Latest Newscasts. Closings and Delays. Dismiss Closings Alerts Bar. By Ashley Bohle. Published: Apr. Share on Facebook. Email This Link. Share on Twitter. Share on Pinterest. You can still see the marks from the murder weapon, the sweet scribblings of the children on the walls.
It's a horror you'll never forget. We love them. We may have to rethink that. During these uncertain times, please keep safety in mind and consider adding destinations to your bucket list to visit at a later date.
Lexer lived with his wife, children and grandchildren on his plantation in Talbott, Tennessee. Unknown to many, however, were Jeremiah's mental illnesses. News of the arrests exploded nationwide. This could be me and my family at this rest stop on the interstate' — that you think is the safest place in the world. Outrage over the killings swept across East Tennessee. In Knox County, a convenience store owner hung six nooses on a scaffold in front of his business. Newspapers and TV stations from Knoxville to Norway sought spots in the courtroom to cover the trial.
Criminal Court Judge Eddie Beckner denied repeated defense requests to try the six separately, remarking that a half-dozen such trials might bankrupt the county. He ruled finding a fair jury in Greene County would be impossible and ordered a jury bused in from Bradley County, miles to the south, for the trial, ultimately set for March That trial never came.
Instead, six defendants rose in a Greene County courtroom on Feb. Bell had been in Bradley County for jury selection when he made the decision to offer the plea deal for life in prison without parole for all six — all or none.
A key witness, an Arizona jailer who claimed Risner admitted the killing to him while on suicide watch, turned out to have an arrest record. That development left prosecutors with a mostly circumstantial case and no confession that would hold up in court. Four of the six — Risner, Bryant, Cornett and Howell — took the witness stand to testify at a weeklong sentencing hearing.
They told a generally consistent story, up until the moment the van stopped on Payne Hollow Lane. Risner told of walking the Lillelids at gunpoint from the picnic table to the van. The father offered them his wallet and keys, to no avail. When the van doors opened, Risner started to take the wheel until Cornett suggested forcing Vidar Lillelid to drive.
Mullins and Sturgill followed in the Citation. Delfina Lillelid began singing softly to comfort the children until Bryant barked at her to shut up.
Risner, Cornett and Howell all insisted Bryant, the year-old, fired every shot, fatal and otherwise, from both guns. Bryant testified Risner and Mullins did the shooting and that the others began hashing out a story to blame him from the day of their capture. By most of the accounts, Sturgill — and maybe Mullins — never even stepped out of the car before a mad rush to get away.
When the Citation ran over a stump and got stuck, those inside abandoned the car for the van and sped away with Risner at the wheel, swerving to run over the Lillelids on the way out. He shakes his head at the popular theory of Satanism as a motive, too. This family was an easy target, and they stopped there at just the right time. If the Lillelids had been there 15 minutes earlier or 15 minutes later, they might all be alive today.
But he suspects the group dynamic — three young males high on adrenaline and testosterone, all infatuated with Cornett and Howell and competing to prove themselves — made for a toxic mix.
But Bell, the retired prosecutor, sees too many troubling patterns to rule out something darker. He cites the stories of friends who said Cornett tried to talk them into robberies and killing sprees.
He points to resemblances between the triangle patterns blasted into the bodies of Vidar and Delfina Lillelid and the triangles and anarchist symbols that appear over and over in drawings by Cornett.
Those words conjure up a vision in his mind of six people dancing and chanting with glee as the shots ring out and the bodies fall. But I think they took advantage of the situation to engage in a satanic ritual.
I think everybody participated in some fashion. Whatever the motivation, the six soon discovered life on the run and behind bars to be nothing like what they might have imagined. In letters written from prison, Howell and Sturgill still insist they never touched a trigger that night and that they felt pressured to take the guilty plea.
The Tennessee Department of Correction no longer allows onsite interviews with inmates, and only Howell and Sturgill responded to letters inviting them to comment. He left the U. Morgan, the deputy who held Peter that night in the ditch and wondered whether the boy would live, said he never saw the child again after that, even though the memory still crosses his mind.
Part of me would like to know. The Lillelid murder case rocked East Tennessee and drew worldwide notice 20 years ago this week. This story relies on court transcripts, police records, News Sentinel archives and interviews to reconstruct the principal events of the case. Huskey is believed to have strangled four sex workers in Knoxville in the early s, but a judge ruled that missteps in the case and a "coerced" confession meant that he couldn't be tried for murder.
He was convicted of rape and sentenced to 64 years in prison. In the late s, they were considered by many to be murderers, highwaymen, and river pirates who operated across Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and Mississippi. Some historians call them America's first true serial killers , as it is believed they killed dozens of men, women, and children.
Micajah was killed in , but Wiley was sentenced to death and hanged in Originally from Ohio, Kenneth Gordon Taylor is accused of committing murders in several states between and He was arrested when he was pulled over in Nashville for a traffic violation, but he told the police officers that he had just committed a murder, sending them to the body of David Willie.
Once he was in custody, he confessed to killing 16 others in Tennessee, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. He ended up recanting his confessions later, claiming insanity, but was ultimately convicted of second degree murder in
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