S7 Episode 176
Sword and Scale- 1,966 views
- 20 Dec 2020
We’re all looking forward to retirement, when we can finally cash out all of our hard-earned savings and live off of it until we die. That’s the hope, at least. Joel Guy Senior and his wife Lisa Guy had just sold their house in Knoxville Tennessee and were preparing to move to a new home in Surgoinsville in December of 2016. They had no idea that Thanksgiving of 2016 would not only be the last holiday celebrated at their old Knoxville home, but it would be the last holiday they’d ever celebrate together.
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There were many blood spots in different areas throughout the home, and there were also multiple dismembered body parts in various rooms throughout the home. Hello and welcome to Season seven, Episode 176 of Sword and Scale, a show that reveals the worst monsters, a real.
Well, we seem to have a theme going here about entitlement. I wonder why that is. Anyway, you're going to enjoy this one. It's filled with all the blood and guts you weirdos like.
Just a fair warning, this is the last episode of Season seven, we won't be back until next year. Details at the end of the show. Thank you for supporting us. Thank you for buying merchandise. Thank you for joining us. We love all of you guys. We hope you have a wonderful, wonderful holiday season, whatever your religious denomination is or isn't. And we'll catch you on the flip side in twenty, twenty one. Valentine's Day is always a challenge, everything is overpriced, it's hard to get a reservation anywhere, and this year there's all kinds of other concerns, too.
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In November of twenty sixteen, twenty eight year old Joel Guy Jr. drove back to his home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after a long and relaxing Thanksgiving weekend. He usually alternated holidays because the trek up to Knox County, Tennessee, where his parents lived, was long and boring. Every other year, he'd drive up for Christmas and on alternating years he drove up for Thanksgiving. This weekend in twenty sixteen was particularly special, though it'd be the last time Joel's parents and the rest of the extended family would spend together in the house on Golden View Lane, Dagi Senior and his wife, Lisa Guy, were preparing for retirement.
All of their children surrounded them to celebrate this new chapter in their lives. Togo's senior had daughters from a previous relationship, but when he married Lisa, they had their own son together. Joel Jr., though Lisa Guy was a stepmother to her husband's children, the family meshed well. Joel and Lisa had been married for over 30 years, and the patchwork family was very close knit. Lisa's been in my life my entire life and it said at three that she's been my entire memory.
This is Michelle, one of Jorgo seniors, three daughters, because Lisa and Georgas senior married when Michelle was just a toddler. She really had been there as a mother figure to the girls for nearly their entire lives.
And so we would go in the summers. We would have us for a month in the summer because they always lived so far away. And Angela and I would go visit for the entire month. But the dynamics of that was my mom was a single mom. So their struggles with single moms that when we went to Lisa's house, her cabinets were stocked with food and she greeted Dad like the perfect Walton family. When they would come home, dinner would be cooked with meat and side dishes and there would be candy in the shelves.
The girls, especially Michelle, idolized Lisa growing up. Going to visit Lisa and her dad for just one month out of the summer was like a luxury vacation guy.
Junior got to live with Lisa and Joel Senior. His entire upbringing, he felt the everyday luxuries of having a stocked fridge, a clean house and clean laundry.
His three and a half sisters did not. Instead of feeling jealous or resentful, Michelle and her sisters simply looked forward to their one month of bliss every summer. After all, it wasn't all Junior's fault that he was born into a double parent household. As the three girls grew up and became adults, the relationship with their father and Lisa guy grew into a more mature one. Michelle saw Lisa as her best friend, and she admired her. She looked up to her even as she entered parenthood herself.
I so wanted to be this woman that my first engagement ring was her exact engagement ring. And I wanted to be the mom. She was. I wanted to she would sit in her little brown spheeris brown shirt.
She had a really heart in her foot and just with her cub, I wanted to even at certain points in my life, I walked around with a cup that had like the little square placement under it because I wanted to be her and be the mom that she was told by senior.
Michelle's father was a great parent and housekeeper as well.
My dad makes a bit of every day, Lisa. One thing they always did, even growing up like I wanted to be the housewife that made the dad like Lisa did. And so the bed was always made. The bathroom stuff was always clean.
So they lived far from each other. Later in life, Michelle, her two sisters, Lisa Guy and Joel Guy Senior, kept in touch on an almost daily basis.
We had a group text. It was more like text was banter, just funny. It even through email, dad would send banter of funniest.
Don't you just love getting Meems from your family over email tath? They're always so hysterical, though. They no longer had that month long visit in the summertime to look forward to. The family excitedly anticipated the holiday season. Thanksgiving was quickly approaching and Michelle planned to bring her boys to her parents house.
I'm not sure what time I arrived. It was early. We always spent all day together. My three sons were with me, so my sons came with me and then my boyfriend was coming. That evening he was having Thanksgiving dinner at his grandma's house and then he was coming to my house. But my parents did not know at that point that he was coming.
Michelle's half brother, Joel Jr., was staying at his parent's house, too. Michelle had never really gotten to know him very well, and she assumed he would be out of sight for most of the day.
I don't know if it's usual for everyone else, but ours is. You hang out in the garage and you laugh and you talk and you tell the same story. And then you move to a different spot. So he moved at one point to the back porch. This day was a little different. It was always more the typical time with Dad. And Lisa was more laughing and banter. But is Joe Michael Junior was there. He wasn't ever hanging with us doing that banter.
He would be in his room for Thanksgiving was completely different. And moment that I arrived, Joe Michael Junior was talking to us. And so I'm not sure Joe Michael Junior knew my kids names. And so for him to talk to them was was odd. And so he was talking to my kids and he was bringing them upstairs. They had Lisa had kept every single thing that this kid had that I mean, he wasn't a kid at that point, but his entire everything, Beanie Babies that he had collected things that he put on the shelves like eggs and stuff, and she memorialized not a word his entire life in boxes upstairs.
And so they were bringing those boxes down. But it wasn't Lisa giving that away. Lisa, when Lisa didn't want to give it away, it was like a junior giving it to my boys, which was still odd for the first time ever.
Joel Michael, as Michelle refers to her half brother, was giving his old Beanie Babies and other toys to his nephews. Actually, it was really the first time Michelle witnessed her brother interacting with her children at all. Like Michelle mentions, she wasn't even sure if Joel knew her kids names and he usually just kept to himself. Michelle was on high alert after seeing the exchange between her children and her brother upstairs in his old bedroom. Something weird was going on.
Children whose parents were really the only couple in his life who knew him. His sisters had little to no relationship with them, and that wasn't by accident. Joel Junior had one singular best friend, a friend that had been in his life for nearly a decade.
They went to high school and college together and even attended a two year boarding school program for gifted students. During the course of this decade, the two room together on and off. This man, Michael McCracken, had no idea that Joel even had siblings during the years that they lived together.
Michael only remembers the occasional phone call to the house from Joel's mother.
He had only met Lisa Guy one time and never met Joel's father. Michael assumed Joel was an only child and the topic never came up. This was by design. Joel Junior slowly began to isolate himself from everyone around him. After graduating high school while he was living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, his family members weren't even allowed to possess his address. Very few people knew where he lived. He didn't want visitors, he didn't have a job. And he began to communicate less and less with his best friend, Michael MacCracken.
For Joel to have been jubilant and friendly during the twenty sixteen Thanksgiving weekend was very unusual.
Twenty seven years later, however old he was, he stayed in his bedroom. He was never smiling, saying, Let me give you something or right behind me, ever.
Michele remembers that every time she turned around that weekend, Joel Junior was right there. He was especially vigilant of his sister's movement upstairs any time she went to use the restroom or had to go up to the second floor for any reason. Joel Junior closely followed. Michelle did the same. She kept tabs on Joel Junior all day that Thursday.
It was so odd that my boys were upstairs, like interacting with Joel Michael that I was going upstairs for two reasons. I was going upstairs for laundry and then I was going upstairs to check on the boys.
Since Joel was staying at his parent's house in Knoxville for the weekend, he accompanied his father to Sir Goins Ville, Tennessee, the next day on Black Friday, where his parents plan to move in December, everything was already in place. This is Joel Senior's other daughter, Angela.
They had been talking about it for a while, but he had sent a group message to the family group message. And so that was on November 17th that he finally got word that his house had sold and they had signed the documents and they needed to be out of the home by December 13th so that they have had the house up for sale for quite some time. She was excited about retiring and just spending her time. They were madly in love, so just spending time with each other.
Joel Guy Senior and his wife Lisa had purchased this home in Gainesville from Joel's sister. It was a new and exciting chapter for them. The new property was sure to facilitate a tranquil retirement, Joel Senior had grown up in Gainesville and was looking forward to retiring from his job in civil engineering and returning to his hometown. Most of us work our entire adult lives with our eyes focused on the light at the end of the tunnel. That light is retirement. The promise is that as long as we work hard during our productive years and invest our money properly, we should have enough to live on during the final portion of our lives.
The harder you work as an adult, the more money you'll have to live on when you're a geriatric guy. Senior and his wife Lisa sat down and worked out the numbers to determine whether they'd be able to survive without income from a full time job. They share their conclusions with Joel Senior's daughters in October before Thanksgiving weekend.
I'm one of my trips back home in October, she said. Now we're talking out in the garage and she had stated that they were going to retire and it was time for Michael to stand on his own two feet. He was an adult.
That's right. Joel Senior and Lisa guys. Twenty eight year old son Joel Guy Jr. was not paying his own bills, any of them. Where have we heard that before? Dale Jr. had never in his life had a paying job. He didn't know it yet, but he was about to be thrown full force into adulthood, something he had never truly experienced. He was unprepared and it was all about to happen quickly.
We celebrated my youngest son's birthday in October. It's October twenty eight. That weekend they said that they were retiring and that they were moving to Lawrenceville and dad Joel Michael was going to need to find a job because they were no longer their money when they sat down and determined he even down to the amount of beer that they drink a week and the amount of cigarettes that they had a week, what amount of money they would need. And that amount of money was what they had to retire.
They originally planned to break the news to their son in December after already having moved from their old house to the new one.
Joel Jr. originally confirmed with his parents that he'd be skipping out the twenty sixteen Thanksgiving get together in lieu of the Christmas celebration. But then he showed up at Thanksgiving.
Lisa decided to tell her son right then and there rather than waiting just and that we were out on the porch.
And he said that Lisa had to hold to Michael and that you could feel like that that was what was causing that little bit of tension inside the house that you could feel the tension.
Joel accompanied his father to Sir Goins. Phil, the next day, after all, his sisters and other relatives had left his parents house. They arrived back in Knoxville in mid-afternoon. The house was already mostly packed up and Dale Senior had begun moving things into the new house. Joel Junior stayed with his parents until Sunday, November twenty seventh, when he decided it was time to drive back home to Baton Rouge.
He made his bed in the guest bedroom and gathered the things he planned to bring back with them to Louisiana. There wasn't much, though.
Michelle remembered that she walked past her brother's car when she arrived on Thanksgiving and noticed something odd.
There was this big tote's in the back and the lids were on them and one was inside the other. But I thought he had carried his luggage. And my first reaction was that his luggage was in that car. That's the reason I remembered it. Why did he put his luggage? Why did you not have luggage?
All of your Guy Junior's odd behavior over Thanksgiving weekend was intentional. Every move Joel made was calculated ahead of time.
He had a rebuttal planned, one that would assure you would not ever have to enter adulthood. He would spare himself the pain of working a real job, having true friends and dealing with the stress that comes with the responsibility of paying bills and funding one's own lifestyle. And he had been constructing this plan for weeks. It's a scary world out there, everyone wants to keep their family safe, whether it's from break in, a fire flooding or even a medical emergency, simply safe home security delivers award winning twenty four seven protection with simply safe.
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Dagi Junior presumably discovered his parents plan to cut him off long before Thanksgiving dinner. By the time that Thursday arrived, he had already been planning for weeks. He sat in his apartment in Baton Rouge, picked up his notebook and began writing day after day as new ideas came to him. He pulled the notebook from his bag and captured them. This notebook was now his playbook. He dubbed it the book of premeditation. I mean, let's face it, some criminals are just dumb.
Assets, her assets, life insurance worth 500000 dollars, probably more with double indemnity with him missing or dead. I get the whole thing. All her other assets are joint. Go to him if missing. Unknown if he's dead. His assets, Knoxville house homeowner's insurance, possibly, but probably worthless after fire. They owe one hundred thousand dollars on it. It's Higginsville house appraised at four hundred thousand or more worthless with Rene on the property. Other assets include her car, his SUV, his boat.
His old truck is for one K is worth eighty thousand. He could probably have savings or other investment accounts.
Joel was making a comprehensive list of assets he would obtain if something were to happen to both his parents. Definitely suspicious, but not a crime.
The most telling sentence on this page mentions what happens if Joe Gomez senior is missing or dead. The tone this handwritten summary gives off is akin to the well-known mafia idiom that goes, that's a real nice life you got.
There would be a shame if something were to happen to it, except Joel Jr. is talking about his parents, the people who gave him his cushy, comfortable life, the people who memorialized his magical, innocent childhood inside a guest bedroom and funded his way through private school programs and a decade's worth of college classes at Louisiana State University.
Even after all that time and financial help, he never even got a degree, never got a job and never had a life of his own.
He stashed the black Cambridge Limited notebook inside his maroon book bag between textbooks for other college courses. The bag also contained folders housing his syllabi for the fall twenty sixteen semester, one of which was a class on psychiatry. Ironic considering Joel's declining mental state.
On another page in the notebook, Joel had scribbled down composition of body. Twenty percent fat. Twenty percent protein. Fifty five percent water. Five percent other compounds. This made sense. It was written inside a notebook found in Joel's school backpack. And Joel was in school at the time.
He had been attending for nearly a decade, taking classes sporadically with one goal in mind to become a plastic surgeon. It made sense that his notebook might include notes about the composition of the human body. The problem was the heading of the page. It read Destruction of Bodies. Joel Junior began accompanying his notetaking with weekly trips to the store. He began to purchase items noted in his journal things like plastic sheeting, bleach, lye, a chemical sprayer and a few plastic totes.
Yeah, like the ones his sister Michelle noticed in the back of his vehicle that Thanksgiving.
The subsequent pages in Joel's journal only began to get more strange. The notes he wrote back in early November of twenty sixteen are devious and disturbing, but also juvenile, with then carefully structured plan to murder both of his parents.
He specifies odd things, things that would directly incriminate him. It's almost as if he constructed a roadmap for police to find a document that would give law enforcement a very clear idea of the murder weapons timeline and motives. Get killing knives quiet multiple. Get carving knives to make small pieces, get sledgehammer crush bones, bring blender and food grinder, grind meat, get bleach dedecker proteins, get plastic bin for dead iteration process does not matter where they're killed. Just get rid of the bloody spots to prevent evidence of time of death, not the mattress or couches.
This was his plan. Joel began gathering his materials, writing notes directly to himself in a journal and continued planning as the days crept forward. Drawing closer to Thanksgiving weekend. Think about how many people have probably planned murders in their head, maybe going as far as to plan it in a notebook like Joel Junior did, but never actually had the guts to carry it out. I mean, a lot is on the line. When someone decides to commit a crime as serious as murder, there's a good chance the perpetrator won't get away with it.
And we all know this. Most of us would never even a. Attempt to murder someone, not just because it's morally wrong, which should be the main reason we avoid murder, but because technology today makes it really challenging to get away with crime scot free.
There are cameras literally everywhere, and that little device in your pocket is constantly paying off cell phone towers and triangulating your location at any given moment in the day. DNA and crime scene investigative technology is getting better and better every year, and it's just not a great time to be attempting murder. Chances are it's only going to get more difficult to get away with a crime as the decades progress.
Joel Guy Jr. was attempting to plan for every possibility. He knew that if there's nobody to be found, the crime is harder to pin on someone in a court of law. Joel was confident that he could get away with these murders. He and his own mind thought he was a genius. Let me paint a picture for you real quick. Joel has only two facial expressions. The common one is a blank mister. Being like gays, it's creepy.
His buggy eyes nearly pop out of his skull, staring deep into your soul, sometimes darting around inexplicably as well. The other facial expression he sports when he's not lost in his own brilliant thoughts is a smug one.
His chin is held high in the air or tucks into his neck. He raises his eyebrows and smirks. He smirks like he knows he's the smartest person in the room. If someone's looks alone could just piss you off. That's Joel Guy Junior. The huge downfall in Joel's Book of premeditation is the simple fact that the book exists directly incriminating him if it were to be discovered. But to see Joel was very confident in his intricate strategy. He planned for almost everything.
The next pages in his journal go into even more detailed, calculated plans. But we'll walk you through everything as it happened.
Get rid of bodies inside house there and my DNA already there. That statement right there is the reason the deed had to be done.
Over Thanksgiving weekend, Joel chose to stay at his parent's house for more than just that Thursday. He knew that if his sisters were aware that he was spending the entire weekend in Tennessee with his mother and father, they'd be great witnesses. After the fact. They could tell police that Joel had been spending the night staying in the upstairs bedroom, which would explain why Joel Jr.'s DNA would be all over the residence. And another reason for his likely stay is, of course, that he needed several days to carry out everything written in his notebook.
You couldn't just get it all done.
In one night, Joel's mother, Lisa, put in her notice of retirement at her job on November twenty first twenty sixteen.
Her last day at Jacobs Engineering Group was scheduled to be December 2nd, a Friday. Lisa and her supervisor, Jennifer Whitehead, were not only colleagues but good friends. Jennifer knew of Lisa's plans to retire before she put her notice in prior to the Thanksgiving holiday.
She was excited, yet a little preoccupied because she had so many things changed in her life. They seemed to be very excited. She was excited to know that her entire family, her kids were coming to spend the holiday with her.
And senior Jennifer and Lisa didn't speak during that holiday weekend. Both were busy with their own families and planning. Jennifer figured they'd catch up with each other on Monday and give a summary of Thanksgiving. This was to be Lisa's final week working at Jacobs.
Well, Lisa, after work schedule started at seven a.m., and I noticed at about seven fifteen that she was not in my office and I normally gave my employees about fifteen minutes to get there and, you know, more out of being concerned that they were OK. I would start calling. So then fifteen came and she wasn't there. Nobody in a group had heard from her. So I began texting her and she didn't take it back. And I thought that was highly unusual.
A lot of thoughts in my mind, you know, hoping that she was OK, hoping that this was her last week. She was retiring. She had blown us off, but I knew that wasn't right. So I continued to text her. I continued to text Jill Senior. I called and never did get an answer. If he couldn't make it to work, she would have called me immediately. One of Joel Senior's daughters had a birthday on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
She didn't hear from her dad that entire day. Those who knew Lisa and Jill Senior well knew that something was very wrong.
After calling and texting both Lisa Guy and Joe Guy senior dozens of times that morning, Jennifer finally decided to call police and request a welfare check.
I yes, I have no way that I'm not reporting for the day and on like her. I called her home number and an eight hold of her. What can we do about the money, ma'am? I mean, do everything. We have a guy, you gli her name and Carol. Er.
Yeah they do.
And I do have a dog named Jake.
I think maybe he is in her or I think right now I'm in her blood pressure. But that's all that I know. I know that they're not real and they are moving and clearly that our company began to percolate her day in between. A coworker did not show up on her and take anything for granted at this time. No. OK, great. Thank you so much for that.
Jennifer waited all throughout that work morning for callback from authorities.
I had realized that nobody had called me. I still could not get a hold of Lisa or Joel. So I called back to see what they had found at the welfare check. And I was told that everything seemed to be fine, that nothing looked out of the place. And so they didn't do anything further. I asked them to please go back because I knew that something was not right. She had plans with other co-workers that day and that she would not have canceled or just blown them off.
She would have she would have at least called. So I asked them to go back.
The dispatcher on this second call told Jennifer that they'd speak with a detective and get an answer for it was probably 20 to 30 minutes later.
I think that I got a phone call from a detective wanting to ask me more questions about Lisa and what I knew but did not know anything in particular had happened.
What had really happened was beyond anyone's wildest fears, no normal person could have dreamt up what the Knoxville police witnessed when they entered the guy residence.
Upon my arrival, there were vehicles in the driveway. There was a for sale sign in the front yard. The back fence was closed. The front door was locked. You can see that there were groceries inside the residence.
This is the lead investigator who was assigned to the case. He accompanied the original responding officer back to the house after police received that second call from a panicked.
Jennifer waited with the vehicles in the driveway and the information that we had, it was obvious that the owners of the vehicles to possibly be inside the residence and need assistance. I actually jumped the fence, went to the back with another officer, got down and got up on the door, observed that there was a doorknob missing on the back door and the glass was was warm from the inside of the house. Like you could just tell that the door was warm and there was some kind of strange odor that they observed.
I don't know if I verbalized it. I know that it was more or less just a feeling sensation of feeling very odd or something ominous about it.
The officers noticed that it was strange that the home had a for sale sign, but no realtors lockbox was attached to the doorknob on the front door. They were desperate to find some way to enter the home without damaging anything.
It appeared that the door knob that had been on the back door was moved to the front door and a garage door opener was located.
The garage door was opened as soon as the garage door was opened. You can feel heat on this particular day in Knoxville. It never got warm enough to breach seventy degrees outside. It stayed in the low to mid 60s all day when this garage door was opened both off. Officers were smacked in the face with nearly 100 degree heat and intense chemical smells, when you enter, you don't want to stand in a doorway for an extended period of time because you have people behind you.
So you want to try and get in and see what the layout is to determine where to go next when you're clearing the residence. The entire time we're making announcements were hit with heat. And again, with this strange odor, there is a pot on the stove, a large pot that you can tell that the stove is on the stove top in the oven are on because of all the heat coming from that area. And it's very odd.
Here's another officer that arrived on scene before the home was cleared.
As we enter the garage, you can feel intense heat coming out of the garage area. When the interior door comes open, we step into the residence. There's some chemicals sitting in the floor soon as you step in. And then we began to clear the residence. The door inside the garage opened up into an eat in kitchen.
On the table, there was a purse, some wallets and a sledgehammer. It was also clear that someone had bought groceries at Wal-Mart. The items were still in their bags. Whoever had purchased them didn't even have time to put them away. Bacon was thawed in its bag, ice cream was melted and its container. Everything seemed to have been abandoned abruptly. Even more strange, right in the entry way to the kitchen from the garage set a multitude of chemicals and cleaning products, an orange bag of baking soda, several gallon bottles of bleach, a roll of trash bags, all blocking the main walkway into the kitchen.
Officers could hear a dog howling and whimpering sporadically. The sounds seem to be coming from upstairs.
His brother would be like, Yeah, we're here to get one of the officers in this body.
Cam footage can be heard saying that's blood. Right. Does everyone have gloves on?
It's terrifying because you don't know if somebody needs some help. I mean, it's just an odd situation. There's nothing downstairs that I'm observing that makes sense to me. You know what I'm saying? I mean, we go through houses and we clear houses regularly. And most of the time, if you encounter something, you kind of know right when you get in, this was a very different situation because once we get upstairs, it's like the world does a 180, everything is turned upside down.
The officers on scene were trying to put the pieces together in their minds, half expecting a medical emergency situation when they made their way up the steps. They realized that this case would engulf their lives for years to come. They made their way up the stairs and began to notice blood staining on the walls. Once they had climbed most of the steps, the lead investigator gained visibility into the upstairs hallway. I observed what appeared to be clothing and sharp instruments and some kind of bucket.
I don't know what it was it was. But there was something else present with the clothing and what appeared to be reddish brown staining on the floor, the wall. It's going all over the place. And you can see straight down the hall and I saw hands not connected to a body on one.
And that's where I noticed the hands at the end of the hallway. Yeah, I think so. That's what I think. And, you know, we don't imagine being a police officer called to this house hoping and praying.
It's just another standard welfare check. Even once they got inside, each officer held on the hope that someone had just experienced a medical emergency and perhaps could still be helped when the leading officer saw the disembodied hands of Joel Guy Senior, these hopes quickly vanished. This was undoubtedly the most gruesome and bizarre crime scene that Knoxville law enforcement had ever witnessed. It's gut wrenching and it's something that I've never experienced before. I had absolutely no idea what I was walking into.
He braced himself, then entered the master bedroom. When you go in, there was like a plastic draw cloth type material or something, a roll of plastic on the bed. And I remember the bed was made. The room looked immaculate, all except a large pile of seemingly random items in the middle of the floor. It was a large room and a pile of junk included things like work lights, the ones contractors use toys, some Clorox wipes, bottles of some sort of chemical socks and other clutter, a space heater and the bedroom was turned on full blast.
It wasn't just this room that held a space heater, though. The furnace temperature was set in the 90s and each room had at least one space heater turned on high. Attached to the master bedroom was a bathroom. I went in the master bathroom and the only thing I saw were two tubs with what appeared to be body parts liquify. I'll never get those smells out of my head or my dreams.
Oh, oh, oh.
We're going to Joel Junior planned all of this, all except the early arrival of police. He didn't get a chance to finish everything he detailed in his journal, but he was in the final stages of his clean up plan. His notebook states get plastic sheeting for disposal process, get hollow point bullets just in case the sentence about getting bullets is crossed out will be seen buying bullets. Just use computer room gun check to make sure there are bullets. Last resort.
He's not alive to claim her half of the insurance money. All mine. Five hundred thousand dollars plan was to kill both of his parents and stage it like a murder suicide. He would kill them sometime between Friday and Saturday, begin to dismember them and dissolve their body parts. Then he would spend the next few days cleaning up the crime scene and prepping for the final stage flood. The house covers up forensic evidence, turn heater up as high as it goes, speeds, decomposition.
Bleach reacts with the luminol just like blood. Dao's area with bleach, big sprayer lie trash compactor don't have to get rid of the body if there's no forensic evidence on the body, minimize things. I touch throughout, visit, wear gloves and socks to prevent fingerprints and footprints. The plan sounds like a lot of thought went into it. Joe Guy with his genius mind and a superb planning skills. He could pull this off. What he didn't realize and what many first time killers don't realize is how difficult it actually is to kill someone and dismember them with minimal mess, let alone two people.
And if you're wondering about that dog, his name's Jack. He was rescued from the house, but he wasn't in great shape. He was tired of not being around that dog. I don't know the dog normally, but it was I mean, he was thirsty and there was no water in there or anything. And he would be up in barking and then he would just stop. Jake was trapped in the upstairs laundry room without food or water for a long time.
Officers didn't know at that point how long he'd been left there, but it was clear that he would have died very quickly if he hadn't been found. The thermostat was set to ninety degrees and heat rises at all those space heaters and you've got a near hundred degree house. Joel put his own family dog in what was basically a large oven and left him there to slow cook with no food and no water. He originally planned to kill the dog at the same time he killed his parents, but he must not have had time.
What you've heard so far isn't the worst of it, disembodied hands and tubs of chemicals and have dissolved the human remains isn't where this ends. Remember that stockpot on the stove down in the kitchen?
Guess the contents of the pot. It was determined that there was a head. A severed head in that pot contained his mother's head. Joel Jr. carried her head downstairs in his arms after killing her and decapitating her. He started boiling it in the pot on the stove. It doesn't get much more evil than that. I've been looking for ways to make my home more comfortable, especially since I have cats, so covering up the litter box smell is an absolute must.
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When Michelle and her sisters were made aware that their parents bodies were discovered at their home in Knoxville, the same home where they just shared a holiday meal, they didn't understand the severity of the situation. They didn't understand, for example, that this was not a normal crime scene. It hadn't been a clean PG 13 rated murder.
Jennifer Whited, Lisa Guy's supervisor over at Jacobs Engineering Group, contacted Michelle after realizing the welfare check she requested wasn't turning out the way she hoped.
And so I don't know the exact time, but about to. Jennifer had got in touch with me through Facebook and she had said, there's something wrong you need to call me or and I'm not sure her exact message. And so I called her and she said, you need to get a hold of the detectives. And so I called Detective McCord and he said, you need to come meet me. He said, do not go to the house. And I said, OK.
And he said, meet me at the Harley-Davidson place. And I met him at the Harley Davidson parking lot. He said the bodies were unidentifiable. And I said, if you'll just let me you can cover their face. And it's their 1980s all written all over. I'm like, their hair was 1980s. And they're like, you know, I can we're always in bathing suits.
Michelle couldn't wrap your head around why the normal protocol wasn't taking place. When a loved one dies, someone has to go identify the body. She didn't understand why this wasn't possible. This is assistant medical examiner Amy Hause.
The remains were not in such a state that we were able to just place the remains in one body bag like we would do if it was an intact deceased person. When we entered the home, there were multiple rooms in the home that seemed to be involved as part of the crime scene. There were many chemicals that were scattered in different areas throughout the home.
There were many blood spots in different areas throughout the home, and there were also multiple dismembered body parts in various rooms throughout the home.
So our overall impression was that this was a very complicated and unusual crime scene.
Complicated and unusual are very polite words to use when describing what this crime scene looked like. Joel's plan when something like this, at least this is how he intended things to go. After returning home with his father from the new house in Strigoi Princeville, the evening was normal. He waited and prepared for Saturday, November 26th.
He'd have to kill his father first, drop something down the garbage disposal to break it, get him on the ground, fixing it, kill him with the knife, clean up mess from him before she gets home. Surveillance footage showed Lisa guys shopping for groceries at Wal-Mart around noon that Saturday. She had no idea that her life was about to end, kill her with a knife, placed her in shower, turn on hot water and point at her to get rid of Forensic's, remove her clothes and take them with me for disposal.
We know for sure that Joel did achieve most of this.
So the numbers of wounds that I give is in at least no meaning. So much of the tissue is gone. So much of the skin was gone that it's impossible for me to give an exact counting. So the wounds that I could see and document primarily were on Mr. Guy's back were the skin still was relatively intact in on the skin of his back.
He had what I identified as thirty four sharp force injuries in sharp force. Injuries are either stabs or cuts.
It seems mostly logical that Joel Junior ambushed his father while he was down on the ground fixing the garbage disposal, all according to plan. His back would have been turned away from his son. He'd have never seen it coming.
But that's not what happened.
Joel attacked his father in an exercise room on the second floor. He stabbed him over and over again, and it wasn't an easy task.
In total, he stabbed his father at least forty two times. The blinds in the exercise room were torn. A Bowflex machine was completely knocked over onto its side, and the amount of blood smeared all over the walls and carpet indicate an intense struggle.
Joel Jr. was injured during this fight to the death, but he didn't have time to address his own wounds. Joel knew that he had to end his father's life quickly.
His mother would be home soon. He cut his father's clothes off his body and left him there to deal with. Later, when Lisagor arrived home from Wal-Mart, she set her groceries down, put her purse, wallet and keys on the table in the kitchen and went upstairs. Joel Junior attacked her right at the top of the steps, stabbing again with a knife, just like he had done to his father.
This guy had multiple sharp force injuries on her back. She had at least 25.
And again, having to do a little bit of a hedge because of the degree to which the remains were altered.
Again, the wounds were on both sides of her back. They were approximately six to seven inches deep.
They included injuries to the heart. So the right ventricle or the right side of her heart, the aorta in her abdomen, which is a major blood vessel that leaves the heart and feeds the lower portion of the body. Both lungs were injured, the left kidney, the liver in her third thoracic vertebra. So a bone in the spine also appeared to be injured.
He stabbed his mother with a kitchen knife at least 31 times. Joel then cut all of his mother's clothing off and began dismembering both of his parents.
The arms have been removed at the shoulders. The legs had been removed at the hips.
His head was completely skeletonized.
Joel cut off his father's hands at the wrists and left them in the exercise room where he killed him earlier that day.
So like Mr. Guy, Mrs. Guy was also dismembered. There was some differences in the degree to which you were dismembered, in the way she was dismembered.
Her head was completely severed from her body. Her arms were disarticulated at the shoulders and her legs were disarticulated at the knees.
So in comparison to Mr. Guy who had his legs disarticulated, the hips, this guy's legs were at the knees so hurt, her thighs were still intact.
Her thighs were still attached on to her body, but her head was completely severed and her arms were completely severed, placed him in a plastic bin and use it to get him into the upstairs bathroom, cut off his arm and plant his flesh under his fingernails, placed her hand with his DNA so that his DNA is not wasted away by shower, use sodium hydroxide to destroy his soft tissue and soften bones for transport based once every hour to accelerate.
So not only were the remains in multiple pieces, but there were two large bins, plastic bins like storage bins that were in the upstairs master bath that were filled with some type of chemical.
Mrs. Guy's head was found in a large pot in liquid in the kitchen. The liquid in the pot had a slightly different character to it than the liquid in the plastic tubs. It didn't have the strong chemical odor, had a slight odor of decomposition, but it did not have the chemical odor like the bins upstairs did.
In this skin that remained, the skin and flesh that remained on her scalp was different. The top layer of skin was still intact. In other words, the skin looked like it had heat, artifact or what we call thermal artifact as opposed to a chemical artifact. The hair was still there as well.
Joel Jr. was quite literally cooking his mother's head on the stove when police discovered the crime scene.
The stove was on, the pot was boiling with Lisa's head inside. For days, some have referred to this piece of the crime scene as a, quote, diabolical stew of human remains.
And that's pretty much what it was. Blood droplets were present on the stairs, likely from Joel Junior, carrying his mother's decapitated head down to the first floor to ultimately be placed in the stockpot. This is where his plans stopped, he had much more written in his journal, a full summary of how he would clean up the scene.
But after driving to Wal-Mart in the late afternoon to purchase his first aid items for his own deep hand wounds, he realized he would have to go get the wounds treated professionally.
Then he'd just come back and finish the rest, flush sodium hydroxide down toilet, wash out bins with handheld showerhead and then direct hand-held into the toilet to flush everything out of the pipes and into the public waterway.
Dao's killing rooms with bleach placed hair curler with flammable paper and flammable containers of gasoline in four locations.
His killing room, her killing room, his bathroom, her bathroom wipe down areas near killing rooms and bathrooms, turn heaters up to 90 degrees to melt fingerprints and dry everything.
Set her phone to send me a text late Sunday to prove I was in Baton Rouge and she was, quote unquote, alive. Leave through front door and wipe down doorknobs. Timer for flammables set for Friday at 10 a.m.. Sunlight masks, fire, but not smoke, everyone at work so they can't report it. In case you haven't noticed, Joel's entire plan depended on numerous big assumptions.
The most laughable one is that somehow he was convinced no one would be home at 10:00 a.m. on a Friday to call and report a house engulfed in flames.
I guess he wouldn't know much about work schedules, though. He never really had a job after all. Joel spent the rest of that Saturday tending to his parents, dissolving bodies. He drove back to Baton Rouge on Sunday to have the wounds on his hands treated at the Louisiana State University clinic, but not before he made sure to transfer his parents money directly where he needed it to go from his father's car.
Dole transferred one thousand twenty five dollars, then one thousand five hundred and eighty nine dollars, and finally two thousand and fifty one dollars. All of it went to Louisiana State University, where Joel was a student from another bank account in his father's name.
Joel transferred a total of three thousand ninety dollars to a utility company back in Louisiana.
Joel left the house exactly as police found it.
You see, he planned to drive back to the house in Knoxville to finish cleaning up once he got treatment for his hands. But Lisa's supervisor, Jennifer Whited, had already called for a welfare check when Lisa didn't show up for work on Monday.
I guess Joel didn't think about the fact that his mother still had one week of work left and people would be looking for this early discovery.
Threw a wrench into Joel's entire plan. He stupidly left his backpack with the book of premeditation in it while he drove back to Baton Rouge. When police arrived, they had a clear cut, easily prosecutable crime scene, and they knew exactly who had committed the crimes. This was know who done it. But that didn't make the crime scene any easier for investigators to witness or process. The sights and sounds will, without a doubt, stay with them forever.
If killing his own parents wasn't egregious enough, his plea of not guilty is really the icing on this crime cake. True crime cake. Is that a podcast yet? I'm sure it will be. During his twenty twenty trial, Joel sat and listened to all the evidence brought against him.
He watched photo after photo of the crime scene, flashed onto the courtroom screens and he tried to hold in a smile. He stuck his fingers in and around his nose. Yond rolled his eyes and made faces that can only be construed as condescending throughout the entirety of the trial. He forced his three sisters and his parents siblings to sit through a tedious rehashing of the awful way their favorite people, Jol Senior and Lee Sagai, were brutally murdered and stolen from by their own adult son.
And it wasn't because Joel was hoping for a verdict in his favor. His defense team offered no defense whatsoever. They called no witnesses. They suggested no other alternate storylines for how the crime could have occurred. Nothing. Joel just wanted to sit in a room where everyone would discuss his handiwork.
It's clear that the appalled facial expressions of everyone involved in this case pleased him.
He enjoyed it. Here's Michelle Jáuregui, senior's daughter as a little girl, I watched how much Lisa loved you, Michael. I wanted to be that mom, Jill Michael was Lisa's entire world. Most girls dream of weddings, I think. No, but I dreamed of being Lisa with the picture perfect family, with the dad coming home at 5:00 and me having dinner. I wanted to love as strong as Lisa loved. They provided a loving and caring home with all the extra stuff.
My dreams were to spend the next 40 years at Thanksgiving and Christmas laughing with my parents. My dreams were to move Lisa and Dad into my home. I would even banter with them about them moving into my home when they were old to model for my kids how to take care of your parents in the last days, because I moved in with my kids when I get old, they wanted them to see that. Like I got to see my mom take care of her parents.
I got to see my mom stay in her parents bed when they died. And I wanted that. My dream was to hold my mom's Lisa's hands as she took her last breath. My dream was to hold my dad's in as he took his last breath. People think moments like that for crying in one of those moments with mom. Also, not only that, like his childhood was taken away, I am angry for my dreams being destroyed. But I'm not the only one that's been affected.
This is impacting my kids and for that I will never be able to forgive. I rest easy knowing that God is OK with my choice not to forgive someone that has murdered my parents. I had just spent the last four years saving back his soul, their spirits and their hearts. I have spent the last four years cleaning up a mess. No one will ever know what it's like to have to be a child. Having to hear that your grandpa mother's head was cooking in a pot because the person that did it had the perfect childhood.
He especially not a man with that childhood. And he'll never know what it is like to have to tell your children that their grandparents have been chopped up and put in acid with my kids ever trust again when I ever really be able to trust again?
During the four years prior to the trial, Michelle had been healing with her family and trying to protect her kids from the horrendous nature of this crime. Joel Guy Jr., on the other hand, has spent his time sending handwritten court filings in an effort to claim his parents life insurance money.
We can only assume that his ultimate goal was to get a free ride through life, to never really have to become an adult with real adult responsibilities. This goal for him was so important that he was willing to murder the only two people who really loved him then his mind. It was simple either way, whether he got away with it or whether he was caught and convicted, he would achieve his goal. Just two days prior to jury selection for his trial, Joel filed a motion to serve as his own defense attorney.
He was only concerned with one issue. He wanted the state to pursue the death penalty. In this case, the state prosecutors made it very clear that they would not seek the death penalty. They weren't going to give Joel what he wanted. Instead, they stated they would seek a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. After fifty one years, it almost goes without saying. But the jury found Joel Guy Jr. guilty on all counts.
Of course, his charges included two counts of first degree murder, three counts of first degree felony murder and two counts of abuse of a corpse. The judge presiding over this case sentenced the now thirty two year old Joel Guy Jr. to five life sentences with the possibility of parole after fifty one years.
Whether those life sentences will be served concurrently or consecutively will be decided after this program has been recorded, but before it airs. So you could probably just Google it. Now that all is said and done, Joel actually got what he wanted. He will never have to act as a productive member of society, never have to shave and commute and go to work, be frugal, save his money for retirement, all those annoying adult things that nobody really likes to do.
But everyone has to.
They'll never have a boss looking over him and telling them what to do, and he'll never have to form any meaningful relationships with anyone.
The state will provide three square meals and a cot. The. Perhaps that'll be comfortable enough of a life for them, although they probably won't be what he was expecting. All right, guys, that's it, that wraps up season seven. We'll be back January 10th on the regular feed with season eight or January 3rd, four plus members.
If you haven't heard a plus, go to Swinscoe dot com slash plus check it out. Support the show. Help us out. Have a wonderful holiday season. And until next year, stay safe. Hi, Mike, and the wonderful work and scale team. My name is Courtney, I'm calling from Connecticut. I just listen to the most recent episode one seventy five.
And I felt super inclined to call and just let you know how in the strangest of ways all of your episodes plus episodes have been so therapeutic for me.
And I think people who have never listen probably would go like what in the world is she talking about? He talks about crime, murder, rape, all that kind of stuff. But for someone who has had, know, post-traumatic stress disorder, it's just something that is very helpful for me. So I just want to say thank you and keep up the good work. And also, I have made the best decision in my life to not allow my boys to do Boy Scouts ever again.
So thank you for that. You guys are awesome. Keep up the great work and take care. Happy holidays.