S1: E18 – The Brotherhood, Part 1

One of the deputies went out to the residence and when he went inside he discovered the body. The level of violence in this homicide was astonishing. She'd been shot five times, stabbed deeply five times, and vigorously beaten with an aluminum baseball back. When he exited the house, he actually threw up. It was kind of crazy.

The murder of Genora Guillery sent shockwaves through her small Louisiana town.

Everybody was scared, especially if you were a woman. You know, it was the summer of fear.

Today we're in Clinton, Louisiana, for the case of Genora Guillery, whose unsolved murder became a talking point among local politicians. I'm Sloan Glass and this is American Homicide. Just a warning, this episode contained some graphic content. Please take care while listening. Before we go into the story of Genora, we have to talk about Louisiana. It's not trite to say that it really is a melting pot, a mix of so many different ingredients that come together to create something really

Stew gumbo being one of the spicy, fantastic dishes of South Louisiana Cajun Land.

Elbert Gillary is a lawyer and former state senator in Louisiana, where gumbo isn't just the official dish, it's a culture.

We call ourselves Gumbo people, a blend of of French, French, Catholic, particularly African, and a lot of Native American.

That blend of culture is what makes Louisiana so unique.

This is the most fascinating place in the world. The most fantastic food, the best music, and greatest dancing will.

Cities like that in Rouge and New Orleans get the spotlight. Elbert believes it's the many small towns that make up the fabric of the state.

We call ourselves the real Louisiana. People are much warmer, much more open. Our food is better, our music is better. It's just a whole different world. It's a much more integrated world in the country than in the city.

One such integrated place is the town of Clinton. Clinton says about thirty miles northeast of Battle and Rouge. The rural community of about twelve hundred residents dates back to the early eighteen hundreds. Today, its population is nearly split equally among black and white residents, but is still working to overcome its racially fraud history. For years, residents argued over a giant, thirty foot statue of a Confederate soldier

This is America. There is racism in America, and that's just a part of life. We've come a long way during my lifetime, and we still have a few more yards to go before we reach the finish line.

Back in two thousand, Elbert's sister in law, Genora Gillery, was living on a large ten acre lot in Clinton.

She lived down a country road. There were only two residences on that country road. She liked the fact that it was far out in the country.

Genora, or Miss g as her neighbors called her, was a single career woman whose love for the country was only surpassed by her affinity for animals.

She loved horses and had horses. She loved dogs and had some dogs, and particularly one. Cleo was her absolute favorite and lived in her home with her. They were very, very close.

Cleo was Genora's protector. She would bark at almost anyone who came near her. Genora used to joke that none of her outfits were complete without Cleo's dog care, or hair of any of the twenty or so dog she kept in a large kennel behind her home.

She loved the idea that she would be able to have her animals there in an undisturbed fashion.

It was undisturbed all right. Genora's farmhouse style home sat on a huge parcel of land off a dead end road. In the distance were several tall trees and a cemetery. It would be a scary place for anyone to live, especially a single woman. Genora felt grateful to have neighbors living.

Up the block.

There was a trailer about a half city block down across the little street, and it was occupied by a family named Skipper, Mister Skipper, his wife, and their children.

The Skipper's trailer may have been an ice work, but having Philip and his wife Amy Skipper as neighbors was a welcome site for Genora. She was a single career woman who lived alone. Her job in Baton Rouge kept her away most of the day, so she relied on the Skippers for help.

Mister Skipper assisted with the animals, who made sure that they were fed and received water and those kinds of things. Missus Skipper was employed by Genora as.

A housekeeper, but it was more than a working relationship. The Skippers and Genora were very close, especially because Genora depended on them for so much. If she ever needed help at home, she knew she could rely on the Skippers. You see, Genora was very successful. She worked for a major insurance company and would leave for work early in

Her coworkers got worried about her because she didn't show up for work.

Detective Joel Odam worked for the East fully Siena Sheriff's Department.

They called the Sheriff's office and asked to do a check on her house and a welfare check.

With no sign of Genora and a constant busy signal on her landline phone. A patrol car was dispatched just after ten am.

Clinton is pretty quiet. It's a small community. Most everybody knows everybody. Not much goes on up there.

It took about thirty minutes for the squad car to make it to Jenora's home in Clinton.

When he first arrived there, he saw that the door was open to the residence.

That's where Jenora's dog Clea was found tied to a railing near the carport. Cleo was upset and barking. She even tried to bite the officer as he quickly squeezed past her.

And when he went inside, he could see blood basically all over the living room, the phone, the kitchen.

Then they walked into the bedroom. A broken lamp lay on the floor next to an overturned end table. Blood spatter covered the walls, along with bullet holes above the bed, and the body of Jenora Guillery lay on the floor.

She'd been shot five times, stabbed deeply five times.

It was awful. This entire story gives me such a stomach ache, and this is where the details get really hard. Bruises covered her entire face. Genora's skull almost looked flattened by whatever was used to hit her.

She took a blow to the spinal column that severed it straight from the back of her neck. You can imagine how much damage of blow like that would dig.

If what happened to Jenora Guillery wasn't already bad enough, there were also signs she was sexually assaulted. It was a horrifying scene for a small town police officer, or anyone for that matter.

And this was a violent homicide, probably more brutal than most homicides you'll ever see. I believe when he exited the house he actually threw up.

Think about that for a second. The scene was so bad that it sickened the deputy.

We have murders up in Clinton, but nothing that was the level of this. It's heartbreaking. Makes me feel sorry for the family to know their loved one had to go through something like that.

Detective Don McKee arrived a short time later and began to piece together what happened to Genora Guillery.

She was laying in the back corner of the bedroom. She had stabs in her hands in her arms, so you could see that she was trying to fight back. It was just obvious that this was a homicide.

Detective searched the house and they didn't find anything missing. They also didn't find any major clues.

At that point, we secured the sing with Kyle for Louisiana State believed the crime lab to come and process the scene. While we was there waiting for that to occur, we talked to the Skippers.

As Janora's Bonnie was taking out in a body bag, her neighbors and good friends, Philip and Amy Skipper, were standing outside. A very pregnant Amy stood on the edge of the driveway with her husband crying.

Amy was just really upset, she was hysterical and they shook up. I mean, they just couldn't understand why this would have happened to her.

Amy and Philip were two twenty somethings who lived in a mobile home with their children. They explained to detectives that Genora, or Miss g as they called her, was the most generous person they had ever met.

Was talk about how big of a heart she had. She would pick up stray dogs and bring them to the vet and get him checked out and take care of them.

And the Skippers provided detectives with their first clue. They said Genora's dogs never worked at night time. However, the previous morning they heard Genora's dogs barking around two am.

That's when we noticed scratches on both of their arms and then question about it.

Philip Skipper's arms were all scratched up, but he had an explanation. He said that he and his stepson, John Balllyo had been horsing around in the yard.

He said it was wrastling in the yard and so forth.

It the Skippers were the only ones who lived nearby, and those scratches for something detectives couldn't ignore. So in order to rule them out a suspects, they had Philip Skipper and his stepson, John Balllyo take a polygraph test.

Admitted to a polygraph test, and both of them passed that.

After they passed with flying colors, the detectives were back to square one.

Genora lived in a nice house out in the middle of nowhere. I mean it's down at the end of this gravel road.

Journalist Chuck Hussmeyer covered the story.

Well, the door was open to the house, it wasn't forced, which is a clue right there that she likely knew the killer.

Based on her autopsy, the police determined Genora died sometime in the very early hours of Sunday morning, and given the severity of her injuries and the fact that nothing was taken from her home, they wondered if Janora's killer may have held some sort of grudge towards her.

Typically, in a murder case, you start with the closest circle of people to the victim. You know, husband's boyfriends, any kind of lovers, friends, things like that. And in this case, Janora had had a boyfriend, a long term boyfriend, but he had died.

Two years earlier. Her boyfriend fell asleep at the wheel and got into a fatal car accident that left Genora devastated and alone.

But after that, it's really digging into the history of the victim. You know, who was she who did she know? Who was mad at her?

At the time, Genora was forty two years old. She worked in human resources for an insurance company in Baton Rouge. Since she handled the hiring and firing, detectives questioned her coworkers to see if there were any former disgruntled employees.

You know, people like that are who you want to check out first.

Her colleagues couldn't think of any disgruntled ex employees, but they did tell detectives about a suspicious male friend of Genora's.

She had complained to her co workers that he was harassing her, and he was very persistent. He would stake out her car sometimes in the parking lot, catch her after work so he could because she wasn't answering his phone call, so he would go and you know, visit her so to speak in person, although she didn't want it. So he was a very viable candidate as a suspect.

That man was an old friend of Genora's named Steve.

They went on a date one time and he made her really uncomfortable.

Detective Joel Odom investigated and learned Genora met Steve in the eighties, but the two had lost touch. They'd recently reconnected and just before her murder, they went out on a date, but things quickly soured. Genora wasn't interested in seeing him again, but Steve wouldn't take no for an answer. Genora said, Steve wouldn't stop touching her.

She thought that was going to be the end of it, but actually that was just the beginning. He would call her at work multiple times, and they'd even heard him argue on the phone and she had told him I could call me. It worked.

In the month before her murder, Steve's phone number turned up on Genora's home phone eleven times, including Saturday, June twenty fourth, hours before Genora was murdered. And then there was this The previous Friday, Genora told her colleague that she hoped Steve wouldn't show up at her house that weekend. That was the last time any of Jenora's colleagues saw her alive.

So we started looking to him and found out he at the time was a Veton Rage City police officer. Everybody was just shocked.

Although he was forty five years old at the time, Steve was a rookie cop. He had just graduated from the academy. He spent the prior twenty plus years working as a corrections officer. All of this, combined with his repeated unwanted advances, made to detective suspicious, so we felt.

He was a good suspect at the time. But it's hard, as.

You can imagine, questioning one of their own requires a delicate dance.

There's no correct way to do it, and I was a young detective back then. I was kind of a goble. I believe with the people that were supposed to take care of the people and the public wouldn't lie to you, or would not lie to the public.

No matter what. One cop investigating another cop means you're gunna step on some toes and potentially cross some unspoken lines. But that didn't stop them.

At the time, we didn't have anything. Basically, we had a crime saying, no murder weapon, just phone records and other stuff that we could develop.

Detectives continued to look into Steve. He cooperated with their investigation.

We pulled him in for question and we offered him a polygraph.

At the time, Steve agreed, and the results shocked everyone in the room.

He failed to polygraph and he said, I don't want to talk to you. I hold my lawyer, and that was the end of the interview.

Okay, So things weren't looking good for Officer Steve, and detectives continued to look for anything that would connect him to the crime. Journalist Chuck Hussmeyer covered the story.

He left a message on her answer machine right before she died that he was going to be in the area and of course, you're really not in that area unless you're going out there on purpose. But he claimed he was going to be in the area and he would stop by.

That's something important to remember. Genora lived in the middle of nowhere, so you really had to go out of your way to get to her house. But Officer Steve had an alibi. He said that on the weekend of Jenora's murder, he was at his mother's house, and this part surprising. He was mayor at the time and even had a son who he dropped off at a nearby camp. He did admit to calling Genora that Saturday, but she

He'd made Genia nervous to the point where she wouldn't take his phone calls.

Detectives learned Steve sometimes stop by Genora's house and office unannounced, which obviously scared Gena. And get this, he even called Genora's colleague a couple of days after her death and asked for Genora's parents' phone number.

They are just a lot of weird stuff going on with this guy.

Things got even more unsettling when they visited the police academy officer Steve attended. There was a payphone there where fellow cadet said they always saw Steve making calls. Detectives got a phone long from that payphone and found thirty five phone calls placed from that phone to Genora's in rouge office. Who do you call when the police are the ones harassing you?

They interviewed people that he knew, including another woman who was in the police academy with him, who said he kind of harassed her, So you know, guy's got kind of a history of harassing women that don't return his affections.

Even after Steve lawyered up and stopped cooperating, detectives continued to turn up the heat.

And they really went after him hard. They execute a search warrant on his house, on his car, and they didn't find anything. They couldn't link him to the crime.

So this had to be frustrating for detectives. They now had plenty of circumstantial evidence, but nothing concrete. Officer Steve failed his polygraph. He admitted to phoning Genora multiple times a day, and he admitted to even showing up at Genoa's office unannounced. But all of that wasn't enough to press charges.

Can't charge anybody without evidence, so they just have to either dig up another lead or wait for some kind of a break to come your way.

While detectives continue their investigation, Genora's brother in law, Albert, struggled to stay positive. Here's Albert.

That was not an easy time, not at all.

At the time of Genora's murder, the police had lifted some DNA from under her fingernails, but keep in mind it was still the early days of DNA testing and the testing was not only expensive but slow. It was the year two thousand. It took months for the lapse to process it.

There were some missteps and some broken leads, as they are in many investigations, but it would be difficult for all of us.

It required a good deal of patience on all sides.

We did everything that we could to be helpful to law enforcement. Families under these emotional, devastating circumstances can sometimes get under foot. They want to try the case in the press and all of that. That was not something that we would do and we did not do.

Albert and Jennora's family weren't the only ones losing patience. Law enforcement was also disappointed with how long it took the lapse to process that DNA, but one arrest one year later would change everything. Detectives in the quiet town of Clinton, Louisiana, spent over a year trying to solve the murder of Genora Guillery.

Normally there isn't a lot of crime in that area. I mean it's a very small town, small population, in a very rural area.

Chuck Hussmeyer authored the book Unspeakable Violence about Genora's murder.

I've been around a lot of crime, you know, but this one was just particularly bad.

The police investigated a rookie cop out of Baton Rouge, who some said was stalking Genra, but they just didn't have enough evidence to charge him.

They polygraphed him and he seemed a little shady or on the polygraph, but nothing definitive and there's just no evidence. So the case went cold.

Cold, something family and friends never want to hear when describing the case of a loved one. For Elbert and Jenora's community, it felt like an answer to her murder would never come. And then a year later, the investigators got a break when a man named Donnie Fisher was arrested Donnie was brought in for beating up his girlfriend. Detectives had no connection to him and Genora, but Donnie was hoping to trade some information to get himself off the hook.

He said he knew something about the Genoa Gillery murder. He said he was talking to a guy and that guy was bragging about having killed this black woman in Clinton, Louisiana. So they started digging into his story.

That's when detectives learned about a local makeshift gang called the Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood was, you know, three four, maybe five guys with a tattoo. They stole the idea from a cheesy b action movie.

If you've seen the nineties movie Stone Cold, and not too many people have, you may have heard of the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood was a biker gang that was featured in the movie. But the Brotherhood and Clinton operated a bit differently.

They were selling meth, they were fighting pit bulls, they were committing grave robbery. They were literally pulling gold teeth out of people's mouths that they dug up from graves. I mean, you got to have something really wrong in your head to decide that the best way you can earn some money is to go dig up graves and steal their teeth and jewelry. I mean, that's something really screwing in your head there.

And members of this dog fighting, meths selling, and grave robbing gang sported tattoos with the letters GFBD.

GFBD God forgives brotherhood, doesn't.

That tattoo was a sort of membership badge. But you had to earn.

It, and the only way to earn it was to kill somebody.

So who was part of this gang? Well, according to Donny Fisher, the brotherhood consisted of Philip Skipper, Genora's neighbor, and his brother in law, Johnny Hoyt.

But there's no evidence of animosity between the Skippers and Jenore.

The person who fed this information to Donny Fisher was his friend John Balllyo, you may remember, lived with the Skippers.

John Balllyo was sort of an orphaned kid. His mother just sort of left him with Philip Skipper and Amy Skipper. They referred to him as their step son, but he really wasn't any kind of relation to them.

John Ballio would have just been fifteen years old at the time of the murder. Early on in their investigation, detectives noticed that John Ballio and his stepfather Philip Skipper had a bunch of scratches on their arms and face, but both of them passed a polygraph test. So the detectives went back to question the teenager about the Brotherhood's connection to Jenora's murder.

And you know, of course, John Balllyo denied that he participated in it, but he was there.

John Balllyo said he was there the night Genora was murdered, but he pinned the blame on his stepfather, Philip Skipper, along with Philip's sister Lisa and her husband Johnny Hoyt.

John Balllyo said Lisa shot her a couple times. Philip here with a bat and that's what killed her.

John Balllyo said all he did that night was controlled Genora's dog, Cleo.

John Balyo's job was to get a rope around the dog's neck. The dog was a chow and it was sort of vicious, and Genoa let that dog sleep in the house with it because there was her protector.

Balllyo said it was all part of his initiation into the Brotherhood. Okay, so there's a lot to unpack here. Philip Skipper and John Balllyo passed a polygraph test right after Genora's murder, which originally eliminated them as suspects. Here's how they did it. Both of them pop some pills before the test to bring their heart rate down. But still none of this added up. Would Philip Skipper want to hurt Genora?

She was extremely generous to them. Whenever they would come ask her for anything, which they did a lot, she would give it to them. She threw a birthday party at a local restaurant for their baby. She actually gave them enough money to help them buy a newer mobile home. Not a new one, but newer and nicer.

As the police investigated, they learned that a month before Genora's murder, the two neighbors had an argument.

The relationship between janere Gillery and the Skippers started to deteriorate over this incident involving a goat. That's a weird story, but the Skippers had a pet goat. Why, I have no idea. Somehow the goat got loose and Amy Skipper said that one of Janoora's dogs attacked a goat. Amy Skipper called Jenore at work, just cussing at her, and you know, just angry furious about the goat. You know, it turned out it wasn't really one of Jennor's dogs.

So, in other words, the Skipper's own dog attacked their goat, but they blamed Genora. This skipper said the two sides had reconciled. But again, would an incident with a goat be enough of a motive to kill it seems a little ridiculous.

They did get a search warrant based on what he told them, and they executed the warrant at the trailer across from Jenor's house.

Now keep in mind this search happened well over a year after Jenor's murder.

They weren't really able to find anything in the house. They couldn't find the gun, you know, the twenty two gun that she was shot with several times. And they did find a bat. John Ballyo had told him about a bat, but the bat had been sitting outside their trailer for like two years in the rain, so they weren't able to get any evidence DNA evidence particularly.

One other notable find at the Skippers was some life insurance documents It was a life policy that named the Skippers as the beneficiary in the event of Janora's death.

Her boyfriend was the beneficiary on the life insurance policy on Jenora's life, and when he passed away, she didn't cancel the policy. She saw her neighbors were in, you know, financial straits, so she just named Philip and Amy Skipper as the beneficiaries of the same twenty five thousand dollars insurance policy. And she figured, you know, if something happened to her, they would have some extra money to help take care of their baby.

Well, that's certainly curious, but it wasn't a secret. Albert Gillery knew about the life insurance policy and no one had objected.

Philip and Amy definitely knew about the insurance policy. Jena told them about it, So all of a sudden, the attention shifted to the Skippers and John Ballio, who lived right across the street from Jeneuguiller.

Even with these suspects and a confession, the police still did not think they had enough evidence to charge them, just like with their other suspect. The comp from that in Rouche.

Most prosecutors are extremely risk averse. They won't tee it up and see what the jury says. They will just drop the case rather than press forward on what they consider a weak case.

The decision not to press charges created a war between the DA and Sheriff's office.

So we just kind of had to sit back and look at everybody again.

And the unsolved murder left the town of Clinton terrified.

It was the summer of fear. Everybody was buying mace off the shelf as fast as they could get it. Here handguns say the road.

I'm Sloan Glass. In the conclusion of the Brotherhood, the police learned the surprising answer to why they couldn't find more evidence.

You never have that happen, And you know, that's something I would be embarrassed to try to write in fiction, But in this case, it really happened.

That's next time. On American Homicide. You can contact the American Homicide team by emailing us at American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. That's American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. American Homicide is hosted and written by me Sloan Glass and is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeartPodcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Todd Gans. The series is also written and produced by Todd Gans,