Park Predators - The Sanctuary

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

In 2015, when a young man shows up dead in a doorway of a historic church in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, rumors about who stabbed him to death run rampant in communities surrounding Cherokee, North Carolina. The identity of the predators who took his life surprise those closest to the victim and people living on the sacred land they considered to be a sanctuary in its own right. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit parkpredators.com  Park Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @audiochuckTwitter: @audiochuckFacebook: /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck

Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the case I'm going to tell you about today takes place in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a park I've mentioned several times throughout the first two seasons of this show. Last season, I told you about the case of missing father Michael Herron and the mind-boggling disappearance of Trenny Lynn Gibson. of Trenny Lynn Gibson. At this point, there's no doubt that the Smoky Mountains have a lot of wild stories like these, and I'm pretty sure the reason I keep coming back to this park for episode material is because it keeps giving it. Every year, millions of people visit or camp in the Smoky Mountains, and it's just a hotspot for stories that fit the bill for this podcast. I mean, I know crime and murders happen everywhere, but there's definitely something about the Smokies that just tends to draw a lot of bizarre happenings. Maybe it's just inherent to the landscape or the fact that the park borders a couple of states and can be accessed by several

major highways. I'm not sure what exactly it is, but the Smokies' running streak of murders and missing persons mysteries has stayed strong. And a crime that happened in March of 2015 is no exception. This story is probably one of the most violent and strangest crimes I've read about. It took place inside a historic church several miles inside the boundary of the park and left a 25-year-old man dead on the altar and a disturbing trail of clues that led authorities to two men who were in the victim's inner circle and were people he called friends. This is Park Predators. On Sunday, March 29, 2015, at 2.50 in the morning,

a 911 dispatcher at an emergency communications center for the Cherokee Indian Police Department received a call from a panicked young man. The caller's voice sounded strained and breathless. He told the dispatcher that he was several miles inside of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, inside an old historic church, and he wanted to report that a man had been stabbed and needed medical attention right away. The operator had just a few seconds to take down those details and the man's name before the caller hung up.

The guy had said his name was Raven York, and the reason authorities needed to hurry was because the man inside the church was bleeding all over the place. Raven said the name of the building was Smokemont Baptist Church, an old one-story church that was not an actual functioning religious institution but more of a historic landmark. Right away the dispatcher sent officers and paramedics from the Cherokee Reservation to the scene. Around the same time, the National Park Service got word of the call and they also sent several rangers to the church's

location. The church itself sat roughly three miles north of the town of Cherokee, North Carolina. It's still around today and sits on a hill that overlooks a popular lodging area known as Smokemont Campground. It isn't very far from the turnoff for Highway 441, which is also called Newfound Gap Road. Investigators with Cherokee Police and the National Park Service got to the scene first and made their way inside the historic building. Everything was eerily quiet and dark. They only got a few steps inside the sanctuary before they found the body of a young man who looked to be in his mid-20s, lying face up on the floor of a doorway near the base of the bell tower. The man's body was surrounded by a large pool of blood. In addition to the widening

red stain all over the floor, the man also had blood covering his face, upper torso, arms, and there was a lot of blood soaked into his camouflage pants and jacket. When first responders checked him for a pulse, they didn't find one and determined he was definitely dead. Right away, everyone inside the church took a step back and called for special agents from the Charlotte FBI field office about three hours away. According to reporting by the Citizen Times, the crime scene was technically on federal land and overlapped with acreage inside the Cherokee Reservation.

So that automatically made the FBI the lead agency responsible for investigating the case. But until agents arrived from Charlotte, the NPS's Investigative Services Bureau and other local law enforcement agencies from around the area came to assist. One of the first things they did was call in the Swain County Medical Examiner. When that guy arrived, he examined the victim's body more closely and discovered several rips and tears in the man's pants and jacket that coincided with multiple stab wounds on his chest, neck, hands, and wrists. From the looks of it, the young man had also sustained a large number of cuts to the back of his right hand, knuckles, and lower forearm. The cuts weren't between his fingers, though, or on the inside of his palm,

which indicated to the ME that the victim had likely tried to fight off his attacker, but had never actually grabbed the blade of the sharp weapon that was being wielded at him. The wounds to his neck and chest were clearly the ones that had killed him, but the ME couldn't be sure until a full autopsy was done. Before removing his body, the doctor turned the victim over

and noted that even more stab wounds had been inflicted to the back of his neck and one of his shoulder blades. It was clear whoever had committed this brutal murder had been in a rage or wanted to make very sure their victim was dead before fleeing the scene. According to reporting by Greenville News Online, authorities working during those first few hours of the investigation did not find a trail of blood or any kind of sharp object like a knife

inside of the church or anywhere around the crime scene. They'd searched and looked around in the nearby woods, but came up empty-handed. Investigators surmised that whoever the killer was, they'd likely taken the murder weapon with them. It was either that or they'd tossed it in the woods somewhere between the church and Newfound Gap Road. Or, worst case scenario, it could be anywhere in the vast park. After a few hours of processing the scene, the FBI agents from Charlotte arrived and took over the investigation.

The first thing they did was order the victim's body be sent three and a half hours away to the state medical examiner's office in Winston-Salem. The next day, on March 30th, a spokesperson for NPS told reporters that Smokemont Baptist Church would reopen to the public and that even though the death of the young man who'd been found inside was being investigated as a homicide, Rangers didn't think anyone else inside of the park or in the immediate area was in danger. I'm not sure why officials always say this kind of statement in the aftermath of a brutal murder. I mean, let's be honest, clearly a horrific stabbing inside a national park should concern anyone who's visiting. But I think officials just say this kind of thing because they don't want people to freak out. Maybe it helps some people, but I know for me, statements like this kind of cause me more anxiety than relief. Either way, it didn't take long before

word of the vicious attack spread throughout the surrounding communities. No one could wrap their minds around something like this happening. This area of Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a heavily traveled part of North Carolina, and it isn't far from the park's border with Tennessee. According to Tomasi McDonald's reporting for the Raleigh News and Observer, the Cherokee Reservation in North Carolina has roughly 8,000 people living in its boundary within the national park. McDonald's article, which was published in 2019, stated that a lot of the hospitalizations and deaths from the years 2012 to 2018

were overdoses that occurred due to the misuse of opioids. Unfortunately, like a lot of indigenous communities in the U.S., there isn't a ton of accurate information on violent crime rates because so many incidents go unreported. But according to the people who specifically lived in this part of western North Carolina and who talked to news outlets afterwards, they considered their community to be very safe with little crime, especially murder. For those of you who may be asking,

wait a minute, I thought the Cherokee Nation is in Oklahoma. Well, you're right. But just to give you a little background on the Native American community's history in North Carolina, back in the 1830s, when the U.S. government ordered the Cherokee people off of land that was originally theirs, thousands of families ended up traveling the Trail of Tears and settling in Oklahoma. But several hundred stayed behind on 56,000 acres in North Carolina. That group grew to 16,000 residents and, according to several historical sources, became the largest federally recognized tribe east of the Mississippi River. Today, a lot of families who identify as

members of the Cherokee Nation in North Carolina live outside of the official reservation land and reside in Swain or Jackson counties. In late March 2015, when the Smokemont Church murder occurred, a lot of the businesses that employed locals were just starting to open back up to visitors after a harsh winter. Springtime was the time for hikers, campers, and people from all over the world to start flooding the park's gates to hit up historic sites just like Smokemont Baptist Church. Obviously, the murder really put a damper on things. The U.S. Department of the Interior lists Smokemont Baptist Church on the National Register of Historic Places by that name, but it's also called the O'Connor Lefty Baptist Church. According to the sign that's mounted in front of it, it sometimes even goes by the abbreviated name, Lefty Baptist Church.

Apparently, in the early 1900s, when logging pioneers settled in the area, one big lumber company, Smokemont, made a semi-permanent campsite near the church's foundation. And after that, people just started calling the lodging area downhill from it Smokemont. Eventually, everyone also started calling the church Smokemont Baptist, and I guess the name stuck. According to historic documents published by the National Park Service, the church was established without an actual building in 1836 and had a whopping grand total of 21 founding members. It wasn't until 1912 that construction crews built the actual one-story structure.

And to help give you some context, picture a classic white church with a sanctuary that has wood floors, rows of handmade wooden pews, big wooden beams overhead, and a single aisle that leads to an altar and pulpit. There's also a small attic and bell tower in the steeple. Very simple, very charming. Not somewhere you'd expect a bloody murder to occur.

An interesting tidbit of info, though, I found while researching the building's history is that until the church officially closed in 1935, the record showed that on a regular basis, members would be brought forward by other members and charged with offenses like swearing, lying, and slander. Never anything as bad as murder. During those proceedings, the church congregation would hold trials for each case, and if the person accused was found guilty, they were excluded from membership forever,

which I guess to some deeply religious folks who'd grown up their entire lives in that area and consider church as big a part of their life as safe family relationships, a verdict like that would be devastating. In modern times, though, for the most part, the church has gone unused. There's been the occasional wedding event or homecoming gathering for descendants of the Okinawa Lufty, but other than that, it's just sat there as a pretty building to look at. According to all of the research material for this case, no major news regarding the unidentified young man's murder broke in the days immediately following the crime. Authorities stayed very tight-lipped about what was going on with the investigation.

Federal agents did not release the victim's cause of death, his name, or any information about how he'd gotten out to the old church or if he'd been spotted with anyone while there. Then on April 9th, the feds finally announced the identity of the dead man as 25-year-old Tyler Britton Gaddis, who was from a town about 10 minutes southwest of Cherokee called Whittier. who was from a town about 10 minutes southwest of Cherokee called Whittier. The state medical examiner estimated Tyler's time of death was 3.16 a.m. on March 29th, just minutes after that 911 call reporting his injuries had come in to the authorities. His official cause of death was multiple stab wounds, which caused him to bleed to death,

something police pretty much already knew at that point. After the official autopsy was completed, Tyler's parents, Dewey and Ellen Watts Gaddis, who lived in Whittier with his young daughter, Courtney, Tyler's three brothers, Sean, Derek, and Nathan, and Tyler's sister, Brandy, held a funeral for him. The information in his obituary is brief, but based on what I could gather from multiple news stories on the case, Tyler's family shared that he loved the outdoors and always enjoyed being in the woods hunting or camping.

He wasn't an extremely social person, but the small group of friends he did hang out with from time to time shared the same interests as he did. His family told WLOS News that Tyler loved going to the Smoky Mountains on a regular basis. They said in the weeks leading up to his death, he'd been battling depression and had become friends with a new group of people that they felt were not good folks to be hanging around with. After Tyler turned 25, he reportedly became somewhat estranged from his family and even went in and out of homelessness. estranged from his family and even went in and out of homelessness. His brother Derek told WLOS that several social media posts Tyler had made right before his murder suggested he was struggling with problems in his relationships and was living on and off with friends in run-down hotel rooms on the Cherokee reservation. Derek told the news station, quote, he was a good kid and everything. He just went down the wrong path and everybody tried to get him on the right path and then he Eric told the news station, quote, Despite his known struggle with depression,

nobody involved in the investigation felt that Tyler contributed to his death in any way. What had happened to him was definitely a murder, but when the FBI learned that he recently surrounded himself with a rough community, that helped them understand who might have come into his life that was capable of such a horrific crime. A few weeks after Tyler's funeral and the FBI's announcement that confirmed his ID, the Swain County Medical Examiner's Office released its findings from the preliminary exam it had done on Tyler's body while he'd still been inside the church. Excerpts of that full report were

published by Greenville News Online, and they clarified that Tyler had been stabbed roughly 17 to 19 times. Four times in his chest, once in his left side, once in his neck, and twice in his back. his chest, once in his left side, once in his neck, and twice in his back. There were also 10 deep cuts on his right hand and forearm, as well as one cut on his left hand. Those injuries all but confirmed the theory that investigators had assumed from the start, which was that Tyler had tried to ward off his attacker by raising his right hand and arm to defend himself. That's why his right arm was so much more torn up than the rest of his body. Unfortunately, his efforts had not been enough, and whoever stabbed him landed too many blows to the main areas of his body, like his chest and neck, which were what contributed the most to

him bleeding out. The Citizen Times reported the state medical examiner's office had determined that the blade of the knife used to kill Tyler had actually broken off and stayed inside of his body after the attack. That was a detail no one at the initial crime scene assessment could have known just from looking at him. The weapon investigators said had been used was the size of a small flashlight and had a feature where you could attach and detach the blade, which is probably why it broke off so easily. FBI agents also revealed that not long after the murder, searchers had found the hilt of the knife they believed the blade belonged to. It had been tossed into the woods along the rural road

leading from the historic church back down to Newfound Gap Road. They'd also recovered Tyler's broken cell phone that was discarded in the brush along the same route. What authorities didn't tell the public during the summer of 2015 was that in the months of silence immediately following the crime, they'd been building a case against two prime suspects. They learned about these people on March 30th, the day after Tyler was killed, and one of them had come forward and made a full confession. According to court records I downloaded from a federal public records database known as PACER,

FBI agents knew from the jump who was behind Tyler Gaddis' murder. FBI agents knew from the jump who was behind Tyler Gaddis' murder. They just needed from April to August of 2015 to build a rock-solid case of evidence and testimony in order to be able to assemble a grand jury and file formal charges. The guys who authorities believed had committed the brutal murder were 25-year-old Jonathan Hill and 22-year-old Forrest Dakota Hill, local men who lived out of hotels on the Cherokee Reservation. And just for clarification here, Jonathan and Forrest are not related, despite both of their last names being Hill. According to the federal court filings,

back on March 30, 2015, 24 hours after the stabbing, Jonathan had walked into the Cherokee Indian Police Department and requested to speak to an officer. He told them he had information related to the death of an acquaintance of his named Tyler Gaddis. Over the next few hours, he told FBI agents a wild and violent story about how the murder had gone down. He started by saying he'd been the 911 caller who'd reported the crime during the early morning hours of March 29th. He said he'd made the call using Tyler's cell phone and had given the 911 dispatcher the fake name Raven York to mask his true identity. Jonathan denied being directly involved in stabbing Tyler and instead pointed the finger at his friend, Forrest, who was also friends with Tyler.

According to Jonathan's statements to the FBI, Forrest had gotten upset with Tyler after learning that Tyler had allegedly been speaking badly about him around the Cherokee reservation. Forrest's growing resentment of Tyler hit a fever pitch on the afternoon of March 28th, when Forrest learned that Tyler had told a girl Forrest was talking with online that he'd lied about who he was. Court records show that two weeks before Tyler's murder, Forrest had met a girl named Nina on a dating website and told her his name was Andrew. When Nina did some digging on Forrest, she'd found pictures of him with another girl named Tabitha posted all over the internet. When Nina confronted Forrest about the other woman, Forrest, posing as Andrew, told Nina that Tabitha was his sister.

In reality, though, Tabitha was actually Forrest's real girlfriend slash domestic partner and was carrying their unborn child. About a week before the murder, Forrest had told Jonathan and Tyler that the only reason he'd initiated a romantic relationship with Nina was because he'd recently learned she'd been paid a large sum of money. Jonathan told detectives that Forrest expressed several times that he planned to rob Nina. Tyler did not support that plan at all, though, and he took it upon himself a few days before his death to warn Nina that Forrest's intentions were not romantic and she should be careful how much information she shared with him.

According to court documents filed in the case, Tyler messaged Nina and told her all about Forrest's lies and about his plans to rob her. On the afternoon of March 28th, Forrest discovered Tyler had ratted him out to Nina, and the entire day, Jonathan said Forrest was fuming with anger. Jonathan told authorities that during his conversations with Forrest that day, Forrest had said threatening things about Tyler like, quote,

he is going to get his, and I'm really heated about this, end quote. The FBI's summary of facts states that the whole murder plot got underway late in the evening on March 28th. Jonathan told investigators that between 9 o'clock and 2 a.m., he and Forrest were hanging out with Tyler and driving around the reservation. Earlier in the evening, around 7 o'clock, the group had dropped Forrest's girlfriend, Tabitha, off at a casino and driven her Ford Focus to pick up Tyler. At some point late in the night, Forrest told Jonathan and Tyler that he wanted to go on an adventure together, so the boys drove to the woods near Smokemont

Baptist Church. Jonathan told detectives that the entire car ride, he knew that Forrest had planned to assault Tyler inside the church, and the ruse of just going on an adventure together was Forrest's way of luring Tyler. Jonathan said once the trio got inside the church, Forrest confronted Tyler and almost immediately started stabbing him. Jonathan explained that Tyler did not go down without a fight, and as Forrest slashed him with the knife, Tyler had yelled out for Jonathan to help him, but Jonathan said he froze. He started crying and didn't do anything to stop Forrest. For several minutes, Jonathan said he watched as Forrest repeatedly stabbed Tyler all over his body to the point where the blade of the knife broke off. When Forrest finally stopped, he picked Tyler

up off the floor and slammed him down just to make sure he was dead. That movement caused Tyler's body to splash in a large pool of blood, and the weight of him landing had sprayed blood all over Forrest and Jonathan's clothes and shoes. Once Jonathan and Forrest knew Tyler was dead, Jonathan said the two of them got back into their car and drove off. was dead, Jonathan said the two of them got back into their car and drove off. On their way out of the park, Jonathan said he saw Forrest toss the hilt of the knife out of the car's window. Around that same time is when Jonathan said he used Tyler's phone to call 911. After placing the call, he said Forrest took the phone from him, cracked it in half, and threw it out of the vehicle. The pair then immediately drove to a car wash on the Cherokee reservation

and cleaned off their shoes, and Jonathan said Forrest threw away some bloody paper bags. 45 minutes later, around 4 o'clock in the morning, Jonathan said he and Forrest went back out to the casino to pick up Forrest's girlfriend, Tabitha, and all three of them returned to the motel they were living out of. A few hours later, Jonathan said he and Forrest went to a remote area on the reservation known as Big Cove, which wasn't very far from where Jonathan's relatives lived.

There, they burned the clothing and shoes they'd been wearing during the murder. Immediately following his confession, Jonathan took FBI agents to the general areas where he said he and Forrest had disposed of the knife hilt and Tyler's broken cell phone. When Jonathan led investigators to the burn pit in Big Cove, authorities collected several bags of charred pieces of clothing and shoes. After that, it was a matter of hours before the authorities brought Forrest Hill and his girlfriend Tabitha in for questioning. According to transcripts of her interview, Tabitha told agents she knew Tyler by the nickname Tater and knew he'd been out with Forrest and Jonathan

most of the evening on March 28th. She also confirmed some of the same details Jonathan had said about how Forrest's frustration with Tyler had been building leading up to the end of March. She told authorities that right before the boys dropped her off at the casino, she'd noticed Forrest was upset, and when she asked him what was going on,

he told her he was going to assault Tyler when he got the chance. She also admitted to knowing all about Forrest's online scheme about lying to Nina, but she hadn't gotten mad at him for that. When FBI agents interrogated Forrest, at first he denied even knowing Tyler, but as soon as investigators confronted him with all of the information they'd learned from Jonathan and revealed that Jonathan had essentially sold him out, Forrest changed his tune. He said, actually, he did know Tyler, and he eventually admitted to being upset with them, but he said he just had plans to assault Tyler the night of the murder, not kill him. To bolster their case and find some more evidence against Forrest,

investigators seized Tabitha's Ford Focus and processed it. Inside, they found traces of blood which came back as belonging to Tyler. Building the case and getting all their ducks in a row took the FBI several months. Court records show that agents didn't file a formal criminal complaint in the case or request a grand jury for first-degree murder charges against Forrest until June of 2015, two months after the crime. During that time, another witness who was friends with Forrest, Jonathan, and Tabitha had come forward. This person is unnamed in the court filings, but they told investigators they'd had several conversations

in April and May of 2015 with Jonathan and Tabitha that corroborated details of the crime and cleanup. This witness said they felt Jonathan was actually way more involved in the murder than he'd initially led investigators to believe. The witness also said Tabitha had confessed to them that she'd played a bigger role in the cleanup. The witness said Tabitha claimed to have helped Forrest and Jonathan wash the inside of her car in an attempt to remove bloodstains. This kind of testimony proved to be valuable in getting an indictment because authorities now had a person who was able to corroborate details of the crime no one else knew and attributed learning those details from the prime suspects.

According to Leah Belletti's reporting for the Citizen Times, a federal grand jury formally indicted Forrest Hill for first-degree murder in early October of 2015 and set his trial for February of 2016. Jonathan's case was severed from Forrest's, meaning they would not face a jury together as co-defendants. Instead of first-degree murder, prosecutors decided to charge Jonathan with the lesser charge of accessory to murder after the fact. He was scheduled to testify for the government at Forrest's trial, but Forrest's case would never end up going before a jury. On April 15th, 2016, Forrest took a plea deal for second-degree murder, a lesser charge than what he was facing.

If he'd gone forward with the trial and been convicted, he could have received the maximum sentence and spent the rest of his life behind bars. By taking the deal, he faced the possibility of only receiving 10 to 15 years. On August 31st, a judge sentenced him to just shy of 17 years in federal prison. Currently, he remains incarcerated at Coleman Federal Penitentiary in Florida and won't be eligible for release until the year 2030. Jonathan's journey through the criminal justice system looked a lot different than Forrest's, though. According to court filings, Jonathan was formally indicted for accessory to murder after the fact in early November 2017. A month later, on December 1st, he pled guilty and was released on $25,000 bond while he waited to be sentenced.

But seven days after being let out on bail, he assaulted a police officer and was found to be in possession of drug paraphernalia. As soon as the court found out about that incident, a judge revoked Jonathan's pretrial release and issued a warrant for his arrest. Unfortunately, by that time, though, authorities weren't able to find Jonathan. He was gone in the wind. Eventually, the FBI tracked him down, and in early April of 2018, five months after his initial pretrial release, authorities arrested him. For all his bad behavior, Jonathan ended up being sentenced to four years in federal prison for his role in Tyler's murder and violating his pre-trial release conditions.

That seems like kind of a light sentence if you ask me, but I think because he came forward right away and was such a useful source of information for investigators early on, the FBI and federal prosecutors had no choice but to work with him. U.S. Bureau of Prison Records for Jonathan show that he was released from prison in July 2021 and is currently on supervised probation. He's 28 years old and will forever remain a convicted felon. The federal judge who handed down both men's punishments stated, quote, It takes a depraved person to kill another human being, but an evil one to carry out the murder inside a religious institution

founded upon the belief in the sanctity of human life. While we can never replace their loved one, we hope that Hill's lengthy prison term will bring closure to the victim's family and friends, end quote. The Hill I assume the judge was referring to was Forrest, since he got the most prison time. Despite having knowledge of the crime and even admitting to a third-party witness that she helped clean up blood, Tabitha, Forrest's girlfriend, did not face any charges related to Tyler's murder. Something that this story really reminded me of while I was researching and writing it is just how cruel people can be toward one another. I'm also struck with the same sentiment the judge in this case expressed, which is this idea that it takes a

truly evil person to commit such a heinous murder inside a church, which is the very place most people have some kind of reverence for. A question that I didn't see answered anywhere in the news coverage of this case or in the court paperwork was why. Why did Forrest and Jonathan take Tyler to the Smokemont Baptist Church that fateful night in March of 2015? Of all the places they knew about on or off the Cherokee reservation, why there? I'm not sure anyone except Forrest Hill and Jonathan Hill will ever be able to answer that question. What I do know is that Tyler Gaddis did nothing to deserve the horrible fate he met. He was a young man who had his whole life ahead of him.

He was a father of a young daughter from a previous relationship who he never got to see grow up. He was a young man with a family who desperately wanted to see him receive the help he needed to get back on his feet. Forest Hill was super young too, just 21 years old when he decided to do this. His life is forever changed because he let anger and frustration spiral out of control. This crime, though covered to a degree by Western North Carolina news outlets, did not receive national attention. After initial reports aired in March of 2015, the story didn't stay in the media for long.

It only really resurfaced when the FBI formally indicted Forrest and Jonathan. It's one of those cases that just happened in the heart of Great Smoky Mountains National Park that nobody outside of that immediate area really talked about. Visitors to the park came and went day in and day out, and the Cherokee community moved on. But I think it's a story that embodies all too well the cautionary warning we should all think about when it comes to the people we call our friends. The people who we venture into the woods with, who will to do us harm, and we might not even know it. Park Predators is an Audiochuck production. So, what do you think, Chuck?

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