124: WARNING: Social Media Feud Ends in Heinous Double Murder
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Hey, true crime besties, welcome back to an all new episode of Serialistly. Hey everybody, welcome back to an all new episode of Serialistly, a true crime podcast with me, Annie Elise, your true crime bestie here to talk with you about another case.

Now the case we're talking about today, guys, it is one that I feel like has, gosh, I don't know, all of the elements of a crazy case. I mean, you've got catfishing, you've got bullying, you've got lovers quarrels, you've got it all. And it's one that is really devastating because, like,

I mean, they're all devastating, but this one, it just, when somebody's so vulnerable and so innocent and they just get taken advantage of a little bit, it really does break my heart. So what I want to start this episode off by doing is

kind of set the scene and then we're going to go into the full backstory. Okay, so just bear with me for a second. So on January 31st, 2012 in Mountain City, Tennessee, the community was truly just rocked by some very, very unsettling and chilling news. A brutal double murder had just taken place. Johnson County.

The entire Mountain City community was just absolutely horrified. This was a small town, only around 2,500 people, and it was a town where everybody is friendly, everybody knows everybody. There was little to no crime at all.

Ever. I mean, there were, yes, domestic calls here and there, but nothing like a home invasion and double execution. So who would possibly do this? Well, as I said, to understand this case, we have to go back to the beginning a little bit, and we need to talk about Janelle Potter. Janelle's family moved to Mountain City in 2005 from Pennsylvania. This was because Janelle's grandmother was very, very sick.

Now the move was very difficult on Janelle because she wasn't a very outgoing person to begin with, and it certainly didn't help that she was now moving into a very small town where everybody already knew each other. Those relationships had already been built and formed, so newcomers weren't exactly welcomed with open arms.

Now, back in Pennsylvania, during Janelle's childhood, she was in special education classes due to her learning disability, also her hearing disability and anxiety. In school, she really didn't have much interaction with other students, and the interactions that she did have weren't very encouraging. You see, Janelle was bullied by some of her classmates.

They made fun of her height. They actually punched her in the face for being pretty, if you can believe that. I mean, horrible things like that. So it made it even more challenging for her to ever put herself out there because she already had this long history of not really having friends, not making friends, people bullying her because of her disability, girls picking on her because of her looks. So now moving into this small town where everything's

Everybody already knew each other. Friendships were already there. It just felt a little daunting to Janelle. It wasn't really something that was going to be easy for her. Janelle's parents did try to help her fit in, but at the same time, they would still remind her of how different she really was.

Overall, Janelle lived a pretty sheltered life, and honestly, that's putting it mildly. Her parents, Barbara and Marvin, always kept a very close eye on Janelle. They didn't let her stay out late at night, she was never allowed to drive, and dating, I mean, well that was just completely off the table.

And it doesn't really sound like that's all out of the norm, right? There are plenty of parents that are strict on their children, especially in their teenage years. But there was one problem here. Janelle was not a teenager. In 2005, when they made this move, Janelle was 27 years old. But her parents did have their reasons for keeping Janelle so close to the nest.

First, they had to manage her type 1 diabetes. And second, she had those learning disabilities that I mentioned. And because of those disabilities, it put her at a mental capacity of that around a fourth grader. She also had that hearing disability, and it made it difficult for her to hear the different inflection in voices.

So it was often difficult for her with this disability to pick up on social cues, especially when she was talking to people that didn't know about her disability. For example, if you were to tell Janelle, like, I hate you in like a joking kind of lighthearted manner type of way,

she would completely miss the sarcasm in that, and she would take it seriously. So because it was challenging for Janelle to make friends in person, now in this new small town, even at her previous school, she did spend a ton of time online, and she would make different accounts on social media, really trying to find her own way of making friends.

Janelle's initial dabbling into social media, though, eventually turned into her only form of socialization. However, what started as Janelle's initial dabbling in social media and in that world, it eventually turned into her only form of socialization with anybody other than her parents.

Janelle ended up creating a Facebook page with the help of her parents, but this also meant that they knew her username and her password. So they would often go into her account to regularly monitor it, check through her posts, check through her interactions, and just really look into her overall online presence. And they would do this constantly. Despite her profile being constantly monitored though, Janelle really did enjoy social media.

Or rather, she clung to social media. It was her getaway, her actual freedom to connect with those outside of her house. It was her breath of fresh air.

Janelle's Facebook profile said, Now, when her mom wasn't looking after Janelle, Barbara was working at Hewlett-Packard, and her dad Marvin, who everybody called Buddy for short, was a retired Marine and Vietnam War veteran. Janelle also had a sister named Christy.

But Christy wasn't very close with her family ever since she became an adult, and we'll get into more of that in a little bit here. Now speaking more about Janelle's parents, Buddy and Barbara. They loved, loved, loved, loved the Second Amendment, and they had a plethora of guns in their home, all for protection. Buddy even carried a gun while he gardened outside in the front yard. That is how much they were packin'.

Now, after serving in the Marines, Buddy suffered from a back injury, and he experienced a number of other health problems to the point where he had to carry an oxygen tank around with him. He was still so proud of his veteran status, though, that he even had bullets draped over his oxygen tank.

He would tell others, too, that he had actually worked for the CIA. And Barbara also loved telling people that Buddy used to work in the CIA. But she told people that she didn't know much about it and that she didn't want to press Buddy for more information because she knew that it was all very confidential.

So now going back to Janelle. She lived in Mountain City from her late 20s into her early 30s, not having a job and just living at home with her parents. And there were only two places that Janelle ever went to, the

the pharmacy, and the local grocery store. So one day, Janelle met a woman named Tracy Greenwell, and Tracy was one of the OG locals in Mountain City. She was born and raised in Mountain City, and she was very outgoing and very well-known in the town.

She was a clerk at the pharmacy that Janelle frequented, and Janelle always saw her there whenever she had to pick up her diabetes medication. And because it was such a small town, remember, Tracy knew that Janelle and her family were new to the town. So Tracy could tell that Janelle was having a little bit of a hard time fitting in and socializing.

So she took it upon herself to get to know Janelle. One day at the pharmacy, Tracy and Janelle started talking more, and the conversation was going well. So Tracy told Janelle that she should come by her house to meet some of her friends and even some of her family. Janelle was really excited about this. She was so surprised that Tracy wanted to be her friend. She was thrilled by this. It was like she finally caught a break and she was making a friend for the very first time.

Except there was one small problem here. Janelle knew that she was going to have to ask permission from her parents because they didn't really let her go anywhere, especially with people they didn't know. So Janelle brought Tracy over to her house so that she could introduce her to her parents. And then she asked them if it would be okay if she went out to hang with Tracy.

Barbara and Buddy were a little bit hesitant at first, but they ended up really liking Tracy, and they told Janelle that she had permission to go and hang out with her. So one day when she went over to Tracy's house, Janelle met Tracy's brother, Billy Payne. Billy was very similar to Tracy in that he was just as outgoing and had this very natural charisma to him. Then later on, Janelle met a few more of their mutual friends.

So Janelle started hanging out with Tracy and Bill's friend group several times. She was really becoming immersed in this circle of friends. They would go rock climbing, they would go to the movies, and they all became Facebook friends with Janelle as well. So this was a dream come true for Janelle, right? Because before meeting Tracy, she only had her parents and her social media presence for friends. And now for the first time, she had real life friends in

in person and on Facebook. Everybody else before was just a digital friend, a virtual friend.

And I know that sounds a little bit weird, guys, since most people typically know their Facebook friends in real life before they even become Facebook friends. But remember, Janelle wasn't able to do that before. So this was a huge deal for her. And she spent most of her time at home online and almost obsessing over her Facebook and her Facebook friends. And there was one Facebook profile in particular that Janelle began to frequent more and more. And

And that was Tracy's brother, Billy. Now, when Janelle first met Billy, she thought that he was very cute. And as time passed, her initial small crush soon turned into this massive crush on him.

Whenever she hung out with Tracy and Billy was around, Tracy could also tell that Janelle really liked Billy. And although Tracy thought that Janelle was very sweet, she didn't know if the two of them would be a good match. So Tracy started to think that maybe she could set something up for Janelle so that she could date somebody else, but not her brother Billy.

So she thought of her and Billy's cousin named Jamie Curd, who was also in their friend group, their close circle of friends. Tracy knew that her cousin Jamie, like Janelle, was also somewhat of an introvert, and thought that they might be a good match together. Jamie had never had a girlfriend before, and Janelle had never had a boyfriend. So she ended up setting the two of them up.

After hanging out for a few times, Jamie and Janelle actually began to really like each other, so this seemed like it was a really good pairing. However, although this was a good match and a good pairing, there was still another problem here. Janelle was not allowed to date.

Even though she made friends and was now starting to step outside of her and her parents' comfort zone, Janelle knew that her parents would definitely not be okay with her and Jamie dating in any sort of official capacity whatsoever. So instead, Janelle decided to come up with a plan. PenFed free checking offers zero fees and zero balance requirements for zero hassle. PenFed Access America checking lets you earn money on your balance for dreams big and small.

Choose the best account for you and start making the most of your money. Learn more at PenFed.org. Federally insured by NCOA. To receive any advertised product, you must become a member of PenFed Credit Union. At Janelle's house, there was one main computer that everybody shared in the family. And this computer often had a lot of problems with it and needed constant fixing, constant updates.

So with that in mind, she introduced Jamie to her parents by telling them that he was actually a computer mechanic and that he was also one of the friends that she met through Tracy. So now Jamie had a reason to come over, a reason to come over to Janelle's house so that he could help with the computer or tech problems that they were having. And he came over often. However, their relationship was more than that.

Whenever Jamie came over to, you know, help work on the computer, Janelle and Jamie would secretly kiss. They would also take pictures together, and they would hang out like they were actually dating. Which is actually kind of bizarre when you really just take a step back and think about it, because what, this computer mechanic is just always at the house tinkering around on the computer?

They knew that Janelle was extremely attached to the computer and also constantly online because so much of her life and social interactions came from Facebook.

So I don't know, maybe they thought that's why Janelle was always in the study with Jamie working on the computer, who knows? But in any event, Buddy and Barbara didn't think much of it, for whatever reason. So as the relationship begins picking up steam and getting a little bit more serious, or as serious as it can get since they're still basically seeing each other in secret, eventually Jamie even bought Janelle a cell phone so that they could talk when she was home alone.

They spent hours talking on the phone, and Janelle's parents had no idea.

Janelle would talk to Jamie any time that she would get a few minutes alone during the day. And then she would also talk to him most nights. She would pretend that she was sleeping, hiding under a blanket, when really, she was on the phone with Jamie at all hours. Which kind of reminds you of like an innocent schoolgirl crush. I remember for me in middle school and even going into high school, the late nights on the phone when you're on the landline and there's just something so new, so exciting about it.

If I'm really going to date myself here too, I will say I remember in middle school, I thought I was like the hottest shit ever because I had my own line in my room, my own landline phone line, and I had an answering machine. And if you're my age, you will definitely remember this. You would like take the phone when you're recording your answering machine message and put a song and you'd be like, and the song would match your mood or you'd like put a song that was like flirty. So when the person would call you, they'd hear it. I mean, it's honestly so embarrassing and cringe.

Now that I say it out loud, but if you're a millennial like me, you get it. So this was very, very exciting for Janelle. However, what started as innocent secrecy and casual dating started to escalate because then Jamie started asking for nude photos of Janelle.

and he would organize these nude photos into files on his computer. And in something that I have never heard of, he organized the photos by topic. One of them, for example, was called openandwet.jpg.

That was the actual file name that Jamie created, which is just vile. Anyways, one day Janelle's parents found her secret cell phone. They didn't find the pictures though, but they did find the cell phone and they took it away. But that didn't stop Janelle and Jamie because Jamie just bought her another one.

So now you have Janelle and Jamie, whose secret relationship was definitely becoming more serious and intense, despite the fact that she lived with her parents, and they had zero clue about this relationship, and they had zero clue that dating was even in the realm of possibility for Janelle. But there was once again yet another problem.

You see, Janelle never really got over her initial crush on Billy, Tracy's brother. And he had now started a relationship with somebody else. A woman, coincidentally, named Billie Jean. And for the sake of just like no confusion, I'm going to now start referring to Billy the guy as Bill, and then we'll refer to Billie Jean as Billie Jean. So in 2010, Billie Jean got pregnant with their son, Tyler.

This was also around the time that Bill decided to really get his life together. He worked hard on cleaning up his life, he started staying away from drugs and alcohol, and he even moved in with Billie Jean.

Eventually, Bill proposed to Billie Jean as well. Now maybe it was something about a child coming that made their relationship more solidified, or the fact that he was engaged and Janelle wasn't, or just the fact that Bill wasn't single anymore. But Janelle started to feel a very strong sense of jealousy. This intense jealousy was just brewing within her.

She absolutely hated the fact that now whenever she went to Bill's Facebook profile, it was a constant reminder that he was with Billie Jean and that they were beginning to start the rest of their lives together. Janelle thought that this was not fair, and she wondered why he would want to be with Billie Jean in the first place.

She was convinced that her and Bill were the ones who actually had a true romance, a true connection, not Billie Jean. So this didn't make any sense to her. However, I will say this shouldn't have been all that surprising to Janelle. Bill was very quick to introduce Billie Jean to their friend group as soon as they started dating, along with two of her best friends, Lindsay and Tara.

In fact, Jamie and Bill even took Janelle and Billie Jean out on a group double date. So Janelle was very well aware of this relationship. It's not like it was something that caught her off guard or by surprise. She was going on double dates with them. But still, all of that aside, and despite the fact that Jamie and Janelle seemed to be getting somewhat serious, Janelle was just overcome by jealousy. And she also was not hiding it.

She just could not help herself. She was constantly talking shit about Bill, Billie Jean, and even their baby. So soon, the friend group that she once thought that she was a central part of stopped inviting her to hang out with them. And I mean, honestly, how uncomfortable would that be, right? Somebody's just constantly talking crap about these people, about a baby no less, like...

I understand why maybe they would stop inviting her around. But I mean, the truth of it was that the friend group seemed like real true friends to Janelle, who had never had a group of friends to call her own before. But the rest of the group, I mean, they really only let Janelle into their circle out of pity in the first place.

They always thought of her as an outsider, and their true loyalty was of course to Bill, not to Janelle. And now that she was becoming hostile, obsessive, and seemed to be just...

spewing and raging with jealousy over Billie Jean, it was almost a no-brainer to just kind of drop her like a hot potato. But not being around Janelle in person did not stop the drama, because a lot of this hostility took place on Facebook, and a lot of it wasn't even coming from Janelle. In fact, Janelle was the one who was getting viciously attacked online. I'm

There were nasty messages posted to Janelle's Facebook profile and through Facebook Messenger. And a lot of the messages were horrific, like threats of rape and murder. People also made comments that Janelle was too pretty to live. That is a direct quote. I mean, she was constantly just inundated with insults, threats, and harassing messages. Just that I was a bad person. I was horrible. Threatened to get raped. Must have been pretty scary.

Yes. So much so that it got to the point that Janelle's mom, Barbara, tried to intervene. And she commented back, writing, please leave Janelle alone. I remember I wrote, please do not write on Janelle's Facebook. I begged them, please don't do this. But that request apparently went completely unheard.

So Janelle had been getting all of this hate online, and a lot of the profiles sending the messages or writing the posts were fake accounts, almost built like a troll account or a sock account, where somebody makes an account so that they can say whatever the heck they want and not have their identity be revealed. So who was the driving force behind all of this hate and this honestly hateful movement against Janelle?

Well, if you ask Janelle, she was 100% certain that it was none other than Billie Jean. Janelle was sure that Billie Jean was always jealous of her looks and also her connection with Bill.

She was convinced that Billie Jean was doing all of this because she was afraid that Bill would leave her and the baby so that he could be with Janelle. Janelle even outright accused Billie Jean specifically of being the one behind this hate campaign towards her. But Lindsay and Tara, Billie Jean's best friends, confronted Janelle, saying, You are the one who created fake profiles and is spreading these false comments, not Billie Jean.

So Janelle responded to this and said, why on earth would I do that? If anything, was it not you guys that created a fake profile and was doing all of this? Like, it has to be either you guys or Billie Jean. Why would I bash myself? Why would I make these horrible remarks about myself? But even after being confronted with this allegation and this huge confrontation, the hate campaign against Janelle and the online bullying didn't stop.

Instead, things escalated. And it got so bad that Janelle started feeling truly threatened when she noticed somebody was driving by in a car and monitoring her house. At one point, whoever was driving the car threw a rock at her house, and whoever threw this rock wrote on it in Sharpie and signed it,

Billy Payne, in parentheses, your Huckleberry. And then the other side said Billy Jean. So to make matters worse, and even more complicated, quite honestly, Bill and Jamie were in very awkward positions because they were known to be really close with each other. They were cousins.

So Jamie was starting to get really frustrated and angry too by all of this. Janelle was his first girlfriend, and he didn't understand why she was getting harassed, and why his cousin Bill and Billie Jean just couldn't be happy for him and Janelle. Then as things continued to escalate, and everything seemed to be coming to a head, something completely unexpected happened.

A CIA agent reached out to Janelle and then to her mother Barbara. They reached out by email saying that the CIA was aware that Janelle was on the receiving end of serious online bullying. And now, because it's gotten so serious, they were beginning to look into the case, and they were looking into some of the threats that she was receiving. The CIA agent told them that his name was Chris and not to tell anybody about these communications because it might hinder the investigation.

He claimed that he had a lot of access to confidential things and even had access to surveillance cameras that were on Bill and Billie Jean. He explained to Janelle's mom, Barbara, the things that he saw on a regular basis, and he figured out that Bill was in fact a drug dealer.

that he had never quit doing drugs, that he also ran with a very dangerous crowd, and the CIA agent also tells Barbara that through this surveillance, he discovered that Billie Jean was in fact a sex worker. Then he dropped a bombshell on Janelle's mom.

He told Barbara that Janelle might be in some serious physical danger soon because apparently Bill and Billie Jean were planning on kidnapping and raping Janelle just because of the fact that Janelle was a virgin. And this is just truly insane because first of all, my first thought is like,

how unhinged are Bill and Billie Jean that they're plotting a kidnapping, a rape because she's a virgin. They've been, you know, if they're so happy together and they have this new baby makes three happy family, why are they continuing this harassment against Janelle? But then on the other side of it, I'm thinking, how does this CIA agent know so much information and so much intel? And if he's made aware that there is a

kidnapping plot in place, why not just stop it rather than say it may happen soon? Why not like put the kibosh on the whole thing and arrest these two animals, right? So once this huge revelation was made to Barbara and Buddy, Janelle's parents, they kind of felt like, holy crap, we are so lucky to have met Chris, the CIA agent.

They were going through so much at the time, and they had been doing so much and all they could to protect Janelle. But often they were at a loss of what to do. But now they finally had real help. They had somebody from the CIA, and they were so thankful for this. So when they asked Chris why he was helping them so much, Chris said that he was previously one of Janelle's school friends.

And he happened to discover the online bullying of Janelle, and he really just wanted to help her and get involved. Then over time, Chris started building up quite the relationship with Janelle's mom, Barbara. Somehow, he just had completely won over Barbara's heart. And soon enough, he was addressing her as mom in their emails. And she was even calling him son.

Feels a little borderline unprofessional, right? Like, what the hell is really going on here? Now, like I said earlier, Chris told Janelle and Barbara not to tell anybody about their communications with him in general, and especially don't tell anybody anything that we have talked about. But there was something else. Due to the confidentiality and the fact that he had to protect his identity since he wasn't supposed to be working as a CIA agent on any personal matters, most of these communications were through Janelle's email account.

That way, he was always covered. But as time passed, and as their communication continued, some of Chris's emails had spelling and grammatical errors in them. And Barbara and Buddy thought that this was a little weird. However, they didn't really think too much of it. They knew that Chris was a CIA agent, and they thought that maybe spelling wasn't his strong suit. Maybe it was his mind that is what got him into the CIA, not his spelling.

So it was kind of whatever, no big deal. They weren't going to break ties with this man. This man had chosen to protect their daughter. And now they were on a mission, a CIA mission. Chris was devoted to Janelle's case. And in some emails, he even mentioned going to the extent of murder because that was the only way to defend Janelle.

He also promised that he could get rid of evidence for the Potter family if they went through with it, because he had the means to destroy evidence. I mean, I mean, he was a CIA agent after all. He had even reached out to Jamie by email and said,

Now, meanwhile, the hateful and threatening Facebook posts and messages to Janelle just continued. These messages were awful. They were calling Janelle a bitch, wishing she were dead, and making more violent threats. I mean, you name it, it was happening. It was truly appalling. There were also several different Facebook accounts of Lindsay, Billie Jean's friend, saying how she wasn't afraid of Janelle's dad because she was above the law.

and she just continued to spew hate and vitriol for Janelle all over the internet. The

The bullying and the harassment continued, and then it started to spill over into real life too, similar to that rock incident when that rock with the sharpie writing was chucked through the window of Janelle's house. You see, one day, Janelle's dad, Buddy, woke up to discover that somebody poured sugar into his truck's gas tank. And there were also rumors starting in the community that Buddy was a drug dealer, even though that couldn't be further from the truth.

So now, Janelle decided she was going to push back, and she was specifically going to push back online in particular. So she started some rumors of her own about Lindsay and Tara, to the point where they actually ended up filing a restraining order against Janelle. Lindsay, Tara, Bill, and Billie Jean ended up telling the police about one of Janelle's posts that she made where she wished that Bill and Billie's baby would just die.

which of course was something that Janelle was apparently completely shocked by. And she said that she would never ever say something like that. She would never say something so horrible about a newborn baby. So ultimately the restraining order was dismissed because Janelle showed proof that she was the one that kept parents

pleading with them to stop harassing her. This huge feud honestly was becoming the talk of the town, which is not surprising considering that there were literally only a couple of thousand people in the town, but Janelle was just a nervous wreck at this point. She started carrying around mace if she ever left the house, which she hardly ever did anymore, but she was just constantly on edge.

However, the saving grace in all of this was that she still had her parents, Jamie and Chris, by her side. Whenever she needed them, they were there. And then when things were getting worse, Chris, the CIA agent, told her mom Barbara that he was going to come by the house physically whenever he was going to be off work so that he could scope out Janelle's enemies. That was the direct quote, Janelle's enemies.

He also said that he was going to find a place or a time to kill them if he could. So on one hand, Janelle felt like she had as much protection as she possibly could.

But she also couldn't understand why these people, her so-called own friends, had turned against her and were now making her out to be this terrible person all of a sudden. Someone that they were threatening to kill, someone they were threatening to rape, and then some of them even began to unfriend her on Facebook, which Janelle took extremely personally. It was like even though they were being mean to her, Janelle still wanted them to like her. And remember, her life was through Facebook.

Chris and Barbara were still communicating on a daily basis at this point. They shared hundreds of emails with each other talking about everything, not only about Janelle, but also about Chris's life, about Barbara's life as a mom, about Buddy's life as a CIA agent, because remember, he was in the CIA as well, and they even started talking all the way down to the details about the whereabouts of their estranged daughter Christy, Janelle's sister.

Barbara legitimately confided in Chris like he was her best friend. He just seemed to get it all. And with it, it was like their relationship and their closeness made Barbara more comfortable to tell him things that she normally wouldn't say to anybody. She was really letting her guard down. At

At one point in their emails, Barbara said that although she nor her husband Buddy were the type of people to become violent, they would choose to do so if it meant that they could protect their daughter Janelle. Barbara wasn't alone in letting her guard down either. Chris told her how much he wanted to kill Bill, Billie Jean, Tara, and even Lindsay, but that he couldn't yet because his arm was broken from duty.

In their emails, Barbara shared that during the Vietnam War, Buddy and his team had failed to complete their appropriate mission, and they accidentally killed off an entire village of innocent Vietnamese people.

Because of this mistake, the CIA had actually worked to cover up the incident, and what Buddy once would have gotten an award for was taken away and considered a non-existent award, as the CIA wiped away their mistake from the history books. Chris assured Barbara that the CIA was working to resolve their past mistakes, and that he could definitely get one of his supervisors to take a closer look at Buddy's unfortunate case.

But first, they really need to focus on the situation at hand. They needed to focus on Janelle. Nobody in the community other than Janelle, her parents, Chris, and Jamie knew how serious things were now getting. Most people just thought that this was all gossip, rumors, and a bad friendship breakup that was just playing out in the public eye on Facebook. That was until a very cold morning when Roy Stevens and his wife Linda went by Bill's house.

He came by their house often, just to check on him, and they were close friends of his, so he usually didn't even knock, he would just walk right in. So Roy walked in around at 10.30am, and he called out to Bill. But this morning was weird, because he saw that Bill had not gone to work, and his truck was still there.

He also couldn't hear Billie Jean anywhere in the house either, and he started looking around thinking that it was weird that their back porch door was unlocked and wide open. So Roy headed upstairs, and that's when he saw Bill lying face down, and he immediately thought, oh, he's still asleep? But Bill didn't respond, even as Roy was trying to wake him up and talk to him. So then Roy turned Bill over.

and that's when he saw a giant gap in his neck and blood all over the sheets. His heart dropped heavily into his stomach as he realized that Bill was dead, and he immediately yelled to his wife Linda to call 911. Next, he went to check on the nursery, trying to find Billie Jean, and when he did, he saw Billie Jean. She was also lying dead, with a hole in her head and her baby still in her arms.

Now, Roy was afraid that her seven-month-old baby was also dead at this point because there was a bundle of blankets that he was wrapped up in and her arms were still. But luckily, baby Tyler was still alive. However, he was covered in his dead mother's blood. When the police arrived, they took a closer look at Bill and Billie Jean. It's a very clean scene as far as physical evidence goes. So no prints, no shell casings, no DNA left behind.

Not that we found no, sir. Would that lead you to believe that whoever did this killing had some training? It looked like a hit. Like a contract hit. Right. They found Bill lying face down with blood seeping deep into his bedsheets. A bullet to his face and his throat slit from one end of his neck to the other.

Nearby in baby Tyler's room, Billie Jean was on the ground with a singular bullet to her head. The news of the murder quickly spread and it shook everybody in the community to their core. Murder was most definitely not a common occurrence. I mean, the murder of an innocent couple, especially a local who was born and raised in Mountain City and was known and well-loved by everybody...

But also, what kind of cold-blooded person murders a mother holding her baby? It is sick, twisted, and completely deranged. Most people in the community knew about that online feud that had been brewing with Janelle and people had heard about their friend group rivalry, but Janelle or her parents weren't actually capable of murder.

especially since investigators that initially examined the crime scene said that it looked like it was a professional hit job. So the people in town began to wonder if their deaths were somehow drug or gang related. Regardless, police still had to ask Janelle and her family about their relationship with Bill and Billie Jean. What we're doing right now is investigating the double house. Very serious matter. Everybody always points a finger at us for some reason.

- Oh no, there ain't nobody pointing their finger. - Do you know of anybody that would hurt them? Won't they hurt you? - No, actually I don't. I feel bad about the situation because I didn't want no harm on them. They've been harassing me in my driveway, on our property. And then yesterday morning when I got on Facebook is when I found out. And I mean, I'm sorry it happened, but I mean, that's all I could tell you is they have been harassing and living

- Why would they be harassing you? - It came out to be a jealousy thing. They said I was too pretty.

Janelle's only response when they showed up at her front door was that although she felt unfortunate about the situation, they had really harassed her a lot, and she was a victim to their bullying, and there wasn't really much else that she could say. The police also recognized that Janelle's father Buddy was absolutely in no physical condition to pull this kind of hit off, along with the fact that he carried his oxygen tank around with him, so there was no way that he could have

pulled off a murder, no less executed it perfectly. I mean, remember, the police thought that this could have been a professional hit job. So they quickly ruled out any chance that Buddy or his very good, loving Christian family with a sheltered daughter could have committed such a brutal, cold-blooded, and violent murder. The only other person that they could even think to question was Janelle's boyfriend, Jamie. He was closely involved with the Potter family, despite being blood-related to Bill. Jamie.

He's just a friend. We've been friends for years. He's a friend of our family. Yeah. He's a friend of all of us to me. Is Jeremy kind of like your boyfriend? No. No. No, he's just a really good friend. Does he want to be your boyfriend? Not that I know.

Jamie was also much younger than Janelle's dad, and although unlikely, police recognized that he was physically capable of doing this, making him much higher on their suspect list. So, could this have all been orchestrated by Jamie?

Was he so caught up in the feud and fed up between the two families that he just had to do something? Was he sick and tired of Bill harassing Janelle and he wanted to protect her honor like Chris, the CIA agent, was telling him to do? So the police took Jamie in for questioning. This was six hours after the report of Bill and Billie Jean's death. Jamie also took a polygraph test.

Now this was just the start of the plot twist that was beginning to unravel. Jamie had failed his polygraph. There was not a question that resulted in a truthful answer at all, and at first, Jamie tried really hard to conceal what he knew.

They asked him, do you know who might have killed them? And were you alone when you were there? Jamie stood his ground. He kept saying, no, I wasn't there. And what's weird is that he also denied having any romantic relationships with Janelle. I think you ain't in there. I won't take care of this situation. I won't take care of people messing with Janelle. People ain't gonna mess with my girl no more.

However, in the middle of the interrogation, Jamie asked a very puzzling question to the detectives. He asked, Is

Is the CIA here? You see, nobody knew about Chris, the CIA agent, except for Barbara, Jamie, and Janelle. So when Jamie then asked the detectives, they were very confused. I mean, why would the CIA be here?

But to Jamie, the involvement of the CIA, of Chris, the CIA agent, was so matter-of-fact. So investigators disregarded what they felt like was an extremely stupid question, and they told him, no, of course there are not any CIA agents here. And then they began to refocus their questions on Jamie's whereabouts and who he was with at the time of Bill and Billie Jean's deaths.

They said,

So slowly but surely, they were wearing him down. And then Jamie basically admitted that he was there at Bill and Billie Jean's murder. Even so, detectives knew that there was something more to this story. There was no way that Jamie pulled this off alone, with such precision leaving no physical evidence behind. Who shot him? Hey, who? Hey, who? Buddy? Yes?

So investigators asked Jamie, So Jamie agreed, and he called the Potter house.

The phone rang and Barbara answered. Jamie laid out the whole story of how he was brought in for questioning, but then said he ended up being released. Barbara was very relieved and said how glad she was that they had just let him go, how he just passed the lie detector test, and how she had been praying for him, and that apparently, and this is a direct quote, that Janelle saw an angel come into the computer room. Then her dad Buddy came on the phone. Blah, blah.

But that confirmation was enough. That was all that the detectives needed to confirm their initial suspicions that maybe Buddy was in fact the culprit and Jamie was his accomplice. Buddy also said, and I quote, they

They don't have a reason to point any fingers at you or nothing. Because Jiminy Christmas, all the shit Billy was in, I've heard more stuff about gangs and things there in the last few days and the stuff that he was involved in in Johnson County. Everything is crazy, and I still think it's a drug deal gone bad. Basically just trying to reassure Jamie of the storyline that they had agreed to stick to, and that Jamie had nothing to do with the murders."

But little did Buddy know that it was already too late now. He had slipped, and his real answer had already come out at the beginning of the conversation.

So Jamie was then immediately detained, and an arrest warrant was out for Buddy. It seemed that answers were now becoming more clear. But now all detectives had to do was find out what was really going on between Buddy and Bill, and also what had driven Buddy and Jamie to work together to attack and murder Bill and Billie Jean. But during their search for the truth, a monstrous web of lies and manipulation began to unravel.

What they found out was not only a shock to them and to the residents in this small town of Mountain City, but also somewhat one of the most bizarre, bonkers, and absurd stories that detectives had ever heard. First, they began questioning Buddy.

Why did he do it? Was there really a big threat against his daughter, and maybe he did something as some sort of act of protection? After initially denying any involvement, after a few hours of questioning, Buddy cracked. Buddy said that everything

was done on his own, that Janelle and Barbara had no idea that he was the one who had this done. But he told investigators that somebody had put a bounty of a whopping $3,000 out on Janelle for her life, so that because of this, he had to take matters into his own hands. However, he said he didn't even know if Bill and Billie Jean were the ones that had officially put this bounty out on Janelle. So detectives then went through the same process as they had with Jamie.

And they gave Buddy some time to call his wife Barbara at home to let her know what was going on and to see what, if any, information they could gather from that interaction. But it was Barbara's response that got the police even more suspicious and questioning if somehow Barbara was also involved in these murders.

Barbara answered the phone, and rather than shock, she was oddly calm. Too calm, like she was waiting for this type of call to happen. Buddy kept telling her, it's too late, I already told them, and it's over, I already confessed.

But Barbara just kept responding with, it's okay, it's okay, they don't have anything on you. So after that, the police went to investigate the Potter's family home so that they could find any evidence or records of suspicious activities. There were a ton of firearms at the house, as I had mentioned in the beginning of this episode, but that really wasn't a big deal, and Buddy had always been upfront about that.

So then the police moved on and moved around the house when they noticed that they could hear some ripping sounds. They looked over and they saw that Barbara was trying to rip something up that was on their coffee table in the living room. So the police walked over and they took the paper and the photo on that paper was a printed out photo of Billie Jean with some of her friends. The

Then, outside in the truck, there was even more shredded paper, and it was all stuffed inside three giant plastic bags. These three bags of shredded paper amounted to thousands of emails that were being sent between Barbara and none other than the CIA agent, Chris.

The police were able to put everything together, and what they found was truly shocking. The emails exposed all of Chris's information about Bill and Billie Jean, about how Bill was a serious drug dealer, how Billie Jean was a sex worker, and that the two of them ran with an extremely dangerous crowd. The police were confused, frankly, because they knew for a fact that these claims were baseless.

Bill had quit drugs and had even stopped smoking because he didn't want any secondhand smoke or remnants of smoke around his new baby Tyler. So then the police began to dig in even further. They needed to find out who this guy was, who is Chris the CIA agent. So they decided they were going to track down his IP address. And what they found was going to rock this entire case on its head.

Alright guys, we are going to take a final break in today's case to hear from our final sponsor. So like I was saying, they were now trying to figure out who is this guy Chris? What are all of these shredded emails? Who is this CIA agent who has been like tailing these people who are now found dead in a double homicide? So they're tracking his IP address.

And it turns out that Chris wasn't actually some secret CIA agent who just happened to stumble upon Janelle's life in this exact moment and was willing to give up his career and credibility for the sake of saving her because they were once upon a time besties in high school. Chris was Janelle. Janelle was Chris.

This changed everything. And let me tell you right now, everybody was in complete shock. See, it wasn't just that Chris had been using Janelle's email account to have these exchanges. He was using her account from her exact computer at its exact location. And remember, Barbara and Buddy never met Chris in person. They all just knew him by email.

It was in fact Janelle though, all along, who was emailing everyone.

Catfishing everybody, even down to the detail of Chris's photo. I mean, truly unbelievable. So this revelation explained so many different things. But also, at the same time, it just made the case that much more insane and truly mind-boggling. I mean, nobody could understand what was going on here. The spelling and the grammatical errors that Chris had...

Well, Janelle had that learning disability, and this was also reflected in her spelling and writing. Not to mention, the police had actually taken a sample of her letter regarding her witnessing her dad's days prior to the day of the murder, and that letter was written in the exact same style as the way that Chris wrote the emails.

Now what makes all of this absolutely absurd is the fact that there was only one computer in the family's house. It wasn't like today where you could be in your bedroom on your laptop while your dad is in the office with the desktop and your mom's then using the phone on the couch in the living room. This was just a single old computer.

desktop computer that was in the house for everybody in the family to use. But the realization was that Janelle being Chris means that she was able to hold up this act through the thousands and thousands of emails with her mom and with Jamie, all through one computer.

And everybody in the family apparently, what, truly thought that Chris was real? It turned out that Janelle's mind was a lot more conniving and sneaky than anybody would have expected. One detective said that she may have had the mental capacity of a fourth grader, but she was a master level manipulator.

Hiding behind her innocent facade as this sheltered girl who was too weak and sickly to know the harshness of the world, she had manipulated her own family members, and through them, had chosen to harass everybody who were once friends with her in this town that she was a newcomer to. It was unbelievable. So when she was confronted with the truth during interrogation and interviews by the media, Janelle immediately broke down in tears.

She just couldn't handle it, and oftentimes she would just go into a full-out hysterical temper tantrum. Now, you may think that her mass-scale manipulation that drove her boyfriend and her own father to murder an innocent couple was all that she lied about, but that could not be further from the truth. Everything that Janelle said about Mountain City, Tennessee, and her life there, it was all a lie.

It turned out that when Billie Jean became pregnant, it was also around the time that Janelle's alter ego, Chris, came onto the scene. It was also the beginning of all of her anonymous online conversations with other people who also apparently knew Billie Jean, Tara, and Lindsay and hated them as well. Janelle was constantly going on about how the girls won't stop harassing her because, remember, she was just too pretty. That was always like the direct quote.

and how she was saying that they kept harassing her because they were all jealous of her. But in reality, every single thing that Janelle said these girls did to her was actually what she was doing to them. Lindsay was slandered all

online about how she was a whore, how she had HIV, how she was a stupid bitch, and how she slept with almost all of the guys in Mountain City. And in reality, Janelle is the one who created these fake Facebook profiles with fake names, fake pictures, and slandered the girls online, pretending that it was all a bunch of different people who just hated these girls, and that it was a

all Janelle. She also was the one who sent a lot of the threats that were directed her own way through Facebook profiles that she made. She was not only threatening other people, she was the one threatening herself as well. The entire time, all of it was coming from Janelle.

She even said, It also turned out that the whole reason the family had moved to Tennessee was also not entirely true. See, Janelle's grandmother was sick, yes, but the family had not moved only to take care of the grandmother. They moved because Buddy also got caught lying by many of their friends in the community.

Because, just like fake Chris, Buddy was never a CIA agent, and he was then getting exposed in the town they used to live in. On top of all of this, fictitious Chris, who was really Janelle, continued to stir the pot.

Janelle was really egging on her mom Barbara, who in turn would then push Buddy. Remember, Barbara had previously told Chris, aka Janelle, that Buddy would never choose violence, but that if he was pushed past his limits, he would do it if he needed to. So Janelle also knew that she could manipulate her mom and dad by saying that Chris was a CIA agent, because she knew that that would legitimize Chris and make them more likely to go along with his plan.

Her dad, Buddy, was under the impression that Janelle was being harassed and threatened to be raped and murdered. And get this, in a super sick and twisted detail, remember that $3,000 bounty that was apparently put on Janelle's head? Well, apparently, Barbara never told her dad, Buddy, this, but...

And supposedly that bounty was put out by none other than Christy, Janelle's older sister, which wasn't true at all. It was just something that Janelle had said while she was pretending to be Chris. I mean, blaming it all on your sister, it is so unhinged, it's hard to even wrap your mind around all of the different components.

Investigators also discovered that Janelle was directly implicated in the murders because she sent a text to Jamie early in the morning around the same time that Jamie had met up with Buddy, and the text said he just left. As

as in her dad had just left the house. So she knew their plans all along, and she knew the influence that her role as Chris was having on everybody close to her. Buddy, who was the one who physically went to murder Bill and Billie Jean,

was sentenced to two different life sentences in October of 2013. Jamie, who was there at the scene but had only kept watch for Buddy rather than doing the murder himself and also helping Buddy to spot Billie Jean before she got away, was sentenced to 25 years in prison. This was in 2015.

But because he was also caught up in the family drama and the lies, and his main desire was to please the Potter family, he was given the chance of parole in 2019. Which seems crazy, right? That is only a few years. Janelle and Barbara were also charged for their roles in the murders, and they were tried together in court. Now get this. During court, one very surprising witness came to testify. A man named Chris.

Yes, the Chris that Janelle was pretending to be and even used his picture. He came to give his testimony. He indeed worked for law enforcement, and he was a fairly good-looking guy and did go to school with Janelle at one point. But?

but he barely even knew who she was at school. So in 2015, though there was no physical evidence, Janelle and Barbara were both found guilty of first-degree murder, and they were sentenced to life in prison, all for causing this entire crime to unfold on the baseless grounds that Bill and Billie Jean were harassing Janelle.

which in fact was the complete opposite way. She was the one harassing them. Now today, a judge heard the final closing arguments as to why their two attorneys believe they deserve a new trial. It's an argument of new evidence as to why attorneys say the Potter women should have new trials. Shocking new testimony came from husband and father to the Potter women, Marvin Potter, yesterday. I committed the crime.

He was convicted in 2013 of firing the gun in the murders of Bill Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth. He testified in court yesterday for the very first time, giving a full admission of guilt in the death of Bill Payne. Did you accidentally slit his throat?

No, sir. I did that on purpose. He testified his convicted accomplice, Jamie Curd, killed Billie Jean Hayworth. Marvin testified his wife and daughter played no role in convincing him to kill. Barbara and Janelle's attorneys argue if he had testified to this in the original trial of these two women, they would be free today. I think his testimony was too important not to hear. His testimony has to be taken in light of the massive bias he'd have to help his family.

and it would have to be evaluated in light of the other evidence of the case." District Attorney Dennis Brooks does not believe much of Marvin's account of the murders, which the DA calls full of red flags. "Maybe somewhere along the way he's had a change of heart, but in my mind if he wanted to help those women at their trial, he'd have done it. He'd have done it."

In court Wednesday, Barbara Potter told a judge she was guilty but of a lesser charge. This comes after she was granted a new trial in August. So now there is a plea deal in the case and we've learned she is no longer sentenced to life in prison. Under oath to God, she said, I'm guilty.

I'm responsible. It was surreal to hear her say that." Of the three family members convicted in the murders of Bill Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth, only one has a shot at release from jail. That's mother Barbara Potter, who alongside her daughter Janelle and husband Marvin was originally convicted on two counts of first-degree murder. "The conviction for murder was wrong. The jury got it wrong.

Yesterday in court, Barbara Potter admitted guilt to a lesser charge, facilitation of first degree murder, meaning her life sentence is now reduced to 25 years in jail. She straight up pled guilty. So she was wanting to accept fault. For the state, the plea deal was not ideal, but they say in doing so, they insisted she not allege innocence. I didn't want that. I said, you're going to have to plead guilty. You're going to have to admit under oath.

responsibility for these people dying." Potter has already served the required 30 percent of her new 25-year sentence since she's been behind bars for eight years. That means she will soon be eligible for parole. "Quite frankly it made me sick to write out the judgments that would allow her to see a parole board. I'm not sure if she's

I feel bad for the families of the victims that have to worry about a parole hearing." Barbara Potter was granted a new trial back in August after a judge ruled there was a conflict with her original trial attorney, Randy Fallon. "She was denied due process. Flat out she was. There was a conflict of interest." Barbara's attorney says he encouraged her to go to trial for a second time, but is satisfied with her plea and chance for release from prison. "It gives her something to look forward to.

And what she's convicted of more appropriately fits the facts that she was accused of now. Barbara's daughter Janelle and husband Marvin both remain jailed for life on charges of first-degree murder. The level of true manipulation by Janelle was honestly unbelievable.

And she played everybody like a fool, like they were all just puppets in some sick, twisted game of hers. Now, I by no means am saying what her dad did was right, certainly not. The murders were brutal and horrifying and nothing will ever and could never justify that.

But the fact that he was truly convinced that all of these people were saying that they wanted to rape his daughter, murder his daughter, rape her because she was a virgin, and that she was on the receiving end of all of this hate and vitriol that seemed to also never end, it just makes this case that much more heartbreaking and sick. Because he was trying to protect her, even though that's not an excuse for it. It all came from a place of wanting to protect his daughter, protect her life, everything.

I mean, I guess her parents were just extremely gullible, but they really believed that they were working with somebody from the CIA. And...

As I kind of alluded to in the beginning, I feel like there would be a lot of red flags personally going off for me when a CIA agent starts calling you mom and you start calling him son. It's like, ugh, the lines are for sure blurred. And when they're sharing all of that information with you and talking about murder, probably not a professional CIA agent. But still, they must have just been so desperate to cling to any hope that somebody was going to protect their daughter, right?

Meanwhile, their daughter was the one concocting this entire sick and twisted story. It is heartbreaking.

haunting. It really is. And it's just another illustration. You can never trust people you meet online. You can never really trust what people are telling you. And that before you ever do anything, and I'm not talking murder, I'm just talking about like jumping to conclusions about something, you need to see outright evidence and facts because this could have easily, I think, been avoided at several different turns in the road.

Although Janelle was committed and she was a master manipulator, had there been certain check marks along the way or people raising a question about certain things, it's very possible that this murder, this double murder, could have been avoided. Now little Tyler is left to grow up without his two parents because of some catfishing scheme that was what? All in done in an attempt and a ploy for attention out of jealousy? It is...

The definition of senseless, right? Anyways, it's one of those cases that truly has just boggled my mind ever since I first heard about it. So I knew I needed to jump on the mic and talk with you about it. All right, guys. And before you forget, make sure to snag those amazing deals. I will link it all below. You can get your customized hair care program with pros. You can get some bomb ass factor meals. And you can get your little pet, your little furry friend, some pet insurance.

So thank you for tuning in to another episode of Serialistly. Please don't forget, before you close out of the app, make sure you're following the podcast so that you don't miss out on any future episodes. I think you can do so in like the top corner of the podcast app. Just click the follow button. I don't really know how it works depending on what app you're using, but make sure to follow. And if you are enjoying the podcast so far, I would love to hear from you. Please, if you're on Apple, leave a rating and review and let me know in the review section what you're enjoying, what you want more of, any questions.

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