Small Town Murder - Bush Blade In The Hog Bucket - Parsons, Tennessee
Episode Date: September 4, 2026This week, in Parsons, Tennessee, a man walks into a house to discover his baby nephew, crying in a crib, and his brother, butchered in bed. His brother's wife is missing, sending police on a mission ...to find her, not knowing if she's in danger, or if she's the killer. It turns out to be something much crazier, resembling a Coen brothers film, in its pure strangeness. A wild, cold blooded scheme, fueled by "a straw full of crank", and played out for a very odd reason!! Along the way, we find out that you can only bake so many things with lemons, that a "straw full of crank" is probably too much crank & may make you commit horrible crimes, and that if your brother wants to duct tape you, and stuff you into your own car trunk... RUN!! New episodes, every Wednesday & Friday nights!! Check us out on VIDEO Wednesday and Friday evenings on Netflix! www.netflix.com/smalltownmurder Donate at patreon.com/crimeinsports or at paypal.com and use our email: crimeinsports@gmail.com Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions! Follow us on... instagram.com/smalltownmurder facebook.com/smalltownpod Also, check out James & Jimmie's other shows, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!!
Transcript
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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express.
Yay, and Choo!
Yay, indeed, Jimmy.
Yay, indeed.
My name is James Petrigallo.
I'm here with my co-host.
I'm Jimmy Wiseman.
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That said, I think it's time, everybody, to sit back.
What do you say here?
Let's all clear the lungs.
There we go.
Arms to the sky.
Let's all shout.
Shut up and give me murder.
Let's do this, everybody.
Okay.
Let's go on a trip, shall we?
You packed up over there.
You got your suitcase next to you.
Good as I'm going to get.
Looking for it.
Cross body.
Must be behind your chair.
I can't see it.
That's the problem.
It's a fanny pack.
Oh, okay.
One pair underwear and I'm on the road.
One pair underwear and one sock.
That can be a catch-all.
You never know what you need that for.
That's in case.
Yeah.
Just in case.
So we're going to Tennessee this week.
We're going to Parsons, Tennessee, which I had never heard of.
Parsons, Tennessee is in western Tennessee.
It's about an hour and a half to Nashville, about two hours to Memphis.
So right in between in that.
nowhere land in the middle there in Tennessee when you drive on the 40 and it just goes hills like this.
Is it been the smokies?
I guess so.
Two hours and 40 minutes to our last Tennessee episode in Tullahoma, Tennessee.
That was episode 689 Murder Breadcrumb Trail.
That was a wild one too because I remember there was body parts and everything else.
This is in Decatur County like Georgia there.
What is Decatur?
Is that a tree or something?
No clue.
I have no idea.
It's all over the south.
Yeah, a lot of Decatur's there.
A bunch of different states have Decators.
In the north, do there's Decaters, I think.
Is there?
I know what that is.
It's got to be a fucking tree.
Maybe.
I mean, but then it would grow.
I don't know what it is.
We'll have to find out one of these days.
Area code.
Yeah.
Let's have a bonus episode on the, on Decatur.
Why?
Why Decatur?
Area Code 731 here.
Population 2462.
Not a big place.
A little small place.
It's pretty rural.
A lot of farms out here and things like that.
Median household income here.
Wow, this is low.
Less than half the national average.
31,293.
That's household.
Living off the land.
Wow.
Yeah, I hope you grow something to eat because you can't afford to buy anything with that kind of money.
Median home cost here, $126,100.
So also extremely low.
This is like living in 1988, essentially.
The motto here, they do have a motto, and you rarely see mottos with punctuation, and this has an exclamation point on it, so they're really selling it to you.
Take pride and parsons.
Do it.
You son of a bitch.
It becomes aggressive with the exclamation point, doesn't it?
Yeah.
All right.
History, 1880 here.
A young man named George Washington Parton, I.N, not O.N.
Oh.
Parton, George Washington, Parton, left his home in Georgia on a horse-drawn buggy, because how the hell else would we get anywhere back then?
Unless he walked.
That was a long walk to go to Northwestern, to go to Tennessee, to sell sewing machines.
They were new at the time sewing machines.
Eventually, he went to Decatur County where he married a woman, Maggie.
So they liked the Bear Creek area and thought it would be a good place to start a town, which,
Such wild times back there.
You see some nice land and you go, let's start a town.
Not let's live here.
Nobody does that.
Does anyone start a town anymore?
No, we start a house.
That's it.
Yeah.
We start with a place.
He wanted to start a town.
A town.
He purchased a number of acres on the Perryville, Lexington, dirt road near the present big, or a Bear Creek church building, and opened a big general store, and people went to the general store.
So all of a sudden, other people started.
come in here. Cotton gin's doctor's office opened up. Things started happening. There was no post
office nearby. So he put in an application for a post office. And the post office was going to be
called Partonville after him. It was approved and he became the first postmaster of the town.
But then the railroad decided they wanted to build a railroad from Memphis to Tennessee across
the Virginia state line. It was completed and ended at Perryville.
Memphis to Tennessee.
It missed Partonville by about a mile to the south and fuck the town, basically.
If the railroad didn't come through, you were toast.
So he saw it was going on and moved.
Purchased the first lot sold in the new town and bought nearby Bucknerland and then sold Torres Building down and moved to a new town.
And then the post office was moved to Parton, our Parsons, and then Parton.
and then Partonville was gone.
So some guys...
Yeah.
So did he change the...
His name, too?
What's going on?
Why is it no Parsons?
No, they just forgot about him and it's Parsons.
He was stricken from history.
Reviews of this town, here's five stars.
I was raised in arsons.
Not parsons.
I was raised in arsons, he just said.
And there's no other city I would rather grow up in.
It's a small town, wherever.
Everyone knows everyone, and I like that aspect.
A takeaway, though, is that there aren't many job opportunities.
I would think not.
That is a drawback.
And then finally, four stars.
There's only five and four star reviews.
It was like three fives and a few fours.
Parsons is a small town, so you'll get to know most of its residents within two years.
It's a friendly little place to live, and big towns and cities are a 30-minute-to-one-hour drive away.
One drawback is that, since it is a small town, most
everyone will hear about you and your life.
So make sure you give a good impression.
Don't fuck up.
Jesus Christ.
It's like prison here is what that sounds like.
Everyone's going to be watching you and judging you.
Hear about your life.
That literally sounds like if you're going to prison is what they would say.
Make a good impression because everyone's going to know what you did and everyone's going to know, you know, like, that's wild.
In two years, you will probably meet everybody because just by virtue of living, you're going to run across.
everyone? There's only 2,400
people and you figure a bunch of those are
little kids, so you're not going to meet them. A bunch of those
are like elderly people. So anyone within like
a 20 to 50, 20 to 60
range of age, you will meet all those
people probably. Or at least...
James, I was on the HOA board of my neighborhood.
There's only 60 houses. I still
don't know all those people.
You should be fucking ashamed of
yourself for doing that, by the way.
I had to do it.
I had no choice. That's how you get
shit done for your own stuff.
I had to get on the board to vote for my own house.
Oh, that is a disgrace.
That's a disgrace.
But I did it.
Jesus, I want to buy a house, but let you tell me what to do with it.
That sounds fun.
Yeah, it is weird to ask other adults if it's okay if I put different rock down.
That's what I'm saying.
It's very bizarre.
No, no.
Do you know how much I build as?
I could build a burning wicker man in my front yard,
No, it's a fucking word about it.
I love that.
I was arrested as a teenager for breaking, you know what I mean, doing bad things.
Now I ask other adults, is it okay with you if I put gravel in my yard?
They're slightly different color gray, but I think you'll really like them.
I think they'll match everybody's stuff, please.
That's so funny.
It's a little darker brown color.
Is that all right with you?
God damn.
Things to do here, the big squeeze is what I found.
No.
What is that?
It's held on the, it's held.
weekend before July 4th.
If you want to go out and not have to mix up all those fireworks and bullshit.
It's to raise awareness and funds for the veterans in Decatur County.
I don't know if there's any actual body of anybody that's behind this, like a, you know,
organization or anything like that.
If you serve, we'll give you a couple bucks.
Yeah.
It has a lemon up there.
So it's a big squeeze talking about lemon, lemons, I guess.
It starts off with a hero's breakfast.
There's a drop off for the lemon bakeoff.
There's a lemon bakeoff.
The lemonade stands open at 10.
What's that?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, lemonade stands.
There's not much to bake with lemons.
Is there meringue and tart?
I got a schedule.
It says drop off for lemon bake off.
It's the only information I have.
You can just bake a lemon and eventually it'll.
It'll just, I don't know.
Pre-heat 350.
Don't know.
The lemonade stands open at 10.
At 6.30 p.m., they're going to play the sandlot.
Just put on the movie screen in the middle of the park there.
Then there's going to be fireworks.
Then the next day, they have a Lemon Lane touch a truck.
Then they have food trucks.
They have a patriotic parade followed by an outhouse race.
I don't know what that is.
Oh, boy.
Yeah.
Your guess is as good as much.
but it doesn't matter because they're opening for the big headliner,
the Kimberly Hilton band.
I don't know.
I'm sure she's great.
I'm sure she's lovely and wonderful.
That said, let's talk about some murder, shall we?
Let's do this.
My goodness, this is weird and messy.
Okay, let's start out hot October 18th, 1993.
Okay?
Here we go.
93.
Kurt Cobain is still alive.
Put it that way.
It's a much different time.
Everything's going great.
Now, I'm going to read this right from the Jackson Sun newspaper here.
Wilkins Town Road winds through the beautiful wooded countryside of Decatur County off the U.S. 412 near Parsons.
This is where we're going to be.
It's dotted with farms and small homes that are located here and there.
The entire area conveys good, peaceful living.
Okay.
That's how they decide.
The newspaper to set the scene here, all right?
Yeah.
On this day of October 18, 1993, Ted Barnett, he is going to knock on his brother Timothy's door.
Timothy goes by Timmy.
He's going to knock on his door.
He hasn't heard from him in a couple days and he's wondering what's going on with Timmy here.
So he knocks on the door for several minutes and nobody answers.
So he thinks Timmy might be sleeping or something.
He keeps banging, keeps bang.
And eventually he just opens the door.
door and goes in. When he goes in, he finds his brother's eight-month-old daughter, Amelia,
crying in her crib. She's just sitting in her crib. So that's the first thing he sees,
is the baby crying in the crib. And he's like, okay, this is weird. Where, where's the people here?
Then he walked into Timothy's room and he sees blood all over the walls everywhere.
Yeah. I mean, it's a, when we, when you find out what happened, it is a blood. It is a blood.
Bloody scene.
You can't imagine how much spray, spatter, everything else is going on here.
He sees that his younger brother's, he sees his head and sees he has several sharp wounds,
and his head is kind of mushed in between his waterbed mattress and the bed frame.
So those water beds, you can kind of pull up the mattress and get like a spot.
So you can, yeah.
You can roll it up.
So that's what's going on.
If you sleep towards the edge, you'll get pinched.
you'll get in there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah, he finds him.
Now, he looks around.
There is no sign of Timmy's wife also, because he has a wife.
Oh.
And so there's a baby who's crying and fine.
His brother, who is very dead and blood everywhere, and we don't find the wife anywhere.
She's nowhere to be seen.
So this is interesting.
So he calls the police, obviously.
They come over and a little bit of background here.
Now the victim, Timothy, Timmy, Barnett.
He's born 1972.
He's 21 years old at this point.
Wow.
Yeah, young guy.
Young guy.
He, by the way, not only has an eight-month-old, he has two other kids, too, from before his marriage.
At 21.
Pre-20, he had two kids.
That a boy, Timmy.
Wow.
Yeah, that a boy.
Way to completely fuck up society.
Great job.
That's good.
Keep it up.
Come on.
He is viral.
More parents who can't watch your kids.
Please have him, all of them.
Yeah.
I knew he was young just because he had a waterbed still.
Post-30, you can't sleep in that anymore.
93, though, people didn't give a fuck.
They had water beds, which was crazy.
I don't know when they were.
Late 90s, that had to die, right?
Mid-90s, that was the end of it.
Probably 96, right?
Around then.
You can't have a water bed after that, right?
I've been to the room store and places, furniture shorts.
They don't have them anymore.
No, no, nobody buys.
Nobody's buying them.
No.
So, Timmy, a little bit of background on him, he's got a dad named Ralph, a mom named Rita.
He has a brother named Ted, obviously, who found Hib's body.
He also has a sister.
Like we said, Timmy already has two sons and a young daughter with his wife.
He's a farmer, Timmy.
That's what he does for a living, farms.
You'll find out he also does some other shit that we'll find out about.
Now, they classify Janice, his wife, as a missing person at this point.
They don't know if she's a suspect or a possible victim.
They have no idea.
Usually, though, when you walk in and you see one spouse completely slaughtered and the other one gone, you put two and two together and go, okay, the other spouse probably did it, I would imagine, right?
Generally, that's the first clue, yeah.
Generally.
Now, the baby girl appeared to be fine and remained at the County General Hospital for protected.
surveillance at this point because they were afraid
maybe somebody had it in for this family or something. They didn't know.
So they literally have a
little baby sitting in a hospital room with a cop standing outside.
Nobody go near this fucking baby.
There could be a Terminator coming back for this baby. We don't know.
We have no clue. That's the thing. We don't know what he's
changing forms into at this very moment. We can't tell.
Now, where's his wife? Let's talk about his wife.
His wife's name Janice Ann Robinson, now Barnett,
since they've been married.
But Janice Ann Robinson.
She's born 1969.
She's about three years older than him, 24 at this point.
Now, she comes from a good family.
Her father is the Reverend James Robert Robinson, James Robert Robinson.
James Robert Robinson goes by Jim, Big Jim Robinson, the reverend.
And her mom is Barbara Ann Robinson.
They have three kids, including Janice.
Janice is the middle kid in this mix.
She's the Jan.
So we have John is her older brother, John R. Robinson.
He's born in 67.
Then there's Janice, born in 69.
Then they have another daughter named Deborah Sue, who's born a couple years later.
Now, her brother, John, is married to a woman named Kimberly, who's about five years younger than him, and they have a young son.
Okay.
Kimberly, by the way, has a ninth grade education and has no job prospects, no.
anything. I think she's just from the rural, just from the rural area and doesn't know
shit about shit. So she's kids and shit. Exactly. Now, Janice met Timmy and they hooked up and
got married here. Like we said, March of 1993, so whatever, a little bit earlier than that,
February maybe. That's when they had the baby. That's when they had little Amelia here.
Amelia Ann. Everybody's, wow, that's weird. Everybody's middle name. It's.
is Anne. That's interesting. Okay. Now Janice. There's only like four middle names back then.
There really is. Yeah, it's Anne Marie. A lot of them named Marie too. That happens a lot.
Joe. So Joe, yeah, yeah, that too. Yeah. Yeah. Susie Joe. You see that a lot. Yeah.
Now Janice works at a factory. That's what she's been doing, what she's been up to. So the day we find the body, Monday, October 18th, 19, 1990.
That's when Ted finds the body.
And the detective who came to check out this scene said,
We found Timmy face down in the master bedroom.
He had several wounds to the back of the head by a sharp object.
His head was hit so hard that it was shoved between the bed frame and the waterbed mattress.
The hitting forced it in there.
Violent.
Wow.
Yeah, violent, forced in there.
Didn't like it.
A violent attack that drove him and drove his head.
there. They said he sustained three chops to the back of his head. One of the chops completely cut
through the dome of his skull. Wow. To the brain. So think about that's hard. Yeah. Yeah. That's hard,
man. That is a hard chop. That's a machete, right? We'll find out what it is, but it's a hell of it's not a
kitchen knife probably. No. This is a serious weapon right now. Now they look around too and they find that
The phone doesn't work.
So first they think that maybe someone, you know, did something, but it's actually disconnected for unpaid bills.
So there was no.
It's not doing great.
No, there was, to me and Janice are not doing great.
We'll find out there's no way for anybody who could have called for help or anything in this house because they have no phone.
And there's no cell phone.
It's 93.
So if you don't have a phone, if your phone gets disconnected, as I remember being a kid and having that happen once in a while, you have no way to contact the outside world.
You're just stuck.
Wow.
You're just fucked.
They also discover that in the back of a van parked in front of the house, there's a couple things missing, including a bush hook is what they call it.
Huh.
Which is a large curved blade weapon.
It has like a three foot handle and a two foot curved blade, like a big sickle.
Oh, it's the grass cutter.
Yeah.
They call it a bush hook.
Later on, they'll call it a hog something we'll talk about.
but it's a big nasty fucking weapon.
It's a manual lawnmower is what it is.
Yeah.
They see that and they realize that that is missing
and the wounds on Timmy are consistent with a big blade of that sort.
So they're thinking there's possible that that's what caused it,
but they don't know where that is at this moment, the bushhook.
They can't find it.
Oh, God.
They also find in the home a single unfired cascade.
brand 22 magnum
cartridge with a copper jacket and a
hollow point. Unfired.
Just a bullet laying there that doesn't
match anybody's, it's not Timmy's
gun, it doesn't belong to anybody in the house.
So that's also something.
But also there's a compact.
All right.
Now, Ted, who discovered
the body also tells the police
because he's over there a lot, so they said, is there anything
missing that you can tell from the house?
Right. And he said, well, yeah, the
VCR is missing.
and a telephone and answering machine is missing also from the bedroom.
Okay.
So there are answering machine, telephone, and a VCR are missing at this point in time.
Now, Timmy's mom, they get her to come to the scene because Ted calls his mom, not from Tim's house, but somewhere else.
Yeah.
And she says, this is Rita, Timmy's mom.
My friend drove me up to his house.
About a half a mile away, I could tell something was wrong.
Then I saw the yellow tape.
I knew what that meant.
I just started hollering, timmy, timmy, timmy.
So this poor lady.
Now, here's the question.
Where the hell is Janice?
That's what we really want to know.
Yeah, where'd she go?
Well, she is considered at this point a missing person,
and they're literally saying possibly a suspect or possibly a victim.
We're not sure yet.
They're describing her as 24 years old, five feet tall, white blue eyes, long blonde hair,
could be driving a white two-door 1988 Pontiac Grandam, hot shit, with Decatur license plate,
Decatur County plates, ZNV-675.
So that's what they're looking for.
They also find a witness at this point that had seen the Barnets because they're trying to put together Janice and Timmy's night.
How did this happen?
So they find people who had seen them at 1130 p.m. on October the 16th, which seems to be the last time anyone saw them anywhere, basically.
They stopped at a guy named Michael Woody's house, who is a local drug dealer, allegedly, I guess, I don't know, to, quote, pay the wife of Michael Woody some money.
Apparently Janice had owed some money that she borrowed to pay off her brother John's bad checks.
Oh, boy.
This is bad.
Now, when asked by the press if this Michael Woody is a suspected drug dealer, the cop says this, quote, that's hard to say.
Yes.
That's hard to say and then says yes.
We've received information also that Timmy and John Robinson, Janice's sister, were dealing for Mr. Woody also.
So now.
Yeah.
Yes, now we're finding out that he's doing a little more than farming Timmy, and that might make more sense of why someone would want to kill him.
They said, Timmy would sell and give the money to John, but John wasn't giving the money to Woody.
So John's like the intermediary guy supposed to deliver the money that Timmy made from selling the drugs, but he just keeps it.
Yeah.
Jesus Christ.
John sounds like a great guy.
Why does Timmy get killed for that?
That's fucked up.
That's what we're wondering.
Yeah, that's what's interesting.
So they said also John Robinson also had written $6 to $800 in bad checks that the Barnets had been collecting and paying off.
Basically, they've been trying to find out where he wrote bad checks and they're trying to make good on it, essentially.
They said the Barnets were pressuring the Robinsons to get them to pay the money back.
So they kept saying, all these people, you owe all this money, and we've been having to give it to people.
You got to pay these people back.
You've got to pay these people back.
Yeah, we're dealing drugs.
We've got to lay low.
Stop writing bad checks.
Yeah, what are you doing, dude?
Jesus Christ.
You're bringing heat.
You're stealing drug money.
Use that money.
Don't write bad checks.
What's wrong with you?
So Tuesday, October 19th, 19th, 1993.
The police are looking for Janus.
They said, we're still looking for the wife.
Right now, we're classifying her as a missing person until we find out a little bit more.
Until we find her.
We're going to classify her that way.
Yeah.
They said she could be a suspect or she could have been abducted and she could be kidnapped right now.
We have no idea what's going on.
They said there wasn't enough evidence to give any clue of what happened, basically.
Got it.
It's hard to say.
They said there's no forced entry that was noticed, but again, hard to tell.
Hard to say, yes.
Hard to say, they said.
Again, hard to say.
They have a witness now.
Another Janus, not the Janus we're looking for.
A different Janus.
It could be any less confusing.
Telling 2,000 people.
Let's throw two Januses together.
In one story.
Janice Mitchell, this is now.
Okay.
Janice Mitchell's husband contacts the police on Tuesday, October 19th,
the day after Timmy's bodies found.
He tells the police that Janice Robinson,
Janice Barnett, Timmy's wife that we're looking for,
that, oh, I'm sorry, not Janice Robinson,
Kim Robinson, who's John's wife, Janice's brother John,
his wife, Kim.
Okay.
Kim told this guy's wife, Janice Mitchell,
that John Robinson, Janice's brother,
killed Janice.
That's where Janice is.
She's dead and her brother killed her.
And she's dead.
Just stuck her behind a tree.
trailer that's close to the crime scene, a nearby trailer in the neighborhood.
Okay.
Now, that's what they said.
So obviously, the cops don't know if that's true or rumor or what, but they have to go look.
Where do you start?
Everything's a trailer probably, right?
It's the one close to the property.
So they said it's this one.
I just said close to the property.
If I gave everybody all the landmarks, you wouldn't know what the hell they meant.
No.
Close to the trailer.
Yeah.
It's near that one tree.
You know the one.
The blue one next to the Decatur tree.
Yeah.
You go down to where the old barn used to be and take a left there.
You know how that is.
So later that day, they go and they find Janice's dead body.
So these people that called in either had some good information or they did it themselves.
But somebody knew where the fuck she was.
Right on.
Yeah.
And according to those people, it's John's wife, Kim.
is the one who knew where they were.
Now, her body, yeah, her body's been exposed to the elements for more than three days.
So, decomposition, animals, that sort of thing.
They find her decaying in tall grass and woods behind a neighbor's house.
He said, I'll just put her by the neighbor's house.
That way they won't know.
All done.
It'd be different.
Yep.
Then a tip is going to lead to the discovery of Janice's vehicle.
as well.
In the...
The Grand Am?
Yes, the swallow bluff area
of South Decatur County.
Now, Janice, by the way,
her left arm near her shoulder
was sliced really deeply.
Her jaw was broken.
Also.
And her throat is slit
from ear to ear.
I mean, huge.
Whoever did this is angry.
Angry and really,
really angry
and really, really wants to put some
hurt on this show.
shit. So her brother, John, arrives to ID the body because they notify the family. So he says,
I'll go, I'll do it. I'll go ID the body. When he gets there, he's taken into custody for
questioning on the killings. They're like, hey, we were looking for you. Great. Come on in,
buddy. We heard your wife might know something. Yep. They also questioned Kim, his wife. Now, they said
the information we developed from individuals indicated that John Robinson had gone over to the
house and committed the axe over there.
Based on the reliability of the information, we had enough to take John into custody at that
time based on just those tips that they had.
It's enough to at least take them in and have a chit chat with him here.
They also search John and Kim's house on the 20th of October and find a two-shot Derringer
pistol that those 22.
22 bag?
Yeah.
Fits perfect in those.
As a matter of fact, he had one of those in there already.
So look at that.
Those are the bullets.
Was it a palisade or whatever that brand was?
A cascade.
Cascade.
Yeah, same shit.
They found that stained sneakers with blood, a pillowcase and a wash rag that are all blood stained.
So a lot of bloodstained shit and a bullet that matches that.
So now the car, by the way, once they get the fire marshal's office to investigate the car burning that they found, his sister's car, they found out it was actually burned twice.
Oh.
It was burned twice.
They're like, this car's burned twice.
It was burned and then someone tried to burn it again.
He's like, so that's a weird little detail.
Now, the neighborhood freaks the fuck out, as you might imagine.
Yeah.
We described it idyllic with little dots and farms and little houses.
This is, now it's expected.
It's a place to grow up, James.
Sounds wonderful.
Sounds lovely compared.
That's what the reviewer said.
We don't know.
Charlotte Johnson, who lives across the street from the Barnets, said,
that she saw Timothy and Janice Barnett earlier the day they were killed.
She said the murders put us in a state of shock and fright for a long time.
Timmy was best friends with my son and he had been coming over here since he was 12.
They were the same age.
She said the neighborhood will never be the same.
It will fall back to normal somewhat when it's finished in the courts, but we will never
forget what happened.
Another neighbor says she doesn't even like to drive down the road that she lives on.
She went to school with Tim Barnett and went to church with Janice.
And she said, coming from a small town like Parsons, you can't dream that something like this can happen.
Especially if John Robinson did it, I just can't believe anybody would do their family like that.
You don't listen to this show very often, do you?
So did he do it?
Let's find out.
I mean, somebody knew, if he did, James, somebody's a yapping ass some bitch.
Somebody loves to chit chat.
Within three days, you're busted, idiot.
You rolled up to the scene and they're like, hey, looking for you.
Come on over.
Well, let's find out.
Janice Mitchell, she said that about 715 Monday, October 18th, 7.15 a.m.
on Monday, October 18th, 1993.
That's the day Ted walked in and found his brother, Timmy there, that Kim Robinson, John's wife, told her that John had killed these people.
okay so it's all john told her yeah told her that um she said that the that kim went into detail when
conveying the story about the killings as well the conversation occurred two hours prior to
the discovery of timmy barnett so this conversation happened before they even found timmy no one
knew timie was dead yet except for kim yeah it's not like they heard it was all out and she was
like i know who did it she was like hey this happened no one even knew he
he was dead yet.
You're going to hear about this one day.
Yep.
He wasn't discovered until 9 a.m.
that Monday.
This was 7.15 a.m.
So an hour 45 before that happened.
So here's more evidence.
Apparently, he and Kim had been separated up to about two weeks before the murders took
place.
They said that this is from one of Kim's friends, quote, this is the police.
We confirmed through an individual that Kimberly said she would not go back to John
unless Janice was dead.
His sister.
Unless you kill your sister, I'm not coming home.
Wow.
Okay.
Then they said we developed a person that stated on Sunday after the murder took place before the bodies were ever found.
John and Kim came over with a VCR and telephone answering machine combo thing and gave it to them for in lieu of money they owed them.
So they stole this shit or John stole this shit from the house.
then tried to pay a debt with it.
Wow.
I mean, those are big ticket items in 93.
93 of ECR is a couple hundred bucks.
Yeah.
At an answering machine phone combo, James, get out of here.
You could probably three, four hundred bucks worth of debt.
You can get out of with that, probably.
Yeah.
So the items were then given to Tracy Beecham of Jack's Creek.
And after hearing about the murder involvement of the Robinson's,
she then threw the items in the forked deer river near Jackson.
I don't want these.
They said, we have a diving team set up for later in the week to go search for those items.
So then they bring Kimberly in.
And John won't say shit.
He's like, I don't know what you're talking about.
Kim has a much different approach.
She says, let me tell you everything that's ever happened to me, ever.
Real?
I mean, everything.
Yeah.
She starts doing, like we've mentioned before, she starts doing chunk from Goonies and starts telling you.
One time when I was four, my sister, it's wild.
So Kim gave police two different statements.
The first one, she lied for her husband.
And she admitted she was lying for her husband.
I don't know what happened.
He was here, gave him an alibi, all that kind of shit, okay?
The cop, though, says, but after she was given an opportunity to talk with her mother, she gave us a different statement.
Her mother said, don't you go to prison for that scumbag.
Yeah.
You tell.
Kim said she was scared because she hadn't told the truth.
she was scared that John was going to go to jail.
Well, that ship has long sailed.
He is going to jail.
Who gives the shit if John goes?
Yeah.
Question is, are you going or not?
That's what you need to worry about.
So she says, here's what happened.
Okay, I'll tell you the truth.
On the evening of October 15th, John was all high on crank.
I mean, he was methed up, hardcore.
She said.
She said, crank is the way she put it.
Yeah.
They're big users if they say crank.
Oh, they're into it, yeah.
Nobody says crank unless you're cranking.
Yeah, yeah, you could say math.
You could say all this other shit.
But crank is like, I'm using that shit.
I like it.
Yeah.
He was doing that kind of all night. He was doing a little bit here, a little bit there.
Slizzler? A slizzle stick? Maybe.
Got to be one of those. Yeah.
You give her like a McDonald's milkshake straw.
You're like a icy straw, slush puppy straw. You're in deep shit.
Oh, he'll be high for a month.
So later that evening, John left their apartment to go to a local bar.
Yeah.
It's not enough that he's on a straw full of crank. He has to get a couple of drinks at him, too.
Upon returning home, he said that he saw Timmy and Janice, his sister and brother-in-law,
and quote, he was tired of their bullshit,
tired of them yelling at him about bad checks
and that he was going to take care of them.
Tired of their bullshit.
Because they're telling him that people are breaking our balls
about your debts, please pay them.
He's sick of hearing it.
So the Robinson's at that point
had also driven by a friend's house
and saw Tim Barnett sitting in his car.
Later, Tim and Janice talked to John
near a small grocery store,
and that's when you need to pay your debts, basically.
The Barnets asked John to take care of the $600 to $800 in bad checks he had written them, essentially.
John said he was tired of their shit,
and he said he was tired of Timmy giving him problems about the bad checks,
and he said he was going to take care of them,
and he was going to go kill them.
That's what he told Kim.
Kim said she never took the comments to heart because John,
makes threats all the time and he was all cranked up i mean you know he's just talking shit she said i thought
he was crazy and high i was trying to calm him down okay she indicates he was yeah shocking he was
frantic after that saying he was going to kill them and insisting that she kim take him over to
their house right now now well i'm still all well i still got a straw crank in me yeah yeah so she said
okay and got a babysitter.
This is my favorite part.
The most, she what?
She made a phone call.
Yeah, a couple hours if you go,
we're just going to go murder some family members
if you could just come by, be nice.
Look, I got $8 an hour minimum $20.
I got upwards of $20 with your name on it.
And you may order pizza.
That's the other thing.
I'll leave pizza money.
I'll leave a 10 on the table.
You may order pizza, fudge sickles,
in the freezer. We good? All right.
He got a sitter
for a murder.
For a murder. How wild is
that? I've never heard of that before.
We've never had that before. That's unbelievable.
Would have been even
better if she said, we'll just take the baby.
It don't matter. It threw them in the car. That would have been
awesome. I can't get a sitter on this
late a note. God damn it. Put him
in the car seat. He sleeps when we drive.
It's all right.
And she can't say I didn't know
what we were going to do. He told her,
I'm tired of their shit.
I'm cranked up.
It's murder time.
It's murder.
And she said, let me call the sitter.
Hold on.
I'll call that 13-year-old down the street.
The sitter.
Yeah.
She's always up for free pizza.
Let's bring her over.
Wow.
So at John's insistent, Kim said she drove back, drove the back roads.
Wouldn't even let her drive the regular roads because she's all paranoid to the
Barnett's Wilkins Town Road home.
About midnight, she stopped the car, about two houses away, let John off.
off in a ditch, she said, and then drove back to her home in Scott Hill.
She said, I was getting pretty worried because it was taking so long.
I asked Tommy Alexander to ride with me to where I drop John off.
So she said that the whole point was he instructed her to return home and that he would call
her when he was ready to be picked up.
I don't know where he's going to call from because they don't have a fucking phone.
They don't have a phone.
No.
About 4 a.m., that is when he just shows up back.
at their apartment.
He made it back.
He just popped up back at the apartment with no ride.
I'll bet you the not having a phone thing definitely put a snag in his plans.
They fucked the whole thing up.
Yeah, he was expecting to be able to make a phone call.
Yep.
Now he's got a walk.
All fucking jacked up on a struffle and nothing and everything else.
So she said that she and Shelly, the babysitter, Shelley.
That's a babysitter name.
Shelly.
and Tommy Alexander were all present when he came home.
They said that he came in.
He was real pale, sweaty, dirty, had grass all over him, and looked, quote, freaked out.
If you gave me a strawful of meth, that's about probably what you would describe me at as well, right?
And have me murder somebody and then walk.
I don't know how long back home.
I might look just like that.
I'm saying cut out the murder and the walking.
Just give me a bunch of meth in a couple hours and you're going to go.
He was real pale and sweaty and dirty and freaked out.
I don't know what was going on.
I'd be a mess.
Walk home.
Who knows?
If I'm on meth, I might crawl under cars that I don't have to crawl under.
You never know.
I might be kind of dirty.
You never know.
Yeah, you might have done some.
How'd you get power steering pump fluid on your back?
It's a couple of stop dropping rolls for no reason.
Just I'm on fire.
Shit, down.
All right.
I'm good.
And hop back up again.
I don't know.
So Tommy Alexander, one of the people there, said that John appeared to have either blood or a scratch on his face and that Kim said that John made everyone leave except for her.
Everyone get the fuck out.
Shelly, you get your $20 and get the hell out of here.
Go on.
Get lost.
Take your Elyos to go.
Now move it.
All right.
So she said that after everyone had left, she said, quote, I asked him why he didn't call me.
and he said the phone was disconnected.
And I asked him what happened.
And he just looked at me and said, they're dead.
And I said, who's dead?
And he said, Janice and Timmy.
So she said he's got grass all over me.
He's very nervous.
They're dead.
She said, I started crying and freaking out.
John took me by the arms, shook me and told me to calm down.
He gave her one of those.
Get yourself together.
Like in an old movie, start paint brushing her.
Get it together.
Come on.
You didn't kill anybody, bitch.
Yeah.
Fuck are you freaking out.
I'm the one that should be behaving like that.
And then he said, I did it for you.
He said, that's all you talk about, that you want Janice dead.
And then he said, I didn't like her anyway.
It's his sister.
It's his little sister.
I didn't like her anyway.
Imagine killing your little sister.
That's wild.
And you don't even like your sister.
But still.
Oh, yeah.
You're not going to kill her.
I mean, I kind of killed her.
I haven't seen her in eight years.
As far as you go, I guess she's essentially dead.
So then she said that they drove to a factory where he left the Grand Am, Janice's car.
Then he got into the Barnett's car, I guess here.
Oh, they had to go get the car because he had left the car.
He drove the Grand Am out to here, then walked home from there.
So they go get the car.
Then he follows her.
in their car, in the Barnett's car, to a deserted area.
They arrive.
He gets out of the car, removes items from the trunk, which Kim said look to be Bill
Folds and some clothes, a bunch of others.
Got to take that one shirt that Timmy had.
That was a damn nice shirt.
I'm going to take that.
He burns it all in a culvert near the road, except for she saw Tim's wallet that he
kept.
He kept Tim's wallet.
Before leaving, he set the car on fire.
Okay.
Then they drive to Memphis.
That's the thing.
There's nothing.
This is there's no, they'll stop complaining about my bad checks.
Right.
You still owe money on the bad checks.
Kim will quit pitching that my sister won't leave her alone.
Less nagging.
It's okay.
They drive to Memphis that morning.
Okay.
They dropped off their son, Spencer, with Kim's mother, and they started driving toward Memphis.
That's when John told her actually what happened here.
she said John didn't want to talk about it.
I told him I was going to tell the police about burning the car, and then John started crying.
John told me after I dropped him off, Jesus Christ, he said he, you know, went in there and he said that, he said he went down the road.
And he said he went there to begin with, okay?
Janice let him in the house.
That's what happened.
He told Janice that he and his wife had been fighting and that he needed.
a ride to his car.
Janice went in and told Timmy,
who'd been sleeping,
that she was going to take John to his car.
And Timmy went,
whatever, and went back to sleep.
Okay?
He separated.
Then, yep.
Well, then, okay, here it is.
Here's Tim's, or Kim's statement.
Quote,
he said they went to a road,
they went down to a road,
and he said that Janice was raising hell
about the checks,
about me, meaning Kim,
about everything.
And he said that he needed to use the bathroom
and he got out,
and when he got back in,
he hit her with a gun.
He then duct taped her and put her in the trunk.
Duck taped her hands.
Put her in the trunk.
He said he then went into their house, the Barnett's house, and started walking around
and then stopped and thought, what am I doing?
I got my sister duct taped and pistol lift in the trunk of her own car.
This is crazy.
And he said he was going to go back to let Janice out of the trunk.
This is a story he told his wife.
To talk to to talk her into not tell.
on him for what had just happened.
Please don't call the cops and say,
I pistol-wipped you and kidnap you.
I'm telling me about this.
That he was going to let her out and that she had,
but by the time he got out there,
he realized she'd kicked her way through the trunk.
Yeah.
She kicked her way out of the trunk and took off running.
When he got outside, she was running.
He said, shit.
So he chased her.
She was running to a neighbor's house,
screaming at him, back at him,
about how she was going to send him to jail.
Okay.
So he said he went to the porch she was on, tried to calm her down, tried to get her to listen to him, but she wouldn't.
She just kept screaming and fighting him.
He said he pulled the gun out and tried to shoot her, but it wouldn't shoot.
Wouldn't work.
So, and this gun apparently was notorious for not working all the time.
So then she took off running.
They're standing there.
He tries to shoot her, click, click.
And she was like, and took off.
Like, if I'm not shot, I guess I better run.
So she takes off running.
He tackles her.
She picked up a brick, he says, and tried to hit him with it.
And he took it away from her and started shaking her.
Again, he's a, what are you doing?
He's a shaker guy.
And then he hit her head in the head with the brick.
And he said he heard her neck pop and she didn't move.
He said, he broke her neck with the brick.
Yeah.
So then he said at that point,
I guess I got to go kill Tim.
I better go kill Tim because he knew that we left together.
He knew that John and Janice left together, so had to kill Timmy.
So Timmy wouldn't tell that him and Janice left together.
That's what he tells Kim.
I had to kill him.
I had no choice.
So, wow.
He continued to say that he found a blade describes a three-foot handle with a two-foot-long
blade and went into Tim's room.
He found a blade in a pig bucket, by the way.
Oh, God.
A blade in the pig bucket.
It's so gross.
It's disgusting.
He said that he, quote, said he just started hitting Tim.
He said that Tim never knew what happened.
He said he was sleeping when he attacked him, so he never even came to, came to.
And just, he started hacking him up like sling blade.
I mean, this is a sling blade type incident here.
Billy Bob Thornton here.
Is this a worse weapon? I think it is.
Sling blade, it all sounds bad.
A two-foot blade out of the hog bucket, that does not sound good.
I mean, I was picturing, yeah, you're right, he killed his mom with a sling blade.
It's the same blade.
Yeah, same type of thing.
I was seeing the lawnmower blade at the end when he whacked dude in the head.
Yeah, that one of those too.
This is definitely the worst weapon, right?
This is horrifying, yeah.
John said he hit him a couple more times, but blood was splashing, so he quit.
Yeah.
He quit because there's too much blood pouring out on him.
He just didn't like it.
Too much blood.
Got to leave.
When you're on a straw of crank, blood makes you uncomfortable.
So, wow.
Wow.
So after killing Timmy, he went back to see whether Janice was dead or not.
She looked dead, but he said he went out there to check her, lifted up her head and
cut her throat to make sure she was dead.
Yeah.
That's cold, dude.
That's his sister.
Yeah.
But he's also minimizing what he did to her.
Even with that.
Even that's minimized.
Absolutely.
Then he said, Kim said that John made her go back with him to the car again.
The grand am that he had burned.
It hadn't completely burned.
So using lighter fluid, he ignited the car for a second time, which is why it was
burned twice.
Then got her VCR and a telephone.
phone answering machine he had hidden beside a tree close to the car.
Yeah.
Wow.
Then that's when they had dinner at Tracy Beecham's home and he gave Mr. Beecham the VCR
an answering machine to satisfy a debt.
And then they discovered, holy shit, this is a, these are murder items and threw them
in a river.
So the cop who took the statement from Kim said at this point, everything we have points to
John, even though he's denying it.
They said, you know, he has, wouldn't give the cops a statement.
They said, only John Robinson knows why he killed them until he tells me, I won't know why.
These people are like, why would he kill his sister?
What the hell?
Then let's get Carla Duck in the picture here.
What's she do?
Carla Duck is a friend of Janice's, and she said she had heard Kim threatened to kill Janice at least twice.
Oh?
At least twice.
Duck recalls once during this summer when she heard a message on Janice's.
Janice's answering machine that she claimed was Kim saying, and she said Kim called up and left a message and said she would kill Janice and her baby.
So just go.
Let's take it further.
Put that on tape.
I'm going to kill you and your baby, bitch.
Guys, this is wild.
I get that you're in the middle of nowhere, but you have to realize there is a civilization going on around you.
Right?
I get on this road, it's pretty quiet.
$800.
Ruin their life.
ruined their life.
If someone just had $600, this all could have been squelched.
This is wild.
I will, bitch, I will get a sitter and I will kill you and your baby.
And your baby.
I will get a sitter first, though, because I'm responsible.
I leave my baby by herself.
I'm in debt $800.
I'll go in debt $820.
Fuck it.
I don't care.
Well, it's actually $8.35 because I did promise pizza.
I promised pizza.
You got a tip.
I'm a good person.
I tip.
With the piece of tip.
So sometime after the message threat,
Carla Duck and Janice went over to Kim Robinson's house,
which sounds like a bad idea.
Kim and Janice became involved in an argument,
which led to a physical fight.
This is just all trashy bad stuff here.
Kim came, she said, quote,
Kim came running out of the house,
rantin and raven.
A ranton out of raven.
She said she'd see us both days.
Now Carl is involved in this too.
She's going to die too.
So they asked Duck here, who separated from her husband, if she had been romantically
involved with John Robinson at any time because John and Kim Robinson were also separated
during this time.
She said, John has been to my house and I've been to his sister's house where he was staying
because while they were separated, he was staying there.
So then they said, did you have sex with John?
and she said, no, we kissed on the mouth.
Which is like, okay, now I get why his wife wants to murder you.
Now we're making sense.
This is the first thing that's fucking made sense in this episode so far.
Yeah.
Okay.
So the cops here, they talk about all this.
It's a complicated relationship with drugs and money and, you know, just a mess here.
They said Janice and John were brother and sister, but there had been problems between the two primarily over money.
He said we received unconfirmed information that John and Timmy were involved with drug trafficking.
John was supposed to have owed Janice and Tim $6 to $800 because of bad checks.
Upwards of $800.
Upwards of $800.
Wow.
So Kim is arrested also.
She turns herself into the sheriff's department.
She is also charged, same as John, two counts of first degree murder and arson.
Oh, shit.
You couldn't be more involved in the whole thing.
You drove him there.
You drove him all around, picked him up.
And, you know, in jail, John talks to an inmate and says that he burned the blood of the bloody clothes he wore while committing the murders and discarded the murder weapon in a gully, quote, where nobody would ever find it.
There you go.
Why is he so talkative?
They reduce.
He's an idiot.
He's probably on meth.
It's crazy.
So they reduced Kim's Bond from 100,000.
to $50,000.
Her mother says, well, my daughter has a ninth grade education, no job or money.
So we're going to have to help her out if we want to get her out of here.
They said that Kimberly's family should be able to make bond soon and that the evidence presented Monday.
This is Kim's lawyer, was weak.
What are you talking about?
They have your whole statement of you describing exactly what happened.
Yeah.
And wounds that corroborate your story.
That's not good.
No, they said the only thing that was presented here today was that she carried her husband over to the crime scene.
Maybe she ought to be punished, but not before a trial.
Okay.
July 27, 1994, some time goes by before the trial.
John escapes from jail.
You've got to be shitting.
Of course not.
No.
John, another guy, accused murderer Charles Gary Bruce, a federal prisoner named Frederick Zong,
and a guy named Tommy Poe,
all, I guess, pulled apart the fence from a pole
at McNary County Justice Complex in Selmer and escaped.
They loosened four bolts and squeezed through an opening in the fence.
Good job, everybody.
Way to keep everyone inside.
The fence is so unsecured that four guys can take time,
each one bolt and we're free murderers.
County jail, two murderers.
Yep, this is a, the escape spark.
marked a huge manhunt, including federal, state, county, and city.
Yeah, because there's two murderers escaped here.
Yeah.
So a few days later, July 29th, still on the loose.
Can't find them.
Oh, my God.
And these are, like, not good murderers, too.
I mean, there are, there's some serious murder.
He killed his own sister.
Yeah.
The Bruce guys accused of murder and arson in connection with the deaths of federal witnesses in
Benson County.
These are bad people.
These are bad, bad people.
They have at least 30 federal state and local law.
law enforcement officials combed the woods near the jail while a Memphis police helicopter armed with infrared heat seeking scope hovered overhead.
It's a fucking mess.
It's a fucking mess.
There needs to be more.
Yeah.
This is wild.
They said it's a $4.2 million brand new jail and courtroom complex, which came under some criticism in local newspapers as a teak paneled white elephant.
They said that the, yeah.
the sheriff's spokesman said that the men escape by removing retaining devices, blah, blah, blah.
They said the men have probably split up, they say.
Wow, this is fucking crazy.
They say also that there have certain leads of where some of them might be able to go.
They said it was pure human error, gross negligence.
The jailers whom they wouldn't name until a hearing have been suspended without pay pending a disciplinary hearing.
Someone just wasn't watching where they were supposed to be watching.
August 1st, they're finally captured.
Well, at least two of them are.
One ended up turning himself in.
He showed back up at the jail and said, I'm here.
Literally just walked back up to the jail a couple days later.
Wasn't working.
Yeah.
The other two, John and Tommy Poe are, this is from the newspaper.
The two, chigger-bitten, scratched up fugitives were arrested at Poe's mother's house.
They were crawling around the woods for days.
Yeah, they were just hanging out.
The mother didn't even know they were there.
She was like out and that wasn't home.
She didn't even know it was going on.
And they said, you don't just charge mothers with harboring their sons.
So they said they wouldn't charge her with harboring.
Kimberly pleads guilty to two counts of voluntary manslaughter and setting fire at a personal property.
Okay.
The plea agreement is in exchange for her testimony, obviously.
And she will receive two eight-year sentences and a four-year sentence, which will all run concurrently.
So eight years.
They said she's going to plead guilty to two counts of voluntary manslaughter, and she'll get that.
So now the sentence is run together.
She'll only be required to serve 35% of eight years before she's eligible for parole.
So less than three and a half months?
Almost three years.
Less than three years.
That's a matter.
Yeah.
Wow.
So late 94, here is John's trial.
And the opening statement is just basically everything Kim said.
They said that John Robinson produced a gun, forced his sister into a grand damn, taped her hands together.
She escaped.
He chased her down.
He beat her.
He cut her throat.
He fucking, it's horrifying.
And if he didn't do this, why do you escape?
Exactly.
And the other thing is, this is the, for some reason, it's a weird detail I keep getting stuck on is that he can't.
hacking at his brother-in-law until he started to get blood on him.
And then he was like, oh, this is gross.
It's too much.
I can't even get my hands dirty doing this.
Worse, he did that, couldn't get blood on himself, then went back to his sister and opened
her throat.
Opened her throat.
It's wild.
Now, the defense has another boogeyman.
They blame Michael Woody, the drug dealer that they were both working for allegedly.
Michael Woody testifies, I ain't have shit to do with anything.
You can say I'm a bad guy and a drug dealer, but I didn't kill anybody, and I'm not, you ain't pinning this on me, motherfuckers.
So that's that.
The defense also says about Carla Duck, the one who said that she was the one making out with John and having Kim wanting to kill her.
They said, obviously, Mrs. Duck was having an affair with Mr. Robinson.
During a fight, Mrs. Robinson said, I'll kill you.
I don't put any credence to that.
I call that non-evidence.
That's what the defense says.
Okay.
Now, here's one of John's major arguments.
I didn't do it, and your time of death is all off because the baby wasn't really alone for two days.
That's how I'll prove it, even though the medical examiner said that they've been dead for days.
Oh, right.
He said, yeah, he said the baby after 48 hours should have had dry defecation on her and should have been on the verge of starvation.
So the jury did hear evidence that the child immediately consumed two bottles upon being discovered, starving.
They did not hear evidence, though, pertaining to the child's examination at the hospital, nor did the record indicate whether any indications of urination or bowel movements were found in the child's crib.
So everyone out there at home who is really wondering about this baby shit, I don't have that information for you.
And I apologize.
Why not?
Why not?
They have other witnesses.
They have the cop who interviewed Kim.
And he said, Kim said to me that she didn't like Janice.
She said, I wanted Janice dead anyway.
That's why it hurts so much.
Okay.
She said that John told Kim, I did it for you.
That's all you talk about.
You wanted Janice dead.
I didn't like her anyway.
All that kind of shit.
So the cop who took Kim's statement goes on to say, you know, describes it freaking out.
John freaked out because Janice was dead.
and yada, yada, yada, basically.
Kim drove back to Scotts Hill.
John was to call her, but an hour or so later showed up at the apartment.
The whole mess of the night he's testifying to, and everyone's like, whoa, holy shit.
Kim testifies that the, I guess the Barnets were not supposed to be home is what she's saying on the stand now.
She's kind of tweaked her testimony a little bit.
She said they're not, yeah, so they were going to just rob them to burglarize the house,
but they were home.
So it all had to go like this.
On cross-examination, she said her husband's story changed after she was arrested and charged with the same murder.
She said Robinson, John told her that Mike Woody, who supplied the drugs to her and her husband,
killed the two while Robinson was present and threatened to kill Kim and their son if John told anybody about it.
She says this understand now.
That's what John told him.
He showed up.
He showed up when we were on our way there to kill them, but he already done it.
Yeah, but we were all going over there to rob them.
That's the bad story.
We was going to rob them and we showed up and there was already a guy there like killing him and everything.
So, you know, but that's literally what it was.
So that's, that's, Kim accuses him because that's John's defense's new story and she's on board with John still.
So in closing, the defense is saying, Michael,
Woodie, Michael Woody, Michael Woody. He's the guy
who did it. Quote, dealing drugs
is caused all of this. It's the
Michael Woodies of the world that prey on
John Robinson, Tim Barnett,
and the Janice Barnett's of the world.
He's just a victim.
He's then says, I'm not saying
John Robinson's a saint.
Don't get me wrong.
But he did not kill his sister or his brother
in law. The state has not fully
investigated this case. The parents
of John Robinson need better answers
than that, because they're also
the parents of the victim, Janice.
It's a good point. Yeah.
The prosecution said, you can't really get full justice when a couple of people are
chopped to death. But I can't blame John Robinson's attorney. If my client was charged,
I would find the biggest, ugliest, meanest person to try to pin it on to, meaning the
Michael would. I'd try really hard. I would.
He said the, so yeah, the verdict comes in to an hour and 50 minutes, and they convict him,
two counts of first-degree murder and one count of arson.
Sentencing comes around.
Rita testifies Timmy's mom and said,
Amy knew her mommy and her daddy.
That's the daughter.
For at least two or three months after we got her,
when she'd see someone with blonde hair,
she'd want to go to them.
We keep a picture of Janice and Timmy in the living room.
She'll look at it and say mommy and daddy.
She said, nobody wins.
The Robinsonsons have lost and we have lost.
Amy doesn't have a mommy and daddy.
It's hard to make it in this world without loving parents.
Timmy was 21, but he was still my baby.
He was sweet and gentle and loved life.
Nothing can bring him back.
But I do feel John Robinson needs to be punished.
I feel life without parole is the closest thing to that.
Now, John and Janice's father gets on the stand, Jim, Reverend Jim.
And he knows how to make a public spectacle of himself and sob and all that shit.
So he gets up there and, you know,
He's sobbing, begging for mercy and all that kind of thing.
And he said, a lot of lives have been struck.
My wife and I have three children.
We've lost one and we're fixing to lose another one.
It's a great burden to bear.
We've all lost a great loss.
I'd trade places with Timothy or Janice.
I would even trade places with John, but I can't.
And so he said, the drug problem is destroying the whole world.
Oh.
Yeah.
What about straws?
What about that?
No more straws, damn it.
That's where the paper straw movement came from, was this shit.
So the jury instructions here, they said that they have to find existence of one or more of the statutory aggravating circumstances.
The murder was committed for the avoidance of avoiding interfering or preventing a lawful arrest.
Committed, was engaged in committing or was an accomplice in the commission of another crime.
So all that kind of thing.
The jury found that the definition on statutory aggravating circumstances number two, meaning it was committed while the defendant was engaging and committing or was an accomplice in the commission of or was attempting to commit or fleeing after committing or attempting to commit any first-degree murder, robbery, burglary, theft, or kidnapping.
Which you did multiple of those.
They took an hour and 15 minutes and said, you, sir, may fuck off life without parole.
two sentences consecutive.
Oh, boy.
Oh, and a two-year sentence for the arson, also consecutive.
What about the escape?
The escape, that's a separate issue.
They don't do that in this trial.
That's a totally separate trial.
John and Janice's mom, Barbara, said,
I don't feel justice has been done in Decatur County.
She said they need to go after the one who did it and not be afraid of him,
meaning they're not going after this drug dealer because they're so scapeer.
of him. So they're just pinning it on her son just to
James, he's willing to dice people up with a, with a manual
lawnmower. With a, something out of a hog bucket. That's, wow.
So the appeal, 95, he appeals, and he said that, you know,
the challenges the sufficiency of the evidence. He said that two to three
weeks after the arrest, someone else, quote, committed the murders and
that there was a grossly insufficient investigation into his
allegation because he said, I know who did it.
He told him Michael Woody did it.
And they were like, sure, he did.
You know, they looked into it.
He had an alibi, by the way.
Michael Woody was at like a sporting event or some public thing that night.
He was with a bunch of people.
It was impossible.
That is the tough part of trying to blame somebody else is that you don't know where
they were.
You better know where they are.
Yeah, they could have been on fucking television at that point, doing a live interview or something.
You have no idea.
That's a problem.
That's a problem.
Also, spousal privilege.
says that the testimony of his wife should not have been admitted.
But yeah.
So there's that.
He also said that, you know, findings of fact by trial judges are afforded the weight
of jury verdicts and are conclusive if there's any evidence to support them.
We find that the record supports the trial judge finding that the attorney had not
received confidential information, which is another thing.
Accordingly, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting Mrs. Robinson's
testimony. Obviously, there's plenty of evidence. You can keep fucking off, and that's where he
remains, fucking off in a prison in Tennessee. So there you go, everybody. That is Parsons, Tennessee,
and just a goddamn mess of a fucking... Terrible. For nothing. Disaster. He killed his sister for
nothing. Nothing. And her husband, for a 21-year-old father of three, whose life was already going to be
so fucking hard.
There's already farming and meth involved.
This is, it's rough to begin with.
So, holy shit.
So anyway, there you go.
That's Parsons, Tennessee.
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