Lords of Death - 4 | Breaking the Law

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

Mick provides detectives with information that sheds light on the murders of Homer and Lela Potts and details a mysterious cult-like group, the Lords of Death, who could be responsible for several crimes in the area. Subscribe to Tenderfoot+ for an early access binge to episodes 1-5 and ad-free listening - https://tenderfoot.tv/plus/. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Listener discretion is advised. I think it was about 1989, somewhere in there. I usually hang out down at the handball courts back then. That's when they started coming around. That's how I met them. Took a liking to them, they took a liking to me. Seemed like good dudes. It turned out to be a good friendship from there. This is Mick

telling the story of how he met Tim and Jim when they were all serving time at Ross Correctional about six years before Cindy Kozad's murder. I noticed that everything they had, like a Lord's of Death symbol. I'm like, what is this? It says that's our group. Like, what is this? This is just our gang.

That's what they taught us at the time. It wasn't until sometime later, we're actually like a cult, you know. I'm like, a cult? Jim said he was like the leader, and Tim was his, like, second in command. He said, we're trying to recruit people. I said, I'm cool. I don't want nothing like that. If you remember from the last episode,

Detective Arnold Van Horn's investigation into the Potts murders led him to Dayton to speak with my mom shortly after Mick and Tim were arrested. She didn't have the leather jacket or shotgun he was looking for, but she passed a long letter she found that Jim had written to Tim.

While in Dayton, Van Horn went to the Montgomery County Jail to speak with Mick. That's when they were asking about, did Tim ever brag about killing somebody? And that's when I mentioned the incident about where he said a screwdriver was a good weapon, you know, like that.

And that's why I was like, what do you mean? He said, well, something jumped off when I had to break out a screwdriver one time. That's about as far as it went on that. And then Jim cut in and changed the subject. And from what I could tell, he had killed a girl and got away with it. From Tenderfoot TV, I'm Thrasher Banks. This is Lords of Death. When Mick talked to Detective Arnold Van Horn,

he told him that Tim had bragged about killing someone in Guernsey County with Jim. Tim, he was drunk. This was sometime out of the blue when he was staying with us there on Royal Avenue. This is when he told me that him and Jim had killed a girl and got away with it. That's what they told me. But he didn't say who or when. He just said a girl. I just dismissed it.

I was like, I didn't think it was believable because him being drunk and all. I mean, he always said he was in a gang, if you want to call it a gang. More or less satanic, devil-worshipping type thing. That's how I came across him, you know, to me when they said it. The Lord's a dad, but I never really took that serious either. With him and Jim. They say there's other members. Maybe four people total, maybe three, three or four.

Him and Jim were the only two I knew of, you know. Jim would call himself the Dark One. Jim is the only person other than Tim I've confirmed who has a Lords of Death tattoo. And if the story my mom told me is true, he had to kill someone to get it. According to my mom, Mick gave her specific details about Tim and Jim's involvement in Homer and Leela's murders. He told me that Leela Potts was murdered by Tim with a screwdriver through her head,

and her husband Homer Potts had been murdered approximately a year prior to that. He did say that they were killed for money. There was supposedly a lot of money in the house. My question was, why would they murder them a year apart? And Mick didn't know the answer to that. He also mentioned Homer and Lila Potts' name. It wasn't just they killed these people. It was by name. If Mick knew more about the murders, he wasn't willing to share that information with me. What I can say is that Tim and Jim lived in Guernsey County when the murders happened. Jim spent the 1980s in and out of prison for robberies and B&Es,

but wasn't incarcerated when Homer was murdered in February of 1987. Later that year, he ended up going to prison, but was released the month before Lila's murder. But just because they've lived in the area doesn't mean that they're guilty of murder. After Van Horn interviewed my mom in 1995, she didn't hear about the Potts murders again until nearly 20 years later. I've always, always been interested in just searching random things on the internet or things that I know about, just seeing if there's any information that I haven't seen yet. And one day I typed in Homer Lee LaPotte's murder on Google and I found a blog that had like a description of what had happened when the Potts were murdered. So that was the first time you had seen anything about it? Yes, other than just what I'd heard, that was the very first time time you had seen anything about it? Yes, other than just what

I'd heard, that was the very first time I'd ever seen anything about it. I think I called you immediately or text you. This would have been back in 2013 or so, back when I was still in college. The blog post was written by a local, reminiscing about the murders. When you read through it, were you like, Tim definitely did this? I've always thought Tim did it, but I think that kind of reiterated that for me. There were a lot of things that I learned from reading that, that lined up with things I had been told. The screwdriver, the fact that they were there for money, how she was stabbed, what she was stabbed with. A lot of fear felt in that moment, too, because someone like Tim, you just don't know what they're capable of. And we've seen a little bit of what he's capable of,

but what else is he capable of? But I wanted to contact the person because I knew about these murders. I put an anonymous comment that I ended up deleting. I don't know if it was ever seen. I don't really even remember what it said, but I was too scared to get involved. And I didn't want my comment to ever seen. I don't really even remember what it said. But I was too scared to get involved. And I didn't want my comment to ever be traced back to me.

I've been investigating the Potts murders ever since my mom told me this story. I thought connecting Tim to these crimes would help me make sense of why Cindy Kozad was murdered. At the time, the blog post was the only source of information available online about the case. So even

though my mom was against reaching out to the blogger, Tapu, it was my only hope of finding new information. I was basically writing for it because my mother kept talking about it. Whenever we'd go past a house or anything, she would say, there's the Potts' house. Tapu grew up in Guernsey County, a couple miles from Homer and Lila's farm. We first connected back in 2014 and have stayed in touch ever since.

I wrote these blog messages because to me it was a really interesting subject and also because I could find no info on it either. But it kept me interested just because it's so puzzling. It was pretty strange for Guernsey County to run into this kind of murder, murder of a husband and wife. We don't have that stuff happen around here. We live too far apart and everything. Who would do such a thing and where it was? You'd have to like go out of your way to find the Potts house. It's just hard to believe that the man was murdered, you know, Homer. Then a year or so later, so was Layla. So people were definitely discussing it at that point. A lot of people had different theories. The comments section of Tapu's blog is filled with theories and rumors,

most of which were posted anonymously. Oddly, I see a lot of my comments deleted. I don't know why. They obviously had some kind of interest in what went on. I think the comments would, there's not that many, but I think that you should look at that because I feel like somebody else is watching my blog. Then, one day, back in 2018, I was scrolling through Facebook and saw Homer and Lila's names.

It was a post listing the dozen or so unsolved murders from Guernsey County. A user named Tori posted that she believed Tim Terrell was involved in the Potts murders. It was the first time I'd heard someone other than my mom connect Tim to the murders. So I reached out to Tori. There was, you know, a good bit of traffic on the post. People were writing what they thought, but it was completely opposite of what I knew. So I was like, you know what, I see my cousin's husband wrote, basically, that person's long dead.

So I commented. I was always told it was Tim Terrell and he's in prison for another murder. That's when I got a message from you, being a stranger, telling me it might be for my best interest to remove that comment for my safety, being the area I live in, and that that murder wasn't a one-person job. Right then, I'm like, wow. Basically, I was interested in the conversation right away. Like, either this is somebody that's close to Tim and his family and trying to shut me up, or this is somebody that's got some information too. That's when you told me about you being a little boy living in a house with Tim for a while. Tori lived next door to Tim in the early 90s before he moved to Dayton and was best friends

with one of his stepdaughters. After news broke about Tim's arrest for Cindy's murder, Tori overheard Tim's ex-wife Pam and other adults talking about it. When I got there, they were talking, the adults and Pam were talking about Detective Van Horn went to Dayton to interview Tim. She proceeded to talk to her neighbor lady about specifically the Potts. As soon as I heard her telling the neighbor the Potts' names, I knew exactly where the house was and I knew exactly who they were talking about. Us kids were old enough to know what they were talking about. Us kids were old enough to know what they were talking about and we wanted to hear every little detail what Tim

really did. So it's immediately when I hear his wife and the neighbor lady talking that he was interviewed for the Potts murders after killing Cindy, obviously something had to be there, and it stuck in my mind. So that's how this got started, and still back at that time, the only thing you could find would be a blog that Tapu made. That's all we had to start with. We literally had to start from the bottom with this, and you knew stuff, then I knew stuff. Being that I was from here, I remembered people Tim hung out with. I knew Tim had a brother named Terry, but he had no internet presence. It turned out there was a good reason for that.

Tori told me that Terry was homeless, but she knew the area where I could find him. I really think you should also plan a trip to Cambridge. Go to this location referred to by us locals as Goat Alley. And there's a trailer in this alley. It's the only trailer up there. And you should definitely be able to find Terry Terrell up there. So that's when it happened. The moment my armchair investigation turned into an active one. Starting route to Byesville.

When I arrived in Guernsey County, I drove to the area where Torrey said Terry would be. I looked over at a dilapidated trailer and saw the outline of a man in tattered clothes, passed out next to a bottle of Cobra malt liquor. It was Terry. Come up on the porch, look. There's a seat up here you can sit in. And my beer is up here. Drink beer and live free. My brother Tim said, President's got three squares and a cot. He don't have to scrape and scrounge, which that's what I do.

I'll tell you something crazy. I lived with your brother when he killed Cindy in Dayton. I was just a boy. Oh, my God. Well, I didn't know what the girl's name was. Yeah, her name was Cindy Cozad. That was the prostitute. Yep.

That's why I haven't talked to him. It was in cold blood. I don't talk to him. Well, now, the story I got, Mike McCourt shot her first. Yeah, James McCorter. Nick.

Mike, what we called him. He shot her first and Tim heard the gunshot and he reached underneath the seat of the car and grabbed the.357 and ran up to check on Mike and when he got up there Mike said

now you shoot her and prove your loyalty to me and that's when Tim shot her that was how it was loyalty to me. Yeah, I don't know. And that's when Tim shot her. Yeah. That was how it was put to me. Only two people know the truth about that situation. Them two. Because he ain't talking. If this is the version that Tim told his family, it couldn't have gone down that way.

Mick didn't have a gun with him that night. The three bullets that hit Cindy were all from Tim's.357. I didn't bring a gun with him that night The three bullets that hit Cindy Were all from Tim's.357 I didn't bring this up with Terry Because more than anything I was looking for information About Tim's involvement in the Potts murders I'll be frank with you

Here's what I'm getting at I'm making a podcast About the Potts murders From back in the 80s Okay, I heard about the Potts murders And it always doubles 80s. Okay, I heard about the Potts murders. And it always doubles back to your brother. He didn't do it. You don't think so?

No. Why's that? Go to Jim and John Tubble. You'll find the culprits right there. John is Jim's older brother. Then you go out. You want to go do some more research, John is Jim's older brother. This wasn't the first time I'd heard about the robbery at Cole Station. It was mentioned in newspaper articles about Leela's murder because it happened the night before,

on October 24th, 1988. Locals at the time speculated that the crimes could be connected because the telephone lines were cut at both scenes. Terry wasn't able to provide an alibi for his brother's whereabouts on the night of Leela's murder, but he did leave me with another lead to look into. So these tubbles, you really think they did it? Got away with it?

Yeah, but that ain't the only ones. I know rumors. Let's hear them. Give me something to look into. There's a woman named Margaret Long. I think Margaret had something to do with some of that shit. That's about all I can tell you about it, really, because I know I didn't do it, so I don't know no more than what I hear. But yeah, Tim is my brother.

I'm not real proud of what he did. But he's still my damn brother. I recognized Margaret's name from a document I found in the box. It was an indictment for breaking into a gun store with Tim and Jim on October 23rd, 1988, two nights before Lilo's murder. Bob Henthorne's gun store was in Noble County, directly south of Guernsey County, where Tim lived. Bob was getting ready for bed when he heard noises coming from the gun store connected to his home.

I heard something making a funny noise. I thought, what in the world would that be? So I just waited there a bit, and I just tried to go to bed, and I said, man, I better just not do this right now. I waited there a little while, and pretty soon it hurt again. Finally, I found out what it was. It was somebody was trying to tear the door open over there on the front of my store, and they didn't have enough strength to do it.

So the guy went around there and got a fellow around here at the corner of the building. That was Jim Tubble, I found out later. And buddy, when he got around there, they got the door tore down. I mean, they tore that door up. When I interviewed Bob back in October of 2020, he still lived with his wife Donna in the same location. The gun shop was at the front of the property, and Bob and Donna lived with their five children behind the store. By the time Bob alerted his family and grabbed his gun, it was too late. They got in there and got the stuff, got out and got going there, and I didn't catch them.

They escaped with over a dozen firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, which they took to a trailer in Viseville where John and Margaret lived. That trailer was located less than two miles from the Potts' farm. Bob reported the break-in to Noble County Sheriff Landon Smith. I asked Landon, the sheriff up here, about it. I said, in a case like this, what do they do now? They didn't get much. He said, hey, they'll be back. The next night, two masked men robbed Martha Cole's service station in Guernsey County. Martha was alone and heard noises coming from the back of the building.

Martha was alone and heard noises coming from the back of the building. When she went to investigate, one of the men struck her in the face with a pistol and demanded money before forcing her to undress and tying her to a chair. While she was tied up, one of the men took a knife and cut off both of her braided pigtails. When Detective Van Horn talked to Martha, she was unable to identify the assailants. I mentioned we had a woman that they robbed her and tied her up and cut her braids off. But she swore up and down, I don't have a clue who it is.

I said, I've known Martha for years. So I sat down and talked to her and I said, it'll happen to somebody else. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know who it was. And I think that was the night before Lela was killed. The next record I could find about Tim was a marriage license from October 28th, 1988, three days after Lela's murder, when he married Jim's sister.

The week after the wedding, on November 3rd, he was arrested in Florida for petty theft, which begs the question, what was he doing down in Florida? The next week, Jim and Margaret were arrested in Florida for possessing a firearm, which turned out to be one of the guns stolen from Bob's the month before. Back in Ohio, Bob was prepared to face the burglars in case they decided to return.

I figured if the time comes, I'll face what I have to face. And if they'd have come back, come in the house or anything, I'd have been prepared to have blowed them in half. So I fixed me a bed over in the store. Got my security system set in. Slept over for about three weeks. Maybe a little longer. The next time they

come back, I was ready for them. And then a little bit later, I went outside to stand out there smoking. I seen these lights that were in the cemetery. I just stood there and watched for a while. There's people in the cemetery,

and I'm just pretty sure that they were over there watching us. So that was the night to hit us. Were you nervous? Not particularly, no. What was going through your mind? Well, meanness. I slipped out, and I went in there, and two of them was out in the front of the counter,

and the other one, he was behind the counter. And then I jumped out there in my 44, and I said, buddy, freeze right there. And the other two took one step, and out that door they went. That was unbelievable. I couldn't hardly believe it. He was unbelievable. I couldn't hardly believe it. He was caught. He couldn't go anywhere.

I told him, I said, if you want to run, go ahead. We'll see if this.44 will catch you. I just got him pinned down there and brought him around and threw him down on the floor there and tried to get him to tell me who he was and he wouldn't do it, he wouldn't say a word. There was a hole down through the floor and I just took that gun and shot right down through there

to just about that far from his ear. Did he react to that or? Not a bit, not a bit. Just laid there. I didn't know how to do this, so I just pulled it up real quick, stuck her down, and I said, you son of a bitch. I said, I'll just shoot you right here and now if you don't tell me. My guy didn't help any. He didn't say a word. So that was Tim Terrell. Yeah. Yeah. That was Tim.

Yeah. Old Tim. The voices you hear in the background are me, Bob's daughter Tina, and his wife Donna. So when you shoot at this guy and point the gun are me, Bob's daughter Tina, and his wife Donna. So when you shoot at this guy and point a gun at him and he's not reacting at all, what are you thinking about this person? I'm thinking he's a real idiot. Anybody that could lay there and say nothing, you know, thinking they might die. I just couldn't believe it. So Bob tied Tim up and had Donna hold him at gunpoint.

He went outside to look for Jim and Margaret by the cemetery where their car was parked. I went across the road looking to see where the others was. She had the gun on that one and kept him pinned down there. Jim had got swept back up here, and I seen him walk up there to the winches. He done that and he shot at her and just missed her about that much. And he didn't miss my daughter much either. But when I was coming back up, I seen this guy running up over this hill where I know they couldn't hit him, but I just, for the heck of it, I seen this guy running up over this hill with him.

I know they couldn't hit him, but I just, for the heck of it, I just took two or three shots anyway. All of a sudden, this here girl come tearing up over that bank, and she's saying, don't shoot me. I'm pregnant. Don't shoot me. So Margaret was two months pregnant with John's baby at the time. After she got up, I told her, if you tell me what I want to know, I said, I might let you live to the's baby at the time. After she got up there, I told her, I said, if you tell me what I want to know, I said, I might let you live to the other side of the road. She told me right off who each one of them was,

what her name was, what the boy's name was. She didn't hesitate. About that time, the sheriff come pulling in. He talked to her a little bit, and then he went in the store there and got that kid with a cuff of the color and drug him out to the car. He knew exactly who it was. Margaret avoided prison time for her role in the robberies. While Tim was sentenced to two years, Jim wasn't as lucky.

Since he fired shots through the front of the store, he was charged with aggravated robbery and served nearly 10 years in prison for his actions that night. This incident led to Mick meeting Tim and Jim at Ross Correctional in early 1989. When Tim was released from prison for the gun store robbery two years later in 1991, he moved back to Guernsey County and married a woman named Pam. I found a photo album in the box

full of pictures from those years. Since Tim's former neighbor, Tori, knew the family, I shared some of the photos with her to see if she could identify any of the people in them. That Polaroid, I'm not sure who the adult male is in the middle, but left or right, I can ID those kids. All four siblings, all children of Pam.

The other picture would be Pam's wedding day when her and Tim got married. And then standing beside Tim is Pete Gravens. And Thrasher, I'm telling you, Pete is who you need to talk to. She sent me a link to his Facebook page, so I decided to send him a message. I wrote, I'm working on a piece about the Potts murders from back in the 1980s. Pete responded, I didn't do it, but I do know shit. Lila had him killed. Look for a woman named Margaret.

I replied, how does she tie into this? Pete said, she knows. So I asked the question, who killed Leela? He replied, John Tubble. Not Leela, but the first one. So John killed Homer and went back for Leela? Why? Pete responds,

Guess so nobody found the truth. I'm still friends with Timmy. Pete didn't respond when I asked him if Tim was involved in Leela's murder. Instead, he replied, I do know or heard that they buried the murder weapon deep. At one point, they had a photo album from Leela's

with $100 bills in it. They lived off the money for a while. So the only person Pete directly implicated in the murder was John, the only one of these people who's no longer alive. He was shot and killed back in 2006. And he didn't outright say Tim was involved, but he mentioned Tim and Margaret without me bringing them up and that they had a photo album from Lila's house. Then he sent me a link to a Facebook page belonging to Tim's cousin, Gary Alexander,

and suggested I speak with him. So I got his number and gave him a call. Back then, I was known to be the major hellion in the whole town, whole area. You know, you mentioned Gary Alexander's name. It's like, oh my God, what? Me and Timmy, we was known to be some bad boys around the whole Guernsey County area. We did some robberies and theft, you know, nothing major. We robbed the school. We stole her uncle'sies and theft, you know, nothing major. We robbed the school.

We stole our uncle's car and went to Colorado with it. You know, just little odds and ends. I was kind of the leader in all of our craziness when we was kids. But he always had that foresight where he wanted to go that extra foot outside of the boundaries. Anything that Timmy had anger-wise, I'm going to say probably came from his dad. His dad was very, very strict and abusive. Tim had about three different sides of him. Y'all knew one or two of them.

There was still one hidden. Y'all knew one or two of them. There was still one hidden. And as far as the Potts' and Homer's, from what I gathered, was double. Jim went in and robbed Homer for some money that he had. When he wouldn't give up the money and he killed the old man, he told the old lady if she didn't come up with the money, he was going to kill her. What she told him was, if you will let me live, I will give you all of the insurance money, which is what none of the other people even expected.

But the second one involved Timmy. Gary claims that Tim told him this story in the early 90s at a bar in Buysville called The High Lie. That's the same bar Tim took my mom and Mick to where he got into the fight and told my mom he'd been hired as a hitman in the past. This version of the story, if it's true, explains why the perpetrator left empty-handed

and why Lila's injuries were minor compared to Homer's. But how was I supposed to verify this? What are you missing, young man? Now think about that question. What am I missing? Oh, man. You just haven't learned quite enough yet. Pete Gravins.

Pete. He was with him all the time. From what I was told, there was about three or four other people there. The two gals stayed outside. One guy stayed on the porch while the other two went inside. Pete knows exactly what went on.

When what went on. who went on with it, left his whole chapter out of the story. If you keep on going the way that you're going, you will know everything very soon. So after Pete directed me to Gary, interestingly enough, Gary pointed the finger right back at Pete. When Pete caught wind that Gary implicated him in the murders, it's safe to say he wasn't thrilled about it. Judging by this voicemail he left me. Gary Alexander, that motherfucker is a piece of shit.

I don't even know why Gary's breathing air at this moment in his life because he's such a piece of shit. I don't even know why Gary's breathing air at this moment in his life because he's such a piece of shit. You should call me. I can tell you some fucking stories, dude. I have fucking knocked out more fucking people in this town, and I am loved in this town. But Gary Alexander is a piece of shit. Oh, man.

My name is Pete Gravins. My dad was a deputy sheriff in Guernsey County, and he watched over the posses, and I was friends with Timmy. But when them fucking murderers... I wasn't even around. But I know them. I know who you are now. Lord's of Death is a production of Thank you. Dennis Cooper. Produced by Meredith Stedman and Dennis Cooper.

Executive producers are Donald Albright and Payne Lindsey. Consulting producer and video production by George Miller. Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan. Artwork by Byron McCoy. Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set, with additional music by Thrasher Banks. Mixed by Cooper Skinner. Thank you to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, Beck Media and Marketing, and the Nord Group. Special thanks to Tori Ross, Caitlin Kabosky, and Thrasher's mom, Carrie. For more podcasts like Lords of Death,

search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app or visit us at tenderfoot.tv. Thanks for listening to this episode of Lords of Death. This series is released weekly, absolutely free. But if you want an exclusive ad-free binge, sign up for Tenderfoot+. Check out the show notes for the link to subscribe.