Criminology - The Murders of Tommy Vickery and Teresa Cronic

Episode Date: January 12, 2019

In May of 1983, Tommy Vickery and Teresa Lynn Cronic were found shot to death in Tommy's McDonough, GA home. This was a small town back then with a population of around 3,000 people. Tommy Vickery got involved in the drug trade and consorted with unsavory people. The murders baffled police. There are so many questions surrounding this case. Why were Tommy and Teresa together? Who would have wanted them dead and was it connected to Tommy's involvement with the drug trade and a cartel out of Miami, Florida? How did the area's history of police corruption connected to the drug trade factor? You can help support the podcast at patreon.com/criminology https://www.facebook.com/LovingMemoryTeresaLCronic/ An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. I'd like to welcome everyone back to Criminology. This is episode 43. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morfer. So Morp, what's going on, man? How's your week?

It's been busy. You know, coming out of that holiday season week where you're relaxed, it's time to get back to work. And we've been chugging along here. Yeah, I think that that happens for a lot of people, right? right, the holidays and a lot of businesses slows down a little bit. A lot more people are taking time off. And then, man, you come back after the first of the year. And it's like, okay, it's time to get, uh, it's time to get going again.

Yeah, we're going full speed. We've got a lot of stuff lined up to work on. So that's the good thing. So we put our first episode out morph last week of the new format, Mikkel Biggs. Got a lot of really great feedback on that episode. And I was happy about that. Yeah, a lot of people were really interested in the fact that it was the 20th anniversary of the case, and it's a really sad case that touched a lot of people. And we got our first voicemail of the year

about that case, which we'll play at the end of the show. Right. So before we get into this case, let's do our Patreon shoutouts. We had Aela Breed, Aaron Barzac, Phyllis Ekoff, Lillian Nage, Lottie Kavist, who is a big supporter of True Crime All Time. Appreciate that. Crystal Thompson, Debbie Morse, Chris Buckel, Astra Berry, Lisa Andrews, Freya Buchanan, Bridget Conners, and Kathy. So a lot of new support morph over the holidays coming into 2019. And it's amazing, right? We say it all time.

But it really goes a long way towards helping you and I put out this podcast. We really appreciate everybody's support through Patreon. We can't thank you enough. And if anybody out there is thinking about joining up for Patreon, we'd appreciate it. You can go to patreon.com slash criminology and sign up today. All right, Morf, let's jump right in. The case we're talking about today is the May 1983 murders of 33-year-old Tommy Vickory and 17-year-old Teresa Lynn Chronic.

They were discovered shot to death in Tommy Vickery's home in McDunna, Georgia. And there's a number of possibilities in this case that we'll be exploring. I think the first one that jumps out is that their deaths were directly related somehow to the dealing of drugs. But there are other possibilities as well that we're going to explore. But before we get into the details of the case, I think we need to talk a little bit about the area of McDonough, Georgia, where they were killed. In 1983, McDonnell is a very small southern town.

that had one grocery store, a town square with a gas station, and other little shops. And it also had a county courthouse. This is one of those small southern towns that you hear about where many people there know each other and they are wary of outsiders. Interstate 75 runs directly through Henry County and through McDone itself. This is a pretty good size highway that runs all the way from southern Florida, north up to the Great Lakes region and into northern Michigan to the Canadian border. And this is a highway morph that literally runs right by my house. I am less than five minutes from an exit of 75, but it's a big highway, right,

passes through six different states, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, and some really big cities in those states. I mean, you're talking about Miami, up through Atlanta, Chattanooga, Lexington, Cincinnati, Detroit. It's important to talk about 75 because it figures prominently into this case, mainly because that one-shot type of access all the way from Florida to Canada was and still is very appealing to people in the drug trade. And that was especially so in the 1980s. You know, that corridor, they call it the I-75 corridor, is just too tempting to pass up to drug dealers. Now, we're talking about the 80s in this case.

And, you know, when you go back into that time period, there were several major drug busts made along Interstate 75. In July of 1982 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, nine people were arrested for trying to move 12, 154 pounds of cocaine along that highway. The cocaine was stuffed into 26 duffel bags and had a street value of $400 million. $400 million, morph, that you, and this was 1980s, right? $192, $400 million in cocaine that you could put into 26 duffel bags. I have no idea what that street value would be today. But if you think about it, that is close to the most recent mega-millions

that was one in Long Island. That is a ton of money, especially in 1983. That's a lot of zeros. And whether it's 1983 or 2019, that's a big amount of money. At that time, it was the largest inland drug bust in U.S. history. In August of 1987, in Bradenton, Florida, two men from Detroit named Daniel Burns Jr. and Samuel Larry Williams were arrested along I-75 with $34,000 worth of crack cocaine in their car. But it wasn't just the drugs these two men were arrested for. It was also for the murder of a Florida Highway Patrol Trooper named Jeffrey D. Young. Trooper Young was part of a unit that intercepted suspected drug dealers and couriers along that highway. In the spring of 1986 alone, Troopers along I-75 in Georgia see

more than $60 million worth of cocaine, 700 pounds of marijuana, and 27 ounces of pure crack cocaine. And these are just a few of the many bus made along I-75 during that decade. We could have filled up the whole episode, Morf, right, with talking about stories of huge drug bus along 75. But we want to point it out because it's a major component of this case. So I don't think there's any doubt, right, that there was a lot of drugs worth a lot of money flowing along this I-75 corridor. And what you have in that situation, sometimes are cases related to that flow of drugs? And one in particular occurred in April of 1982. And this one happened in Henry County, the county that we're talking about when Sheriff Jimmy Glover.

Glass was convicted of taking bribes to drop drug cases. He was ultimately sentenced to 35 years in prison for the related charges. But I guess it came out that he even allowed drug dealers to use small local air strips to move drugs in and out of the area. But he wasn't the only one convicted. Herschel Childs, who was the Henry County Chief of Police, was also convicted alongside Glass. So you have to imagine this scene. You have two high-ranking law enforcement officials in that county being convicted of, you know, these types of crimes.

It was so bad there that by 1985, the entire Henry County Police Department was abolished. So you have a real problem in Henry County in the early 80s, early to mid-80s. There's uncertainty. There's a lack of anyone at the top. accountable after the 1982 convictions of glass and childs. So what you have is even more drugs, basically just flowing freely through this area. But now the people involved in moving the drugs, they don't even have to bribe anyone anymore. All of this in part led to Tommy Vickery's problems and perhaps to his eventual death.

In the early 1980s, Tommy Vickery lived with his wife. Mary and their two young sons on Rosser Road within McDonough City limits. This was roughly one to two miles from the town square. Tommy worked various jobs from selling insurance to doing auto repair, but he wasn't happy doing those kind of jobs, and he wanted to make more money. At some point during 1982, Tommy got involved in the drug business in the McDonough area, and he linked up with a man named Gustav from Miami, Florida. Gustav, who went by Gus, became a friend to the entire Vickory family, often taking the family out for expensive dinners. This also included Tommy's sisters as well as his mother.

Gus always paid for everything showing off the fact that he had a lot of money to spend. Gus got so close to the Vickory family that he was even at their Thanksgiving dinner in November of 1982, while Tommy got stuck in Florida transporting a drug shipment. By all accounts, Gus opened the door to this drug cartel operating out of of Miami. So Tommy Vickery was cozying up, working with possibly alongside some very dangerous people. But it wasn't just the people that were dangerous for Tommy. The drugs themselves would also prove to be a major problem for him. He began using the drugs that he was selling. And doing this led to a whole new set of complications. By May of 1983, when Tommy Vickery was 33, when Tommy Vickery was

33 years old, he had become heavily addicted to free basing crack cocaine. And this heavy drug use led to Tommy Vickery becoming indebted to the Miami cartel to the tune of about $25,000. That's a pretty dangerous situation that Tommy opened himself up to. Nobody wants to be in debt to a drug cartel for $25,000. Well, I think if you look at it this way, $25,000,000, thousand dollars being in in that much debt over drugs in 1983 twenty five thousand dollars is a lot of crack cocaine so i think it goes to the fact of how deep he got into his drug addiction but then you look at it this way you don't want to be indebted to the tune of twenty five thousand dollars to anyone especially over drugs but more specifically you don't want to be

indebted to a drug cartel for any amount of money. Tommy wanted to shield his wife from the particulars of his drug dealings. And Mary was smart enough to know to be gone from the house a lot to keep their children in the dark about Tommy's lifestyle. Mary Vickery was very active with her kids. They played a lot of sports, and she would take them to their games frequently. Between her job and her kids, Mary Vickory kept quite busy. And it allowed Tommy Vickery to do the things that he wanted. wanted to do while being out of sight. So Tommy had a small covered barn in the back of their house.

And it was in this barn that according to family members, he would sell and use drugs with people that came to the house. And I guess people were constantly coming and going to the house and specifically to this barn. And one of the people that showed up there was a 17 year old girl named Teresa Lynn Cronin. Teresa was known as Terry Lynn to her friends and family. She lived in her grandmother's mobile home on Route 4, Sunny Brook Drive in McDonough, Georgia. And she lived with a rather large family there, including her grandmother, her mother, three brothers and two sisters.

Teresa was by all accounts a happy child growing up. She was into baton twirling in junior high and was said that, she would throw the baton as hard as she could, as high as she could in the air, and then she would run like crazy to avoid it coming down and hitting her on the head. Teresa was a jokester. She was funny. She liked to play pranks. She would jump out and scare her little brother.

And then she would chasing down and tickle him until he almost peed his pants. Obviously, this happened when they were younger. But I think the point to make is Teresa Chronic was a sweet kid. She was loyal to her friends and family. And as she got older, she remained very close to her family. She really wasn't the type of person to get into trouble. And that's why it surprised a lot of people that she would become the victim of this type of violent crime. According to Tommy's wife, Mary, on mother's wife, Mary, on mother's

Sunday, May 15, 1983, Tommy asked Mary to help him refinance her house so he could pay off the $25,000 drug debt that he owed the Miami cartel. Tommy and Mary got into a huge argument about this. Mary was very shocked and upset by what Tommy told her. Tommy promised her that he was going to clean up his life and turn things around. As we said, for the most part, Mary was shielded from any of the specific the details of Tommy's life involving drugs. So just imagine her surprise when she found out her husband was $25,000 in debt to a drug cartel. Whether or not she condoned any of her husband's drug activities, you would think that she would have been worried for the safety of her children at that point.

And Morph, I think it's important to say, we don't know the real extent of what Mary knew about what Tommy was doing, right? We know that he tried to shield her. But obviously, during this argument, like you said, she was surprised to find out that he owed $25,000 to a drug cartel. I think at that point, regardless of what you knew before, you know that your husband is into something shady at that point. And I think it's safe to say that she wasn't happy about this at all.

She refused to refinance their house to pay off this drug debt. And it was just later that same day. Gus stopped by the house, possibly to try to collect the $25,000. Tommy told Gus that his wife was not willing to refinance the house. And Gus left the home empty handed. Two days later, Tuesday, May 17th, Teresa Chronic skipped school in order to spend the day writing around with two friends. Teresa told her friends on this day that she was afraid of something, but she didn't elaborate

on exactly what it was. So this was a bit cryptic on Teresa's part. Earlier that month, she had told friends that she was dating an older married man and that they were going to go to Florida. But Teresa didn't tell her friends who this man was. So after driving around on this day. day with her friends. Teresa was dropped off at her grandmother's home right at the time that the school bus would have normally dropped her off. So obviously she wanted to make it look as if she had

gone to school like any other normal day and then she came home on the school bus. And I think this is the way that many teenagers minds work. I know it was the way that mine did back in the day. If I wanted to do something, I would figure out a way to skirt the system to do what it is I wanted to do. Yeah, I was the same way, Mike, I had always put down a cover plan and sort of, I try and skirt the system and figure out a way to fool my parents. And that's what it looks like Teresa did in this instance. Well, I think it's, it was always about the cover story, right? Back in the day, that was the key. So you had to coordinate with friends. You had to make sure that. You had to make sure that everybody was on the same page, if you had any chance of getting away with it.

Later that same evening, a girlfriend of Teresa named Sherry, along with two male friends, spent part of the night at Tommy Vickery's home hanging out and partying. Teresa Cronic eventually showed up at Tommy Vickory's house as well. Her friend Sherry was supposed to sleep over at Tommy's house with Teresa, but one of the male friends asked Sherry not to stay that night, and Sherry changed her mind leaving Tommy's house. along with the two male friends. Now, this is a lot of people coming and going to Tommy Vickery's house, and it makes you wonder what Tommy's wife, Mary,

thought about all these people coming and going, especially given the fact that many of these people rule women. And that makes you wonder if there might have been any jealousy there. We know that Tommy shielded his wife from a lot of the stuff he was doing, and he conducted a lot of his activities out in the barn. The question is, just how much of this did Mary Vickery see? And I think it's a big question, Morph, because I don't know about your wife, but my wife would not be happy at all if I was out on the grounds of my own house or away from my house, you know, let's be honest. But on the grounds of my house, partying with younger women or any women.

Yeah, I'm in the same boat, Mike. I don't think my wife would condone that. And I think most wives out there wouldn't. Yeah, I was just thinking more if that most men are. that are listening to this podcast are saying right now, oh, no way. My wife would not put up with that for one second. Now, no one knows exactly what happened after Sherry left Tommy's house. But just a couple of hours later at around 1 a.m. on Wednesday, May 18th, a friend of Teresa's named Kim was at her home when a white truck pulled up outside. When she looked out, she saw Teresa

Chronic get out of the truck and walk towards her door as the truck drove away. Kim let Teresa inside and they spent the early morning hours parting. Kim also stated that Teresa had a bunch of cash with her and that Teresa asked her if she wanted to skip school and come to Florida with her and Tommy Vickery. Kim told Teresa she couldn't because she had exams that day and it was around 8.30 a.m. on her way to school that Kim dropped Teresa off at Tommy's house at 423 Rosser Road. By this time, Tommy's wife, Mary, and his kids would have been out of the house. And what's interesting here is that this friend Kim claims that she was never interviewed by police.

So this leads to more questions that I think we need to get into. number one, where did Teresa get that kind of cash that Kim claims she had? We talked about Tommy. He seemed to be having money problems, right? He's broke. He's scrambling to put money together. So it seems unlikely that it was his money. And then you talk about Florida, right?

Tommy owed a lot of money to the drug cartel down in Florida. it seems very unlikely that Tommy would want to make plans with Teresa to go down there. I would think the only way that he would be entertaining that notion was if he felt that he could somehow set things right with the cartel. And then finally, I think there's a question of exactly what was the relationship between Tommy and Teresa. We can assume that Tommy was the older married man that Teresa was seeing, but we really don't have any confirmation of that.

About 90 minutes after Kim dropped Teresa off at Tommy's house at around 10 a.m., a man named Henry Asbury arrived to buy cocaine from him. When he went inside, he talked for a bit with Tommy and Teresa, and everything seemed to be normal. Henry was only there for about 15 to 20 minutes. He told Tommy that he was going to go out and get a pack of cigarettes and something to eat, and that he'd be back in a little while. About 30 minutes later, when Henry Asbury returned to Tommy's house, he made a gruesome discovery.

Both Tommy Vickery and Teresa Cronic were dead in the living room. Both had been shot in the head. Tommy's body was on the sofa, and Teresa's was seated in a chair. Asbury frantically called police at 1047 a.m. And they arrived at the scene a few minutes later, along with EMTs and the fire department. The first officer on the scene was an officer Dingler. When he pulled up and he entered the home, he found Henry Asbury standing over the bodies of Tommy and Teresa. According to the police report, Asbury told Officer Dingler, please don't let them be dead.

Later police examination revealed that Tommy was shot in the left temple and the bullet exited just below his right earloat. Police pulled the bullet out of the wall behind him. Teresa had been shot through the top of her head, as if the shooter had been pointing the weapon down against the top of her head while the shooter stood over her. The same police report also mentioned that no weapon was found on the scene. Further along in the report, it states that a Smith & Wesson 38 caliber pistol was missing from the home. the gun serial number J917662. To this day, that gun has never been found.

The missing handgun is interesting. We don't know how they knew it was missing. It's not detailed in the report, but it's possible that Tommy's wife, Mary, later on was asked to look around and see if anything was missing and reported that the gun was missing. One other anomaly regarding the report was that although Officer Dingler was the first to arrive on the scene,

and find Asbury standing over Tommy's and Teresa's bodies, the report was not filled out by him. It was filled out by a different police officer, and we're not sure why that was. Police found that Tommy had $3,000 stuffed into a sock and between two and three ounces of cocaine in his pocket. But there was no mention anywhere in any of the reports about cash being found in Teresa's possession. And this is strange. when we go back to Teresa's friend Kim talking about the fact that she had seen Teresa with a large amount of cash just earlier that morning when she dropped her off at Tommy's house. It's possible that the killer or killers may have taken Teresa's cash but didn't know

about the cash in Tommy's sock. Almost immediately, police felt that the deaths of Tommy and Teresa were drug-related. And it didn't take them long to zero in on the man that claimed to have found them dead. Henry Asbury. He was the last one to see them alive. He had conveniently left for a short period of time and then returned to find them dead. He could have ditched any of the money, drugs, the gun before returning. And he admitted that he was there to buy drugs.

But the clothes he wore that day didn't have. have any of Tommy's blood on them. They didn't have any of Teresa's blood on them. But even given that fact, the police really made an effort to see if Asbury was somehow involved in these murders. He was arrested at the scene for violating the Georgia-controlled Substances Act. Search warrants were issued for Asbury's home and police performed the gunshot residue test on him to see if he had fired a gun that day. According to the results, He hadn't. Asbury was later released on $10,000 bond, and it seemed like the police didn't have anything to link him to the murders. When police searched the barn where much of Tommy's drug activities occurred, they found several 55-gallon drums of airplane fuel, which seemed to be an odd thing for him to have.

This might make you think back to the 1982 conviction of Henry County Sheriff Jimmy Glass, who allowed drug dealers to use small local airstrips to move drugs in and out of the area. And people over the years have wondered if there was some kind of connection there. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door, and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, Blood and Water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.

After the murders, Tommy Vickery's wife, Mary, was not allowed to return to the home for three days. Obviously, it was a crime scene. So it wasn't until May 21st that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation allowed Mary to return to the home. Now, she was also given the $3,000 that police found in Tommy Sock so that she could use that money to bury him. Once Mary entered the house, she found a bloody and disturbing crime scene. And Morph, I think we have to paint the picture of what Mary Vickery saw when she got back into her home.

And for one thing, she found her husband's packed suitcases. So before he was killed, Tommy Vickery had packed much of his clothing. into some suitcases. The other thing that she found was the biscuits that Henry Asbury had purchased when he went out on the morning of the murders. Teresa's purse was still at the house. And according to Mary, when she looked inside the purse, she found several hypodermic syringes. And she called back to police and said, hey, you need to come out and get some of these things,

especially the purse. And they did. The police came back out, took Teresa's purse, and put it into evidence. I think this is a good place to ask the question. Did police botched this investigation in any way? They left potential evidence at the scene. And even though police suspected that the deaths were related to Tommy's drug dealing, they gave the $3,000 cash found in his sock back to his wife

in order for her to pay for Tommy's funeral. That just seems unusual because that cash could be evidence. And I was thinking that two morph when we were going through it, given the fact that police found drugs on Tommy, they initially thought the murders were drug related. It just seemed very strange to me to think that this $3,000 in cash, which is a lot of money to have on you, would not also in some way be connected to drugs and maybe to the murder. Now, there are definitely some theories and possible suspects in this case to dissect. And I think the first angle that we have to look at is the police history there in McDonough, Georgia.

We've talked about it a little bit. We know based on arrests and convictions in the early 80s, they had a major problem with police corruption. There were also some things that were a bit unusual regarding the investigation into the murders of Tommy and Teresa. Obviously, we have the $3,000 that we just talked about. I just don't know how often it is that police give money back to a family member of a victim that could potentially be evidence in a case. And then you have the fact that the first responding police officer to the home that

morning was not the same officer that filled out the report. And, you know, this is the police. police report detailing what was observed when they first arrived at the scene. Why would that not have been the first officer on scene? I don't know the answer to that. But I think you asked the question, is there anything shady going on with that? Just how unusual is it for a police officer to write up the detailed police report? When he was not the officer first on scene, the one that discovered Henry Asbury standing over the bodies of Tommy and Teresa. Now, more, if you and I are not police officers, we don't have any experience with that.

I'm just asking the question. I don't know the answer, though. Yeah, I agree, Mike. This officer is reporting something that another officer witnessed, and I don't know if that's unusual or if it's not, but maybe if there's a police officer out there listening that's used to filling out these kind of reports, they can reach out to us and let us know. So there are some interesting questions regarding this case. And with these things, some people have

questioned whether or not there could have been some sort of police mishandling or even something more devious like a police cover up. And I think it's these questions that have led to a number of theories that that are floating out there. Now, we've used the term murders to describe the deaths of Tommy and Teresa. And on the surface, that's definitely what they appear to be. That's what the police investigated them as. But one of the theories floated is the possibility of a murder suicide. Is it possible that Tommy Vickery killed Teresa as she sat in the chair, shooting her in the top of the head,

and then sat down on the couch shooting himself in the head? I don't think it seems likely, Mike, considering that there was no gun found at the scene, according to the police report. But then again, there was a 38 caliber specifically mentioned as being missing from the vicarry home. What happened to that gun? If we consider that there may have been some sort of police involvement or cover-up in the deaths of Tommy and Teresa, could that gun have been removed from the scene by police? And if so, what purpose would that serve? there would be no reason to cover up a murder suicide.

There's no clear-cut evidence here that points to murder suicide or police involvement or cover-up. Yeah, and I think that's where, you know, this theory is kind of tough for me. The theory of a murder suicide only works if there's a gun at the scene. So what possible reason would the police have for removing it? If this theory centers around the fact that there's something shady going on, right? Let's say with Tommy and the police, why would they want to remove the gun? Wouldn't a murder suicide be better neat and tidy for them? Yeah, I agree, Mike, with that because if the police want to wash their hands of it and make it look like an easy murder suicide, they have the gun there.

They can wrap it up and move on. So the next possibility is that this is exactly what it appears to be on the surface, a double murder. And then the next logical question is who killed Tommy and Teresa and why? Given that there are known drug dealing connections to Tommy Vickery, his large debt to the cartel, a cartel ordered hit on Tommy seems like a distinct possibility here. And it could be that Teresa Chronic was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and was collateral damage. We know more if drug cartels can be ruthless. And a hitman sent to deal with Tommy Vickery, I don't think that's a theory that's too hard to believe. But whatever happened to

Tommy and Teresa, it happened in a very short period of time. That half hour or so when Henry Asbury hasbury had gone to the store to get food and cigarettes. What are the chances that a cartel hitman just happened to show up during that small 30-minute window of time killed Tommy and Teresa and then escaped without being seen? That makes me wonder if a hitman there would spend time trying to torture Tommy Vickery to get some money out of him that was owed to the cartel. And if that's the case, he likely would have been encountered. by someone perhaps Henry Asbury.

And if the drug angle is at play here, could Tommy's friend Gus have played a role? He certainly could have had a beef with Tommy over the debt that Tommy incurred, and perhaps Tommy trusted Gus enough to let down his guard and allowed Gus into his house. Tommy and Gus may have been viewed as partners to the cartel, and Tommy owned $25,000 to them would not reflect well on Gus. and that could have been a motive for Gus to murder Tommy. I think it's also possible that Gus was ordered to commit the murders by the cartel. Well, Gus did go on to have lengthy prison sentences for drug-related offenses,

as well as convictions for fraud. But I think most disturbingly of all, a closer look into Gus's background reveals some very violent events. In September of 1978, Gus's wife, of just a few months, Judy, went to pick up her car from a local garage where she had some work done on it. When she was driving at home, a bomb exploded in the car. And I don't know how morph, but somehow Judy escaped serious injury, but it was just a couple of weeks later that she wouldn't be so lucky. Judy was at her mother's home when somebody attacked both her and her mother. Both were beaten with a hammer and Judy was shot. And it was Judy's brother that came home and found his

sister and his mother on the floor. But the attacker was still in the house. So before her brother could even call for help, the attacker jumped out and beat him with a hammer. Judy's brother bolted from the home and ran to a neighbor's house. It was there that he called police and he told him that the man who attacked him was his brother-in-law Gus. When police got to the home, there was no sign of Gus or anyone else inside. All three victims were taken to the hospital. Judy's brother wound up surviving, but both Judy and her mom died. Before Judy died from her wounds, she told a hospital worker that Gus did it. Gus was arrested for two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder and went to trial for the charges in 1979. But, but

But both Gus's family and his employer gave him an alibi. They stated at the time of the attack on Judy and her family that Gus was 35 miles away from home with them. And this alibi proved to be huge because Gus was found not guilty on all charges and walked away from trial a free man. Soon after Tommy and Teresa were murdered, a judge authorized wiretaps of some phones as part of the investigation into the double murder case. During the wiretap, police collected information that led to a million-dollar drug bust in DeKalb County, Georgia. This was just two months after their murders. As a result of the bust, three people were arrested, and one of those three people was Gus. So more if it seems like we're harping on this, but it's important, right?

Gus had a long history of assorted crimes and some of the people that, that he was close to over the years wound up dead. That makes him appear as a pretty good suspect, potentially, in the murders of Tommy Vickery and Teresa Cronick. But having said all of that, there is no physical evidence linking him to their murders, and there are no witnesses that place him at the scene of the crime that day. Whether or not Gus pulled the trigger, we might not ever know, but one thing's for sure, he definitely was not a good guy. No, he was not squeaky clean, for sure. You know, he had a lot of skeletons in his closet.

I think we still have to consider another possible suspect, and that's Henry Asbury. After all, he was the last person to see Tommy and Teresa alive, and then reported to police that he found them dead a short time later. Could he have had anything to do with the deaths of Tommy and Teresa? We know that Henry Asbury was at Tommy's home to buy drugs. He also had minor records for offenses related to drugs. People have theorized that Henry could have come up with a plan to rob Tommy and things got out of hand. Again, that timing of him leaving for a very short time and an unknown killer, killer slipping in and out before he came back.

Seems a little too coincidental. However, as we mentioned earlier, for these same reasons, police suspected him. They tested him for gunpowder residue, and he didn't have any. So it seems that unless he had an accomplice that actually pulled the trigger that the timing of him coming and going from Tommy's house might just be a coincidence. Henry Asbury can't provide any more answers because he died in 2012. There's one more possibility that some people have suggested and looked into, and that's the possibility that Tommy Vickery's wife, Mary, murdered Tommy and Teresa. If it was true that Tommy and Teresa were having an affair, that might give Mary motive for murder.

But I think we need to point out that at the time Tommy and Teresa were shot to death, Mary was at work. And given that alibi, police didn't consider her a suspect. But there was at least one family member that has stated over the years that Mary was at the house on the day of the murders. And Mary herself later admitted that she was angry with Tommy on the day of the murders because Tommy was heading out of town and he didn't tell her in advance. And Morph, this goes back to what we talked about. Tommy had his suitcases packed on the day of the murders.

There's no doubt about that, right? Mary found those suitcases when she was finally let back into her house. But it appears that Mary wouldn't have really benefited from killing Tom. Tommy because she didn't stand to make any money from it. I mean, for one thing, she needed the $3,000 cash they found in Tommy Sock to pay for his funeral expenses. And Morph, as far as we know, Tommy Vickery didn't have some big insurance policy. I just don't see anything that makes me even think that Mary Vickery had anything to do with her husband's death. And obviously the police didn't think so either. They didn't consider her a suspect at

all. So in the end, it's hard to come to any solid conclusions in this case. You know, being in debt to a drug cartel would certainly have put Tommy Vickery at risk. And it's possible that Teresa was in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is one of those cases morph where I'm not sure we're ever going to really know the truth. Yeah, I agree, Mike. There's a lot more questions and answers here. And sadly, 35 years later, the case remains unsolved. Unless some sort of witness comes forward or new evidence is discovered, this case may be doomed to remain unsolved.

This case hasn't had a lot of public attention over the past three and a half decades, but it hasn't been forgotten either. Teresa's friends and family has created a Facebook page for her called In Loving Memory of Teresa Lynn Chronic. everyone that knew Teresa describes her as being a positive person whom they liked and admired. Teresa was and certainly is loved and missed by many people. In particular, two people we'd like to thank for bringing this case to our attention and for assisting us in gathering material for this episode,

or Robert Anderson and Cheryl Bond, who have researched and advocated for answers in this case. And more if I'm really glad that Robert and Cheryl brought this case to our attention, This is a case that is surrounded by a lot of mystery. Obviously, we know some of the things that happened that day, but a lot of it for me still remain shrouded in mystery. And those are the cases where, like I said, I do think this is a hard one to solve, but not impossible.

Nothing's impossible. You and I have said that a number of times. There still could be people out there that know what happened that day. Now, some of those people that knew may now be deceased, I would love to see a case like this be solved. Especially for the family and friends of Teresa Lynn Chronic, I believe more from the research. This was a good girl. I think she had her life ahead of her. Now, she might have gotten into, you know, some drugs and things like that.

but by everything you read about her, she was a great person. And I think her family, her friends, they deserve to know what happened to her. But that's it for this episode. And the unsolved murders of Tommy Vickory and Teresa Cronick. Now, Moritz, we did get our first voicemail of 2019. And it came in from Erica Clifford. And it was about our episode on McKell Biggs. So let's play that, and then we'll talk about it a little bit.

Hi there. This is Erica Clifford. I just listened to your new podcast on McCall. I believe that's how you pronounce it from Mesa. And I was thinking about the quarters and also thinking about the ice cream truck. I would imagine or I would hope they would have checked into the ice cream truck. It seems odd that she dropped those two quarters and didn't get her ice cream. and she was still writing in circles when her sister told her to come home.

So just wondering if that was something I might have missed. By the way, I love your show. I've listened to it from the very beginning and you two are phenomenal. Thanks. Keep on doing the great work you do. Bye. So you can hear from that voicemail. Erica wanted to know if the ice cream man that we talked about in the episode could

have had something to do with. McHell Biggs disappearance. Actually, there have been people over the years that have asked that same question. And as far as we can tell, the ice cream man was questioned and was not considered a suspect. But Eric was certainly thinking about possibilities in McKell's case, and we appreciate her call. And I do this morph when I listen to podcasts, and I think a lot of people do, right? As you're hearing the stories of these cases, you're not just listening.

you're processing that information. And a lot of times what happens is questions pop up into your head. Now, we try to answer the questions, but we don't always cover every single minute detail. And this was an amazing question. Erica's listening to the podcast and says to herself, whatever happened to that ice cream guy? And she's probably saying, why did Mike and Morf not talk about it? which we probably should have, but we love it. And we want to hear more of those types of questions. So if you want to leave us a voicemail about the show or a particular case,

you can call us anytime at 661-77 crime. And we may just play your voicemail in an episode. If you like the show, please take a minute if you haven't already. Go out. Give us a five-star rating. You can give us a review as well, either on iTunes or whatever podcast app that you use, it really goes a long way. It helps other people find the show, and it means a lot. And we love hearing from people on social media too. You can always find us. We're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. We're also on Facebook. You can find us by searching Criminology Podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group, which is called Criminology Podcast Discussion and Fans. So if you haven't done so already, make sure you

subscribe to the podcast, that ensures that you don't miss a single episode of criminology. So this is Mike. And this is Morph. And we'll be back with you next week with an all new episode of criminology.