Laney was released from prison on Aug. 17, 1999, according to the N.C. Department of Correction Web site.

The crime occurred in November 1993, an official with the Forsyth County District Attorney’s Office said this morning. Other details surrounding the murder were not available this morning.

Rowan County deputies arrested Laney Tuesday evening near his mother’s home on Tanglewood Drive. They served him with a fugitive-from-justice warrant from Greenville, S.C. Deputies arrested Laney in a car that Greenville police say belonged to one of two women murdered in Greenville on Monday.

Laney is accused of beating 86-year-old Dorothy “Dot” Hancock to death and cutting the throat of her 82-year-old neighbor, Thelma “Janet” Godfrey, on Monday in Greenville.

Greenville Chief Willie Johnson told The Greenville News that Laney was already wanted for grand theft and break-ins in the neighborhood where the murder victims’ lived.

Jewelry and a television was reported stolen from Hancock’s house, and Rowan deputies found him driving Hancock’s 1987 gold Buick Regal.

This morning, Rowan Sheriff’s Detective Sharon Hovis said investigators found a blood-stained knife in the vehicle along with several stolen items from Ron’s Quick Grocery, an Enochville convenience store located close to Laney’s mother’s home.

Deputies found numerous canned goods, cigarette rolling papers, boxes of condoms, cartons of cigarettes, lighters and a container of roses stolen from the store in the backseat of the Buick, Hovis said.

Two crack pipes were found in Laney’s possession, and Hovis said the roses found in the car are encased in a glass tube which is known for being used as a device to smoke crack.

Laney was charged with felony breaking and entering, larceny and injury to real property for the break-in at Ron’s.

These are not the first charges against Laney in Rowan County.

In 1986, Laney pleaded guilty to four counts of felony breaking and entering. He was given a suspended sentence and five years probation.

After violating the terms of his probation in August 1986, he was ordered to serve nine years in prison as a “committed youthful offender.”

I n a document dated Jan. 2, 1986, in Laney’s court records, his attorney filed a motion to have Laney committed to a psychiatric hospital. According to the document, Laney was 17 and had a history of drug abuse.

He was “unable to adequately describe his participation in the alleged offenses,” in which he was the only perpetrator. He was “supporting his drug addiction by extra-legal means … because of his age and drug problem needs to be evaluated on his capacity to proceed.”

Laney was seen at Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh, but those documents are sealed.

The court records did detail the kinds of things Laney stole from the six homes in 1986.

Some of the items included numerous weapons, several AM/FM radios, televisions, calculators and cameras.

And Laney stole even less valuable items such as a set of bed sheets, a gas can, a cassette tape, two butcher knives, and a pocket knife.

The manslaughter case followed his release from jail.