MOULTRIE — Plans to reschedule hearings before the end of the year in a grisly 2016 quintuple homicide near Moultrie appear unlikely after a defense attorney requested to be removed from the case.

Burt Baker, who was the Southwest Georgia Regional Georgia Capital Defender Office lead attorney for defendant Jeffrey Alan Peacock, made a request that he be allowed to withdraw.

Baker reportedly has taken another job.

Peacock is accused of fatally shooting five acquaintances on May 15, 2016, at their Rossman Dairy Road residence, killing three dogs and setting fire to the wood frame house.

The Observer contacted the defender office in Atlanta and called Baker’s cell number, but did not reach anyone.

Baker made the request to Superior Court Judge James E. Hardy on Oct. 10, according to Colquitt County Superior Court records.

Hardy had scheduled a court session to hear legal motions from attorneys in the case, but it was called off a few days before it had been scheduled.

A Colquitt County Grand Jury indicted Peacock in March on five counts of malice murder and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. Peacock also was indicted on three counts of aggravated cruelty to dogs and arson.

Prosecutors say that Peacock shot Jonathan Garrett Edwards, Ramsey Jones Pidcock and Aaron Reid Williams, all 21; 20-year-old Alicia Brooke Norman; and Jordan Shane Croft, 22. The five were shot in the head at their 505 Rossman Dairy Road residence before the wood-frame house was set ablaze.

Peacock reportedly was one of three callers who notified Colquitt County E-911 on the morning of May 15, 2016, according to E-911 call logs.

Initial sheriff’s reports said that when a deputy arrived at the burning wood-frame house, located about five miles northeast of Moultrie, Peacock was at the scene. He told officers at that time that he had gone to get breakfast for his five friends living at the house and saw the smoke as he was returning.

Investigators immediately were suspicious that five healthy young adults would succumb to fire, and have said that an autopsy showed no smoke in their lungs — meaning they were dead before the fire started.

According to indictments in the case, all five were shot in the head before the house was set on fire.

Two dogs also died inside the residence of burns and smoke inhalation, according to police, and the body of a third dog with a fractured head was found outside the house.

Peacock remains incarcerated at Colquitt County Jail. A $1 million bond was set, but the public defender who represented Peacock in that hearing told the judge that he couldn’t afford even a quarter of that amount and suggested a figure of $100,000.

Peacock’s last appearance in court was May 30, when Baker entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf. The brief hearing was held for the reading of formal charges.