Crime Weekly - S1 Ep4: The Guy Family Murders (Part I)

Episode Date: December 25, 2020

It was the morning of November 28th 2012 when Deputy Steven Ballard of the Knox County Sheriffs Office paid a visit to 11434 Goldenview Lane in Knoxville Tennessee. He was there to perform a welfare check on its inhabitants and his body cam was on and recording as he pulled up to the quiet home. Fifty one year old Lisa Guy had been a no show to her place of employment that morning, and it was very out of character for her, especially since she was retiring the following week and her friends at work had planned to take her out to lunch to say goodbye and wish her well in her next chapter. When she hadn’t arrived for work her supervisor Jennifer Whited was so concerned she called the police and asked if they could make sure everything was okay with Lisa and her husband of thirty one years, Joel. What law enforcement would find in that house would indicate that everything was most certainly not okay. Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod

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without its expansive 12.3-inch panoramic display. Or the Kia Telluride without its three rows of spacious seating. The 2025 Kia SUVs. Kia. Movement that inspires. Call 800-333-4KIA for details. Always drive safely. Limited inventory available. It was the morning of November 28, 2012, when Deputy Stephen Ballard of the Knox County Sheriff's Office paid a visit to 11434 Golden View Lane in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was there to perform a welfare check on its inhabitants, and his body cam was on and recording as he pulled up to the quiet home. It was the Monday after Thanksgiving, and everyone was transitioning from holiday mode back into normal life, putting away their stretchy waistband pants and pulling out their work clothes, but not everyone had made it to work that morning. 51-year-old Lisa Guy had been a no-show to her place of employment that morning, and it was very out of character for her, especially since she was

retiring the following week and her friends at work had planned to take her out to lunch to say goodbye and wish her well in her next chapter of life. When she hadn't arrived for work and she wasn't answering calls or texts, her supervisor, Jennifer Whited, was so concerned, she called the police and asked if they could check in and make sure everything was okay with Lisa and her husband of 31 years, Joel Guy. What law enforcement would find in that house

would indicate that everything was most certainly not okay. Hello and welcome to Crime Weekly presented by i-D. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. On this podcast, we do talk about difficult subjects. We're talking about real crimes and real people. And due to the graphic nature of some of this content, listener discretion is advised. So Stephanie, before we get into this next case, I want to talk about something that I'm personally very excited about. Good friend of mine, Lieutenant Joe Candace, coming back to our TVs. I'm really

excited about it. So here's the rundown. And again, coming from our partners at ID, it's an all-day marathon of Homicide Hunter, but it's going to include sneak peeks of Joe's new show called American Detective, which is going to be coming exclusively to Discovery Plus on January 4th. And they're calling it New Year Newkenda, New Year's Day, starting at 9 a.m. on ID. So again, 9 a.m. on ID, New Year's Day. You can check out all the reruns of Homicide Hunter and get exclusive sneak peeks of his new show, American Detective. Joe is an unbelievable detective. I've had the opportunity to speak to him on numerous occasions. He's a great guy, great detective, some really good stories. I'm glad he's going to be back on our TVs. Yeah, Derek, I think everyone is ready for this year to be over. I don't think anybody's been looking forward to the new year so much ever

in the history of the world. So we'll wave goodbye to the evil that was 2020 and celebrate the new year with all new Kenda. The Homicide Hunter Marathon will start at 9 a.m. with Lieutenant Joe Kenda himself and will feature sneak peeks for Joe's new show premiering on Discovery Plus, American Detective. Maybe one day, too, if everyone goes and watches the show, I'll share my text messages with Joe Kenda because he speaks just like he texts, which is the strangest thing ever,

but it's also really entertaining. So go listen and maybe I'll release the text messages with his permission because I don't want him to come and find me as well. I look forward to that. So Derek, it's Christmas, Christmas day. When this goes out, Merry Christmas to everybody and Merry Christmas to you. How are you doing with the holidays? I'm good. Merry Christmas, everyone. Merry Christmas, Stephanie. We got a big one to do today. In fact, I think this is going to be a two-parter, right? It had to be. I mean, some cases just have so much to them that you really need to dive in and give it the justice it deserves. I'm very excited. So it's a good Christmas gift, I think, for us and everybody.

Yeah. No, and if anyone, I know a lot of your fans are on here listening and they know you, that you're known for going into the weeds, going into the details. You don't just scratch the surface and it's just the way you're built. So I know it's probably hard for you on some of these other ones to only do 45 minutes to an hour. So I can see the joy in your face as I'm looking at you right now that we get to really go there. And this is probably going to be a common occurrence for us because we both like talking. We both like diving into these cases. And if we feel the need to break it up into two parts, we're going to do it. And we're not going

to feel bad about it because at least we know we're going to get to cover the case, as you just said, the way it should be covered. And I think a lot comes out in discussion too, that wouldn't even normally come out if I was covering it by myself or you were doing it by yourself. With the two of us together discussing, I think things come out that wouldn't normally if we were alone. And I think that everybody might need a little bit of a break from holiday festivities today and maybe, you know, sneak away from your family. I know y'all are tired. You've been wrapping presents, too much eggnog, too much wine. You just need a little break. Go in a quiet room, take an hour for yourself today, and listen to the podcast. Or if you have kids and they're trying to have you build every single

gift that they bought you in the first five hours of owning it, this is your chance to say, yeah, dad's going to listen to a podcast. Leave me alone. Well, speaking of family and kids, I was thinking the other day how we so often just kind of automatically trust members of our family, especially our immediate family. We know that there's murderers and bad people out there in the world, but we never really consider that they might be sitting at our dinner table or sleeping in the room next door. As parents, we definitely never think that our own children, who we gave life to, will ever grow up to take ours. Yeah, that's true. I mean, who would ever think that our own children, who we gave life to, will ever grow up to take ours. Yeah, that's true. I mean, who would ever think that, right? Like, that's not normal.

But at the same time, we know it happens. I mean, in my career, most of the time, family members of offenders never suspect that the person was capable of doing something like this, although there are some outliers where the person commits a heinous act and their family members come out later and say, yeah, we knew something was off. But I mean, look, look at the case we just did a couple of weeks ago, Chris Watts. You look at his parents during the trial and you can tell that they never thought their son would be capable of doing something like this, but they still love him. And the bottom line, you just never know. Well, I'm actually really glad we're covering this case today because I talked about it on

my YouTube channel. And there was many times during my research for the case that I would have loved to have had your perspective because it was just like a crazy case. And there was a lot that happened in the police investigation where I would have loved to have stepped into the shoes of a law enforcement official. Joel Guy Sr. was Lisa Guy's wife, and he'd been married once before. He met his second wife, Lisa. And from his first marriage, he'd become the father of three daughters, Shandice and Angela and Michelle. And Angela and Michelle were twins. Angela and Michelle were still very young when their father met and married Lisa. So she was always a really big part of their lives. And although sometimes you kind of see animosity in step-parents, step-child relationships,

there was absolutely none between Lisa and her three stepdaughters. They absolutely loved her. And you can see later when they're testifying during the trial how much she meant to them, which makes this even worse. They described her as being warm, loving, a woman who would put her family first. And they could see how much their father, Joel, and their stepmother, Lisa, a woman who would put her family first, and they could see how much their father, Joel, and their stepmother, Lisa, loved each other, which gave them a really great example of what a good marriage should look like. From Joel and Lisa's marriage, just one child was born,

a son named after his father, Joel Guy Jr. At this point, there is really not a lot known about the early life of Joel Jr., although I'm sure as time goes on, like you said, many people will come out of the woodwork and they'll describe their experiences with him. They'll say they saw the red flags and the warning signs and they'll have all these stories about him. to move from Louisiana to Knoxville, he decided to stay behind and live on his own, attending a boarding school for gifted students called the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts. Joel Jr. was described as someone who was sort of the polar opposite of his mother. Where she was really family-focused, he wasn't very interested in being with family, or really anyone for that matter. After high school, Joel ended up at Louisiana State University where he lived with another young man that had actually been his roommate at the boarding school. And this guy was someone Joel considered to be his best

friend. But even his roommate saw that Joel, who'd always been socially awkward and kind of a loner in high school, was becoming more socially awkward and more introverted as the years went on. And there would be weeks when he wouldn't see Joel at all, even though they lived together in the same apartment. Joel's half-sisters testified that when Joel did visit his parents in Knoxville, he didn't interact with the family hardly at all. He didn't hang out with them, talking and laughing. He didn't, you know, catch up or ask how everybody's family was doing. He didn't hang out with them talking and laughing. He didn't catch up or ask how everybody's family was doing. He preferred to stay in his room alone. And Joel's roommate said he didn't even know Joel had sisters. Now, Derek, I've known people who are introverts and prefer their own company to that of others. I am one of those people, but not to this extreme.

Yeah, this was definitely, as you said, an extreme circumstance. And as I was researching the case, it made me wonder why Joel's parents never sought professional help for Joel Jr. And if they did, I didn't see any evidence of it. And I know I'm looking at this in hindsight, but that's just not normal behavior. And don't get me wrong. I know we live in a world where kids hop on a video game and you don't see him for three days. But this seemed to be a little excessive for a guy who was almost 30, in my opinion. Yeah, I think when you have kids, you kind of have blinders on. You don't want to think that there's anything that needs to be addressed. And you kind of just keep saying, it's a phase, it's a phase. But you're right. He was almost 30.

That shouldn't have been a phase anymore. You should, at this this point want to at least sit down and talk to your family. You gain access to leads, training, networking, and support from the number one brand of siding in North America. Achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today. There was something else about Joel Jr. too. It seemed even though he was 27 years old, he'd never held a paying job. He was still going to LSU, but he had no degree to show for his years spent there. You know, kind of like Van Wilder. Someone was paying for his tuition, his portion of the rent on his apartment in Baton Rouge, his utilities, his cell phone, even his car payment. But since he didn't have a job,

it wasn't him. That's right. Joel's bills were being paid for by his parents, Joel Sr. and Lisa Guy, and this had been the case for a while. A few years prior, his father had stopped giving Joel Jr. money, but it seemed that the only reason Lisa Guy even had a job at this point was so that she could give her wages to her son, but circumstances had changed. Both Lisa and her husband were retiring, and they were selling their Knoxville home so they could move into Joel Sr.'s childhood home in Segoransville, about an hour and a half away from Knoxville. Lisa's last day of work had been scheduled for December 2nd. And after that, the couple, who had worked so hard for most of their lives, would be enjoying a peaceful retirement. Which they deserved. But as anyone who has retired knows, it's not really like lifestyles

of the rich and famous. You have to save for retirement. You have to plan for retirement. And then you have to live on a budget to make sure that you can stay retired. And that budget would not be able to include continuing paying their grown son's bills. Many people testified during the trial that Joel Sr. and Lisa had told their son it was time to stand on his own two feet and get a job. They'd already sold the Knoxville house. They were even starting to pack up when Thanksgiving rolled around. And it was going to be a quiet Thanksgiving. It was the last major holiday in that house. Joel Sr., Lisa, and the girls, remember Joel Sr. had three daughters from his first marriage. They talked to each other often, almost every day. Joel, Lisa, and I think it was Angela and Michelle, they had like this group chat and they would talk all the time. But it seemed that only Michelle was going to be home for Thanksgiving. Angela, who lived in upstate New York, had been planning to come home for Thanksgiving, but plans had changed. And instead, she was going to spend an entire week during Christmas with her parents

in their new house. And it seems Angela wasn't the only one who had a last-minute change of plans. Joel Jr., who had not been planning to spend Thanksgiving with his parents, suddenly decided to make the trip from Baton Rouge to Knoxville. Now remember, the Monday after Thanksgiving, Lisa Guy never showed up for work, and her supervisor called the police. The first officer on the scene was Deputy Stephen Ballard, and he noticed a few things when he approached the house that morning. There were three vehicles in the driveway. There was a for sale sign in the front yard, but other than that, everything seemed fairly normal. He approached the front door and he knocked. He rang the doorbell, but no one was there, or at least they weren't answering the door. During the trial, Stephen Ballard mentioned that

he didn't look through the glass on the front door due to safety reasons. Can you explain this to me a little bit more, Derek? I'll be honest. I don't really know. I don't know if I can. When I first heard this, I really didn't follow what he meant by it. Safety reasons to protect him, safety reasons to protect the homeowners. Either way, there have been Supreme Court cases that have addressed police officers looking through windows like Minnesota v. Carter, which was a little different, but ruled that a cop looking through a window was not a violation of the Fourth Amendment. But this was something different. He was attempting to locate an individual or individuals who had not been heard from,

which, in my opinion, is a safety reason and exactly why he should have looked through the windows. When he testified during the trial, I got the impression that he meant safety reason for him, such as maybe you don't know who's inside the house. And if you look in or you put your face up to the window, maybe someone could like shoot through at you. That's your job. Yeah.

That's your job. Right. You know, if you're that concerned about looking through a window, and again, we don't have to go too deep into him, but if you're that scared to look through a And I had a feeling that he could have done more. We're going to get more into it. Yeah. Well, Deputy Ballard did go around to the side gate, which was locked. And he saw there was a dog house. And so he whistled for a dog, but nothing happened. No dog came. And he concluded that everything seemed fine and he went on with his day. Now, like I said, in the comment section of my video for this case, Stephen Ballard got a lot of heat for going there for a welfare check and just sort of doing the bare minimum. Like, what are your full thoughts on this? Yeah, it's like we were just kind of getting into, right? He should

have done a lot more. And in my opinion here, I don't believe he didn't look through the window for, you know, quote unquote safety reasons. I just think he didn't look through the window. He didn't think of it, or he was just trying to get out of there as fast as he could because he made up his mind as soon as he arrived that everything was fine. It's complacency. This happens more than I care to admit on patrol. Trust me, I was a sergeant for three years. I was responsible for a lot of patrolmen. Officers get sent to well-being checks all the time. And unless there's a big sign hanging from the house that says, hey, a murder just happened here, they can kind of half-ass it, to be honest. It happens a lot. Would it have changed the outcome in this situation if he had looked initially? No.

But what if Lisa was lying on the other side of that door and needed medical attention? As an officer, you have to be better than that. You have to be diligent and go above and beyond what you are expected to do. So does he deserve the criticism for not looking through the window and not doing his job? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I kind of felt the same way, but you never want to judge. And that's why I wouldn't. I would never be a police officer because I'm a big chicken and I would not have looked through the window and I probably wouldn't even walked up to the house, which is why I'll never go into law enforcement because I'm terrified. And I think that you have to really have some big balls to go and be a police officer. Well,

Jennifer Whited wasn't satisfied with the initial welfare check either, like none of us seem to be. So Deputy Stephen Ballard, along with a detective, Jeremy McCord, and two other police officers returned to 11434 Golden View Lane. At this point, one of the officers did look through the front door, and he noticed that there was multiple bags of groceries sitting on the floor of the foyer, and some of these groceries were perishables. There was ice cream, frozen meat, boxes of beer. So Jeremy McCord and Stephen Ballard scaled the fence that led into the backyard,

and they approached the back door of the home. It was at this time that Jeremy McCord noticed there was no doorknob on the back door. There was just a hole where the doorknob should have been. And he also felt an intense heat coming from that hole, as well as a strong smell of chemicals. Now, McCord started to put two and two together in his head. Like Ballard, he had also seen the forced sale sign in the yard, and he had wondered why there hadn't been a realtor's lockbox on the front door. And this realtor's lockbox would hold a house key. This way, a realtor could gain access to the home as long as they knew the code to the lockbox. Jeremy McCord had also noticed that the front doorknob had some scratches on it.

Seeing the back doorknob missing and noticing the out-of-place front door knob, McCord then called the real estate agent who had been responsible for selling the home and said that there should have been a lockbox on the front door. She also told police that if they wanted to gain access to the home, they could always check the cars in the driveway and see if one of them had a garage door open inside, and there was. Once the officers had gained access to the garage, the smell of chemicals and feeling of heat became more intense, and they continued to approach the door that led them from the garage into the house. And you can see all of this in the trial footage where the body cam footage was shown to the jury. Yeah, it was actually really interesting, that

body cam footage, really telling. And Deputy Stephen Ballard testified during the trial and said that as soon as they entered the house, the presence of chemicals was so strong that the skin on his face began tingling. In a situation like this, the police are going to attempt to clear the house. Now, can you explain exactly what that means to clear a house? Yeah, it means a couple things. The main purpose of clearing a house is to check for any victims who may need medical attention. It's also to check for individuals who could potentially be a threat to the police or anybody else who enters the house. This means checking every room, every closet, under every bed, anywhere where someone could be hiding. A human being could be hiding from being apprehended. And trust me, and I've seen this happen. You don't want to be the officer who clears a house and then someone else goes in

and find someone hiding in a closet. If that happens, I can promise you this, whether they're a threat or not, that officer is going to be getting a lot of looks from his colleagues because the what if comes in. What if that person was a threat? I could have been killed because you didn't clear the house properly. So it's a big no-no. And when you say a house is clear to officers who are arriving on scene, that house better be clear. Does that count for like kitchen cabinets and things like that too? Because you could hide someone in a kitchen cabinet. Honestly, for me, I was in a rut. I checked everything because like you said, you don't know who could be. So yeah, if I opened the first cabinet and it had shelves in it, you know what I mean? I probably wasn't checking every

cabinet, but yeah, I, anything that, you know, I would go and check trash cans cause someone could pop out of one. You know, I always thought about the idea cause you hear these stories where officers are clearing a building and someone's hiding in a closet and end up shooting and killing the cop. That's one thing. But if you tell those officers that it's safe to enter and they go in there at a, you know, feeling like they're safe and they're not, their lives are on, are on your head. And I would never want to live with that. So I always went above and beyond and most officers do because yeah, when you, when you say a house is clear, that's your, that you're putting your stamp on it, that that house is safe for anyone else to enter. That's how they almost missed Charles Manson. You know, he was hiding in a cupboard.

He almost got away because he just curled himself up into that little cupboard like Harry Potter. But before the police even started going through the house, law enforcement saw some notable things directly in front of the door they entered. So this is the door from the garage into the house. And there's going to be like a kitchen on your left, but directly in front of the door they entered, there's bottles of chemicals. There's garbage bags. In the kitchen, there was a table with items placed out, and these items were specifically laid out in a way where it looked like they were exhibits organized by police officers. There was a purse, a set of keys, two wallets, a wrench, a couple cell phones. On the stovetop, there was a large stock pot with something simmering inside.

But the police officers didn't have a ton of time to look into, you know, the pot. They didn't have time to, like, look deeply into anything besides, like what you said, clearing the house. So they didn't look in the pot, and they continued to clear the house. In the dining room, there were guns everywhere on the table, on the floor. There was boxes of ammo and a lock set placed on the dining room table as well. A lock set that most likely had either come from one of the doors or was going to be placed on one of the doors. In the foyer, they saw the same bags of groceries that they had seen from outside the house and a staircase leading to the second floor of the home. And as chaotic and strange as the first floor seemed, it could never prepare them for what they would encounter upstairs. The staircase was in two sections. It's sort of

common in these sorts of houses. The first section is going to lead you up to where there's like a little small landing before another staircase kind of juts off the left and it leads to the second floor. As they made their way upstairs, officers could see dark spots that looked like blood. Now, there's four police officers here at this point. But if it's you, when do you start to feel that something is very wrong? When do you consider calling for backup? Because for me, I'm considering something's very wrong the second I feel heat and smell chemicals. Yeah, I mean, listen, in some departments, like my old police department, you might only have four officers available for the entire shift,

like honestly. So four people on a night when we're clearing a house is like, that's a whole cavalry in my old police department. But I think as soon as they observed the missing doorknob and the groceries on the floor, they knew something was off and they called for backup, which is why there were four officers who entered and not just two, which is exactly what I would have done. If I see the doorknob missing, that's red flag number one, groceries on the ground. Yeah, we need more people here. And I hate to keep ragging on them, but this is also why Ballard caught so much heat. It shouldn't have taken a second officer to see that the doorknob on the back of the house was completely missing or that the groceries had not been put away. And if I were the second officer that responded and found that doorknob missing

after he supposedly checked the house, like we just talked about, I can promise you at minimum, after we were done doing what we had to do with the house, him and I would have had a discussion. I'll just say that we would have definitely had a discussion. Well, I think I think that's kind of the thing. You know, the front doorknob is not missing. So everything looks good from the front. He noticed there was a back gate. He saw the doghouse.

He whistled for the dog, but he didn't he didn't go over the gate at that point. And I do think that was because he was by himself. I think he felt more comfortable scaling that gate once he had the other officers with him. And at that point, that's when they noticed that the back doorknob was missing. But Detective McCord noticed that there were scratches on the front doorknob, which is something really small that a lot of people, I think, would have missed. So good work for him. And as they're going up the stairs and they see all this spots of blood, there's a safety gate at the top of the stairs and the police could hear the sound of a dog barking and wailing frantically somewhere in

the home. And I think that this is just raising the tension. It would for me. And on the other side of the gate, there was a pile of bloody clothes. And on top of that, there was a pair of scissors. There were also large dark stains on the carpet and blood splatter on the walls. Now, Detective McCord asked Deputy Ballard if he had gloves on his person because they obviously want to open that gate and get past it and have access to the second floor, but they don't want to leave their fingerprints all over the place for when the forensics team comes through. So do police officers always have gloves on them? I just have to know, is it standard protocol or is it like a personal preference? I mean, they should. Does it always happen? No,

but officers should have at least one pair of gloves on them, whether it's the latex ones or actual gloves that they wear every day, like those cut resistant ones that some officers wear. I will say this, officers usually carry a box of latex gloves in their cars. I know all of our cruisers, when I worked at the police department, they were all stocked with them. They're always good to have for various situations like this situation that we're talking about right now, or even more common situations like someone's bleeding that you're rendering aid to, or to be honest with you, or someone's throwing up all over the place. And trust me, that happens a lot, a lot more than I care to admit. So this person's throwing up all over themselves. Do you

really want to be helping them up with your bare hands? So that's where my latex gloves always came out of my pocket. Well, Stephen Ballard did something right because he had gloves on him. Steve, you had gloves. Thank God, buddy. Thank God for the gloves. You missed an entire murder, but you had gloves. Great. Oh my God. Poor Steve. Poor Steve. Once they were on the second floor, though, the four men kind of split up, right? They go separate ways. Ballard went in the direction of the master bedroom to the left and McCord went the other way towards the spare bedroom. And even though Ballard had not gone in that direction that Jeremy McCord ended up going into, he testified that he looked that way and saw something sitting on the floor of the spare room through the open door.

And this object turned out to be human hands. Now, in the body cam footage, you can hear Detective McCord say, are those fucking hands? And then he yells to the other officers that they need to get out of the house and secure the crime scene. So they don't finish clearing the house. And can you explain to me why they wouldn't continue clearing the house? What if there was other people who needed help in one of the rooms they hadn't checked yet? Or if the culprits were still inside. Can we save the dog, please? Yeah, absolutely. No, you bring up commonsensical points and they're not far off from what policy is, right? Like, again, this was another head scratcher for me. I get not wanting to contaminate the crime scene and that should always be in the back of your mind. But as I was watching the body cam footage, Detective McCord mentioned a few times that they should back out. And I get it. As a detective, I've been there. You're thinking, I don't want anyone to touch anything. However, number one priority is always

to make sure that there are no other victims in need of assistance. And secondly, as we said earlier, to make sure that whoever did this is no longer there. This is important for a few reasons. One, to make sure that they don't hurt anyone else, obviously. Two, to make sure they can't escape and avoid apprehension. And three, to make sure they don't destroy any evidence while you're outside securing the perimeter. So, yeah, you got to finish clearing the house before you back out. Obviously, safety is number one. Preservation of evidence, number two. Oh, man.

I just, I feel like, and I think that a lot of these police officers who are on the scene, they talked about it later. And, you know, a lot of them had been on the force for quite a while. They'd never seen anything like that. So possibly it was just a very big shock. I mean, have you ever seen anything like that? Have you ever gone into a crime scene and seen a pair of severed hands on the floor? Not severed hands, but I've I've've walked into a crime scene where the guy was still alive and he had a screwdriver driven through the front of his face. So it went in basically

through his nose, the cavity, the nasal cavity, and literally all I saw was the handle. And as much as I wanted to stop right there and get down and give him attention, the medical attention right there, you got to finish clearing the area around him because now I go down and I'm working on him and the guy who shoved the screwdriver into his face comes at me. So you can't help someone if you're hurt and you can't investigate a crime scene if you're dead. So you got to first secure the scene and then that person's still going to be there. Did I call rescue as soon as I saw him? Yes. But my main focus was to make sure that whoever caused that injury to him was at minimum no longer present to hurt anybody else. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're right. You can't help someone. You can't help anyone if you're-

If you're laying next to them. Yeah. And the guy comes up behind you, which you've seen happen in the movies and you've seen happen in real life probably. Yeah. And I'm giving you the PG stories. There's some other ones that were worse, but yeah, I've seen some bad things and they are traumatic no matter how many times you've seen them, but you got to keep in mind, like whatever happened to the victim, someone did that. And you don't know if that happened three days ago or three minutes ago. So you got to assume that it just happened and make sure that the you know The premises is clear before giving anybody any medical attention I really hope that guy didn't have a screwdriver in his head for three days. Derek

Believe it or not. He didn't and he survived like literally is perfectly fine. Like the screwdriver went in I saw the x-rays like literally missed like anything Obviously not anything but missed anything that could have you know, left him unable to walk dead he's fine he's walking around no problem that's amazing every day i'm i'm so stunned by what what we can undergo and and still survive and be okay you got lucky yeah The severed hands, in this case, they belonged to Joel Geis Sr. And the room that they were found in had been sort of set up as an exercise room with a treadmill and like a Bowflex machine, you know, things like that. There was blood all over the room, but it was specifically concentrated in the back left-hand corner of the room where the initial attack seems to have happened. Now, on the floor, Joel Sr.'s clothes were piled and a pack of cigarettes was on top. Joel Sr. was a smoker, and these cigarettes were smeared with blood.

The worst had not even been found yet. But before we get to that, let's talk about Thanksgiving at the guy home. So at Thanksgiving dinner, it was only Joel Sr., Lisa, their daughter Michelle, and Joel Jr. Well, Michelle also had brought her three young sons, and then her boyfriend was going to be joining them later that day. And Michelle had also brought along some laundry to do at her parents' house because her dryer at home had broken. So as she was carrying in baskets of clothes, she had to walk by her half-brother Joel Jr.'s car on the way into the house. She glanced inside the car and noticed, you know, this big blue, like, Sterlite storage bin in the backseat. And she remembered thinking, like, that's kind of odd. You know, why would he

have this in his backseat? Is his clothes in here? Like, what is it back there for? Is he moving back in? And many more odd occurrences would happen that day with her brother Joel. Remember, I said he usually would stay in his room when he was home and avoid interacting with the family. But today he was outgoing. He was friendly. He started talking to Michelle and her sons and like giving the boys his old stuff. As soon as they came in, he was like, hey guys, hey. And he brought the kids upstairs. He was giving them his old toys and beanie babies. The beanie babies had been Joel's when he was younger, and Lisa, Joel Jr.'s mother, had essentially kind of kept his room exactly the same as if he lived there. All his old stuff was there, all his old books and toys and things like that, kind of like a shrine

to him. Now, Michelle thought that this was very strange because she wasn't even sure that Joel knew the names of her children, which is crazy to me. He had separated himself from his family that drastically. And on any other holiday or family gatherings, it was always the same. The rest of the family would gather in the garage, which they actually used as an area to socialize and smoke, and Joel would be off on his own, usually in his room. But this day, he joined in with the family, like hanging out and talking. He even posed for a family picture standing next to his mother and father and smiling. Michelle also noticed that when she was upstairs doing laundry in the laundry room, Joel always seemed to be there, sort of sneaking up on her. She would turn around and there he was, like he was watching

her or keeping an eye on her. However, there was a period of tension in the house on Thanksgiving, and at one point, Michelle was outside alone with her father, and she asked him about it. Joel Sr. informed her that they had been planning to tell Joel Jr. on Christmas that he was getting cut off and that they were retiring, but since he had come home for Thanksgiving, Lisa, his mother, had decided to tell him then, which resulted in the palpable tension that Michelle had felt in the house. Michelle and her family left around 8 p.m. that evening, saying their goodbyes, not realizing that within a few days,

Joel Guy Sr. and Lisa Guy would be dead, killed in their own home by their own son. And now during the trial where Joel Guy Jr. was charged with murder, there would be a lot of emphasis on whether or not this was a premeditated act. And I think the prosecution did a pretty good job of proving that it was based on evidence found in the house. Absolutely. There was obviously a lot of evidence that linked Joel Jr. to the crime.

And in many criminal cases, you're always looking for means, motive, and opportunity. And you're going to hear me say those three things a lot on these podcasts. Joel definitely had all three, and we'll discuss them in more detail shortly. But I will say this about the opportunity element. Joel Jr. had one major advantage, the element of surprise. He was their son. They loved him. They trusted him. They never saw it coming.

And the prosecution did a great job of laying that out in much more detail. Joel Sr. had been killed in the exercise room. Besides the copious amounts of blood all over, it appeared there had been some sort of struggle. The Bowflex machine was turned over and a futon located in the room also had blood on it. The mattress on the futon had been stabbed more than once. Lisa Guy had been killed in the hallway. Afterwards, her clothes had been cut off with a pair of scissors and left in the hallway. It was her blood on the carpet and her blood on the walls of the stairwell. Joel Jr. hadn't confessed to these murders. He hadn't given the police his version of events, but he really didn't need to since he left something behind in the bedroom

that he slept in that was really almost as good. Inside a backpack found in Joel Jr.'s room, there was a notebook, and in that notebook, he wrote an almost step-by-step plan of how he was going to kill both of his parents and collect his mother's life insurance money. For Joel Jr., being cut off was inconvenient, but he certainly wasn't going to get a job to pay for his bills. It would be easier for him to just take his parents out and keep using their money. Now, we know it was Joel's notebook because his fingerprints and DNA were found on it. We also know that it was his notebook because there was a syllabus inside for a class at LSU, a class called Madness in Medicine. Yeah, there was never any question, in my opinion, that the notebook belonged to Joel.

I know the defense attempted to say that it might not be his, but if the prosecution ever thought that there was any doubt, they would have just brought in a handwriting expert. And that would have been the end of that, in addition to what they already had with the DNA. As far as what was actually written in the notebook, that ultimately sealed the deal as far as implicating Joel Jr. As I just mentioned earlier, means, motive, and opportunity. Usually the prosecutor has to build a case to show these three elements. Instead, Joel Jr. did their job for him and laid out each aspect in his own handwriting. So it was a really open and shut case in that sense. There's been a lot harder cases to prove. And I will say this, I don't want to make light of the situation, but it was funny though, because Joel had everything planned out and yet he didn't

have anything in the notebook about not writing down his entire plan that could be used against him later. He forgot that element of his entire plot. Or like Inspector Gadget kind of thing, like destroy after you read this kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. The self-destruct or something. Yeah. Again, I got to say this, he was very meticulous, but that one thing where you actually laid out your entire plan probably shouldn't have done that. You might want to just take better mental notes. It was ridiculous. And that's why I still think that something happened that he had, he didn't more, probably more than one thing happened that he didn't expect, but. No, for sure. But hey, listen, why don't we, why don't we go over the contents of the notebook

for everyone who hasn't had a chance to like actually see them? I watched your, your, your documentary on YouTube. It was excellent and it really broke it down. You got to see the visuals. But for anyone who's just listening to this podcast, can we break down some of the things that were written in there? Because I think that's really telling as to the mindset that Joel had. Oh, yeah. I'll read the list. Yeah.

Let's do it. So it starts with get killing knives, quiet, multiple. Get carving knives to make small pieces. Get sledgehammer, crush bones. Bring blender and food grinder, grind meat. Get bleach, denature proteins. Get plastic bin for a denaturation process. Does not matter where they are killed,

just get rid of bloody spots to prevent evidence of time of death. Not the mattress or the couches. Get rid of bodies inside the house. There and my DNA already there. Now, when he says there and my DNA already there, it's a really badly written sentence. But what he means is his DNA, Joel Jr. and Joel Sr. and Lisa Guy's DNA are already going to be there because they were staying in the house. Open up doggy door to provide entryway. And then he scratches this out and he writes after

that he needs to be blamed, not intruder. Flush chunks down toilet, not garbage disposal. Get plastic sheeting for disposal process. I got to ask you, this is almost like a shopping list, some of these things. And if he's writing it down, do you think there was a point where he was literally at a hardware store? Because I know he went to a lot of different locations, but he's writing it down, do you think there was a point where he was literally at like a hardware store? Cause I know he went to a lot of different locations, but like he's at the hardware store and he's like going through this list in public, like checking things off as he gets them. Like you can't remember you need plastic sheathing. Like you got to write that down. Now, man, Joel Jr. was a guy who doesn't like to leave the house. Okay. He probably did all of this research online shopping. Yeah. Well, he probably did a lot

of it online. Like, what do I need to kill somebody and get rid of their body that he would be prepared for when he went to the store and he wouldn't have to be around people for too long. But it gets worse. After this, he writes, get hollow point bullets just in case. And then he crosses that out and writes after, will be seen buying bullets, just use computer room gun. And he's talking about the guns that are already at Joel Sr.'s house because all those guns that were seen in the dining room did belong to Joel Sr. And then he says after, check to make sure there are bullets, last resort. He continues on and says, he is not alive to claim her half of the insurance money. All mine. 500,000.

Flood the house. Covers forensic evidence. Turn heater up as high as it goes. Speeds decomposition. Bleach reacts with luminol just like blood. Douse area with bleach. Big sprayer. Lie.

Trash compactor. Body gives time of death. And then he has an arrow pointing from that to the word alibi. And after this, he writes, don't have to get rid of body if there's no forensic evidence on the body, his fingerprints and DNA. And he writes his fingerprints and DNA in all caps. Minimize things I touch throughout visit. Wear gloves and socks to prevent fingerprints and footprints. Drop something down the garbage disposal to break it. Get him on the ground fixing it.

Kill him with the knife. Clean up mess from him before she gets home. Kill her with knife. Kill dog. And then he crosses that out and says, leave alive. Fingerprints, take dog with you. He then writes, place her in shower with dog. And then with dog is crossed out

because Joel's decided to leave the dog alive. He then writes, turn on hot water and point at her to get rid of forensics. Remove her clothes and take them with me for disposal. Place him in plastic bin and use it to get him into upstairs bathroom. Cut off his arm and plant his flesh under her fingernails. Place her hand with his DNA so that his DNA is not washed away by the shower. Use sodium hydroxide to destroy his soft tissues and soften bones for transport. Baste like a turkey once every hour to accelerate. Now, he did not say baste like a turkey, but he did use the word based. Based, yeah. And the same phrase that you would use it for cooking a turkey. I mean, and at this point, I think everyone listening is probably doing what we're doing. It's like,

wait, he actually wrote these things? You're not just exaggerating or embellishing. No, literally, Stephanie's reading it word for word. This is verbatim what he had written in the notebook, obviously in very poor handwriting, but word for word, he laid out his entire plan down to these little details that you're hearing right now. And again, keep in mind as you're listening to Stephanie talk about this, that he's talking about his parents. He's not talking about some random people. He's literally talking about the two individuals who raised him and provided for him his entire life.

And this is how he's talking about basting them. And he seems to be kind of, I don't know, editing the plan as he goes along, which makes me feel like it wasn't really that well thought out if you have to cross things out. And I did want to ask you, it says turn up heat to get rid of evidence. Melt fingerprints, I think he said at one point. Do you think he meant melt fingerprints that would be on surfaces or melt their fingerprints? That was my interpret. Who knows what he was really thinking, but I mean, you could have, obviously you want to turn up the heat to try to throw off the time of death. And we're going to talk about that a little bit later, but I took

it as melt fingerprints, which I'm not a, I'm not a forensic expert, but I guess basically your fingerprints are left from the oils in your skin. And so maybe there's a way where if the surfaces that the oils are on get heated up enough, they would kind of dissipate those oils and obviously distort the fingerprint. That's a real possibility, I'm sure. But how hot would it have to be? I know it was like above 90 in there, but if it's on a piece of wood or it's not metal,

I don't know if that would have really, I don't think that would have done anything. So the list goes on. After he's basting the bodies of his parents once every hour to accelerate their decomposition, he's flushing the sodium hydroxide down toilet. Then he writes, wash out bin with handheld showerhead and then direct handheld into toilet to flush everything out of pipes and into the public waterway. Douse killing rooms, kitchen with bleach. Place hair curler with flammable paper and flammable containers of gasoline in four locations. And it's not done. He keeps going and says, set her phone to send me

a text message late Sunday to prove I was in BR. And when he says BR, he means Baton Rouge, where he lives. And she was alive. And he puts alive in quotation marks because he knows she won't be alive. He also goes on to say, leave through front door and wipe down doorknobs. Timer for flammables set for Friday at 10 a.m. Sunlight masks fire but not smoke. Everyone at work so they can't report it. Ultraviolet light shows fingerprints. Check mail before leaving. To get rid of blood, use peroxide and bleach. And then there's the word hemoglobin with an arrow pointing to the word blood, and then the word DNA with an arrow pointing at the word bleach. So, I mean, he has clearly thought this through. Yes. Yeah. And then there's another smaller list, much smaller, and it says destruction of bodies. That's the title of this list. And it

says composition of body, 20% fat, 20% protein, 55% water, 5% other compounds. That's a fun little list of fun facts. And then he goes on to say assets, her assets, her life insurance, 500,000, possibly more with double indemnity. With him missing slash dead, I get the whole thing. All her assets or all her other assets are joint. Go to him if missing, unknown if he is dead. His assets includes all joint property if missing. When he gets all joint property, also gets joint debt. And then he basically writes out their other assets. The Knoxville house, homeowner's insurance possibly, but probably worthless after fire. Oh, $100,000. Sigournesville house appraised at $100,000. Sigornsville House appraised at $400,000 plus, worthless with Renee on property. And Renee is Joel Sr.'s sister, who also lives in Sigornsville, and Joel Jr.'s aunt. Her car,

his SUV, not paid for. His boat, his old truck, paid for. His 401k, $80,000, possibly less after taxes. He could possibly have a savings and or investment accounts. So, Derek, as a former police officer, as a human being, if you see this list, what is your initial reaction? Well, as an investigator, right? First, let's go back to what I said earlier for everyone, right? Means, motive, opportunity. You just ran down a complete list that covers all three elements, right? The means of killing them, how he's going to do it with a knife, how he's going to destruct their bodies afterwards, why he's doing it, right? The motive, financial, right? He's laying out all their assets, what they owe, what they have paid off,

and opportunity. He's laying out how he's going to do it. He's going to throw something in the garbage disposal, have it break, get his father in a position where he's unsuspecting and unable to defend himself, take advantage of that situation. So he literally laid out all three elements for the prosecution. And yet all they had to do was basically show this notebook and that's the entire case. They really didn't have to fill in the blanks on anything. Joel did it for him, but that's as an investigator. And again, there is a lot to break down. I hate to admit this, but Joel Jr. was, in my opinion, he was clearly a smart guy. Not smart enough not to do something like this in the first place or smart enough to not get caught after the fact, but at minimum, you got to give him his credit. He did his research. There's also something else that became extremely apparent to me after reading this. Joel Jr. did not love his parents. The way he described their killing and the disposal of

their bodies, they were just a means to an end. It's really sad, but considering how he basically wanted nothing to do with them other than use them as his personal ATM. It's really not that surprising. I agree. I don't think he loved his parents. I believe personally, it's my opinion, there was only one person in his life that he felt anything for. Yeah. I want to bring up one more thing that's off the subject, but also important before I forget. And it's, you know, as you were going down this list again, I know we both pride ourselves on having people take something away from this that maybe they can use in their own lives to make sure they're safer. And I do think there's something very important to bring up here

because you're hearing it directly from the offender themselves. And it's that I am a responsible gun owner. I enjoy firearms. But as you mentioned earlier, all of these firearms, a lot of them were not secured properly. And I think the mindset behind that is, oh, we live in our home. We trust everyone here. We want to have quick access to them. Not a big deal, but you just never know. And that's why I want to make sure anyone out there who has a gun, make them accessible if you need them in an emergency situation, but also make sure they're secured because the people you think you can trust may be the ones who eventually use those same unsecured weapons against you. So a minor thing here, not knocking

Joel Sr. or Lisa at all. This is something I would say for anyone, but make sure you're securing your firearms, even if you trust everyone in the house, because you just never know guys and you got to protect yourself and you want to make sure that only you have access to those weapons in an emergency situation. So there's so much more to discuss. This is a very in-depth case. There's a lot of forensic stuff. It's very interesting. But I think we need to talk about that next time.

Yeah, I think it's great. Also, because you said that this list basically laid out everything, but it didn't. Something happened somewhere along the way pretty early on in this plan that changed the plan, that flipped the script on Joel, something he wasn't expecting. And we will talk about that next time. Absolutely. Part two, we're going to see you, what is it, New Year's? Yeah, January 1st, Friday, January 1st, 2021. We'll see you in 2021. Hopefully it's better than 2020.

See you guys later. Crime Weekly, presented by i-D, is a co-production by Audioboom and Main Event Media.