Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

In 1983 James Duncan was fatally shot during a domestic altercation at his home in rural Fayette County, West Virginia. The incident occurred after a heated argument with his wife, Cleo, and her son, Jerry Raines.

So this guy, you know what, you're gonna think I made this story up, because it is wild. Now the story is about this guy, James, and James is 35 living in a small town in West Virginia, and he's kind of an awful guy, like he drinks a lot, he abuses his wife. But one night in 1983, James gets what's coming to him. Because it's late and he comes home from the bar, drunk, and he decides his wife needs to make him a snack. His wife is this woman, Cleo, and Cleo's 35. And so he yanks Cleo out of the bed because it's the middle of the night and she's asleep. And he's yelling at her, make me some food.

And so she makes him some soup. But then he gets mad that the soup is too cold. And gur, he slings the bowl across the kitchen and bam, it smashes against the wall. Then he notices their wood stove had gone out, so he's all pissed off about that too. And this causes a whole big fight. And he's like roughing up Cleo and he's chasing her around. and he's dragging her. It is awful. Now by this point, all this wakes up Cleo's son. We'll call him 17, because he's 17. And 17 is James's stepson. And I guess 17 tries to intervene, and this turns into

an even bigger fight. And so James ends up roughing him up too. And pretty quickly, James has Cleo and her three sons sitting at the kitchen table and he's berating them, all while holding a huge kitchen knife and shaking it at them. Then he grabs a 22, and he starts waving it around, screaming at them. Now all this screaming wakes up this woman, Cleo's mom, who will call Grandma, and Grandma is 55, and she lives next door. And so she wakes up, and she runs over, and she sees James waving the 22 around, and she eventually tries to grab it from him, and a struggle ensues. But Grandma, she ain't playing around, and she wrestles the 22 away from his drunk ass, and he lunges at her, to get it back and then blam, she shoots him right in the chest.

So now James is lying there unalived. And Cleo is like, well, now what are we going to do? I guess they don't want Grandma to go to prison for murder. And so they decide to bury the body in the backyard. And for some reason, they make 17 and his younger brother do it. And so 17 and his younger brother are in the backyard digging this big ass hole. and eventually the hole is big enough, and they put James in there and they bury him. But now they have another problem.

James' truck is there, and they need to get rid of it. And so they put their heads together, and they come up with a plan to drive the truck down to the local river and push it into the water and make it look like James got into a car accident. Now, I don't know how they're going to stage a car accident while James' body is buried in the backyard, but this is their plan. And so Cleo and Grandma and 17, they head over to the river, and they take James's truck, and they take their car to drive back home in. And so the two vehicles drive about 30 miles to the river, and they park James's truck on a hill,

and 17 gets out, and he starts pushing it toward the water until it starts rolling forward. And it rolls, and it rolls, and it gets close to the shore, but then, bam, it stops, because it gets stuck in the mud. So then Cleo and Grandma get out of the car. And I guess they're like standing there and they don't want to go up and physically push the truck anymore because it's now in the mud and I guess they don't want their footprints all in that mud,

which is smart. And so they're like, all right, I guess we'll just leave. But here's the thing. They locked their keys in their car. Now why they locked their car door in the first place when they're alone out in the middle of nowhere, I have no idea. But now they're locked out.

And it's 1983, so no cell phones. However, luckily, someone passes by, and it's a small town, and they all know each other. And so this person gives them a ride back to their house so they can get a spare key and retrieve their car and go home. Then the next day, Cleo calls police and files a missing person's report for James so that she doesn't look suspicious. And immediately, the police start looking, and they find his truck, and they start dragging the river looking for. James's body. But of course they don't find anything and no one suspects Cleo or grandma. So all they have to do is lay low and keep quiet and they'll never get caught. Until. A few days have passed since James's death and no one suspects a thing. But Cleo is sitting at home suffering. She just can't

get this whole situation out of her head. She keeps thinking about it. James might have been an abusive asshole, but she's feeling bad for his family and she's thinking that if his body is never found, then he won't get a proper burial and that just doesn't feel right to her. And so she comes up with a new new plan. First, she waits until nighttime. Then she makes 17 and his brother dig James's body back up. And so her new plan is to take James's body to the local river and throw him over the bridge near the area where they dumped his truck, and then police will find the body, and they'll put two and two together,

and they'll assume it was a car accident, and then he'll get a proper burial. Perfect plan. What could possibly go wrong? Well, once they finally get James out of the hole in the backyard, snap, grandma starts freaking out because she realizes the 22 that she unalived him with is actually registered to her.

She owns it. So if police find the bullet inside a James, they could trace it back to her. And so she gets yet another idea. She'll just remove the bullet from his body. And so they get James' decomposing body and they put it on the kitchen table and Grandma gets a big kitchen knife

and she cuts it open and she starts looking around in there for a bullet. But she can't find it. So then she takes out his heart and lungs, I guess to get a better look in there, but she still can't find this bullet. bullet. So then she just gives up and she throws the heart and lungs away. Like, okay, I guess I'm done. And so anyway, Cleo, Grandma, and 17, they load James into the car and they drive him to the

river onto that bridge. And then these two women and a teenager pull his body out of the car and they yeat him over the side of the bridge. And boom, James's foot gets caught on the structure of the bridge. And now the body is hanging upside down, dangling off the underside. of this bridge. And they're all like, fuck, how are we gonna get him down? And so Cleo and Grandma, they send Poor 17 to climb up under the bridge onto the understructure to try and knock James's body loose. But then, in the middle of all this, out of nowhere, pow, headlights appear. It's the police. And Cleo and Grandma, they panic like, oh shit. And they jump in their car and they speed away. But they leave 17 there underneath the bridge.

And so then 17 freaks out and he runs off too, into the woods. And police, they see James's body hanging there from the bridge. And they're like, what the fuck? What kind of hillbilly, West Virginia, bullshit is this? But anyway, police eventually find 17 in the woods and bam, they arrest him. Also, bam, they arrest Cleo. While grandma ends up turning herself in. And so ultimately, Cleo is found guilty of disinterment of a body and she ends up serving

about two years in prison. While 17 does a little time in juvenile detention, but not very much, while grandma takes a plea deal, but I guess the judge feels sorry for her because, you know, the whole self-defense of it all, and she only ends up spending 55 days in jail. Wow.