RedHanded - FROM THE VAULT - Jenelle Potter: Catfish

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

With cyberbullying and catfishing stories back in the news it felt like the perfect time to revisit this early episode from back in 2019.--Someone was cyberbullying Jenelle Potter: hurling online abuse and threatening her life with claims that she was "too pretty to live". As things escalated, inexplicably, the CIA seemed to become involved and Jenelle's parents felt the only way to save their vulnerable daughter was to take matters into their own hands. But once her "bullies" were dead questions quickly surfaced about Jenelle's behaviour...  Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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On the 31st of January 2012, Roy Stevens went off to 1-28 Davis Lane to pick up his post. Why his post didn't go to his own house? We don't know. But for whatever reason, Roy's post didn't go to where he lived with his wife Linda. It went to his friend's house. 1-28, Davis Lane, Mountain City, East Tennessee. Mountain City has a population of just 2,500 people, and it's only three square miles. It's known for being a friendly hometown. That's literally what they have on their road signs. It's like, welcome to Mountain City, a friendly hometown. Is that all you have to say about it?

Does it have no other distinguishing features? And also, how can you just generically call something a hometown? It's either your hometown. or it's just a town. I think it's because no one leaves. So maybe it's just everyone's hometown because you can never leave once you go there. And it really is the type of place

where everyone knows everyone. And as we'll see this week, that's not always ideal. But having said that, according to country living, Mountain City is one of the top 15 small towns in Tennessee. I'm not sure how stiff that competition is. That seems a weird list to be compiling for any reason. I know this is really pedantic of me, but I have such a problem with places being called cities when they're not, barely even a town.

It's not a city, is it? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know why it's called that. Maybe it's just relative. Maybe it has got a cathedral and maybe I should just, it's not talking. I don't know if that is now the bearer for, like, the new, I don't know if that's how it works in the new world. In the new world? I think there it's just their own rules you can do what you want.

Yeah, that's true. 1-28 Davis Lane was home to Billy Jean Hayworth, who was 23. her partner, Billy Payne, 36, and their seven-month-old baby boy called Tyler. As Roy walked up to 1-28 on the 31st of January, he noticed that Billy's truck was still in the drive. This was strange. Both Billy and Billy Jean worked in the nearby cutting mill, and usually by this time, Billy would have left for work. Roy tried the door and found that it was unlocked, so he let himself in

and found Billy Payne lying on top of the bed he shared with Billy Jean. He had been shot in the face just below his left eye, and his throat had also been slashed. As Roy moved through the house, he saw Billy Jean lying on the floor of Baby Tyler's room. She too had sustained a single gunshot wound to the head. Her murderer had shot her in the side of her head as she held her seven-month-old baby in her arms. And according to some stories, when Roy found Billy Jean's body, she was still holding Baby Tyler. But amazingly, baby Tyler was physically unharmed in the attack. But he was totally silent when Roy recovered him.

That is the most terrifying thing to me. Yeah. That this seven-month-old baby is just like in his dead mum's arms silent. That's how Dexter's are made, isn't it, really? Oh my God. It is horrifying. It's too much. Now, Roy then called 911, and the operator told him to try CPR.

That seems weird that the operator tells him to try. Like, I found these two bodies. They're dead. They've been shot in the head. You want to give some CPR a go? Well, maybe he hadn't like properly described it. Or maybe he had, I don't know. Maybe.

Maybe this is on Roy's poor descriptive skills. One a 911 one call. But I did find that weird that they were like, maybe just have a go. Who knows? But he comes clean and he says there's probably no point because Billy and Billy Jean were very clearly dead. So when the police showed up, they were struck by how clean the crime scene was. There were no bullet casings left behind and not a single fingerprint in sight. Now at first, the police thought that they may be dealing with a murder-suicide

or perhaps a drug deal gone wrong. But the lack of forensic evidence and the single-shot executions made it look much more like a contract killing. So the Mountain City Police Department started to dig around trying to find out who might have had a problem with Billy, Billy Jean and their baby. Mountain City is so small that it didn't take them very long at all to end up on the Potter family front doorstep. It was well known that the entire Potter family had a big problem with Billy Jean and Billy Payne.

The Potter family's famous disagreement with the two Billy's all started with their daughter, Janelle. And what the documentaries don't tell you is that Janelle had an older sister called Christy. who had flown the nest at the first opportunity that she got because Barbara, the matriarch of the family, was hard work. Christy got on fine with her dad Marvin, who everyone called Buddy, but her mum Barbara was a totally different story. Christy's younger sister, Janelle, had it hard as well, not because she was a black sheep like Christy,

but because Janelle had a whole host of physical and mental abnormalities that made Barbara and Buddy very protective of her. But according to Christy, Janelle was much more capable than her parents made her out to be. Which I don't know how far to believe that, because that's a very assistily thing, isn't it? It's like, oh, well, she's actually fine. You just give her all the attention, even though she's completely capable of doing everything. But then I kind of also think, I kind of believe her because I feel like when you listen to the story, when you read anything about it, buddy and Barbara are so, like, obsessively protective of Janelle.

And I almost feel like it is a little bit like with the Gypsy Rose case. I know they're not like, it's not a munchausen by proxy or anything in this story, but almost being like, no, no, no, no, she can't do that. No, no, no, no. She's not capable of doing that. And keeping her within their control so that they have something to live for and someone to protect. I kind of believe Christy being like, Janelle was fine. They just constantly told her that she couldn't do anything and they held her back.

Yeah, and if you hear that enough times, you're going to believe that you can't do it. Absolutely. We'll see so much of this. In 2012, Janelle was 31 years old. She still lived at home with her parents who were in their early 60s. Janelle had a midnight curfew. She was not allowed to drink or smoke. She didn't have a job and she couldn't drive a car. According to psychologist Eric Engham, 99 out of 100 children would perform better than Janelle in maths, reading and spelling. She had an IQ of 72. That's pretty low. An average person tends to score with. between 90 and 109. And we are aware that there are a lot of problems

with the IQ testing system, and then it's not necessarily representative. IQ tests test for a very specific set of skills that were determined over 100 years ago by white men to be the most important ones. And as someone who miserably failed their 11 plus test and has done just fine, I could go on about unconventional intelligence forever,

but I won't subject you to it. The point here is that, Janelle Potter operated at the level of a nine-year-old child. Again, it's sort of like coming back to the point that Christy makes. I wonder how much of this was inherent in her that she was so underperforming and that she had such low sort of math, reading, writing, spelling skills, or whether it was just her parents had not, I don't know, allowed her to flourish. And I should say that all of those statistics about her intelligence,

that psychologist was hired by her defence. team. So you have to wonder. And in this whole case, you know, not to give any spoilers, but in this whole case, it is the best outcome for everyone on the defence that Janelle is as incapable as this all makes her seem. I have doubts about this. I do think the fact that she was 31 and she went along with all these rules and she was allowed, she stayed there while her sister Christy ran away and got away from all this. I don't think she was the, you know, she was totally like on point with her like age and her developmental ability but i don't know if she's as developmentally challenged as they make her out to be i have doubts about it but it's important

that we have to raise i think i'm with you so jenelle was also very nearly two meters tall that's so fucking tall that's over six foot tall yeah it's nearly six foot five jesus she's massive fuck it out on like hinge if you're six but five i'm like way six that is so tall wow my god i'm like i'm like 152 meters or something like she's a lot taller 152 meters are you are you a giant sorry i was just so flustered by the six that five i like can't even speak anymore i don't know what i am in meters but i'm definitely shrinking i used to be five nine and now i'm five eight i feel like maybe i've grown a little bit. Oh, you've stolen it from me. Sucked it out of me. Like a witch. Because I went to the doctor the other day and they were like, oh, we just need to, you know,

weight and height. And I never take my weight. I never measure my height because I'm not a nine-year-old child. And so they did it. And they were like, oh, I think I'm five foot two. And she was like, oh, you're taller than you think you are. And I was like, oh, tell me, tell me more. Almost five foot three. There you go. We'll round it up. Anyway, back to this. So, you know, we did make that comparison just now that this case is very like the Gypsy Rose case-esque in a few ways and just like Gypsy Rose Blanchard. In this case, Janelle Potter also had that very like sing-songy, childlike voice. It's not as pronounced as Gypsy Rose as it is. When I first heard her talk I was like, that's bollick, she's not. But Gypsy Rose didn't have any teeth and that's

probably why. Yeah, that's true. So she does speak in a childlike fashion, but it's not quite as stunningly different as Gypsy Rose's voice. So the idea of a nine-year-old child in a 31-year-old woman's body, as, you know, is set out by the family and by everybody in this case, is one that we will come back to. So plant that seed in your mind. A thought seed. A thought seed and let it flourish into a beautiful bush as we go. We'll come back to prune the bush. We will come back to Now, Janelle also had diabetes, and according to some, she had a pretty hard time keeping up with her medication. And with a list of ailments like this, unsurprisingly, Janelle had a pretty hard time at school. And once she was 18, she left high school with her special education high school diploma and started to claim disability benefit.

The potters had moved to Mountain City from Pennsylvania, and Janelle will tell you that Mountain City folk don't take kindly to outsiders, so she remained isolated in her parents' house. when no friends to attempt to break her curfew and with only her computer and Facebook profile for company, Janelle spent a lot of time online. And Janelle loved Facebook. She was constantly on it and she had heaps of online friends that she had never met in real life, but I guess filled that gap given the isolation that she had. And kind of just like Gypsy Rose, her parents had full access to her Facebook profile. Janelle populated her Facebook page with constant status updates and pictures of herself that she calls selfs. There's an interview with her and this guy is asking like,

oh, so what did you put on your Facebook page? And she's like, oh, you know, selfs. Maybe it's like Mountain City slang for selfie. That is a possibility that I hadn't thought of. But when I was watching that interview, I was like, you have so clearly misheard that word and then just repeated it again and again and again until you think that's what the word is.

Like, I've never watched a video of someone who is so clearly living inside their own echo chamber. No, it's true. I think that is a very like an overwhelming part of this entire case is how much Janelle Potter is in her own world. One just like completely shaped by the incredible amount of isolation that her parents have created for her. Oh, exactly. It's like when you only read a word and you've never heard it said out loud and then you say it wrong and it feels really weird because the whole time you've convinced yourself it's like that. Her whole life is like that. You know,

as much as you want to say like maybe she was, you know, she was child. She needed this protection. She needed this support. But her parents never make any attempts, as far as you can see, to make her feel independent, to make her feel empowered like she can do things. They fully hold her back. And Janelle Potter doesn't come out looking great in this. But she's a product of what her parents have done to her. But it looks up a little bit in 2009 because Janelle made a real life friend.

She met Tracy Greenwell at a pharmacy in Mountain City, and the pair got chatting and exchanged numbers. Tracy knew that Janelle was shut up with her parents all day, so she took pity on her and started to invite her to hang out with her other mates. Janelle loved this. She finally had friends. And she especially liked Tracy's brother, Billy Payne. Basically everyone knew that Janelle had taken a shine to Billy Payne, except Tracy, who even now claims to have never really seen it like that.

There's interviews with her, she's like, yeah, everyone said that Janelle was in love with Billy, but I just never really saw it. You're the only one, man. Because, given what unfolds in our story today, I'm reasonably convinced that Janelle had a pretty massive crush on Billy Payne. And when he got together with Billy Jean Hayworth, Janelle handled it exactly like a nine-year-old in a 31-year-old's body. Saying that, I will say that there are lots of 31-year-olds out there who might go down a similar path to what Chanel ends up doing. Not through the same route she does, but the... The murder?

I don't know. The murdering. Spoiler alert. You know why you're here. They all lived happily ever after and we're going to Mountain City next week. Live show in Mountain City, Tennessee. It's the top 15 towns. It's all towns in Tennessee. Not even the US, just in Tennessee.

But Janelle initially didn't show her hurt. She got close with Billy Payne's cousin and best pal Jamie Curd instead. See, she knows. She knows. Because a nine-year-old, I imagine, would just start screaming and shouting and being like, You're a bitch. Blah, blah, blah. You broke my heart. Whatever. But she's like, nah, fine. I'm going to go in through the back door. I'm going to make friends with your mate Jamie Curd.

Come on. This is like classic. This is like EastEnders plot lines. Jamie was a little bit older than Janelle. I think he was about 36. And he seemed to really like her. He was an IT guy, so he'd come over to the Potter home to help Barbara and Buddy out with their PC problems. I think he'd make up things that were wrong with their PC to get around their house, to be honest. Barbara and Buddy described Jamie as a friend of their. but little did they know that behind their backs and behind closed doors, he was pursuing a romantic relationship with their precious daughter, Janelle.

Jamie bought Janelle a secret phone so they could stay in contact without her parents knowing. And they both filled these phones with pictures of them together, smiling and kissing. But it's all super innocent. Like, when I first read about that, I was like, oh, this older man's going to take advantage of her. But like, I mean, maybe he did. I don't know, I wasn't there. But in the pictures on the phones, it's just like very, hands above the waist action. Like nothing looks off. And this is the thing again that makes me

feel like Janelle is not as like innocent and incapable as everyone makes her out to be because she's in love with Billy. He sacks her off for Billy Jean. She then starts going out with his mate Jamie. She's still in love with Billy because of everything that transpires from this point onwards. But she's like out there with Jamie taking photos being in a quote unquote relationship with him. Is she in love with him or is this just a big manipulation game to use him? Good point. And we'll go on to see that Jamie Curd is not the brightest pixie in the forest. So now that we know a little bit more about the Potter family, let's go back to the day in January 2012, when the police turned up on their front door asking them if they knew anything about a double homicide.

The Johnson County Sheriff's Department and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation headed by agent, great name, Scott Lott. It's excellent, isn't it? He sounds like a character in a board game. that's going to sell your house. Scott Lot, like... He should have been an estate agent, really. He's wasted. His parents knew what his surname was,

and they still called him Scott. That is outrageous. So anyway, Scott Lot comes to their house, and he interviewed Janelle, Barbara and Buddy altogether. And the potters were told that Billy Payne and Billy Jean Hayworth were both dead and asked if they knew anything about their murders, or if they knew anyone who wanted them dead. And the first thing Buddy says is quite weird because he said to Scott Lott that everyone in Mountain City was always pointing the finger at his family for something.

And this seems like a bit of a strange thing to say when you are being questioned by the police about a double homicide, especially about the double homicide of a family that everyone in this small town in this top 15 small town in Tennessee knows that you have beef with. Maybe just say, no, officer, I don't know anything about that double homicide. Yeah, it smells a little bit ass covery, doesn't it? So the potters all denied knowing anything about the murders, but they admitted to the long-running feud between them and the two billies. Janelle explained to police that she never wished anything bad to happen to Billy or Billy Jean. That's such a lie, such a lie.

It's like when you break up with somebody and you're like, I don't, I want him to be happy. No, you fucking don't. You want him to be miserable. The way she says it too, she's very just like, does this like angelic voice and she's like well obviously I would never wish harm on any but like she's in a miss world pageant or something she's lying yeah she's obviously lying you're listening to an episode of shorthand our weekly show for Wondry plus subscribers

listen exclusively and ad free every Tuesday on Wondry Plus through Apple Podcasts and Spotify or in the Wondry app all right very quick break because I know you are gagging to get back to this particular episode but we have to tell you a little bit about what's going on on Patreon this week. Certainly. Well, this week we have Under the Duvee where I explain how hypnosis works badly, but it works. It does work.

And I will tell you how I came off the pill and now the back knee's back. We also have a little chat about Russell Brand and contemplate the composition of the soul and whether it even fucking matters. And then I do a little review on a throwback dating

TV show that I watched on Channel 4 called Perfect Match where I literally couldn't believe, A, that people were smoking in clubs, because it's that old, and then all the horrific things that were coming out of people's mouths. And you can listen to all of that over on Patreon, and you can watch it, too, under the duvet, is every week. We release it every Wednesday morning. And also on Patreon, you can get Red-Handed, totally ad-free, and we also do monthly bonus episodes. And you can find all of that at patreon.com forward slash red-handed. And she said that she'd never wished anything bad on the billies, but she said that the couple

especially Billie Jean, had made her life a living hell. Now, Janelle told officers that Billy Jean had been creating anonymous Facebook accounts which she would use to post horrible things about Janelle online. And apparently, it was relentless. And all of these anonymous posts would threaten to rape Janelle, cut off her head. And most famously, they posted that Janelle was, quote, just too pretty to live. As far as I can tell, these are all made by like little grey,

no picture accounts. I don't think that these are being posted as Billy Jean. And the way Janelle tells it, this cyberbullying went on for months. But Janelle maintained that all she ever posted was that she wanted to be left alone. She never retaliated. Spoiler, that is bollocks. And Barbara, like every overprotective mum ever, got involved too. She posted on her own Facebook page that everybody needed to leave Janelle alone. How embarrassed would you be if your mom, like, posted on Facebook and telling people to leave you alone. My mum doesn't do any social media, and I couldn't be more glad of it. I think Janelle loved it, though.

Oh, yeah. I think so. According to Tracy, Janelle's pharmacy friend, it was widely known how much Janelle hated Billy Jean Hayworth. And honestly, the most obvious explanation for this is that Janelle was jealous of Billy Jean for living the life that she could never have. Janelle was not as shy on social media as she would have the police believe. And you might have thought that someone with such a childlike demeanour, might struggle with hurling online insults, but you're wrong because Janelle Potter gave as good as she got.

Janelle would post lengthy status updates detailing how Billy Jean was an unfit mother, who partied all the time, was engaged in sex work and was on drugs. Janelle also publicly posted that she wished, and this is a quote, that damn baby would die. That is quite a childish thing to say, I think. I don't think an adult would say that. No, but again, I just feel like this whole thing comes down to. is she naturally that way or is she that way? Is it a combination of she is naturally that way,

but her parents have created this person that is incredibly like, no boundaries, incredibly childlike, because she's never been exposed to anything. I'm not at all saying that she is, that has the mind of a 31-year-old. Like, I'm not saying that. I just don't think it's as bad as they say it is. In all her behaviour, she seems more like a 16-year-old to me than a 9-year-old

because it's all very like adolescent behaviour that she engages in. And, you know, Billy and Billie Jean, like, they've got a kid, like, and like we said, all of the postings that Chanel goes on about, they all come from anonymous accounts. They're not coming from Billy Jean's accounts as far as we could tell. So all of her posting the stuff about Billy Jean being a sex worker, being on drugs, being a shit mom, all of this, like, it seems to just be coming from Janelle. I wouldn't be shocked and appalled if Billy Jean had posted a couple of nasty statuses about

Janelle because she's doing all of this stuff. So I don't want to say that, like, it was all exclusively from anonymous accounts. I wouldn't be surprised if Billy Jean had posted some. You would. And saying, I want your baby to die. You'd be like, who is this maniac? And the hurling of Facebook abuse eventually led to Billy Jean unfriending Janelle on Facebook. The Ultimate Slight.

Quite. Did you ever watch that movie Unfriended? It's actually really good. No. Is it called Unfriended? The documentary for this case is called hashtag unfriend. Is it? Oh my God, why have they used hashtag?

There's nothing, never anything that happens in Twitter. Yeah, unfriended. It's actually a really good film. I would recommend it. Go watch it. Anyway, so police heard all about this online feud. All of the Potter family were very open about how much they disliked Billy and Billy Jean. And again, seems a bit odd, considering that they've all just been shot six hours ago,

like maybe just wait before you start saying how much you hate them. Now, Janelle also told police that the virtual Facebook violence had escalated. into the real world. One night, she said that she had stones being thrown at her window, and when she went outside, she discovered two stones that had been written on. And one stone was signed Billy Payne, and the other was signed Billy Jean. And one of the rocks had the words, I'm your Huckleberry, written on the side of it in what looks like Sharpie. What the fuck? Why would you, if you were going to terrorise a person you are in a feud with, you wouldn't write your name on the stone that you then throw at their window. And when I read that, I was

just as confused as you are. So at the peril of once again finding myself on etymologically shaky ground, I've done a bit of digging and I figured out, I think, what I'm Your Huckleberry means. I thought it might be a Huckleberry Finn reference, but apparently that's a bit unlikely the term was in circulation well before the Adventures of Tom Sawyer was published, which is where Huckleberry Finn makes his first literary appearance. I'm Your Huckleberry Finn. I'm Your Huckleberry Finn, is a line delivered by Val Kilmer in the 1993 Western Tombstone. And apparently it means I'm the man for the job or I'm the man you're looking for. And I've read that this term derives from ye oldy times when knights would rescue damsels in distress

and be rewarded with Huckleberry branches to wear on their lances as favours. Which is a nice story, but I haven't been able to find a definitive answer to where that phrase originates from. But whatever its origin, it's an incredibly strange thing to be found written in Sharpie on a rock outside your house. I don't understand what that is about. And it never really becomes clear why that's there. No, I think it's just something she's heard in a film that she thinks sounds cool.

And like Val Kilmer does look very cool when he delivers that line. So maybe she just thinks it's cool and doesn't really know what it means and just... Like the whole Jean-Beney, like ransom note, how it's all filled with like random film quotes. We're not going to get it. into Jean Bonnet right now. I just came into my head, please. Everyone just sat up in their seats and pricked up there is. Such a tease. Not yet. Sit down. So the other thing that is pretty odd, besides just these two rocks turning up with these words written on them, is the way that the rocks

look. And we've seen photos. And without wanting to sound like geology obsessives, but fuck it, like I kind of am a geology obsessive. I love rocks. I just think that's so interesting. I will go somewhere just to look at cool rocks. You should put that on your hinge bro. Take me to look at cool rocks I genuinely would love that Like I went down to Beachy Head And I never been before

And I was like Fuck at hell These rocks are amazing I've never been People, that's where people go To kill themselves I know I didn't kill myself

Or go there for that I just went to look at the rocks It's where they have the cliffs Not the way cliffs of Dover Oh the Seven Sisters Yeah seven sisters walk Beautiful lovely rocks So these are nice rocks

This is the point That we're trying to Get to in a roundabout way They aren't just like Your average garden variety rock no sorry I had to

they are like the kind of rock that you would find in like a zen garden they're like very smooth grey like you've bought them in a shop you haven't just found them naturally occurring exactly exactly they're like the kind of thing when mum buys and like fills vases with

and leaves them around our house and this leads us on to our next point because I don't believe for a second that Billy and Billy Jean actually wrote their names on their those rocks and threw them at the Potter house. I think that Janelle put them there herself. And I'm also about like 80% sure that Billy Jean and Billy never posted anything nasty about Janelle. Like we said, maybe they made the odd comment in retaliation for what Chanel was posting

about Billy Jean. But I don't know, we couldn't find any evidence that they were bullying Janelle. That's the key thing. Really, what we think is we think that Janelle was jealous of them. She was in love with Billy. She's jealous. So we think that she went on to create false accounts to get her childish revenge. And we think this because the cyber abuse really ramped up when Billy Jean moved in with Billy Payne and when Billy Jean felt pregnant. That is going to be a stressor for you

if you are in love with, quote unquote, in love with that person. She's obsessed with him. She's not in love with him. But the police, on the 31st of January 2012, didn't have too much to go on. They just had a weird interview with a weird family, certainly not enough to make an arrest. So they went to the next person on their list

affiliated with the Potter family, Jamie Curd, Janelle's secret boyfriend. During the questioning of the potters, officers outright asked Janelle and her parents whether Jamie is her boyfriend. But they all, including Janelle, deny it. They all say that he's just a friend, a friend of the family, a dear friend to all of them. No, he's not. He just comes around and fixes your PC and is secretly like having a relationship with your daughter. And the police sensed that there was something more to this. So they called Jamie Curd in for questioning. to their tiny police station, where the detective's officers doubled as an interrogation room. But despite having no proper interrogation room, the Mountain City Police Department did have

a polygraph machine. Of all the things you could invest your, like, probably quite small funding into. They picked a polygraph. A piece of shit machine that's going to tell you nothing. As we know, polygraphs are bullshit, but it's part of the story, so we have to include it. We can't leave it out, unfortunately. So Jamie was hooked up to the machine and asked if he knew who killed Billy Jean Hayworth and Billy Payne. He denied knowing anything, and he miserably failed the polygraph test.

So police started to push him further, asking him whether he had been trying to protect his girl. Jamie promptly denied that Janelle was his girl. So weird, he's 36. Anyway, police, like me, weren't having any of it, and they kept applying pressure. And after six hours of interrogation, Jamie ended up telling police that Janelle's father, Buddy Potter, had shot Billy and Billy Jean. Jamie agreed to wear a wire and extract and record a confession from Buddy. After Jamie agreed to wear the wire, he asked the police a very bizarre question. He asked, is the CIA here?

Literally what about this small town murder could have attracted the attention of the CIA? And this is the point at which this story takes a very bizarre twist. Yeah, it gets weird from here on out, guys. With Jamie's question of, is the CIA here? is the point at which this just goes off, falls off the tracks. The train doesn't even go off the tracks, it just falls off the tracks. The CIA are a foreign intelligence service for the federal government of the United States. How is Janelle Potter's Facebook war of any interest to them at all?

Nevertheless, as improbable as all this sounds to us, Jamie told the police that he had been in regular contact with a CIA agent called Chris, whose sole purpose was to protect Janelle Potter from her. Facebook frenemies. I wish I had a dedicated CIA agent. That would be nice, wouldn't it? I mean, I could make you up one called Chris like they've done because that's how easy it is, apparently. And as you can imagine, when Jamie sits there and tells the police all of this stuff about a CIA agent called Chris, this raised a few eyebrows. But Agent Scott Lott and the rest of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation didn't want to lose any time. So they were just like, yeah, okay, all right.

And they pressed on, wired Jamie up and sent him after the Potter House to go extract his confession. And here is what they managed to record. Oh, gee, me Christmas. You got rid of their saying. Yeah. What? Jiminy Christmas. I'm going to start saying Jiminy Christmas.

I'm not. I'm definitely not. Especially not when someone's like, they're on to you for a double homicide. I think you're allowed to. If any situation, you're allowed to say fucking Helen, I think is that one. But these people, Hannah, as we're going to find, they are god-fearing folk. They are good Christians, yeah. You can murder people, but you can't be swearing.

Jiminy Christmas, Hannah. We could do this podcast, and then we could do the version that we released to, like, all the people that leave comments about how much they hate the swearing. And we could just drop in Jiminy Christmas every time we say, fuck. That sounds amazing. That's going to be our Christmas special. Fantastic. So, yeah, Jamie goes in. he gets this sort of taped confession.

And that's enough, because with that, Scott Lott and his team brought Potter down to the station for questioning. And there are a few things about Buddy Potter that we haven't mentioned yet that made him a much tougher nut to crack than Jamie Kurt had been. Because the thing was, Buddy was an ex-marine. He had served in Vietnam freeing soldiers from prisoner of war camps. That's pretty cool. And his wife, Barbara, also firmly believed that after

buddy had returned from Vietnam, he had gone to work for the CIA. Now, of course, if you do go work for the CIA, you can't tell anybody. So we don't know how true this is, but I'm going to guess probably not true, because he literally doesn't even know how to use a computer. That's true. That's a very good point. Maybe in the post-Vietnam wars, that wasn't as important for counterintelligence. I don't know. Back then, I'm sure. But, you know, when this is all happening, So I'm going to guess if you want to go work for the Central Intelligence Agency, you probably need to know how to use emails. And like, Buddy Potter doesn't know how to use email.

Barbara's probably not right about this. But one thing we do know is that when the family lived in Pennsylvania, Buddy had had to go to trial where he was found guilty of claiming military honors that he did not have. And that's like a big deal in the US. But huge deal, yeah. I mean, given all this and the whole like not being able to use a computer, We're not totally convinced of his affiliation with the CIA. But CIA or no CIA, Buddy's marine training served him well in the interrogation room slash office.

He wasn't giving the officers a single thing. He just keeps saying, I'm not going to tell you I did something. I didn't do. But his body language is telling an entirely different story. He's very defensive. He's sitting back in his chair with his arms crossed. Buddy told officers that Jamie had not pressured him into anything. They were sort of asking, like, oh, did Jamie persuade you to do this?

the they're bullying Janelle and he's with your daughter and he's like she he's not with my daughter blah blah and also I'm my own man blah blah blah blah and he says that he doesn't know anything about the murders and that he certainly didn't kill anyone but his entire demeanour changed when after four hours of questioning he started to tell officers about the abuse sustained by his family over the past few months according to buddy he had been threatened his wife Barbara had been threatened and that they whoever they were wanted to rape Janelle because she was a virgin and then Buddy broke

down in tears and sat forward in his chair. He sort of like slumps forward leaning on his knees. Agent Mike Hannan seeing a chance asked Buddy, do Janelle and Barbara know what you did? And Buddy simply said, no.

So they've got him but they need to keep him as close as possible. So Agent Lott suggested that Buddy call his wife and of course, they recorded the call. Here is what he says. Barbara.

Yeah. Before you find out, somebody else that wants you now, I was involved in it. I did it. When he makes this revelation during the phone call, Barbara doesn't sound shocked on the other end of the line. She just tells Buddy to make sure he tells the cops that he isn't guilty, that he didn't do it, that he was at home when the murders happened,

and she repeated that he was not guilty. But no matter what Barbara said, That phone call was as close to a confession as the police needed it to be. And they secured a warrant to search the Potter home. And in a pre-dawn raid in February 2012, police entered the Potter house. And inside they found close to 60 different firearms. That's like fucking stockpiling. And this is just like an unbelievable scene.

Like paint this in your mind. They walk in. There were guns under the mattresses. There were guns in the kitchen. AK-47s just lying around. all over the place. Knives hanging off deer antlers and even an ammo belt draped over Buddy's oxygen tank. Because yes, Buddy was not the super fit marine that he had been in his heyday. He now had trouble with mobility and needed regular oxygen therapy. Hence the oxygen tank with ammunition

hanging off it. Oxygen tank, because I'm like quite ill now, but I'm still a marine. So chuck this ammunition belt on it. Accessorize with some bullets. So everyone knows I'm still really tough. But it's like the number one rule of accessorizing. Always take the last thing you put on off. Probably take that ammunition belt off your oxygen tank. The knives hanging from the ceiling, they're completely fine. It's the ammunition belt that are going to get you some funny looks. And we're certainly no oxygen therapy experts. But our understanding is that a person who has trouble getting enough oxygen into their bloodstream by normal breathing would benefit from oxygen therapy. And there are a huge list of conditions that would

lead to you needing an oxygen tank and we don't know which one Buddy had. But the thing is, the oxygen tank does play an important part in this case and here's why. Police officers were initially suspicious of Buddy's confession. They didn't see how a man who relied on an oxygen tank could have killed two people who were significantly younger and more agile than him. But here's the thing. During the video of his interrogation, Buddy doesn't have his oxygen tank And he doesn't appear to be out of breath, breathing rapidly, coughing, wheezing, sweating, or any of the other symptoms that may suggest that he was running low on oxygen. And again, we're not oxygen experts.

But I kind of feel like if you can go through a four-hour interrogation without an oxygen tank, he could probably shoot a gun twice in the early hours of the morning without oxygen too. But maybe I'm wrong. Barbara uses the oxygen tank to totally discredit Buddy's confession on the phone to her. Barbara claimed that when Buddy was low on oxygen, that he was prone to saying things that were untrue. Really not sure how likely that is. Pretty convenient, isn't it, Bob? But, moreover, for reasons that will become clearer later on, I find anything that comes out of Barbara Potter's mouth, extremely difficult to believe.

And although not a single one of the firearms found in the Potter home matched the murder weapon, the pre-dawn raid of the Potter residents had more big red arrows pointing to was the guilt of the entire family. In the living room there were multiple pictures of Billy Jean and Billy laid out on the floor. They had been printed from Facebook. What the fuck? Buddy's been arrested. He's phoned home to tell them the police come round to do a pre-dorn raid.

Why have you not chuck that shit away? No one had time to go to the tip apparently. Like there was no, I don't know. I really don't know why you would just leave these things out like a weird shrine to the people you've just murdered. And it gets even stranger because they weren't just regular. pictures printed out and laid on the floor. One of the pictures of Billy Jean had the word bitch scrawled across it. And the police, get this, had to wrestle the photos out of Barbara Potter's hands. It's like a burn book. It's like they've literally created a burn book. She's made a

burn book with her mum. How sad is that? That's the worst bit of this whole thing. And this is the thing. Barbara's trying to wrestle these photos out of the police's hands and rip up the pictures right in front of the police. I'm going to say you probably wanted to do that. about like the minute you got off the phone with your husband. She has no idea how guilty that makes her look. She genuinely doesn't understand it, I don't think. Not until they come round and they're like, oh my God, look at all this stuff. And she's like, shit, that's when she realizes that that might make her look incredibly guilty.

But too late. Too late, far too late. So 51 items were taken from the home in the raid, including the family computer that they had all shared and Buddy's truck. Inside the truck, the police found three bin bags full of shredded paper. They were also seized. And we have no idea how they managed this, but the police department managed to take these bags of shredded paper and put together over almost 100 complete pages of text.

Now, I do know that police departments, and especially like the FBI, are very well trained to put together shredded bits of paper, but 100 pages of text. That is remarkable. It's loads. And it makes me think of the Snow Queen story where the little boy, has to stay in the Snow Queen's Palace and spell out eternity with broken bits of glass and then he's allowed to go.

Did you not know that one? No. Yeah, it's pretty horrifying. That sounds easier though, because you could just spell it out. But he's blind. Sorry, it's an important part. She blinds him and then she's like, you can be unblind if you can spell eternity out of these pieces of glass and then you can leave.

That's so dark. I think it's a Hans Christian Anderson one, but I'm not sure. Of course it was. This is why, you need a good shredder. Don't just get a fucking straight shredder. Get a cross shredder. Scammers are best known for living the high. high life until they're forced to trade it all in for handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit once

they're finally caught. I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Haggy. And we're the host of scam influencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of some of the most infamous scams of all time, the impact on victims and what's left once the facade falls away. We've covered stories like a Shark Tank certified entrepreneur who left the show with an investment, but soon faced mounting bills, an active lawsuit followed by Larry King, and no real product to push. He then began to prey on vulnerable women instead, selling the idea of a future together while stealing from them behind their backs. To the infamous scams of Real Housewives stars like Teresa Judice, what should have proven to be a major downfall only seemed to solidify her place

in the Real Housewives Hall of Fame. Follow scam influencers on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Scamfluencers early and ad-free right now on Wondry Plus. Today is the worst day of Abby's life. The 17-year-old cradles her newborn son in her arms. They all saw how much I loved him. They didn't have to take him from me. Between 1945 and the early 1970s, families ship their pregnant teenage daughters to maternity homes and force them to secretly place their babies for adoption.

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Now, these pages turned out to be emails between Barbara Potter and the mysterious CIA agent, Chris. Why the fuck are you printing out emails and then shredding them? Why are you printing them out at all? Because Buddy can't use a computer. He can't read it. So she's printing them out and saying, here you go, you have to read it on a piece of paper, Buddy, because you can't look at a computer, apparently. Printing out emails is never a good idea.

It even says at the bottom, think twice before you print this, save the environment. and your innocence. Think twice for you print this, Barbara. Save your fucking life. I love that they just shred them. They go to all the bother of shredding 100 pages and then just leave them in the truck in plastic bags. They don't even get rid of them.

It's paper. Burn it. They really half-ass everything. They're just like, that'll do. This is the problem with, like, people these days. Just not enough work ethic. I hate that attitude of this will do. And that's what this whole family were about. So we've got these emails now between Barbara Potter and Mysterious CIA agent Chris.

And these emails between Chris and the Potter family began around the same time that Billy Jean moved in with Billy Payne and was pregnant with Tyler. These emails are pretty chilling. The overarching theme is that CIA agent Chris is encouraging Barbara Potter to kill Billy and Billy Jean, because of what they were going to do to Janelle. CIA Chris goes on about how pretty Janelle is and how she's such a good person and that no one should be allowed to treat her this way. As the emails went on, CIA Chris, who was supposed to be a widower who really liked dogs, started to address Barbara as mum. I love that he now has like a backstory. And Barbara had no problem telling Chris what she intended to do to get revenge. In one of her enormously long rambling emails to mystery Chris, Barbara wrote,

We've had enough. No one wants to kill anyone, but we will. In another email, sent the week before the killings, Barbara noted, Hopefully, Monday will be a good weather day and dad will be on his A game. Monday being the morning that Billy and Billie Jean had murdered in their bed. Why do you need it to be good weather to murder people? So you can see, I don't know. It's a good omen. Maybe, maybe.

Chris goes into great detail regarding what an unfit mother Billy Jean was. He claimed to have seen her wearing a short dress in the supermarket and described her as, quote, icky. An email from Chris to Barbara Potter's account said, God, I want to kill them now And in a separate email to Jamie Curd CIA Chris wrote These fuckers just want to make her life hell And I hope she don't think about killing herself

Doesn't really sound like the type of language A CIA agent would use when describing the target of a hit Does it? Icky No, you like this guy He meets someone else, he's now going out with her You run into that woman at the supermarket You come and tell your friends

I saw her in the supermarket She was wearing such a tiny dress That's not a CIA agent saying that. Nope, nope, nope, nope. Throughout the email exchange, a plan emerges to take Billy and Billy Jean out, but it's decided that due to Buddy's ill health, he would need a helper, and so that duty fell to a family friend and Janelle's secret boyfriend, Jamie Kerr. Examination of the family's PC revealed that the emails from CIA Chris were guess what?

Coming from the same IP address as the family computer. The calls in this case were very much coming from inside the house. And given that Buddy couldn't use a fucking computer and Barbara was the one responding to Chris's emails, you don't have to be a genius to guess who Chris was. And just look at the way those emails were written. It's Janelle. Yeah, we can safely say at this point, Janelle is Chris.

Police also sees the secret phone that Janelle had been given by her secret boyfriend Jamie Kurt. And its text records revealed even more about the morning of the murders. So here is what the police think. happened that January morning. Buddy, having been convinced by his daughter and his wife that he needed to kill Billy Jean, and Billy drove off in the early hours to pick up Jamie Curd. At 4.39 a.m., Chanel text Jamie saying, quote, yes, he's leaving now I hear the car. So Janelle knows exactly what her dad is doing. And a minute after this text is sent, Janelle sent

another text that read, I love you, text me ASAP when you get back. This version of events was confirmed by Jamie Curd when he took the stand in his and Buddy's trial in October 2013. Jamie took a plea deal, and for his cooperation he was given a reduced sentence of 25 years. Jamie told the court that Buddy picked him up from his house that morning at around 5am. He claimed that he didn't know what was planned for the day. He just knew that he was supposed to help Buddy with something. But given the content of the CIA Chris emails, I think we can safely assume that that is not the whole truth.

I think Jamie knew exactly what was going on. Once they were together, Buddy drove Jamie to 1-28 Davis Lane where they found that the front door was unlocked. And whatever Jamie says, when they walked uninvited into that house at 5am, he must have known that they weren't there to leave a muffin basket. According to Jamie, he stayed standing by the front door as Buddy walked slowly, carrying a gun into the master bedroom, where he found and shot Billy Payne straight in the face and then slit his throat even though he was already dead. Billy Jean had tried to run from the gun-wielding Buddy,

but she was stopped by Jamie blocking the front door, so she had no choice but to run back through the house into the nursery, and it was there while she was trying to protect her baby, that Buddy Potter shot her in the side of the head. Now, during their trial, 207 pages of emails were submitted as evidence. But if you remember, Buddy couldn't use a computer, so the story doesn't stop there.

We really think, in this case, that Barbara Potter was the mastermind behind it all. She claimed in court that Buddy had confessed to the murders due to low oxygen levels. But when Buddy confesses on the phone, she doesn't ask him about the oxygen. She just tells him to maintain his innocence. Why would low oxygen levels make you confess to a murder? Surely they would just make you pass out. Well, you could probably be confused, I suppose, like having low blood sugar maybe.

But it's just such a... She doesn't think of it at the time, though, that's the thing. And I kind of feel like if it was such a common occurrence that if his oxygen levels are so low, that would be what you'd ask on the phone where are you what's happened have you got your medication have you got your oxygen that's not what she says she literally says no you didn't just say you're not guilty not guilty not guilty

that she says it three times so four months after the murders Chanel and Barbara Potter filed harassment claims against the murdered family so they literally filed harassment charges against dead people what do you want I mean this is obviously to fill in the back pages

but it's like to fill in the backstory that they're saying, but it's like, what, you want to have a straining order against two dead people? This is the thing with this case. Had they thought about all of this, maybe in the run-up, it might have been more of a believable narrative. But it's like everything occurs to them far too late, and then they tried to, like, do it retrospectively, and it doesn't work. As part of this process of them filing harassment charges against two dead people, both Janelle and Barbara submitted lengthy statements to the police, typed in their own words, and these statements would prove invaluable later on.

Now Buddy received two concurrent life sentences at the end of his trial and Jamie will be eligible for parole once he has completed 30% of his 25-year life sentence. But it doesn't stop there with the gunman and his unwitting accomplice behind bars because in Tennessee there is criminal responsibility for the conduct of another statute. So basically, if you encourage, solicit aid or attempt to aid another person in the commission of an offence with an intent that it happened, you are just as guilty as the person who pulled the trigger. This litigation landed Janelle and Barbara Potter in some serious hot water.

Barbara had clearly solicited the execution of this crime because she knew that Buddy wouldn't be able to pull it off on his own. Barbara had initially suggested that Chris helped with the murders, but obviously Chris was not real, so Jamie Kerrude was suggested instead. Both Janelle and Barbara were arrested in August of 2013. Forensic linguist Dr Robert Leonard was able to match the writing form, spelling mistakes and word misuse from the typed harassment statements filed four months after the murders to the CIA Chris email exchange. Janelle had a very childlike way of speaking and writing.

She consistently misspelled certain words and CIA Chris displayed all the same written quirks as Janelle, further suggesting that she was CIA Chris and had catfished her family. and her boyfriend into a double homicide. Prosecutor Dennis Brooks famously argued that although Janelle Potter operated on a fourth grade level, she had a PhD in manipulation. He's so proud of that line. He says it in every interview he can get it into. Like, honestly, every single interview I've read with him or seen, he says that line.

And also, I would too, if I'd have come up with that because it's pretty snappy. He also says that Janelle couldn't write two sentences and hide her identity because she is so unique. Which begs the question, how could her actual mum not have known that she was emailing her own daughter? So the computer was in like a little computer room like everything was back in the early 2000s. So they all share it. So it's literally like, I just have this image of Janelle at the computer sending one of the Chris emails. And then she walks around the corner and then her mom goes in the computer room and reads it. It's like some ridiculous sketch.

And I do think that like kids can be majorly manipulative. But come on, like, I think that Barbara knew. I don't know if Barbara knew. I think that if Barbara knew, then it doesn't make sense to me why she would go along with this murder because what would be the reason for all the rage that she has towards Billy and Billy Jean? I think that Barbara is stupid

and I think she just didn't realize that it was Janelle writing her. I think she believed that her husband, Buddy, was in the CIA, therefore he had some, you know, he had some special treatment at this. CIA. Therefore, the CIA had put this guy, Chris, in charge of looking after his daughter Janelle. And Chris had spotted this huge threat that was Billy and Billy Jean. And the thing is, if you don't know that something is spelled incorrectly or a word as being misused or that this isn't how you would write that, then you wouldn't realize that it was wrong. You would just

think that everybody speaks like that. Maybe. The same thing with Janelle and like a lot of her behaviours. I've been thinking a lot about what would happen if, obviously, if you think about yourself at nine years old or maybe at 15, let's say if she's operating a more of an adolescent level. I'm so horrendously embarrassed by what I was like then. But if you're perpetually stuck at that level, you'd never be embarrassed by it because you'd never know any better. And they're all quite isolated by the sounds of it. I think Barbara doesn't seem like she's got, you know, like a raging social life and

she's out with like lots of friends. I feel like this whole family is quite insular. And therefore I think that even though to the outside world, reading, and listening to the way Janelle speaks and reading the way the emails are written. You have other points of reference to judge that against, but maybe as Barbara, and this isn't making excuses for Barbara, she's a fucking dick. I think maybe Barbara just didn't have another frame of reference to judge the emails that Chris was sending her to know that they were quite obviously not being sent by a CIA agent

who would probably know how to spell things correctly. And so I think she believed it, think she went along with it. and then after the murders it's like who knows at what point she found out that it was all a con but she went fully eyes open into this murder that's the key thing now three and a half years after the murder of billy jean hayworth and billy pain in may 2015 chanelle and barbara were put on trial for their murders

both of them denied any knowledge of the murders or the planning and pleaded not guilty defense attorney cameron hyder used eric endem psychological evaluation of jeanel that we headed at the top of the show as evidence that Janelle simply wasn't capable of masterminding a murder and that having an overprotective father didn't make her a murderer. But his case took a bit of a battering. Janelle's sister Christy took the stand and said that Janelle was perfectly capable of planning a murder.

The court also heard from a lady called Tara Osborne who had also made the mistake of unfriending Janelle on Facebook and had had to file a harassment complaint against Janelle as of result of doing this. The defense team also tracked down Chris Jaden, who had gone to high school with Janelle, but hadn't seen her in over 15 years. Chris Jaden's Facebook pictures had been lifted from his Facebook profile and used to create the profile of CIA Chris. Chris Jaden told the court that he had no idea why Janelle had chosen to steal his identity, only that perhaps he had made an impression on her in high school because he didn't bully her quite as much as everyone else did. But despite being confronted with the man, who she had based the character on,

Janelle to this day fiercely denies that she had any idea who CIA Chris was and that it was definitely not her. And Barbara adopted a similar approach to her daughter. When she was cross-examined at trial, she flatly denied that she had written any of those emails to CIA Chris. And she said that it must have been someone else because she's just not that kind of person. She said, quote, I'm not evil, okay, whatever Barbara.

But the emails to fictitious Chris weren't the only thing that showed Barbara in a pretty suspicious light. She's so funny when you watch her in trial. Like she literally just is this completely like ice maiden and they're like, well, what about this? How can you explain this? How can you explain that? And she's like, I don't know how to explain it, but it wasn't me. Like that's all she's got. And two weeks before the murders of Billie Jean and Billy, Barbara had emailed herself a link to an article that was entitled.

titled, Can God Forgive a Murderer? And I have found and read that exact article, and it makes the point that, yes, God can forgive a murderer. St. Paul had multiple homicides under his belt, and he is one of the top dog apostles. Is that the point that the article makes? Yeah, so basically the article is this guy, is a murderer, and he's written into this guy, this preacher,

and he's like, I'm sitting in prison because I got angry and I killed someone. Will God forgive me? And the preacher writes back to him and says, well, obviously, you've done this terrible thing, but St. Paul was also a murderer and look at him. Wow. St. Paul, when he was Saul of Tarsus, before he walked the road to Damascus, he was a Christian hunter. He killed multiple Christians for being Christians. And then he became Paul. A Christian.

And according to that article, the only greater sin than murder is not accepting God's forgiveness. I thought it was arson. Oh, God. I just thought in like a biblical sense, you could just do whatever you wanted and then as long as you repent hard enough that God forgives you anyway. Yeah. So don't worry about it, Bob. Well, she doesn't. She's very much like, only God can judge me. Like that's her whole vibe in the trial. She insists that she doesn't know anything and she's just like, I know I'm going to heaven with a clear conscience and that's all that matters. Well, good for you. The judge can also judge you, Barbara.

Literally his job. And in later interviews, she says with this stony face, she says, I love my daughter and I love my husband, but I wouldn't sit here and lie for them. But you'd orchestrate a murder. Is that somehow better than telling a lie? So lead investigator, agent Scott Locke, told the courtroom that Janelle inspired the murders. And Barbara got it to happen. And I think he's right. Linda Stevens, the wife of Roy who found the bodies of pain and Hayworth, testified too. She claimed to have seen Barbara and Janelle harassing Billy Jean at a petrol station just days before the murder. Billy Jean was distraught afterwards. Apparently the Potter family had been following her everywhere and they were threatening

her. After seven days of testimony Dennis Brooks asked the jury whether they could imagine the murders of Billy Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth happening if Janelle and Barbara Potter did not exist and I think that's very clever and I it's right if it wasn't for Janelle and or Barbara

they'd still be alive even though Buddy's the one that pulls the trigger. Definitely and I think the key thing in this case is like we can't just see Janella's like this girl who did it for a bit of attention she was like creating these fake accounts giving herself abuse and then somehow it spiraled out of her control and this family ended up dead. No, she actively encourages her parents and Jamie to kill them. That's the key thing. It's not like an accident

that this happened. And the jury agreed. When they returned from their deliberation, they found both Janelle and Barbara guilty of murder in the first degree and they were both sentenced to life in prison in July 2015. They're both currently appealing their convictions. But Barbara's manipulation hasn't stopped just because she's behind bars. In December 2017, prison guard Maria A. Jackson wrote a letter to senior judge, Don Ash, in support of Barbara and Janelle Potter. Jackson was fired and told that it was inappropriate for a prison officer to attempt to influence the outcome of court proceedings. That's bonkers. Like, it's such a Rose West move. Like, just befriending one of the prison officers being like, oh, would you mind, could you make this call for me?

Like, obviously, I didn't do it and I'm in here for all the wrong reasons. Like, it's so blatant. Absolutely. And that poor woman loses her job. I really think the two key people in this case are, despite the fact, like you said, Buddy Pull the Trigger is Barbara and Janelle. They are the people behind this. And if you want to find out more about this case, because it is, it's fascinating.

You can read Dennis Brooks's book on the story. And it's called Too Pretty to Live, the Catfishing Murders of East Tennessee. Dennis Brooks, he's the prosecutor, remember. And he actually got in a bit of trouble after writing it because he did it before the appeals process had been completed. No, he just gets a bit of a slap on the wrist. He's like, they're like, you know, this is a conflict of interest, don't you? And he's like, yes. But he just continues to do it.

Just signing books under the table. Yeah, making loads of money. But yeah, that is the case of Janelle Potter. We will see you next week. No, we won't. We're not going to see you next week. We're taking next week off because I'm going to New York and we've done two live shows and it's all just a bit all over the place.

So there will be no show next week, but we'll be back with an absolute stonker. her the week after so don't worry about it so we will see you then in the meantime you can get your fix by following us on social media at red handed the pod on instagram on twitter come join the Facebook group the Facebook group almost has like 4,000 people in it now yeah we're getting there crazy come join that if you would also like to help support the show you can pledge your support via money on patreon.com slash red handed and great news for all the people that kept telling us i can't find you guys on Patreon. It was because we had been flagged not suitable for work. We probably are not suitable for work, but like, shut up. So we got them to unmark us as not suitable for work.

And now you will be able to once again find us on patreon.com. So come hang out there. Come hang out there and we'll see you next time. Absolutely. Bye. Bye. to shorthand every week, start your seven-day free trial with Wondry Plus, and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or in the Wondry app. It's all a lighthearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid. We're your hosts. I'm Alina Urquhart. And I'm Ash Kelly. And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy.

The stories we cover are well researched. Of the 880 men who survived the attack, around 400 would eventually find their way to one another and merge into one larger group. With a touch of humor. Shout out to her. Shout out to all my therapist out there's been like eight of them. A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing. That mother f***er is not real. And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal,

or you love to hop in the way back machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes. You should tune in to our podcast. Morbid. Follow Morbid on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to episodes early and ad free by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Thank you.