Anatomy of Murder - Unfriended (Billy Payne & Billie Jean Hayworth)

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

An online feud is examined closely after a young couple are murdered. Would the CIA be the key? For episode information and photos, please visit: anatomyofmurder.com/unfriended Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

I mean, that's all I could tell you, is they had been harassing the living crap out of me. Have you posted anything negative on the internet about this? But the only thing I had ever posted was, please leave me alone. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anna Sega Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder. Before we get started today, I just wanted to mention that today's case

will be our 200th episode. So let me just say it would not be possible without our amazing AOM staff of producers, researchers, editors, and of course, congratulations to my great friend and partner on the show, Anasiga. This is a fantastic milestone together, and I'm enjoying the ride. And I think the one thing that I'm thinking, Scott, when I hear you say that is that it is clear that that is 200 homicides too many, and we know that is unfortunately just a piece of what is out there. But we do thank all of you, our listeners, for caring about these cases as we talk about them weekly to you.

And of course, always if you want to stay in touch with us on social, it's at Adesiga Negolazi and at Weinberger Media. We also host two other true crime podcasts that you may want to tune into too. But now on to today's case. Mountain City, Tennessee is a very small, quaint town of about 2,500 people situated at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. It's known for its natural beauty, its bluegrass music, and in the old days more than just a few whiskey stills. After all, this was once prime bootlegger country. Nowadays, taking a

look at Main Street where the high school football stands on a Friday night, you might think that it's the kind of place that really hasn't changed much over the years. And you'd be right, partially. In reality, even in this quiet corner of Appalachia, change does come. And sometimes it packs a punch. Like in January of 2012, when a Facebook feud escalated into accusations of cyberbullying, catfishing, and eventually real life violence. My name is Matthew Rourke. In January of 2012, I was an assistant district attorney in Johnson County, Tennessee. And I was the only prosecutor in the county. I did everything from

speeding tickets to first-degree murders. Matt was also witness to one of the strangest and more disturbing homicide cases to ever hit these parts of Northeastern Tennessee. 36 year old Billy Payne and his fiance 23 year old Billie Jean Hayworth both grew up in Mountain City, and in 2012 were working in the local cotton mill and raising their seven-month-old son. On the morning of January 31st, 2012, Billy Payne's co-worker arrived at the home they shared with Billy's dad to pick him up for work.

His friend came normal time, as he was supposed to, and called Billy from the driveway. Usually Billy was ready, but he wasn't. So his friend called him, didn't get him, so he stepped in through the sliding glass door on the side of the house. It was pretty well known among everybody that knew Billy Payne that that door was rarely locked. The co-worker entered the house and called out to Billy numerous times without a response.

The first witness went in and heard an alarm clock going on and called out for Billy Payne, but Billy didn't answer. So he just assumed he was sick or that something was going on, so he left. Later that morning at about 10 a.m., a former neighbor and friend of Billy's dad dropped by the residence to pick up some mail. He thought it odd that both Billy Payne and Billy Jean Hayworth's vehicles were there in the driveway.

So, he went in the same slidey glass door that everybody goes in and out of and walked through the house. Billy's bedroom was on the first floor of the two-bedroom Rambler. The neighbor was not prepared for what he discovered when he stepped inside the room. He walked into the first room and saw Billy Payne laying there on the bed. He approached Billy Payne just to see, you know, if he was responsive and saw that blood

going through the room and then saw the pool of blood on the bed and saw that Billy Payne's throat had been slit and he'd been shot. The neighbor then did what I think most of us would and should do. He slowly backed out of the room, left the house and immediately called 911. First responders from the Johnson County Sheriff's Office

arrived at the scene as they made their way into the house, the horrors they encountered only got worse. They found Billie Jean Hayworth in the second bedroom, which was the baby's room. They had a seven-month-old at the time, and they found Billie Jean laying on her side in the floor holding the baby. The baby was covered in blood, but the baby was quiet at the time. Apparently he had just cried himself out. 23-year-old Billie Jean Hayworth had been shot in the head at close range while still cradling her infant son in her arms. Miraculously the baby survived without a physical scratch.

From the nature of the horrible injuries, it was clear that both Billy and Billy Jean were the victims of an intentional double homicide. So soon after the discovery of their bodies, the Johnson County Sheriff's Office were joined by detectives from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations. I was actually in court that morning in Johnson County. I was notified that two bodies had been found. And as soon as I got out of court, I went down to the scene. According to Matt, the crime scene itself was particularly revealing, not because of what evidence was there, but because of what was not. There just wasn't a lot to go on. Nothing was disturbed.

There was no forced entry. There were no obvious fingerprints, no bloody footprints. Investigators eventually found bullet fragments near the bodies of each victim, but no casings, no fingerprints and no other physical evidence that could immediately point to a potential suspect. Yes, this was not the typical homicide that you have in Johnson County. Most of the homicides in Johnson County are people that are familiar with each other. There's usually a lot more to work with at the scene, a little bit easier to put together. But because this crime scene was, evidence-wise, was actually pretty clean, that was what really piqued everyone's interest.

Investigators would first naturally assume that this could have been some kind of home invasion or fatal robbery. But not only were there no signs of forced entry, there were also no signs of a burglary. Nothing appeared to be stolen, no drawers rummaged, no furniture overturned, even Billy's wallet was left undisturbed. Which led detectives to consider that whoever entered the home that morning was likely there for one reason and one reason only, to kill. By all accounts, it looked like a hit. It looked like something that had been pre-planned and carried out. In such a small town, news of the tragic loss of the young parents spread quickly, and so did the fear.

Everybody was freaking out, thinking that there's a killer out there, that they might be next, and a lot of outpouring and a lot of concern to find out exactly what had happened. The two professional- style executions also suggested there might be more than just one killer at large. The double murder hinted at deep secrets lying just under the surface of an otherwise tranquil mountain town. Law enforcement immediately began

to comb the area in search of anyone that may have witnessed the crime. The sound of a gunshot, the sight of anyone that may have witnessed the crime. The sound of a gunshot, the sight of a fleeing car, anything that could give detectives a running start, but they didn't have much luck. Parts of Johnson County are very rural and houses are very far apart in most of the county. But where this happened, there was plenty of houses nearby. There's a church across the hill. They had neighbors that were close by and none of them heard anything.

They would have to try to pry what information they could about the murder from the evidence found at the crime scene, namely the bullets that killed both Billy and Billie Jean. Both bullets were recovered. Both bullets did enter the bodies and exit the bodies. The bullet for Billy Payne was found in a pillowcase, and the bullet for Billy Jean was found in a little bouncy seat that belonged to the baby.

Those bullets were used to determine the caliber of the weapon used, in this case, a.38 handgun. But that's not all the bullets would reveal about the murder and the potential killer. Further through ballistics, it was found that the bullets that were used had markings on them where whoever fired them had taken the time to sit down beforehand and carve X's into the tip of each bullet, which basically creates almost a hollow point so that whenever they penetrate, they break up and cause more damage than an unaltered bullet would fire from the same weapon. Ammunition altered in this way is sometimes called the poor man's hollow points. And the implications are pretty scary.

That the person that fired this weapon had gone out of his or her way, not just to kill the victims, but to inflict as much physical damage as possible. And then there was also the fact that Billy Payne's throat had been cut, a vicious and up-close and personal assault that when coupled with the fatal gunshot seemed excessively brutal. The medical examiner did say that he was shot before he was cut, but the cut didn't come very long after the gunshot. Stabbed and shot, and as you know, Anasiga, that's really rare. And of course, adding to that theory is likely this was personal and also by the fact that none of the neighbors heard anything or saw any vehicles getting in or out of the location. And perhaps I would use the word professional, meaning it could have been planned very well. This crime did not leave much at the crime scene outside of the bullets itself, the fragmented

bullets as forensic evidence. So the question I would have is, is this a hit? And when you put all those pieces together, the things that stand out to me quite quickly is just that it was quick, it was not random, and all the evidence makes pretty clear, at least on its face, that this was pre-planned. So investigators were left puzzled by the crime scene's brutality and the entire community was left wondering what could have motivated such a violent act against an innocent family. In the days following the killings, it was very much an open question. And it caused a lot of panic in the community because there just nothing seemed to be blatantly

obvious or no leads that they could really put their fingers on in the beginning. And so the search for suspects began where it often does, by quizzing friends and neighbors about what they knew about the couple and anyone that might have wanted to do them harm. In the very beginning, law enforcement, they were just interviewing anybody and everybody that had any contact with Billy Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth. They spoke to friends, they spoke to family members, they spoke to neighbors, talking to everybody just to find out who might have animosity towards the couple. According to everyone they talked to, Billy and Billie Jean seemed like the last people who would be targeted by anyone.

They had no criminal history, no pattern at all of high risk behavior, and no associations with anyone who seemed capable of this kind of violence. Billy Payne was several years older than Billy Jean, but they got along really well by all accounts. Everybody that knew them said that they were just was several years older than Billie Jean, but they got along really well. By all accounts, everybody that knew them said that they were just very jovial people, very welcoming, easy to get along with. But as the interviews around town continued, tongues began to loosen about a brewing rivalry between the murder victims and some other local residents of Mountain City.

It kept being mentioned that Billie Payne and Billy Jean Hayworth had some animosity with people online, specifically Janelle Potter and the Potter family. Janelle Potter was a 30-year-old woman who lived with her parents, Barbara and Marvin Potter, a former Marine that everybody called Buddy. They had moved to Johnson County in the early 2000s from up in Pennsylvania. Marvin Potter, he had worked in construction early on and suffered a by all accounts a horrendous fall. So he was 100% disabled and wasn't really able to move around very well because of all of his back problems. Barbara, she was the type that she ran the house, what she said went. The Potters had lived in Tennessee for seven years, but by Mountain City standards,

where just about everyone seemed to be related by either blood or marriage or have known one another for most of their lives, the Potters were considered newcomers. And Janelle in particular was known for her struggles to fit in socially, and may have had some issues that kept her close to home and close to her protective parents. Janelle, she was an adult, but it didn't seem like she was really treated like one, nor did she act like one. She was in her 30s, didn't have a job, lived at home, and was very much sheltered by the family. Other people who were friends of Janelle's, they would say that Janelle was very, very protected.

That before they could be friends with Janelle, they had to prove themselves to Marvin and Barbara. They were the gatekeepers for Janelle. And if either Barbara or Marvin didn't like you, then you didn't have access to Janelle. And if either Barbara or Marvin didn't like you, then you didn't have access to Janelle. As a result, Janelle spent much of her time online, where she found a social outlet on Facebook and in other online forums. And it was on Facebook where the tension between Janelle, Billy and Billie Jean first started to surface.

The context early on for animosity with the Potters was basically just, for lack of a better word, ignorant feuds online, just pointless, trash-talking, negative things being said, mainly towards Billie Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth and their circle of friends. Of course, from an investigator's point of view, there is a huge gap between someone online trash-talking and Billie Jean Hayworth and their circle of friends. Of course, from an investigator's point of view,

there is a huge gap between someone online trash talking and double murders. But still, if there was any history of animosity between the murder victims and Janelle Potter, detectives would have to dig in. And what they would uncover would shed light on how a simmering online rivalry could boil over into threats of bullying,

conspiracy, and eventually even murder. In tiny mountain city, Tennessee, detectives investigating the double murder of Billy Payne and the mother of their son, Billie Jean Hayworth, are trying to piece together how an online feud could have possibly led to real-world violence. According to Johnson County prosecutor Matt Rourke, gossip in town led police to the door of 30-year-old Janelle Potter, who'd been introduced to Billy and Billie Jean through Billy's sister Tracy. Tracy Greenwell was Billie Payne's sister.

Tracy befriended Janelle somewhat randomly, but they became friends and Tracy introduced Janelle to Jamie Curd, which was a friend of hers and a cousin of Billy Payne. Tracy Greenwell, I guess, played matchmaker between Janelle and Jamie. Despite an eight-year age difference, Janelle and Jamie Curd became an item, and the typically shy and isolated Janelle saw her social circle expand to include Billy Payne and his new girlfriend Billy Jean and then this being the modern age those friendships were codified by the act of friending each other on Facebook Janelle was even included in a day of rock climbing with a group that included one of the murder victims Billy Payne so far so good for the reclusive Janelle, But according to mutual friends, there was already trouble brewing in the new friend group.

Janelle developed a crush on Billy Payne pretty early on, even though Janelle was ostensibly in a relationship with Jamie Curd, who was Billy Payne's cousin. As we know, crushes and jealousy can certainly be the starter ingredients for larger conflicts. In this case, that conflict first took the form of an escalating exchange of words on Facebook between Janelle and Billy Jean. It was more just petty middle school trash talking. So-and-so is a whore. So-and-so has HIV. So-and-so has slept with half of Johnson County. These abusive comments directed at both Janelle and Billie Jean were also being echoed by a number of other online people, too, including dozens of anonymous users. The result?

Janelle was unfriended by Billie and Billie Jean, and she quickly returned the favor. The falling out was typical of young people the world over, in which petty grievance and jealousies can lead to the end of friendships and the hurling of hurtful comments, also known as cyberbullying. But in this case, two of the people involved were now dead. And so police had more than enough reason to go question Janelle Potter. It's February 2nd, so it was a few days after the homicide. Law enforcement went to the Potter's residence

there in Johnson County. They lived several miles away from Billy Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth, but they conducted an interview in the living room of the Potter home. During the interview with Janelle, her parents, Barbara and Marvin, were also present. And in listening to the recording of this conversation,

you can immediately hear that there is just something off in the Potters' reaction to Billie and Billie Jean's murder. Here's a piece of what was said. Everybody always points a finger at themselves. Oh, no, there ain't nobody pointing a finger. I'm sorry that these, those people died. a piece of what was said. It was about an hour conversation. And for most of that conversation, it wasn't really a discussion about the two deceased. It was more talking about how Janelle had been harassed and how

she had been harassed by people out within the community and how she had been harassed by Billy Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth. I mean, that's all I could tell you is they have been harassing the living crap out of me. Janelle and her parents described to police how she'd been victimized by a campaign of online bullying orchestrated by Billie Jean and her friends. They said I was too pretty that I wasn't from here,

so they were going to be accepted. But according to Janelle, not all of the online abuse was petty in nature. Some of it even threatened physical violence. But according to Janelle, not all of the online abuse was petty in nature. Some of it even threatened physical violence. During that interview on February 2, Janelle told investigators that people online had not just said mean things about her, but had threatened to rape her because she was too pretty and that she wasn't from the area so she would never be accepted.

The only thing I had ever posted was please leave me alone. Of course law enforcement officers are trained to take any threat online or otherwise seriously and given what Janelle and her parents were describing. Janelle very well could have been a victim in this online feud. But according to the detectives that conducted the interview, there were also some red flags that made them question her story. There seemed to be very little shockingly little empathy, sympathy for Billy Payne and Billie Gene Hayworth and more of a pity party, oh, woe is me for Janelle for having to endure this alleged harassment.

After that conversation, law enforcement left there both bewildered and interested in the Potter family. You know, Scott, just thinking what law enforcement is quickly learning about, you know, not all is well when it came to what was going on, at least online between these, that definitely puts it in the could it be motive category. But again, as whether you're law enforcement or prosecutor, to me, it's all super interesting and has to be looked into much more deeply, but not much more at least yet. I think we also have to look at this fact, Anasega, going in for investigators.

She was slow to understand. She was lacking some intellectual acuity. So that has to factor into their observations. And then you have to ask, is she a legit suspect? Did she have a motive here? And perhaps, but that has to include that assessment. As an investigator, with what I have in front of me, and I have a family telling me, you know, victimology, right, or suspectology, this is potentially a professional hit with ammo that has been altered, essentially, right? Ultimately, if I'm looking at the whole perspective

of her as a potential suspect, I've got to take her state of mind into account. And that is how I'll formulate my theories and my potential list of suspects based on what information I have going in. And that information about her lack of acuity really would be important to me. But again, just from their own observations, this young woman, you know, 30, at least to me is still young, that I should say it's a big stretch from Odd Answers to get to cold-blooded, skilled executioner. But while they were speaking to her, Janelle did offer an alibi for the night of the murder, saying that she was at home with her mom, an alibi that her mother, of course, verified. But this online grudge between Janelle Potter and the two murder victims, it did point to, like, again, that potential motive, and it also could

at least help narrow down the pool of potential suspects. Following the February 2nd, 2012 interview with the Potter family at their house, that really started narrowing down who they talked to and what they focused on. That's when they start actually paying attention to the social media posts, who was posting and focusing on Jamie Curd because Jamie Curd did have information about the back and forth online. 38 year old Jamie Curd was Billy Payne's second cousin and also the man that Janelle had been romantically linked with. And of course, police are gonna want to sit down

for an interview with him. The question of that day, could he have decided to take matters into his own hands in defense of his girlfriend? The first interview with Jamie Curd, it was pretty obvious that he was being deceptive. He would not admit to having anything more than an acquaintance type relationship with Janelle.

Who is Janelle to you? She's a friend or she's just a friend. Girlfriend? No, I'm just friends with the family. But according to people that knew them, Jamie Curd and Janelle were more than just acquaintances, evidenced by the fact that Jamie had publicly taken Janelle's side in her ongoing feud with Billy and Billie Jean. Now I don't think that he really participated in that, but he definitely bought into the allegations that Billie Jean Hayworth and Billie Payne were harassing and threatening Janelle. Let me ask you this.

It's our job to ask tough questions. Did you kill Billie or Billie Jean? No. Did you know about them being killed? Did you, did you predict that? No. you kill Billy or village. Did you know about them? Did you did you participate or double that there's gonna be

killed before they were killed? Despite his denials, there was evidence that bad blood between Billy and Jamie had recently come to a head. Jamie Kurt had threatened to cut Billy Payne's throat in a fit of anger. Now what that fight was about, I don't know,

but that was one of the things that investigators had focused in on was that Jamie Kurt had gotten mad and told Billy Payne that he was gonna cut his throat. And of course, Billy Payne later ended up with his throat cut. And to me, that just feels like a huge coincidence, right? Like, what are the odds? And it wasn't long before police sat Jamie Kerr down

for a second interview to confront him about both his relationship with Janelle and his recent fight with his second cousin, Billy Payne. It was during the second interview that he was confronted with a love letter from Janelle. And that's more or less what got him talking, is getting caught in that untruth. And when he was confronted with these inconsistencies, that's when he broke down and started talking. And according to Curd, it was Janelle that had first turned him against his second cousin, Billy. When Janelle found out that Billy Payne

was dating Billie Jean, the jealousy meter just broke. And Janelle got in Jamie's ear and basically turned Jamie against Billy Payne. Curd then admitted that he had been at the Potters' home for dinner two nights before the murder when a dark plan had been hatched. Jamie told law enforcement that Marvin had cornered him

when Barbara and Janelle were not in the room and told him that he needed some help with something. Marvin told Jamie that he needed Jamie to drop him off near Bill's house, told him that he needed some help with something. Marvin told Jamie that he needed Jamie to drop him off near Bill's house, drive around, and come back a few minutes later and pick him up. And while Marvin Potter had not been explicit in his attentions, Curd was well aware of the online abuse that was bombarding Janelle's timeline. And he was also well aware what

the combat veteran was capable of. And it was later the night or the next night that he got a text message from Janelle saying that daddy's ready. Daddy's coming to get you. He says that he's picked up by Marvin Potter at his house, at Jamie's house, and they are driven down the road to where Billy Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth were living. He said that he was told to be a lookout, that as he was walking up to the sliding glass door, he was given a gun. And he expresses to Buddy that he can't kill anybody.

But Buddy just said, I'm going to kill somebody. And he said, I'm going to kill somebody. And he said, I'm going to kill somebody. And he said, I'm going to kill somebody. And he said, I'm going to kill somebody. And he said, I'm going to kill somebody. And he said, I'm going to kill somebody He was given a gun and he expresses to buddy that he can't kill anybody But buddy just tells him that he needs him to stand by the front door Right? Yeah. So we got to that porch. Buddy handed you a pair of gloves.

And he relates that they both go in the house through the sliding glass door, and that Marvin goes down the hallway, goes into the first room. Jamie says that Billie Jean comes out screaming. Now, Jamie doesn't say anything about the baby, but says that Billie Jean comes out screaming and runs down the hall, the opposite direction of Jamie. That Jamie hears a gunshot and that Marvin walks out of the first bedroom and makes eye contact with him. And Jamie says that he points the

other direction further down the hall and that Marvin then goes down the hall to the second bedroom and that Jamie hears a second shot. Curd had pointed the finger squarely at Marvin Potter blaming him for the planning and carrying out of the shooting deaths of both Billy Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth, a cold-blooded double murder that left their seven-month-old son still clinging to his dying mother. But according to Jamie Curd, his job was not done. He handed you a hunting knife on a sheet. It wasn't really like a hunting knife. It was just a regular, just a knife. Just a straight blade.

What did he say? You're in it cutting, right? In Kurt's confession, he entered Billy Payne's room and plunged a hunting knife into the dying man's throat. The details of the crime are incredibly brutal and mind boggling. And with this much detail, Curd's story was also pretty convincing. But of course, investigators would want more proof, need more proof that Curd was telling the truth and not just pinning these murders on someone else. And they were actually able to do this in a pretty convincing way.

During that second interview, Jamie pointing the finger at Marvin Potter said that he was the shooter. Jamie Kurd took a lie detector test. And at the end of the interview, it concluded with a recorded phone call from Jamie Kurd to Marvin Potter. And Potter had no idea that their call was being recorded by police.

Asking if he had gotten rid of all that stuff from Bill. From the perspective of law enforcement, it's as good as a confession. I mean, certainly enough to take him into custody. After that phone call that Jamie Curd made to Marvin Potter, law enforcement, they go ahead and get an arrest warrant for Marvin Potter to charge him with first degree murder. It was in the early hours of the next morning that they go to serve that arrest warrant, as well as a search warrant for the Potter resident.

It's hard to fathom how someone could be capable of this kind of violence, or what motive could have driven them to it. But police and prosecutors in Johnson County would have to try. From what detectives had learned from other people, as well as from their own encounters with Potter, the man who went by Buddy was kind of a gentle giant, albeit one with a love of firearms who was rarely seen without a gun on his hip. When investigators searched the Potter home, they found an astonishing number of firearms.

And this is Northeast Tennessee. There are a lot of guns in Northeast Tennessee, but boy were there a lot of guns in the Potter house. I wanna say that there were close to 200 firearms. Marvin Potter's immense weapon collection included handguns, long-barreled rifles, assault weapons, and lots and lots of knives. A frightening but promising lead. Law enforcement hoped that somewhere in that house was the weapon that killed Billy and Billie Jean.

Out of all the firearms that were seized from the Potter house, not one of them matched the rifling and the markings that would have been created on the bullets that were found at the scene. So it wasn't any of the firearms that were found in the house. But that's not to say the detectives came up empty-handed.

During the search of the Potter home, Barbara Potter was detained, and she was made to sit on the couch in the living room. Well, at one point during the search, Barbara Potter grabs a stack of papers and starts ripping them up. And, of course, she's told, don't do that. And they look at what she was ripping up,

and it was printed photo off, I don't know if it was Facebook or might have even been MySpace at the time but it was pictures of Billie Jean Hayworth and her friends with captions such thing as horrors, bitches and they need to die. They need to die. Were these idle threats or promises to keep? And was this evidence that Marvin was not the only Potter privy to a plan to eliminate Janelle's online rivals? We knew that when Marvin Potter was arrested, that it just didn't feel like we were done.

In Tennessee, they say you can learn everything you want to know about a man from his truck. And that certainly was the case when it came to the prime suspect in the murder of Billy Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth, Marvin Potter. When Marvin Potter was arrested, his truck was seized as evidence and a search warrant was written for it and it was taken to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab to be just combed through. And there were things found in his truck that were very concerning. One of those was bullets were found in the console of his truck that had the same scratch marks on them as the bullets that were found at the scene.

Same caliber, same markings, the poor man's holotips, as they were called. But it was the back of the truck that contained the real treasure trove of evidence. And in the back of Buddy's truck were several bags of trash. And in these bags of trash were piles of shredded documents. There was a TBI agent that, bless her heart, pieced about 30 or 40 of these pages together

from the shredded documents. As you can imagine, this was painstaking work. But as the words and pictures on these shredded documents came into focus, a disturbing story began to emerge. And they were printed emails or printed screenshots of social media posts that had been shredded for some reason. And we later found out that that's how Marvin Potter knew what was going on online was Janelle and Barbara would print out the

social media posts, these emails, with all this just venomous back and forth garbage. What was most intriguing to police was that many of these emails describing the alleged threats against Janelle were coming from a person named Chris, and Chris seemed to know an awful lot about the Potter-Hayworth feud that was roiling Mountain City. Chris fed the flames for the Potter parents, Marvin and Barbara, in the sense that Chris would back up Janelle, saying that Billy Payne,

Billie Jean Hayworth, and their circle of friends were all making threats against Janelle, that they were all out to get her, and that it was just a matter of time before someone came and killed, raped, or otherwise harmed Janelle. And how did this Chris know so much about the conspiracy directed against Janelle?

Because according to the emails, Chris was an operative in the CIA. So this CIA agent named Chris is somebody that Janelle would talk about. She talked about the CIA agent with Jamie Curd. She talked about the CIA agent with her mother, Barbara Potter. And like any good secret agent, Chris had access to all sorts of information. This Chris held himself out as having this knowledge because of the special access or the, whether real or not, special powers that a CIA agent would have to access phone records, internet records,

email records. Was there really a spy in Mountain City? The possibility seemed almost ridiculous. But for Janelle's mother Barbara and her husband Marvin, the emails were entirely convincing. Based on the messages, the emails, everything found in the search warrants, you know, Barbara would interact with Chris and agree with him that something needed to be done, would agree with him that, you know, things have got to change. Otherwise, Janelle's in trouble.

You know, Barbara even talked about having a training session where they had Jamie come up and shoot guns in the backyard. And she talked about making a pineapple upside down cake for after they were done training. The paper trail of evidence that law enforcement was able to piece together showed how Barbara and Janelle Potter bombarded Marvin with the threatening emails, Facebook posts, and supposed intel about threats to Janelle's life until eventually he decided it was up to him to do something about it. Once we started finding the emails, the messages in the search warrants that matched to the

shredded documents, that's when we were able to finally conclude that they must have been printing this stuff off and showing it to Marvin. And in an attempt to convince Marvin that Janelle was in danger and that a father taking drastic action to protect his daughter he believed to be in danger and an ex-marine taking orders from someone he believed to be in the CIA. We found messages between Chris and Barbara, but because Marvin never used a computer, there was never any direct communication between Chris and Marvin. But there were messages that were intended to be delivered to Marvin, such as do what you got to do.

CIA has your back. I can't be there to help you, but I can provide support from the CIA. But there was one huge problem. These threats against Janelle, this intel from a supposed CIA agent, they were all lies. And law enforcement was very interested in finding Chris, but honestly early on, I don't know how else to say it. But to say it, it was pretty obvious Chris didn't exist. Digital forensics revealed that this Chris was not a real CIA agent, but a fabricated persona created by Janelle Potter herself.

What a twist. During the investigation, search warrants, subpoenas were done, subscriber records from the internet service providers, subscriber records from the internet service providers, subscriber records from the cell phones. Once we determined that all of these accounts, you know, that the IP address matched the Potter household, we did search warrants for Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo email, AOL email, topics.net, and through these search warrants, it was determined that all of this correspondence was coming from the Potter house. Another way police were able to figure out

that these emails were fake, a good old-fashioned grammar test. Samples were taken from Janelle and Barbara, writing samples, both handwritten and typed. And those samples were used to compare to the returns on the search warrants for the messages, the emails, the posts on the social media sites. We looked at word choice, we looked at spelling mistakes, we looked at punctuation and lo and behold, Chris had the same grammatical syntax, punctuation, word choice, very, I mean, identical to Janelle.

It was evidence that posing as Chris, Janelle had sent dozens of emails to her parents, warning them that Billie Jean, Billie Payne, and their circle of friends were plotting to kill her. Janelle used this fictitious Chris character as a way to corroborate what she was claiming was happening to her online. Chris would and could say things that Janelle never would.

Janelle was very, very concerned with being seen as this good little Christian girl who would never say anything mean about anybody, very meek, very easy to get along with. But Chris could say all the things that Janelle wouldn't. There was even an email from Janelle's mother, Barbara, to the man she thought was Chris saying quote We don't want to kill anyone, but we will if we have to

The night that Marvin Potter was arrested. He was interviewed at the Johnson County Sheriff's Department for hours hours He was there for a while and it took him a long time to come off of it and to admit that You know he he was involved to come off of it and to admit that, you know, he was involved. It was clear that Marvin Potter still believed his daughter's life had been in danger. He basically said that, yeah, he was involved, that he and Jamie Curd had went there,

that he was afraid for Janelle's life, and he felt like it was something he needed to do to protect his daughter and his family. But Potter stopped short of a full confession. He saved that for his wife, Barbara. Marvin makes a recorded phone call to Barbara, and he wants to be the first person to tell her. And he calls her and immediately says, Barbara, I was involved. I did it.

Hi, Barbara. Yeah. Before you find out somebody else wants you know, I was involved in it. I did it. Some of it. Marvin Potter admitted to killing Billy Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth, and for law enforcement listening in, his wife's reaction to his confession spoke volumes about her complicity in this plan. Instead of weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth, Barbara Potter says, oh no, you couldn't have done it. You were sitting right here with me. You must not, you must not have your oxygen. You don't know what you're talking about. You don't have no rest and you don't have your oxygen. You're really not yourself right now.

There was no, you know, reaction that you might expect from someone whose husband just told him that he committed two murders. You need to think about it more, because you're sitting right here, and I saw you. Potter also talked to his daughter, Janelle, the person police now believed had put this double murder into motion. Here's Marvin Potter speaking to his daughter, Janelle Potter. Yes.

Are you OK? No, Janelle. I've been so upset. Honey, don't worry about it. Just take care of yourself. I am, but this isn't right. You didn't do anything. You were here. I'm so sorry that you had to go through this.

It's all right, honey. I love you. I love you too. Okay. Bye. Police believe they had the evidence that could prove that Janelle and her mother, Barbara, had both played a role in orchestrating the murders by creating an elaborate tale, pure fiction, about her life being threatened and then manipulating Marvin Potter into taking revenge.

They are charged with felony murder right along with Buddy Potter. For his role, Jamie Curd was also charged with two counts of first degree murder, but those charges would eventually be reduced in exchange for his cooperation and ultimately his testimony against the Potters. In Marvin Potter's trial, prosecutors presented a litany of evidence proving he killed the couple, and they were able to do that even without him explaining the complicated catfish scheme that prompted him to do it. We didn't get into digital evidence. We didn't get into the emails. We didn't get into the text messages, any of that really in Marvin's trial. We didn't really have to get into all that other stuff

because we were really concerned that we would lose the jury. They would just get lost in the weeds. Instead, they focused on the simple facts, that he had possessed customized ammunition matching the bullets found at the crime scene. His accomplice, Jamie Curd, testified to his guilt, and Potter himself had confessed to the murder.

In October of 2013, Marvin Buddy Potter was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to two life sentences without the possibility of parole. His daughter Janelle and his wife Barbara were tried separately. As the trial of Janelle Potter approached, for prosecutors, the main concern would be proving

that she was indeed the mastermind of this elaborate scheme that ended in this horrific double murder. While she was clearly responsible for exaggerating and ultimately fictionalizing these threats against her life, would the jury find that there was some reasonable doubt about her culpability in the actual murders. That's something I've always struggled with, whether Janelle completely intended

for the murders to occur. Now, we know that she had a very, very limited social circle. She was starved for attention, and she's one of these people that any attention, even negative attention, at least it's attention, and she would stir it up. I mean, she would stir up the drama just so that people would pay attention to her and so that she could play the victim. So we know she had the motive to exact some kind of revenge against Billy Payne and Billy Jean, but there was also some evidence put on by the defense that put into question whether she was mentally competent to understand the consequences of what she had put into motion.

There was testimony at the trial that she was operating on basically a middle school level, but that she was absolutely competent and was not insane at the time. You've got this grown woman who is acting like middle schoolers do online, thriving off this negative attention and all of this asinine arguing and name calling back and forth that it got out of hand. I think that Janelle pushed it so far that Barbara bought into it and they together convinced Marvin that these threats were real and that he had to do something about it. And he did. At her trial, it was Matt's job to unravel Janelle Potter's web of lies and deception

and to prove that she was well aware of the intended consequences. We put on the same evidence that we did in the first trial, but we also had to convince the jury and make it understandable. This big crazy story. According to the prosecution, that tension between Janelle and Billie Jean, that was real. But there was evidence that the escalation of insults and threats exchanged online, those were all hatched in the warped mind of Janelle Potter. This topics.net was an online forum website where you could post anonymously. All you had to do was create an account.

Well, we found that Janelle Potter had created multiple accounts and she would post something as one person, then log in under another account and comment on it, log into another account and comment on the previous comment that she had just made. So what looked like a concerted campaign of cyberbullying was actually entirely self-created. On its face it looks like there are multiple people, for lack of a better way of saying it, talking trash, but they all seem to have some common threads and be saying the same things and communicating in the same ways, using the same rhetoric, the same punctuation, the same

spelling mistakes. Janelle Potter may have had a silver tongue when it came to lying to her parents, but online, her poor writing skills proved to be her downfall. It looks like there's people engaging with each other, but it's really just one person. And remember that supposed CIA agent named Chris? Well, as it turns out, he was real. Sort of.

Once we got to social media and the internet returns on the search warrants for the email, his messages, all that, we had found where Janelle had sent pictures of Chris, or who she was claiming to be Chris. And it turned out to be a guy that she went to high school with up in Pennsylvania. We found him and she had been stealing his pictures off of social media and passing them around saying, hey, here's Chris. Prosecutors decided to inform the real Chris about his involuntary part in this bizarre catfishing scheme. He thought that I was kidding. I mean he remembered Janelle he remembered having a couple classes with her. He remembered that you know, she was kind of

socially awkward that didn't really get along with people didn't have any friends and he was nice to her she has apparently held on to that her entire life unbeknownst to him was passing him off as a CIA agent who was her guardian angel as she called him. And just in case you were wondering, no, Chris was not in the CIA. I think he ran a law and service at the time. But he would take the stand and make a great witness to help expose Janelle's lies. And when we called him as a witness, I remember saying the state calls Chris Jaden and the

air left the courtroom as this guy walked in. And Janelle Potter, if you could have seen her face, When Chris Jayden comes walking down the aisle across the bar and sits down in the witness chair, it was priceless. In May of 2015, both Janelle and Barbara Potter were convicted of first degree murder, with Janelle receiving a life sentence for her role in orchestrating the deadly plot.

The mother's motive? To eliminate a perceived threat to her daughter. Janelle's motive? To eliminate a romantic rival, to take vengeance against her imagined enemies, and to kill in cold blood. As for Marvin Potter, he may not have pulled the trigger if he had not been convinced by his own wife and daughter that Janelle was in real danger. But when he was, he acted without mercy, taking the lives of two young parents.

Over the years, people have asked me, you know, what was that case about? And there's no way for me to sit down in 60 seconds and explain to you what happened just because of the sheer unbelieveability of it. How a mother and a daughter can convince a father that these two people are so much of a threat that they need to die, you know, and the way they did it just through these incessant, constant social media and

email exchanges that have to be printed and shown to Buddy. I mean, nobody in the Potter family, I mean, nobody had a job, nobody really left the house except to go to the store, and they had nothing else to do than to sit around and stew over this stuff. And I mean, I guess you can only be told something so many times in so many different ways before you kind of start believing it. And we think that that's what happened with Marvin. And Matt believes that if he had not arrested the Potters when they did, there was a good chance that the carnage would not have stopped with Billy and Billie Jean. When they did, there was a good chance that the carnage would not have stopped with Billy

and Billie Jean. I really think that had the case not been resolved as quickly as it had, that there were other people in Billy Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth's friends group that may have been targeted. A post-conviction hearing of the case happened in 2021. Marvin Potter testified that he was the only person responsible for the deaths of the two victims, protecting the women in his life to the very end. Both he and Janelle lost their appeals and are currently serving their sentences.

Barbara Potter's conviction, however, was overturned on appeal. She ended up pleading guilty to a lesser charge of facilitation of murder and is eligible for parole in 2028. Of all the homicides I've dealt with in 15 years of practice, I mean this was, there'll never be a more senseless, pointless murder than that of Billy Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth. There's no reason that this had to happen. It may be impossible to understand the reasons Janelle Potter concocted this scheme beyond her own petty jealousies, pride, and ego,

but the results of her actions are all too real. Two innocent people murdered in their home and their seven-month-old child left to grow up without his parents. Four people are currently serving prison time for their roles in the crime, and somehow it still doesn't seem to be enough. When jealousy takes root in someone's mind, it can become a consuming fire, twisting perceptions and blurring the lines between right and wrong.

In cases where jealousy fuels a thirst for revenge, there's a kind of calculated coldness that drives the perpetrator, a grim determination to make that target feel the same pain, to tear down what they themselves lack or have lost, often going to unimaginable lengths to even the score. In this case, there are three victims, Billy, Billy Jean, and of course, their seven month old son, the most innocent of victims. As the child grows, he'll carry with him the silent weight of this tragedy. The community's heartbreak extends not just for the lives taken, but for the life that must now carry the

scars of that night, a night shaped by the dark and often overlooked consequences of online bullying escalating far beyond the screen. This case is the type of story we expect to see in the movies or as fictional tales on TV. But unfortunately for Billy and Billie Jean, this horror was very real. But unfortunately for Billy and Billie Jean, this horror was very real. Technology and social media can be a great thing, but there are inherent dangers we need to be aware of too. It's easy to hide behind the mask of a screen name.

The screen names concocted by Janelle Potter and the words she typed create a lethal and brutal tinderbox that led to double murder. Two young people, Billy and Billie Jean, gone from this earth forever. Their infant left to walk this world without either parent to ever hold him or care for him again. Our thoughts are with him, that now young boy, and hope that those that now care for him will love and support him with all their might. His mother held him in her arms even after her last breath.

And we hope that will help him know just how much she loved her little boy. -♪ -♪ Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original... ...produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media.

Ashley Flowers is executive producer. This episode was written and produced by Walker Lamond, researched by Kate Cooper, edited by Ali Sirwa, and Phil John Grande. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?