Hello, it is Ryan, and we could all use an extra bright spot in our day, couldn't we just to make up for things like sitting in traffic, doing the dishes, counting or steps, you know, all the mundane stuff. That is why I'm such a big fan of Chumba Casino. Chumbuck Casino has all your favorite social casino style games. You can play for free anytime anywhere, with daily bonuses that should brighten your day Lowe actually a lot, So sign up now at Chumbuck Casino dot com. That's Chumbuck
Casino dot com. No pursiness is every d void for HBLI losty terms conditions eighting plus. Hello, it is Ryan and I was on a flight the other day playing one of my favorite social spin slot games on chumbacasino dot com. I looked over the person sitting next to me, and you know what they were doing. They were also playing Chumba Casino. Coincidence, I think not everybody's loving having fun with it. Chumba Casino's home to hundreds at casino
style games. Do you can play for free anytime anywhere, even at thirty thousand feet, So sign up now at Chumbuckcasino dot com to claim your free welcome bonus. That's Chumbuck Casino dot com and live the Chumba Lane. No pursiness is every d void over HPIL lost Conditions eighteen plus.
Step into the world of power, loyalty and luck. I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse.
With family, canolis and spins mean everything.
Now you want to get mixed up in the family.
Business, Introducing the Godfather at Champa Casino dot com. Test your luck in the shadowy world at the Godfather slot.
Someday I will call upon you to do a service for me.
Play the Godfather now at Champacasino dot com.
Welcome to the Family vdW group. No perches necessary. I believe were privateed by loss he Terms and Conditions eighteen plus. With Lucky Land slots, you can get lucky just about anywhere.
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today. Has anyone seen the bride and groom?
Ri Sorry we're here. We were getting lucky in the limo and we lost track of time.
No Lucky Land casino with cash prizes that add up quicker than he gets registered. In that case, I pronounce you Lucky.
Play for free at Lucky Landslots dot Com daily bonuses writing no purchase necessary board.
We're prohibited by LACK eighteen plus terms and conditions the Flag. See website for details.
You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Good Evening. When Bill Payne and Billy Jean Hayworth began their romance, they unknowingly set in motion a diabolic plot that would end with them murdered in their own home, Hayworth holding their mercifully unharmed infant. Chris was a CI agent who was concerned about Janelle, seeing the cyberbullying she had endured and worried for her safety. Chris got in touch with Janelle's protective parents and her devoted boyfriend, warning them that Pain and Hayworth were a danger to Janelle.
He got especially close with Janelle's mother, Barbara, who thought of Chris like a son, though she had never met him. Chris claimed that surveillance of Pain and Hayworth revealed that the two of them were planning on harming Janelle, that it was imminent and that something needed to be done immediately. Chris promised that he would have their back if they were to act to protect Janelle, and so they did.
Janelle's father, Buddy, and her boyfriend Jamie broke into the home of Pain and Hayworth and murdered them in their own home, but the police investigation turned up though made this crime all the more terrifying. Janelle had been Ris yes the entire time, catfishing her family and her boyfriend
to act in vengeance on her behalf. Using forensic linguistics and driving through the brambles that Chanelle laid to cover her tracks, police were able to put together a chilling portrait of a sociopath made all the more ruthless by the anonymity of her online life. Bizarre and unforgettable, Dennis Brooks examines the crime and trial from all angles, bringing his expertise as the lead prosecutor in the strange and disturbing case. The book that we're featuring this Eating is
Too Pretty to Live. The catfishing Murders of East Tennessee with my special guest, journalist and author and prosecutor Dennis Brooks. Welcome to the program and thank you for a Greediness interview. Dennis Brooks, Thank you for having me. Thank you very much. Incredible tale. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, Dennis, and how you came to want to write this book and how you came in a position to be able to write this book.
Well, I'm in my mid forties. I grew up in East Tennessee, in the the foothills of the mountains that border North Carolina, and I actually had an aspiration to be a writer when I was young, and actually got to be a sports writer for the local paper while I was in college, and somehow gravitated towards the law.
I graduated from University of Tennessee back in ninety eight and got a job with the local DA's office here where I grew up, and I've been here ever since, and somehow I've stumbled into going back to being so of a part time writer as well. So it's been an interesting journey. And you know, over the time as a prosecutor, I guess I gained some kind of a niche in prosecuting the murders in the air, a lot
of the bigger ones. And we had a very shocking double murder in Johnson County, which is on the very northeast tip of the state. It borders Virginia in North Carolina, and I was asked to assist in the case, and that began the most interesting journey I've had in my prosecuting career.
Now, set the stage for our audience and tell us where this crime occurred and described the area for our audience, if you could, please.
Yeah, it happened in Mountain City or just outside the city limits. There's actually a Tennessee prison basically across the road from the scene of the crime. But Mountain City is the county seat of Johnson County. It's got a very small population. There's basically three grocery stores. Johnson County's mostly mountainous and there's I forget twelve thousand to fifteen thousand people live in the county completely, you know, in total, and you know it's it's the kind of place where
everybody knows everybody. There's not a lot of secrets. You run into everybody at the post office or the grocery store. It's you know, it's a very friendly collection of people. You know, a lot of god fearing type, you know, people as you would expect in the South. And you know, this of course happened just outside Mountain City.
Now, tell us a little bit about Barbara and about Buddy. And first tell us about Buddy because he's a Vietnam that so tell us a little bit about Buddy and a little bit about his background.
Yeah, but he had a family I can't remember if he grew up actually in Johnson Canty family around in there, and you know, he had gone off to join the Marines as a teenager and went to Vietnam and uh, yeah, we there. There was talk from the Potter family that he had been involved in CIA missions while there, and you know, there's no way to confirm or deny that kind of kind of thing. Uh, but he, you know, he came back to the States after his service, had
a workplace type accident that disabled him physically. So he collected basically disability check for you know, the rest of his adult life. He had he had married Barbara very early in his adulthood and they you know, they were in their fifties by the time the crime occurred. So, you know, they'd been married for a good long while.
Most of their married life had happened had occurred up in Pennsylvania on the outskirts of Philadelphia, and there they raised two children, Christie and Janelle, Janelle being the younger of the two. And then they later moved to Tennessee to Johnson County because Barbara's mother was ill and she was i think power of attorney for her mother, and so she moved to get closer to her.
Now, tell us a little bit about Barbara, and does the mother die and then so there's a difference in obviously it's affects Barbara. So tell us a little bit about Barbara and just her some of her behavior.
Well, you know, to look at Barbara, she didn't you know, she looks, you know, like anyone else. There's nothing, there's nothing, you know, particularly unusual about her. And you know, we were able to study her writings to a great extent in this case because when you put her in front of a computer and have her type of email, she will she will write a book. She's the type of person that it takes you know, five minutes for her to say goodbye. In an email. So, uh, we we
were able to get to know her very well. She held herself out to be a good Christian woman, a very upstanding person. But you know from from studying, you know, not just this case, but you know years past, that she's the type of person who always there's a conflict going on, There's there's some kind of conspiracy going on, and and uh, you know, we've never had the benefit of any kind of psychological profile being done on her,
but you know, there's obviously some abnormality about her. You know, basically, just to put it in a nutshell, if if a person had a conflict with her, she would automatically in her mind believe that person wanted to have her dead or wanted her to die or kill her. And that that goes back just to like a state issues concerning her mother and then continued on through this case. It was just she's got this conspiratorial mind where there's always
something going on. It's very unusual now you talk about that and sort of this obviously disconnect from reality. So what was the relationship like between her buddy and his wife Barbara. Did he go along with that, did he tolerate it? Did he recognize it is mental illness. What was the dynamic of the relationship in that regard? They seemed to be two peas in a pod. They had very close relationship, very loyal to one another, there's no question. But he loved her and Janelle to a great extent.
And you know, it was harder for us to analyze Buddy because he wasn't might use the computer, so we didn't have benefit of a lot of his writings so we could get inside his head. We just basically had a few audio taped or videotaped interviews of him to benefit from try to get some insight into him. But from all indications, he loved his family a great deal, at least those two.
Was there any alcoholism involved with Barbara or Buddy? It was a heavy drinkers or social drinkers. What was that situation.
I don't think they drank at all. I don't think they ever used drugs. Whatever was wrong, it wasn't because of those two reasons.
Now, tell us a little bit about Christy, but more importantly Janelle. He said, Janelle's younger daughter. What was life like for Christy in terms of with this dynamic with Barbara being not in touch with reality and the disabled father and then tell us about Janelle and her disabilities.
Well, Christie was maybe six eight years older than Janelle, and you know, we've you know, we were able to get to know Christie and find out she was a normal, functioning member of society. I think she described it. She had a decent enough childhood, but as she got older, I believe there was more and more conflicts between her and her mother in particular, and a lot of conflicts arose because of Janelle. Janelle grew up with an auditory
processing problem. And you know, basically, as Christie described it, you know, if you if, if if I joke to you that, you know, Ham want to whip your tail outside, and I do it in a joking manner, if you said the same thing to Janelle, she wouldn't be able to process that tone. She would take those words literally.
So she was basically born with that kind of deffect and that probably held back her education process and she she basically became a special ed student and actually got a high school diploma, but it was in a special education category. And to hear Christy tell it, you know, her her younger sister was coddled too, much by her parents.
And.
As she described it, learned she learned to take advantage of her parents and exploit that and learned to manipulate her And and that's something that we saw very evident in the evidence in this case is that, you know, while Janelle was possibly operating at a at a lower intellectual level, she had quite a remarkable ability to manipulate people.
Did you see any psychologist. Was there any diagnosis of anything with Janelle other than her physical disabilities? Was there any diagnosis from a psychologist or a psychiatrist. No.
And I do need to add that Janelle, after she got out of high school, she never had a job. She immediately started collecting a disability check as well. So at the time of our crimes, Janelle is thirty years old. She's never left the home, she's never left the care of her parents, and never worked had a real substantial,
you know, romantic relationship to speak of now. And I was discussing this with a lawyer today because he was asking me that same question about what were the psychologists saying, Well, they really say anything in this case because and as we found out, one was actually hired at doctor Ingham out of Knoxville was hired on Janelle's behalf, and he testified at trial, but basically he just limited his findings to her IQ and described her as functioning at a
fifth grade level. But when it came down to the ideas of you know, was she not guilty by reason of insanity or did she have diminished mental capacity? He couldn't make an opinion on that because she had denied being involved in the case at all, in the crime. And basically, when psychologists are faced with someone that's telling them, you know, I didn't do that, I wasn't involved, then they really can't render opinions on those topics. So we were without benefit of an actual diagnosis.
Now, what was the We talked about a little bit about what had happened with Buddy, but what was his real state of health when we're talking about this time here in twenty and twelve.
Well, he had a prescription of an oxygen machine. I don't think he had it on all the time, but you know, quite often he'd have to use that, And I think he had a walker prescribed to him. But you know, he was able to walk on his own, maybe not fast, not quickly, but he was able to get around. But it became very important in how he analyzed the case, the fact that he wasn't as mobile as the victims that we we had in our case.
Now for audience too, can you just describe buddy and you know, sort of size wise and stature, and tell us again what Janelle looks like as well.
Yeah, yeah, but he's a pretty good sized guy. He's he's a bit portly, but you know, tall and you know, if he goes out in public, he always has the veteran's hat on. You know, he's very proud of his service to his country. And he he had guns glory. When they did a search warn on his house, I think they pulled up over one hundred guns or so in the home. And when he would mow the yard, he would have two guns on his on one on each hip in a belt when he's mowing the yard.
So you know, we we have Carrie permits in Tennessee and he took full advantage of it. So if he went to the grocery store, he had a gun on. Uh. Janelle was a tallish type woman. She's probably close to six foot tall, a little bit lanky, gangly when she walked. She on her Facebook page she loved taking selfies of herself, and some of them didn't look so bad. Some of
them looked, you know, not so great. But from from from what I could glean from how she carried on on Facebook, I took it she was very self conscious about her looks. She would, you know, not to jump into the head of the story, but when when she would pose as someone else on the internet talking about herself, she would always remark how pretty and sweet and kind
Janelle was. And that was sort of an early telltale sign that you know, anybody saying those things are probably going to be Janelle Potter.
Right now. We talked about what at least we've described how protective her parents were, and you talked about when she's thirty years old, still no significant relationship whatsoever. But tell us what, let's go back just a little bit. What is the characteristic of the relationship she has as well that she when she does meet someone, what is
her reaction. You talked about this auditory issue where she would not hear the sort of tone and inflection will say, or the intention of what the person was saying correctly, but how did she take relationships when she would meet people? What was her characteristic to that behavior.
Yeah. Yeah, of course I never had the benefit of experiencing that firsthand. But we had a lot of people that would tell us that she would come up to them in the grocery store and be overly friendly and want to hug them and take pictures with them. And you know, the people in John's County are pretty friendly, but they they they're like anybody else that seems a
little odd from someone that you don't know. It's like she she really wanted to belong to groups of other people and be popular and be liked, but either either because of her own personality or things that she basically learned from Barbara Potter, h she she had a difficult
time maintaining those relationships. She she wound up being befriended by Tracy Greenwell, who was the sister of one of our victims in our case, and years before the killings, Tracy had tried to uh she basically felt sorry for Janelle and thought, you know, she needed a friend and somebody to take her to the mall, and you know, just a good girlfriend. And and one thing that was really odd about it, she said that when she asked Janelle about going, you know, to go eat or that
kind of thing. Tracy actually had to meet Janelle's parents so that they could get to know her and basically almost interview her to get permission to drive their daughter around, which is extremely unusual because that's an adult daughter, and you know, it's just two girls wanting to be friends. Having to go through an audition process of sorts with the parents, that's extremely unusual.
Now, we talked about how protective her parents are and that she had no significant relationship. So let's introduce Jamie Kurd and how did she come in this protective cocoon that her parents had for her in her life? How on earth did she meet this Jamie Kurd under what circumstances?
Well, it emanated from that friendship with Tracy Greenwell, by getting to know Tracy and hanging out with her, she was able to meet Bill Payne, who was Tracy's brother and one of the victims in our case. And by all intents and purposes, for a long time, Bill was friends with Janelle and at some point, of course, Janelle at the time of the crimes is thirty without any kind of significant relationship. But at the time of our crimes,
also Jamie Kurd, who was Bill and Tracy's cousin. Jamie was thirty eight years old and everyone in the community told us he had never in his life had a girlfriend. He was a very socially backward awkward individual. He did get out of his house and have a job and work, but he was he was basically very I think Investigation Discovery called him the creepy cousin, and it might be a pretty good description. And they wound up introducing Janelle
and Jamie together. They thought, well, this, this might be a good match because they both need someone in their life. And Janelle started to call Jamie. And the problem was Jamie, he's a little bit rough looking. And of course Barbara Potter is an upstanding member of society, has a very elevated view of herself, and she did not think Jamie was suitable as a boyfriend for Janelle. So Jamie and Janelle had to then conduct their relationship behind the scenes in secret.
And really the focus of this book, or the central I guess issue in this book is something called catfishing, but we won't talk about that quite yet. But what you do describe in the book is something I guess a lot of us don't think of that live in urban areas. Is the importance of the Internet and Facebook. So tell us a little bit about Janelle and how important Facebook and the Internet was for her in her life.
Well, it's it's, you know, the Internet sort of become the great equalizer. You know, you don't have to live in the municipality to make, you know, to make friendships, reformed bonds with people. Uh, the Internet can allow you to do that. So that was sort of you know, it seemed like Janelle's escape from her boring life was to get on the Internet and make friends with other people. And uh, she she spent a tremendous amount of time
on the on the computer. It created a lot of conflict with other people because inevitably people would defriend her or you know, unfriended her because she would get out of line in the in the things she would say,
and her parents would get upset. They actually had the nine to one one director there in Johnson County at one point had defriended her over you know, something she had said, and uh, Janelle's parents actually took her down the sheriff and basically wanted to do a report on the nine one one director defriending their daughter, and uh that that's obviously extremely strange behavior, but you know that that was her way of interacting with the world. Unfortunately she misused it great a great deal.
But that demonstrates too of the one mind that the three of them were even at that time, which is will be important later in the story one it.
Yeah, yeah, they were. They were just a team. They you know, no matter what outrageous thing Janelle would do or say, it never it never gets corrected by her parents. You know, there's no filter there between the three. You know, whatever outrageous thing one person does, it's accepted by the other two. And that's that's something that really struck me.
Now, let's introduce some of the other central figures in US. Maybe we can introduce Lindsey and maybe we're going to introduce Tara and tell us a little bit about these young ladies.
Well, well, what happens is is Janelle gets introduced to Jamie. They start this secret relationship and Bill Payne, the male victim who's the cousin of Jamie, he winds up meeting a female at work, a younger female named Billy Jean Hayworth, and they go get on the fast track to a serious relationship. Billy Jean's got some friends, Lindsey Thomas being one a very close friend of hers.
Uh.
There's a Tara Osborne who is also in the narrative in the book. She's actually the wife of Brad Osborne, who's a very close friend of Bill's. So what happens once Bill and Billy Jean start their serious relationship everyone in that circle becomes a target of Janelle Potter's delusions.
In iire, what is the nature of these delusions? What exactly does he think these people, in trying to have a relationship are doing to her?
Well, it was it was something that I you know, you always trying to figure out why does someone do what they do when when a serious crime happens, And I had I had concluded that they I believed it all emanated from Janelle wanting Bill Payne in some romantic fashion, and when he then turns to Billy Jean for that kind of relationship, they move in together and Billy jan becomes pregnant, then that then started this raging conduct that we observe in this case on Janille Potter's part, and
that probably came out of a jealousy. You know, she's cooped up in the house. Parents won't take their thumb off of her. You know, she can't have a husband and a child and you know, a life of her own. And when she sees Billy Jean get that, you know, you can see through these emails that she did not like that. She was very jealous of it. And and so then Billy Jean and all of her friends, all those girls wind up in Janelle's sites.
So what happens is is that they have issues on Facebook and just on social media in general, emailing each other in Facebook. What tell us some of the events that happened that, you know, to add to the delusion that Janelle is already having and will set in motion her decision to be coming off, you know, have an alter ego and interact online.
Though when when Billy Jean came into Bill's life, I believe the the facts were that Janelle starts sending Facebook friend requests to Billy Jean and her friend Lindsey, and basically she's friends with everybody. They don't really know or what they accept the request, And as Lindsay described it, Janelle started tagging her her name to pictures that had nothing to do with her, and that sort of annoyed them.
And then Janelle would start basically trash talking or saying bad things about some of the girls, and that caused a reaction from the others, as you would imagine. And you know, even though Johnson County people are friendly people, they're like anybody else. If you there's buttons you can push and you can get a reaction from it. So, uh, Billy, Jean and Lindsey both defriend Janelle. Other girls defriend her, and and I guess that comes as a personal affront
to jen and adds to the conflict. You know, of course, if Lindsay then described that she was getting all these harassing phone calls from the Potter house and is basically someone calling and not saying anything, and you know, eventually Lindsey takes it upon herself to call back and try
to tell them, you know, stop doing this. And you know, the Potters, every time they're accused of doing something, they automatically deny the allegation and want to act like someone else is spoofing their numbers or or hacking their emails. And you know, they never take responsibility for anything they ever do, so So I had the theory that once once someone fights back and tries to confront the Potters, then in their delusional state, the Potters see that as
a sign of aggression from the other people. So Janelle's drawing this reaction and then being able to show it to her parents that that, you know, see, they don't like me, they hate me.
Now, to add to this entire mix, and this is important, is that Buddy was a Vietnam VET. But it seems like there's some exaggeration to some of the things that he experienced in Vietnam and teller audience too, kind of the kinds of things, the kind of talk that he would often talk regarding Vietnam, and tell us a.
Little bit about you. You know, he once went down to the sheriff's office and had conference with the sheriff and told him, you, I've killed people before, and I've worked for the CIA, and the CIA's about to reactivate me, and I just wanted to let you know as a courtesy. You know, here's a man that's you know, fifty or so years old and physically disabled walking into the sheriff's office and telling the sheriff, I'm about to be reactivated
to the CIA. And you know, we saw in the emails a preoccupation on Barbara Potter's part that that Buddy get a CIAI D and pressing, you know, concerned that that that identifications apparently caught up in bureaucratic channels, and you know, they have a very high elevated view of themselves. And you know, at one point I was able to cross examine Barbara Potter on the stand and she admitted to me that Buddy had continued to work in the CIA.
And it's it's just a bizarre state of mind they were in.
So let's talk about now, you know, there's a segue here, Well, let's talk about this Chris person and who gets contacted first from this Chris person, and what is the correspondence like, who is this Chris uh pretending to be?
Well, when I when I first got the case, I got into it several months after the crimes happened and the first people were charged, and I immediately was intrigued by these Chris em that were they were basically coming from Janelle's email account in her Facebook account, and they were written by, you know, someone who was purporting to be a CIA agent out in the field doing very important things for the country. But the the writing style was not of what I would expect to have a
federal agent. He was, you know, it was obviously sort of similar to what Janelle Potter would write, right, And these these emails from Chris would basically started by the same time Billy Jean started a relationship with Bill, and they basically went out to two different people. Chris would write to Barbara, Janelle's mother. He wrote to her a lot. She would write back. You could you could tell from the emails Barbara held a great deal of affection towards Chris.
He was like the son she had never had. And you know, the emails toward toward Jamie, Janelle's boyfriend, they were of a different tone. It was more like a hey man, let me give you some love advice for Janelle. And he basically became like the relationship advisor for Jamie
in dealing with Janelle. So, to make a long story short, Janelle Potter, who was offering these Chris emails, she knew the delusions and the vulnerabilities of each of these two people and she exploited them through how she wrote to them, how she approached them and they bought it.
Now you talked about one important thing that's a hook for Buddy and for Barbara is that this reactivition of a Buddy as a CI agent, an active CIA agent. And to that end, Barbara either asks or Chris suggests or offers tell us about this offer of through Chris to help Buddy, and what that correspondence entel.
Well, Chris assured them that he was talking to his bosses and getting Buddy his IDs so he could go on missions. And Barber's responding that she wants that for him. That Buddy's excited and wants to teach Chris some things he knows, and he wants to go help Chris round up the bad guys and do good things. And they go through I don't know how many emails back and forth about that, and Chris always finding an excuse for the ID not to arrive. And there's all kinds of
you know, Christy, the older sister of Janelle. There's a whole lot in early twenty eleven where we see Chris reporting on Christie's goings on and all the evil things they perceive her to be doing. And now those were quite disturbing, and they're included in my book too, just it gives a lot of insight into Barbara's paranoias and obsessions and delusions.
Part of the undercover work that Chris is doing on behalf of the family tell us about what he says he's doing and in actuality, what he actually is doing with Will's family.
As twenty eleven develops, you know, and the one thing that was just obviously apparent anything Chris wrote about, anything he cared about, was Janelle centric. You know, if someone
was upsetting Janelle, he was upset. And he he winds up reporting in his emails to Barbara that he's been him and his guys have been conducting surveillance on the on Bill Payne's household and listening to their jail their phone calls, and reporting all the evil things going on in that house and the plots that they are hatching
against Janelle. At different points he's reporting that they're planning some very harsh things towards Janelle, possibly even to kill her, and not to let her be out alone in public, to always have someone with her, and to always be carrying a gun. It was that serious. And every time he writes something like that, whatever he writes, Barbara Potter believes it.
Now tell us, could we skipped over a little bit why Jamie Kurr is not really welcomed into the family, But we're going to have to explain how he still has some involvement with this. So, I know you talk about in the book this incredible secret relationship with the thirty year old and him not having a relationship before he buys her a phone so that they can communicate because he can't certainly can't even call the home. So tell us about what Chris tells Jamie while he's telling Barbara,
who communicates obviously with Buddy. So tell us what the narrative is for him her boyfriend.
Well, Jamie had been welcomed into the Potter home at some point because he was sort of handy working on computers, and you know, they would have computer problems and want Jamie to come over and fix it. And at some point he grew out of favor with Janelle's parents and he wasn't welcomed there anymore, and they quit talking to him.
And he buys Janelle a cell phone that and throws it out in a bush at her property with instructions for he to go retrieve it and then they can text when her parents aren't watching, and she has to hide the cell phone from her mother. At what happens is, you know, as Chris is writing emails for Barbara reporting on the evil things that Bill Payne and Billy Jeing
Hayworth are doing. The victims in the case, they he they they you could you can tell each of them want to, you know, basically put an end to the harassment in the in the fret, and Barbara wants basically Chris uh to go along with Buddy and take care of the problem as it were, And obviously that can't happen because Chris isn't real. But as we developed our case, we we realize that if he's going to hunt down to younger people who are more mobile, but he needs help,
he needs somebody to basically man the door. So as Barbara is wanting Chris to be the second person, Chris obviously knows he can't do that. So Janelle is Chris is writing to Jamie at the same time and in trying to soothe the wounds between him and Barbara, her mother, and at the same time, Chris is writing emails back to Barbara suggesting Jamie as the person who could help Buddy in this mission. And it takes some time for Barbara to warm up to that idea, but that's how
the emails progress. She winds up then writing to Jamie. You can see the manipulation in her writings towards Jamie, trying to lure him into a possible conspiracy.
Now, what is it before we get to the actual murder itself? What exactly could possibly Chris say that Billy, Jean and Bill were planning to do? And why?
Well, and there's so many things going on in this case is so layered. There's one thing I've not mentioned that was going on at the time. There were some cases going on where Janelle was cars with harassment, like against Lindsey, against Tara we've described before, and that was very stressful for Janelle because in the in Barbara Potter's mind, if Janelle goes to jail, she'll die because she's got health ailments and they won't be able to take care
of her there and she'll surely die. And so that stuff is playing out at the same time. And I think I've forgotten your question. It's just such a layered case.
Well, what exactly you know, I mean, he was saying many things, Chris was saying many things about the threat of Bill and Billy Jean. But what specifically did he say that just sort of the straw that broke the camel's back and then got these people that were already getting ready or readying themselves. What exactly specifically did he say that? Okay, that was it. That's it.
I don't think there was a specific thing that was ever said. But they were always allusions to lots going on against Janelle, and in at times he would say they want to kill her, or they they want to hurt her, you know, to a great deal. And so early in this that that was understood by Janelle's parents far a lot, far longer than when the actual crime
took place. And and really the I think the reason that it took some time for the crime to happen was they were just trying to get everything together at the right time.
Well, tell us about the faithful event and just what happens just beforehand. Tell us about that we create the scene.
Well, you know, by we we wound up getting the cooperation of Jamie Kurt. He was really the one that sort of broke the case he he was the one that gave the initial statement after filling a polygraph that you know, open the door to the authority has been able to make charges on him and Buddy and get the search warrants that we needed to get into those emails, all that content that we wound up analyzing what happens.
Jamie wounds up telling us that he had gone over to work on the computer at the potterhouse the night before the killings, and Buddy had said that I need you to go do something for me. Will you do that for me? And he goes, yeah, Sure. Well, through the night, like three in the morning, four in the morning, there's all this texting activity between Janelle and she's writing as herself in these and Janie and she's basically getting
proughting him to call her dad. And then once he calls her dad, she's reporting on him leaving the residents. And what Jamie says is that you know, she called and said, you know, Dad wants you to do that thing for him. Will you call him? And so he does and Buddy comes and picks him up in the truck and they drive down to the pain residence. They park at a church parking lot, that's basically a field away, and Buddy sits and waits and watches, and he waits
until Bill's father leaves for work. You see the lights coming off of his truck pulling out, and they basically walk across the field and when they get to the residence, Bill hands Jamie a gun. Jamie tells him you that I can't kill a person, and Bud says, you won't have to. I just want you to guard that door. They enter the door and this is still dark in the morning. People are getting ready to go to work.
Bill was getting ready to go to work. Billy Jean was making a bottle for her seven month old baby, Tyler, and they were still in their sleeping clothes and Buddy very quickly shoots Bill in the face right below his left eye. It kills him. Bill also sustained a big cut to his throat, to the front of his throat, and Billy Jean escapes that room. She can't exit because Jamie Kurr is covering the door, and so she goes
into another room, which is basically the baby's nursery. She's holding her baby in her arms and gets a gunshot wound from Buddy to the right side of her head, it exits the other side, and each single shot killed the victims almost immediately, and then they left the residence.
Who discovers the bodies and tell us about the state of the infant.
Well hours later. There's a Roy Stevens who's a family friend of the Pains, who basically was getting his mail at the pain residence and they would stick it up on the fireplace mantel, and he came to check his mail.
When he arrived, he saw that Bill's vehicle was still there, which was unusual because he should have been at work at that time, he knew, But the house was quiet, and you know, he expected if Bill wasn't at work, he'd be there and Billy Jean would be there and the baby would be present, and there would be noise, there'd be some commotion. There wasn't any. It was still,
and so he went into the first bedroom. He saw Bill's body laying there on the bed, face up, and ran out to get the attention of his wife to call nine to one one, and he ran back in wondering where Billy Jean was. He finds her in the other bedroom and in her arms is Tyler, who is still alive, but as they described it, he he wasn't making any sounds. He was probably too exhausted from the crying that you know, probably he had endured for the last four or five hours.
Right now, how do what do Buddy and Jamie do preceding this? What's their be what do they do?
Well? The police obviously start looking for suspects, and you know, from all indications in the community, the only people that had a beef with the mister Payne miss Hayworth was the Potters and possibly Jamie Kurd as well, and so they very quickly tried to interview them. They interviewed all three of the Potters at once in their living room and we had an hour long conversation where they basically
he denied any involvement, any participation in the crimes. But what was striking during that hour was that it was full of invective towards the victims. And I detailed that in the book, and that was very significant, I think to the jury that you know, just twenty four hours after these tragic crime happens, the Potters are trashing the victims as much as they can with the cops, and Jamie Kird gave a statement denied involvement, but they asked
him to come back in for polygraph. He bombed the polygraph and he started he you know from watching the tape, it was obviously he was cornered and was very vulnerable, and the police were able to get out of him that Buddy Potter had done and he had been there, and that then prompted them to be able to get
an interview again with Buddy Potters. They arrested him for a first gree murder and after a little bit of work on him and divulging to him that they had a audio tape conversation between him and Jamie Kurr, his defenses broke down and he admitted to doing the crime, and he very tearfully recounted the reasons why, which is basically to protect his family, that Janelle Potter her life was in danger and he put an end to that.
Now, it sounds like it might be an open shut here, but that's not what happens exactly, because it's not easy to prosecute these women, Janelle and Barbara. So you explain in your book in great detail how you go about doing that and the breaks that you need to be able to do that. You talk about Jamie Curtis as well.
That retracts his confession fairly soon, but you say it was still valuable to get information from him at that point because there is a point where you basically not too much, was there.
Yeah, I mean, you can't just go out and get email content from people just because you want it. You gotta have probable calls. You've got expensive judge that you've got probable calls the reason to get it. And the Jamie Courage statement gave them that because he he wound up in one big question he gave after after the end of his statement, everything sort of settling down, he just pops up this crazy question, is the CIA here?
Because you know, basically in being catfished by the Chris emails. Uh, Chris had always told him the CIA had his back, and Barbara had written to Jamie that the CIA's got our back. And basically what happens and when when he asked that question that investigators had no idea that there was anything about the CIA involved in this case, and they were taking aback and didn't really pursue the questioning. But he we able to We were able to then get the emails and we saw exactly what he was
talking about, which was these Chris emails. So not only did you get to warrant and get the emails and the Facebook posts, but what I thought was really fascinating, again very vivid imagery. Here was the tell us about the bags of garbage and what was in the bags
of garbage and the job somebody had to do with that. Yeah, during that hour long conversation in the living or living room where the Potters are denying involvement and acting like they have no idea who might have done this to the victims, during that time, they full well knew there were multiple bags of garbage in the back of Buddy's
truck in the garage that contained shredded documents. And it was the job of one lady down at the tv our Crime Lab in Nashville to piece those things together, and she was able to piece enough of them together to see what it was was these correspondence messages between Barbara Engine and Chris. And Yeah, that was very significant, I think to the jury, the fact that they're denying any involvement, any knowledge, and yet they've got these destroyed
documents in the back of the truck. That's you know, they just hadn't gotten to the dump quick enough.
So tell us how they they proceed in trying to get information that will be significant in the prosecution of Barbara and Janelle. Well, we had the tell our audience if if if Buddy, if Buddy is protective of his wife, and it's Jimmy protective of Janelle.
Yeah, neither one of them would say a thing against those women, neither one of them. And so the only route going after them was to actually just use the words they had used through their email accounts. Uh. The trick to it, though, and what seemed insurmountable at first, was, you know, you got to prove who wrote what, and there the IP addresses on the on the emails are both coming back to the Potter residence. There's basically one
computer there. So you've got two people typing, and you've got to attribute this statement to this person, that statement to the other person. And that was complicated by the fact that somebody is masking their identity as this Chris character. And you know, this isn't a case that I'm used to doing. I'm used to doing more straightforward murder cases, and I just I got on Google one night and
just trying to search for some experts. When I was reading it, I had the common sense perspective that, you know, I think Janelle's writing this stuff on her email account as Chris. But you know, I can't get up in front of the jury and just start spouting my opinion. And I was afraid that the cops couldn't do the same.
So I found a field of forensic scientists that's called forensic linguistics, and made contact with a doctor, Robert Leonard at a Hostra university who was a expert in the field, and he started guiding us through how to go about proving the authorship of these emails. And that was a laborious task, to say the least.
Now you make a decision or your office makes a decision and in conjunction with you, to how to prosecute these people once there's enough information and evidence. So how do you do this? Who gets separated? And what's the strategy behind that or the reasons they hind that.
I could say, well, we you know, we had to attribute the emails to each each woman and then categorize and condense them to where a jury could could swallow them, you know, so to speak, and you know, along the way, we're having to analyze it in the in the terms of the criminal responsibility for the conduct of another statute.
And basically this the thing kind of challenge we had was the know what California prosecutors had many years ago, as Charles Manson, they had to go after him for murders of people that you know, he didn't commit those murders. He wasn't present, There was no proof he was present, but he had directed others to do that on his behalf.
And in Tennessee, like a lot of states, probably has a criminal responsibility statue where you're guilty of my crime if you directed, solicited, aided, or attempted to aid me in doing the crime, and you intended for the crime to happen. So we had to pen the women under one of those four options. And we believed that the when you looked at the you know, the the wide swath of emails, it appeared they were directing the men
to do their bidding and eliminate these victims. But also as we developed our theory coming closer to trial, it was obvious to me that they were attempting to aid Buddy Potter in the killings because they they had to realize that Buddy couldn't do that himself. If he enters the home and shoots one person, the other younger person's gonna be able to slip out the door and get
away into darkness. And so he had to have that second person, and in recruiting Jamie Kirr to be that second person, they inevitably attempted to aid Buddy in committing the crimes. So we had to take those words, even though we know they're probably still back at the Potter house when the crimes happened. We use those words to show they were responsible for the crimes. And as I told the jury in closing argument, you know, if I asked them to, you know, just close your eyes and
imagine this crime happening without Janelle Potter being involved. And do the same thing for Barbara Potter. Close your eyes and imagine. And if you can't imagine these crimes happening without these women being involved, and you knew in your heart what the verdict needs to be, and luckily that's what the verdict was. Was guilty.
What was the verdict for Buddy? What was his sentence? What did he receive?
Well, Buddy was found guilty to count's first degree murder in a separate trial. That was the first trial we had. It was just him and he got two life sentences
for that and he's in prison over it. And then the second subsequent trial occurred, this last May made twenty fifteen, and that involved Barbara and Janelle and they both got too guilty verdicts for first degree murder and also received life sentences, and Jamie Curdiner in cooperating with us, he was able to get a reduced sentence of twenty five years with some possibility parole.
Right. One of Buddy's defense was that he was too weak as a result of using oxygen. That didn't really fly with the jury obviously.
Yeah, And that defence was in context of trying to knock out his confession as it were that he was deprid of his oxygen during the interview with the tb I and thus wasn't in his right mind and said something he didn't mean, so that that didn't fly at all.
Uh. There was a casey Sears for Jamie kurd and Cameron, a Hydra for for Janelle. So these were not inadequate lawyers. These were decent lawyers that these guys had at this trial, weren't.
They Yeah, everybody had fine lawyers. Mister Hyder used to be a renowned assistant Attorney General in Nashville. You know, mister Sears represented mister mister Kurd very well. Randy Fallon's old trial lawyer from Florida that moved up to Johnson County years ago. And you know, he's shown his skills in the courtroom to me, and he wound up representing Buddy in his trial as well as Barbara and in her trial.
What was the most dramatic point in any of the trials regarding these four men characters.
Well, it really didn't happen here. And during a trial when we had a pre trial motion on Buddy's case, they tried to knock out his confession on the theory that he was without his oxygen and he was tired. It was an odd hour of the night. And when they did that, they put Barbara Potter on the stand. And Barbara and Janelle at the time were not charged.
In unbeknownst to them, I was working up a strategy in case to present to the grand jury against them using doctor Lennard's work, and so she takes the stand, and she's never really been interrogated after the hour long interview in the living room the day after the killings. So, you know, I had the opportunity to then question someone that I was planning on charging the first degree murder,
and that was highly unusual. That was first time I ever experienced that, And I went through a lot of detail in the book recounting that event in getting a very important admission from her during that that I was able to use a trial against her.
How beneficial was Buddy's reluctance and basically their reluctance to a lawyer up immediately and be questioned with a lawyer, How beneficial was that for you?
Well, and it's one point I made in the book was that you know a lot of defendants are willing to make statements to the police, and they think as long as they don't say you know, I did it, that they're okay. But you know, a skilled prosecutor can find value in just about anything that's said out of the males of someone who's guilty, even when they're not
admitting something. And you know, so we had an our long interview there in the living room, the Potters that all three Potters were involved during and I found that to be significant for the jury. And then of course when he when he goes into the when he goes in for his interrogation with with the TVI agents, Buddy, you can tell he was very sure of himself. He even though they had just arrested him first degree murder, you could tell he was pretty cocky and he didn't
think they had any evidence on him. And it took them disclosing some of the evidence they had for him to basically his defenses to wear down and get to where he would confess. And you nowhere in that that he asked for an attorney until the very end and that end of the questioning, but it was too late at that point.
Was there any indication that Buddy and Barbara were ever convinced that they're precious Janelle had hudwinked them and or were they still in believing in their daughter.
Well, you know, once they're charged, I don't get the benefit of talking to them, or you know, I have to read the tea leaves and I don't know. That's probably something I'll wonder about the rest of my life. Did Buddy Potter ever realize he was hoaxed by his daughter that she really wasn't in danger. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know what he thinks about. But you know, he had he had the opportunity to testify in the women's trials after his conviction. You know,
his case was on a peal at the time. But you know, he had the fifth moment right to not testify. But you know, he from from the indications that got from the defense attorneys, he elected, he didn't want to testify. So yeah, I never got to hear that from him.
What was Janelle's demeanor throughout this and trial?
Through the trial, she she cried often, She would look down a lot often. She she was just sort of pitiful the whole way through it. You know, you didn't get angry reactions from her. You know, the one reaction I saw from her that I observed one time during an opening statement, I showed pictures that her and Jamie had taken in secret, Jamie kissing her on the cheek and her smiling as she takes a selfie. And you know, I put that up on the wall for everyone to see.
You could see Janelle sort of, you know, cringeing like like it's going to get her in trouble with her mother almost And it's just very unusual people to be prosecuting the first grade murder. Usually we've got some pretty ugly characters sitting over there charged, and these these people didn't look like central casting for murdered cases.
So what would you say, has A And I guess it's for those that have listened to this this episode would be interested in reading this entire book. But I know you can't really make a encapsulate what happened, But what, if anything, what was the something that you got from this in terms of a profound sort of takeaway from all of this?
Well, and this is something I told somebody else the other day. And this might sound weird. I mean, you don't know about the case, but you know, we've got a crime that's perpetrated by a man who puts a gun up to a woman's head as she's holding her baby and takes her life. And you you can't imagine
anything where callous are awful than that. But when you really unpeel the layers of what brought this case about, and it may sound weird to people, but you know the different characters that perpetrated the crime, you can almost feel some empathy toward and I know that sounds weird, but you know, you've you've got somebody pulling the trigger who's been hoaxed, you know, and you've you've got a daughter who's putting all this stuff into motion, and you
know she's been neglected from real parenting her whole life, and you know they've sort of caused her to be the way she is, so you you feel some sympathy for her that you know she never had a life. And this is what manifested itself. And you look at Jamie Kurt and you know he he's standing there at the door as his cousin's being murdered. Probably that you know, his cousin is probably as good to him as anybody
ever had been. And uh, but you look at how he was hoaxed into getting to where he was, and you know it's it's really odd for for his callous a crime. This is if you analyze the case, you can you know ultimately that everybody's where they need to be. You know, don't don't don't get me wrong, you know, we we put people in prison over it, but you know, this is unlike many cases that you know, you can you can have some tiny twinge of empathy on some
levels for some of them. It doesn't make what they did right, but it makes it very intriguing to study, and you know, just as an example of human nature.
Oh absolutely, It's just it's a bizarre case. Uh what was the fate or what is the fate of the young infant Tyler?
Well, he he was, you know, basically became cared for by Billy Jean's family and he's in there care and growing up without parents. But he's you know, I understand he's got a lot of love in the home for him. So you know, it's ty is tragic.
Is Tracy Greenwall involved in that as well too as contact with the obviously.
Yeah, I'm not sure, you know, it's it's I'm not sure the extent of that, but you know, obviously, you know, Babley Tyler's got a lot of people that care for him. Bill had an older son that from a different mother that also survives this, and you know, obviously they're going to be affected the rest of their lives by it.
You talked about the initial interest in this story, especially with the cat fishing, and it's just again, very unique story overall. How much attention did this story get?
He got a lot of attention in East Tennessee because just you know the fact that a home was invaded and two lives taken out. It became in local lore called called the Facebook murder cases because it was commonly known that Janelle had been defriended by this victim. So, you know, a myth sort of arose that it all happened because she got defriended. But I tried to dispel that during a trial as well as in the book, because that happened many many many months before the crimes.
It was almost up on the eve of trial where I finally it dawned on me what I was prosecuting. It was a catfishing case. You know, my wife had watched a movie called Catfish and TV show and basically what happens with that phenomenon Someone assumes a fake online identity and basically builds a romantic type relationship with another person they never meet, but the other person sort of falls for that myth. In making that identity, you can
sort of create yourself however you want. You can be exciting, successful, pretty whatever. And basically that's what we had. In this case, we had Janelle sitting there at home, living a boring lifestyle, but being able to assume this identity of Chris and talk about the exciting things that Chris is doing and lure people in to that myth and then use it for nefarious purposes. Obviously, the question I have, too, is.
Where did the title come from? Too pretty to live? Yeah, it may sound a little odd, but I was sort of fixated on those words because as you analyze the Potter women, the conflict that would arise with other people in their lives, they always attributed it to their being too pretty for the other people. You know, if Barbara couldn't find a church to blome too, she would say, well,
the women there just think I'm too pretty. And Janelle inherited that outlook and in her writing she would disparage other people's looks and then say, well, they don't like me because I'm too pretty. And that was actually something that came out of her mouth during that hour long interview the day after the killing. She actually told the cops that these people are harassing her because she was too pretty, And it was just something that was absurd and stoock out and felt like a good title to me,
absolutely very appropriate. I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking about Too Pretty to Live. Now. I know this is another fine example of a Diversion release, so Diversion Books. So tell us a little bit about this release with Diversion and if people were interested in this case more so? Do you do Facebook? Do you have an email? Do you have a website? Tell us a little bit about how people may contact you and where they can get this book.
Well, I'm a prosecutor first and an author a distance second. So I've been learning about this world after we've written a book, and you know, I've been lucky enough to get it published by Diversion. It's it's available online from all the online retailers on Amazon. I think the last I checked, it was actually ranked twentieth in true crime overall and first in hoaxes interceptions. And I'm right there with Marshall Clark, you know, writing about OJ Simpson.
So fantastic, And it's been.
Featured on Investigation Discovery recently. The shows that on that network is called Too Pretty to Live. Also, I believe it re airs this weekend and we'll keep reairing. So you just have to check the listings. But you know, I'm also on Facebook. You look up Dennis Brooks and I'm the ugly guy from Tennessee. And I've been introducing myself to different Facebook true crime groups that exist that my agent's been directing me to and enjoying interacting with
people I normally don't get to interact with. So it's been interesting this little turn in my career.
Absolutely, it's a fantastic book, Dennis, and I want to thank you very much for number one, writing the book and coming on and talking about this great book, Too Pretty to Live, the cat fishing Murders of East Tennessee. Thank you very much, Dennis, have a great evening and the best of luck with this book.
Thank you so much.
Have a good night.