Rapper Convicted Of Murder After His Bars Match Details Of the Crime

It was July 16, 2017, when three roommates were murdered inside their north-side apartment. Prosecutors said the suspects planned to rob one of the victims, who was a marijuana dealer.

Part of the fatal robbery included snatching a safe from the victim's room and fleeing in a getaway car. 

Five people were eventually linked to the fatal robbery. But one is at the center of the case involving rap lyrics. 

Investigators were tipped off that 21-year-old Troy Ward may have been involved. A detective who looked at Ward's Facebook page found a link to Ward's SoundCloud account. 

Then there it was, right in the lyrics for the song "I'm Different," the details of the murders:

"I creep up to the door silently and slow

I opened up that bitch and now we clashing poles.

Two shots to the body two shots to the dome

Finesse the (expletive) stash and then I took it home."

The lyrics were so specific, Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said, that only a person at the scene of the crime could possibly have come up with them. 

Three men walked up the apartment complex stairs, Mears said. Each victim was shot by guns (poles) in the chest (body) and head (dome). The shooters fled with the safe (stash).

The song also mentions swimming trunks. One of the victims wore swimming trunks when he died, Mears said.

"When you take all of those things together," Mears said, "that song is pretty consistent with the facts of the case. We pretty much broke it down, lyric by lyric."

Prosecutors also presented other evidence in the case, such as cellphone records. Some of Ward's co-defendants also testified against him.