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The man's cousin had been gunned down just two days earlier in a horrible double homicide that shocked the little town of Mountain City, Tennessee. And now, on February 2, 2012, the detectives wanted this man's help. But the man just slouched down in his chair, muttering one-word answers and never even taking off his sunglasses.

So eventually, the detectives just stopped asking questions and just stared at the man, waiting for him to talk when he was ready. And at some point, the man did talk, but he said something that didn't make any sense. He sat up suddenly and looked all around the room like somebody was watching him, and then he looked at the two detectives, and he said very quietly, Is the CIA here? The detectives had no idea why the American spy agency would be interested in a Tennessee murder case, but now they needed to find out.

But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please offer to take the Amazon Music Follow button out to the movies, and then while you're there, be sure to sprinkle an entire handful of sand onto their popcorn, but tell them it's salt. Okay, let's get into today's story.

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It was after 11 p.m. on January 30, 2012, when Billy Payne Jr. got a call.

A buddy of his wanted to come to his house in Mountain City, Tennessee to buy some drugs. But Billy didn't appreciate getting that call. Sure, Billy was a small-time drug dealer, but he wasn't the crazy bachelor he used to be a few years earlier. He was 36 and he had a family now, including a six-month-old son who had finally fallen asleep. And so the last thing Billy needed was a late-night visitor to wake the baby up again.

So, at 11.30, he texted his friends saying they couldn't meet up. He explained he had to be up early in the morning for his job at the thread factory, and so he needed some rest. His friend would just have to get his pills somewhere else.

But as much as this call was annoying because it was inconveniencing, the truth was, Billy was actually in the process of trying to leave his drug-abusing past behind. Billy had always been the life of the party in his small town. He was the guy who always had a beer in his hand and an endless parade of girlfriends. He drove a Mustang and bragged about going to Las Vegas for the weekend. His cousin, Jamie Curd, described Billy as being a man with "caviar tastes on a working man's budget."

But all that high living had a price. Billy had developed a nasty addiction to opioid painkillers, an addiction that he supported in part by selling opioids himself. Billy knew he'd made his share of mistakes in his life, including the fact that he had a young son in Florida that he never saw. But his opioid addiction was the worst. It clouded his judgment, it sucked up his money, and always left him feeling desperate for more.

After Billy finished texting his friend telling him not to come over, he went to go peek in on his baby, Tyler, who was all tucked into his crib. Billy smiled at the baby, and then he headed down the hall to join his girlfriend, Billie Jean Hayworth, in bed. Billie Jean was 13 years younger than Billy, and she was slender and pretty with short brown hair. She was also an outdoorsy Tennessee girl who loved nothing better than fishing, hiking, and camping.

Billy had had his eye on Billie Jean from the moment she'd come to work on The Cleaning Crew at the thread factory three years earlier. And soon after they had met, the two started spending all their time together.

By 2010, Billy had invited Billie Jean to move into the small one-bathroom house that he shared with his father. By 2011, Billie Jean was pregnant with Billy's child. That same year, Billy had begun going religiously to an opioid treatment center and taking a prescription drug to control his cravings. And while the new year was still only a few weeks old, Billy still had a feeling that this year, 2012, would be the year he could finally start calling himself a former opioid addict.

Billy felt grateful as he looked down at his sleeping girlfriend, but he didn't look for long. He was really tired, and as soon as he laid down and his head hit the pillow, he fell asleep. But parents of infants rarely get to sleep for very long, and just after 5 a.m., baby Tyler started wailing from his crib. Billie Jean wearily swung her feet out of the bed and onto the floor, and then set off down the hall to try to calm the baby down.

Billy woke up to all the commotion, and he lay there quietly, listening to the sounds of Billie Jean heating up a bottle for Tyler. He could also hear another voice out in the kitchen. It was his father. Sometimes the house felt a bit cramped, with all of them living there together, but it filled Billy with happiness to watch his father hold little Tyler. After a few minutes, Billy heard Billie Jean changing the baby's diaper, and he heard his father saying goodbye and leaving for work.

Then Billy felt Billy Jean slide back into bed next to him, and then he began to nod off again, even though he knew the alarm would soon wake him up. And it was at this point that Billy heard the sound of the sliding glass side door open. Just for a moment, he thought maybe his father must have forgotten something and come back. But then a shadowy figure suddenly loomed in the bedroom doorway, standing there completely silent and still.

And even in the darkness, he could tell this was not his father. Billy suddenly was terrified and he managed to blurt out, what the hell? And then everything went black. Less than an hour later, at 6.25 a.m., a friend of Billy's pulled into Billy's driveway, just like he always did on weekdays. He worked at the thread factory with Billy and they usually carpooled.

From outside, the friend could see that Billy and Billie Jean's bedroom light was on, but the friend didn't want to burst in, so he sent Billy a text, asking if he was going to work today.

When Billy didn't respond, his friend went around the side of the house and then went into the house through the sliding glass door that Billy and Billie Jean always left unlocked. He called out for Billy but got no answer, so he used the family's landline phone in the living room to call Billy's cell phone twice, but each time no one picked up.

But just then, the friend wondered if maybe the reason Billy and Billie Jean were not responding to him was because they were sharing a private, intimate moment in their bedroom and basically the friend had walked in on them. And so out of respect, the friend just stopped what he was doing, left the house, and figured, you know, Billy would be in touch at some point. Almost four hours later, another family friend, whose name was Roy Stevens, came to Billy and Billie Jean's house to pick up some mail that Billy and Billie Jean were holding for him.

And just like the friend from earlier, Roy also ended up going into their house through the unlocked glass sliding door and began calling out for Billie Jean and Billie. And when no one responded, Roy walked down the hall to the couple's bedroom and went inside. And what he saw gave him the shock of his life. Billie was lying on his back on the bed, not moving and covered in blood.

Roy ran to Billy and shook his arm, but it was useless. Billy was totally lifeless. Roy began screaming, "No! No! No!" over and over and over again. Then he rushed outside and yelled for his wife, who was waiting in the car, to call 911. Then Roy went back inside and he would make an even more shocking discovery.

He heard a murmur coming from the baby's bedroom and when he went into that bedroom, he saw Billie Jean lying on the floor in a pool of blood. And there in her arms was her baby, breathing but asleep. The baby's forehead was smeared with their mother's blood. Roy couldn't believe what he was looking at, but he just reached down and scooped up the child and then ran out of the house as fast as he could.

Minutes later, paramedics reached the house, but there wasn't anything they could do for Billy and Billie Jean. The EMTs said the couple had likely been dead for hours. This was now a job for homicide detectives. Agent Scott Lott, a veteran detective with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, was one of the first law enforcement officials on the scene, and he began photographing everything he saw.

He knew immediately that this was not your typical East Tennessee murder that grew out of an alcohol-fueled argument or a domestic dispute. This was something more sinister. It looked like Billie had been shot with a single bullet before he could even get out of bed. And he also had this deep gash on his throat. Lott left the bedroom and walked down the hall to the nursery, and he saw Billie Jean lying on the floor by her baby's crib. She had also been shot with a single bullet.

Lot knew she had to have been killed while she was clutching her baby, and the thought of that was so disturbing and just so sad. Lot got down on his hands and knees and began to look for the actual bullet that killed Billie Jean, and he found it lodged in the baby's bouncy seat. Lot was amazed that the baby had somehow been left unhurt in all of this carnage.

Aside from the murder victims themselves, Lott felt like the house seemed remarkably undisturbed. There was no sign of a struggle or a robbery or destruction of Billy and Billie Jean's property. Whoever committed these murders was very clean and efficient. After Lott's initial search of the house, he walked outside and waited for Billy's father to come home. Billy's father choked back sobs when he came roaring up to the house in his truck. He had gotten a call from a sheriff's deputy telling him what had happened at his house.

He stepped out of the truck and Detective Lott went over to meet him. Billy's father told Lott that everything had seemed perfectly normal when he left that morning. Billy Jean had been feeding the baby in the pre-dawn darkness and he was getting ready for work. And now, just a few hours later, his whole property was marked off with yellow police tape and his son and his son's girlfriend were dead. The old man just couldn't make any sense of it.

But as Lot listened to Billy's distraught father, it dawned on him that the killer or killers must have planned the attack in great detail. Billy's dad said he left for work at 5:30 am and Billy needed to go to work an hour later. That left only one hour when Billy and Billie Jean would have been home alone with the baby.

Lot thought the chances were good that the killer or killers had been waiting in the dark outside the house for their opportunity to attack this young couple. And the thought of that just made Lot's skin crawl.

By 2 p.m., the detectives were ready to release the bodies to the morgue for autopsy, and Lott was eager to start talking to people who knew the victims. His investigators had combed every square inch of the house and learned almost nothing from it. Lott didn't know whether he was dealing with a drug cartel hit or a serial killer or something else entirely.

That afternoon, Lott and his partner, Chief Deputy Joe Woodard, asked one of Billie Jean's closest friends, Lindsay Thomas, to come down to the Mountain City Sheriff's Station. They hoped she might be able to provide some information about Billie Jean that could help the investigation. Lindsay had clearly been crying, but she came to the station ready to help find the killer or killers, even if that meant telling some of her friends' secrets.

Lindsay said she suspected that the murders had something to do with drugs. She had visited Billie Jean at home the day before the killings, and Billie Jean had told her that she was selling opioid pills to help pay for Tyler's baby supplies. And Lindsay knew that Billie Jean's boyfriend, Billy, also sold opioid pills. And so Lindsay told Lott that between the two of them, they could have been in touch with some very dangerous people who would not hesitate to hurt or even kill them if something went wrong.

This was news to Lot. Billy and Billie Jean did not have criminal records and they were not under investigation by the narcotics squad either. But maybe the couple was just good at avoiding unwanted attention. The crime scene was certainly consistent with a ruthless drug gang hit, cold, efficient, and cruel. And Lot did find white crystals on the floor in Tyler's room that looked a lot like methamphetamines. And so Lot made a mental note to be sure to check back in with his narcotics squad.

Then, Lot asked about something Billy's dad had told him. When Billy's dad was sobbing in front of the house, he had made a comment about how there was some bad blood between his son and his son's girlfriend and this other family in town, the Potters. Now, Billy's father was too upset to explain this clearly, but from what Lot gathered, it sounded like there was some sort of internet feud between primarily Billie Jean and Janelle Potter, who was 30 years old and lived with her parents.

Lindsay told detectives that she knew all about this feud. She said she'd even gotten caught up in it. But she thought the whole thing was just stupid. It was more like a middle school food fight than a reason to actually kill someone, and so Billy and Billie Jean were not afraid of the Potter family. I mean, they never even locked all their doors. Still, Lot asked Lindsay to slow down and walk the detectives through the entire feud.

Lindsay said the dispute had begun more than a year earlier when people that she had never heard of began slamming her and Billie Jean on a website called Topics. It was a site where people commented on local issues, sometimes anonymously. One person had accused Lindsay of threatening to hurt Janelle, and he said that Janelle's defenders might hurt Lindsay too. And so he warned Lindsay to, quote, "...watch her back."

For months, Topics users alleged that Lindsay and Billie Jean were out to get Janelle and that they might even physically assault her. Lindsay told the detectives that she and Billie Jean had tried to ignore the taunts because the whole idea was absurd. The two women barely knew Janelle and really had no reason to want to hurt her.

Lindsay said that she and Billie Jean ultimately became convinced that Janelle Potter herself was orchestrating the social media posts against them as a way to make herself look like a victim and maybe get some sympathy. Lindsay explained that Janelle was a very immature person who had never had a job, never had a driver's license, or really a real boyfriend, so she had plenty of time to stir up some trouble.

Lindsay said that she and Billie Jean eventually filed harassment charges against Janelle, but a judge threw out their complaints for lack of evidence. After that, Billie got involved and he called Janelle's mother in hopes of ending the dispute. But the mother stood by her daughter and before long, the phone call had turned into a shouting match with Janelle crying in the background.

Lott looked over at his partner Woodard, and he nodded. They both knew this was a strange lead, but it was the best thing they had so far, so they had to go talk to the Potters next. The next morning, so February 1st, the two detectives drove out to the Potters' home, located a few miles from where Billy and Billie Jean had lived and died. Janelle's father, Buddy, opened the front door even before Lott and Woodard could ring the doorbell.

He would tell them that he'd actually been expecting them because everybody in town always pointed fingers at his family. Lott could see that Buddy was a very proud United States Marine. He wore a Marine Corps hat and his living room table was covered with military honors, including decorations from combat in Vietnam.

Buddy said that he and his wife had moved here from Pennsylvania a few years back after a severe fall ended Buddy's military career, and now they were just enjoying retirement. But Buddy acknowledged that their daughter, Janelle, really struggled sometimes. He explained that she had a hearing problem when she was young that made it really difficult for her to carry on normal conversations, and at 6 feet tall, she felt really awkward and struggled to talk to boys.

So, as the years went by, she spent more and more of her time alone at home. Buddy said that his daughter was so vulnerable that he and his wife often had to be very protective. Anybody who wanted to do something socially with Janelle had to meet Buddy and her mother Barbara first. And Buddy said they worried constantly that Janelle was being bullied.

That's when Barbara chimed in. She said the feud between their family and Billie and Billie Jean and her friends was a perfect example of the way Janelle was bullied. Barbara said that, you know, Billie Jean and Lindsay would pick on Janelle so regularly that she and Buddy sometimes worried that their daughter might end up hurting herself.

Janelle sat quietly as her parents talked about her to the detectives. But eventually, Janelle would speak up and she would say that she didn't understand why Billie Jean and Lindsay were targeting her. She said she never posted insults about Billie Jean or anybody else online, but some of the people who came to Janelle's defense online fiercely criticized Billie Jean and Lindsay.

Janelle said she believed that Billie Jean and Billie and Lindsay were trying to make her feel completely alone. She said that Billie had also attacked her closest supporters, falsely accusing her friend, Jamie Curd, of selling drugs. Lott's eyes widened at the mention of Jamie Curd. He'd heard that name when interviewing people who were close to Billie. And so he stopped Janelle and he asked, isn't that Billie's cousin? And Janelle nodded and said, yes.

Lot acted surprised. Lot told Janelle he understood that Jamie and Billy were not only relatives, but also close friends. So why would Billy attack Jamie? Janelle explained that Jamie actually was no longer friends with his cousin Billy anymore because he had learned how badly Billy and Billie Jean and Lindsay were mistreating Janelle.

The two detectives wrapped up the interview and thanked the Potters for their time, then they got up and walked outside and made their way over to their car, all the while puzzling over the strange story they'd just heard. Also, Janelle's way of talking just seemed very immature to them, and not just because of her high-pitched, childlike voice, but also because she portrayed everything in terms of petty rivalries that really did seem like something from middle school.

But the online harassment that Janelle and her parents described sounded very serious to Lot. And if Janelle really did look at the world like a middle school kid, she would be an easy target. So Lot could see why the Potter family was on edge at the mention of Billy and Billie Jean. Lot and Woodard agreed they needed to speak with Billy's cousin, Jamie, as soon as possible. Clearly, he had a ringside seat for the family feud, and so maybe he could give the detectives some sense of how deep the anger ran on both sides.

Later that day, narcotics officers listened politely as Agent Lott described the evidence that Billy and Billie Jean were selling drugs out of their home, potentially putting their lives at risk. But the narcotics officers were not impressed. They said at most, Billy and Billie Jean were small-time dealers who were selling just to their inner circle. The narcotics officers went on to say...

that typically they investigated people who sold hundreds of times more product than Billy and Billie Jean. If anyone was going to get killed over a drug deal gone bad, it would likely be major dealers, not just some random young couple with a little bag of pills. Nothing the narcotics officer said surprised Lott, but the dead end left him with only one real lead in the case. Now he was even more interested in his upcoming conversation with Jamie Curd.

By the time Jamie walked into the sheriff's office on Thursday, February 2nd, so two days after the murder, the detectives had thoroughly scrubbed his background. They talked to friends of the victims, as well as Jamie's own sister, about Jamie's relationship with Billy and Janelle.

People said that Billy was probably the best friend Jamie had ever had. The two men had worked together on the same exact machine at the thread factory, and then they often went out and partied together after the shift was over. And when Jamie's dog died a few years ago, Billy had even come over with beer to commiserate and to comfort his cousin.

And when Jamie couldn't find a girlfriend, Billy had introduced him to Janelle Potter, who had just as much trouble getting a date as Jamie did. And Jamie and Janelle hit it off and began spending time together, but they had one problem: Janelle's parents did not like Jamie. At one point, they even banned him from coming inside their house. And so that was when Jamie began offering to come over and repair the Potter family's computers because it was literally the only way he could think of that he could still see Janelle.

But Jamie's relationship with Janelle ultimately drove a wedge between Jamie and his cousin Billy as the online feud spread to Facebook and other social media, and then to the courts. In the end, Jamie had to choose between his girl and his best friend. And he picked his girl, and the two men stopped speaking to each other. Now, the detectives wondered how far Jamie would go to defend Janelle. Mr. Ballin' Collection is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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From the moment Jamie entered the police interview room with a baseball hat pulled down low over his sleepy eyes, Lott had the sense of a man who was a follower, not a leader. Jamie himself was quick to make it clear that he was a country boy who had never strayed too far from eastern Tennessee.

He said he didn't really use computers much himself, even though he was enough of a handyman to repair them, but he knew that Billy and Billie Jean were posting threats against Janelle on Facebook and other websites. And Jamie just couldn't understand why Billy would do that, or why Billy denied that it was true. Jamie said he saw firsthand the damage that Billy and Billie Jean's threats were doing to Janelle.

Jamie said he had seen Janelle suffer these paralyzing panic attacks over some of the things that Billy and Billie Jean were saying about her. And Jamie said at some point he just couldn't take it. He just could not bear to watch his girl get hurt.

Detective Lott said he could only imagine how hard it would be to watch your girlfriend be bullied. Jamie tried to interrupt, claiming that Janelle was not his girlfriend, but Lott ignored him. He said it must have been hard for Jamie to keep from hurting the people who were hurting Janelle. Then Lott leaned forward and looked right at Jamie and he asked him a very surprising and blunt question. Would you shoot a woman with a baby in her arms? Startled, Jamie just sat there for a moment before he answered with one word, no.

And Jamie instantly offered to take a lie detector test to prove he really had nothing to do with these murders. And after that, he went silent. And so the detectives just sat there in silence and stared at Jamie, hoping he would eventually chime in with useful information. And for a while, all Jamie did was just sit slouched in his chair. But then suddenly, Jamie sat up and he began wildly looking all around the interview room as though he was looking for someone who was watching them.

Then he looked right at the detectives and his eyes were wide and his voice got really quiet and he asked them, "Is the CIA here?" Lott and his partner were dumbfounded but also intrigued. Why would the Central Intelligence Agency, the country's international spy agency, have anything to do with a double murder in rural Tennessee?

Jamie glanced from detective to detective hoping for an answer to his question, but the two detectives didn't say anything, mostly because this was a totally outrageous question that didn't seem legitimate. But what was absolutely clear in this moment was the two detectives knew they had to figure out what in the world Jamie was talking about.

On the other side of town, Janelle's mother, Barbara, had no idea that Jamie was talking to the police at that very moment. But she would have known exactly why Jamie was asking about the CIA. And she, for one, was grateful that one particular spy did keep an eye on Mountain City, Tennessee. For more than a year, Barbara had been emailing back and forth with a CIA agent named Chris, and they had grown very close like mother and son. In fact, she even sometimes addressed him as son.

Chris, the CIA agent, had gone to high school with Janelle more than a decade earlier. And even though his career had taken him around the world since those days, he still kept a protective eye on his high school classmate, and he would let Barbara know whenever he learned of any threats to Janelle's safety.

Months before the murders, in April of 2011, Chris had emailed Barbara to let her know that Billie Jean and two other women had been prowling around their property at night. Chris said he suspected the women were up to no good, but he was in no position to do anything. He had just broken his arm and he was in a cast. However, Chris said he had tapped the phone line in Billie and Billie Jean's house so he would be able to keep track of their conversations. That way, they would know if Billie and Billie Jean were planning anything else.

Barbara couldn't thank Chris enough for the warning. He was like a guardian angel. We love you, son, she wrote back to him. And in the email, she also reassured Chris that her husband, Buddy, was in, quote, Vietnam jungle recon mode, end quote. And he would be ready if any intruders tried to enter their home.

Billy's cousin Jamie had also struck up a relationship with Chris the CIA agent. And Jamie often poured his heart out to the spy about how much he loved Janelle. Chris had assured Jamie that he had a great girl, but he warned Jamie that Billy and Billie Jean and their friends, they really wanted to make Janelle's life hell and that would definitely affect Jamie's life.

So, when Jamie returned to the police station to take his lie detector test that he requested on February 6th, 2012, so almost a week after the murders, he hoped that Chris the CIA agent might be looking out for him. But things didn't go so well for Jamie. The lie detector analyst concluded that Jamie was being deceptive when he claimed he didn't know anything about the murders of Billy and Billie Jean. And so this meant it was very likely that Jamie was hiding something.

And this was exactly what Agent Lott was hoping for. Now he'd be able to really up the pressure on Jamie and basically force him to either spill his guts or risk facing first-degree murder charges. And so Agent Lott walked into the interview room where Jamie was once again waiting, and Lott felt ready to break this man down.

For the next two hours, Lott, along with another detective, threw one question after another at Jamie. What was he hiding? Why was he lying? Was anyone else involved in the murders? And Jamie just sat there mumbling, I don't know, I don't know, or just grumbling without even answering at all.

Finally, the detectives actually started taking pity on Jamie, saying they knew he was not the mastermind. He was probably just following someone else's instructions. Lot said that maybe Jamie didn't shoot anyone, but he needed to tell them who did.

But Jamie just continued to mumble and stammer his way, and Salat was getting really frustrated. So he just left the room and typed up a written statement, a confession for Jamie to sign, that admitted he played a role in the murders. And Salat came back in the room with the statement, and he slid the confession with a pen across the table to Jamie, and Jamie just stared at it for a long time doing nothing. But eventually, Jamie picked up the pen and he signed his name down at the bottom.

After the interrogation ended, Jamie looked completely defeated, and so he very quickly just agreed to let the detectives come out to the parking lot and search his car. And in his car, scrawled on a scrap of paper on the front passenger seat, the detectives found email addresses for not only Jamie, but also for Barbara and Janelle.

This was like a goldmine to Lott. Now that Jamie had confessed to a backup role in the murders, the detectives could get a search warrant to see all the messages written to and from these email addresses in the months leading up to the murders. If there was a larger plot to murder Billy and Billie Jean, then the detectives would soon know about it.

A few days later, the email company sent the detectives an electronic file containing thousands of emails sent or received by Jamie, Barbara, and Janelle over the previous year. And so suddenly, the detectives had a window into why the Potter family lived in such fear.

The detectives quickly started seeing correspondence from a CIA agent named Chris Chauden who was warning with increasing urgency that Billy, Billie Jean and their friends were harassing and threatening Janelle. The emails were chatty and personal, sometimes weaving in stories from Chris's CIA work or references to his three Great Danes, but frequently coming back to his concerns that these bullies might follow through on their threats to hurt Janelle.

Lott couldn't believe that a CIA agent would use his official position to get involved in a family feud in rural Tennessee. The email showed that for months in 2011, Chris had tried to get a CIA ID card for Janelle's father, Buddy, so that Buddy could acquire military-grade weapons that are normally off-limits to civilians. And so the whole thing just seemed extremely unprofessional to the detectives.

So, Lott and another detective decided to track down Chris and just ask him what was going on. The detectives found a guy named Chris Chauden who graduated with Janelle from a high school in Pennsylvania, and so Lott got his phone number and called him up. Chris seemed surprised to be getting a call from police in Tennessee, but he agreed to talk. And the next day, Lott and the other detective drove up from Mountain City to Delaware to meet with Chris for coffee at his house.

After the detectives and Chris had taken a seat at the kitchen table, they talked for a few minutes, just kind of general niceties. And then Lott just pushed a stack of papers across the table to Chris and told him they were copies of emails that he had written to his old high school classmate, Janelle Potter.

But Chris just looked blankly at the papers and then at the detectives and he said he had never sent an email to Janelle Potter ever. He knew her in high school but they were never really friends and did not stay in touch after graduation. He said he didn't know what those papers were but they had nothing to do with him.

Lott then asked Chris about his work for the CIA, and Chris nearly broke out laughing. The CIA? Chris said he was a police officer, just like the two detectives, but he had never had anything to do with the CIA, and he certainly wasn't a spy. Lott asked Chris if he had broken his arm recently, and Chris said he had never broken it.

Lott and the other detective believed Chris. He was nothing like the brash CIA agent in the emails, and he seemed genuinely surprised to be asked questions about a woman he barely knew. But now Lott needed to know, if Chris was not the author of all those emails, who was? The emails that the detectives had obtained from their search warrant were enough to fill an entire banker's box when they were printed out, and they included countless emails from Chris himself.

But using them to solve a crime was another question altogether. They were not in any particular order, and they covered a wide array of subjects, from everyday trivia like Janelle's love of floppy-eared dogs to Chris' tale of international assassinations. If investigators were going to figure out Chris' true identity, they needed a specialist who could really focus and not be distracted by every twist and turn of the investigation.

So they turned to a veteran state prosecutor, Dennis Brooks, who agreed to read every single email until he had a better sense of who Chris really was.

For days, Brooks spent his evenings immersed in the electronic world that the Potters and Jamie shared with Chris. Brooks concluded that Chris, if nothing else, wrote like he was a homicidal maniac. In notes to Buddy, Barbara, and Jamie alike, Chris would talk about the need to eliminate Billy and Billie Jean and their friends. He closed one message in particular to the Potters with the words "Kill, Kill, Kill" all in capital letters.

And, of course, Brooks suspected that whoever this person was, this Chris person, they did not work for the CIA. Real CIA operatives, the kind who killed people as part of their job, were notoriously secretive, and Chris was anything but. He seemed to openly brag about his most important assignments. But there was one striking thing about every single one of the notes from Chris that convinced Brooks that the real author, the real Chris, could only be one person.

And that person was the mastermind behind the murders of Billy and Billie Jean, using others as unwitting pawns. The night that Jamie Curd signed his confession, he did finally break down and talk in great detail about his role in the murders. Then, once investigators had thoroughly analyzed all the emails, they did have a clear picture of how the murders played out. And so here is a reconstruction of how police believe Billy and Billie Jean were murdered in their home on January 31st.

Around midnight on January 31st, so right as Billy was crawling into bed, a few miles away, Billy and Billie Jean's killer told Jamie that they needed a favor from him. Would Jamie take a ride to Billy and Billie Jean's house and stand lookout? Jamie knew what this favor really meant. The killer was finally going to take drastic action against Billy and Billie Jean, and they needed someone else for backup.

Jamie did not like this idea, but he had known this night was coming for months, and so he agreed to go. So, Jamie and the killer drove to a church that was near Billy and Billie Jean's house, where they could see whoever left or entered. And they waited. Eventually, they saw the light go on as Billie Jean brought her baby into the kitchen for a bottle. Then they saw Billy's father packing his lunch for work, and then walking out the door around 5.30 a.m.,

This was the moment they were waiting for, when Billy and Billie Jean were all alone with just their baby in the house. Now, the couple was going to get what was coming to them. Jamie and the killer put on gloves, and then the killer gave Jamie a handgun so they'd both be armed. Then, the killer and Jamie got out of the car, they made their way over to Billy and Billie Jean's house, and the killer slid open the unlocked glass doors on the side of the house, and then they walked inside and headed straight for Billy and Billie Jean's bedroom.

Once the killer reached the bedroom, they stood in the doorway to gather their courage for a moment and then they entered the room. And as soon as they did, Billy woke up and he yelled out, "What the hell?" But the killer was on top of Billy before he could do anything. And the killer put their gun just inches from Billy's face and fired.

At this point, Billie Jean, who's right next to Billy, began to scream and she ran out of the room, but she didn't get far because Jamie was standing guard in front of the door that would lead outside. So Billie Jean couldn't escape. Instead, she ran down the hallway to her baby's room and pulled him out of the crib and held him close to her body. And then the killer just stepped into the room, rushed at Billie Jean, they raised their gun and shot her point blank in the side of the head. Billie Jean crumpled onto the floor, still clutching her baby.

The killer simply turned around, walked back into the hall, and headed back to the main bedroom. And there they walked back over to Billy, and just to make sure he was dead, the killer drew a knife and slit Billy's throat ear to ear. Then the killer walked out of the bedroom and met Jamie at the front door. Jamie gave his gun back to the killer and then ran outside to vomit.

And that was it. The intruders got back in their car and sped off. They were in and out of the house in less than three minutes, leaving behind two dead bodies and a baby who would grow up without parents. But the killer was satisfied with what they had done. At least now his daughter, Janelle, would be safe. Buddy Potter, Janelle's father, killed Billy and Billie Jean.

But police did not believe he was the one who actually set the murders in motion or that he was the one pretending to be the mysterious CIA agent Chris. Still, police easily had enough evidence to arrest Buddy and they hoped that once they had him in custody, he would confirm that somebody else had pushed him to kill.

But Buddy owned dozens of guns, and he often carried them no matter what he was doing, whether he was mowing the grass or out at a restaurant, he was always carrying. So when Agent Lott and Chief Deputy Woodard drove out to the Potter house early on a mid-February morning to arrest Buddy, they called ahead to let Buddy know they were just coming by with some follow-up questions. The last thing the two detectives wanted was to surprise Buddy and accidentally trigger an armed standoff.

When they got there, Buddy let the two detectives into the house. But the moment Lot told him they were actually there to arrest him for murder, Buddy reached for a gun. But Lot and Woodard were ready, and they instantly tackled Buddy, pinning his arms and getting him into handcuffs. Then they dragged him outside, put him in the cruiser, and went back to the sheriff's office.

On the ride, the detectives told Buddy they knew that he loved his family and he was just trying to protect them, he was no monster. After all, Buddy didn't kill the baby. The detectives reassured Buddy that they understood. The world was going to hell, and sometimes violence was the only solution, right? After all, someone else had warned Buddy his daughter was in danger.

And with that, tears began to well up in Buddy's eyes in the backseat of the cruiser, and his voice cracked as he shared with the detectives all the terrible things the CIA agent, Chris, had told him that Billy and Billie Jean were going to do to his daughter. And it was just too much for him. He had to act. ♪

Now, while Buddy clearly missed all the red flags in the emails coming from the CIA agent Chris that clearly indicated he was not who he said he was, the state prosecutor, Dennis Brooks, who reviewed all those emails, he caught the red flags. And it was one particular red flag, a chronic error that popped up in many of the emails, that ultimately led Brooks to discover the fake CIA agent's true identity.

Time and again in these emails, Chris made a spelling mistake that was far more typical for a school child than an adult CIA agent. Chris always forgot to drop the letter E from the end of verbs when he added the letters ING to them. So words like loving, taking, and caring all contained the extra E in the middle. And that was the same error that Brooks had seen over and over again when reading emails sent from another person, Janelle Potter.

And so Brooks told investigators that Chris had been a figment of Janelle's imagination all along, but one that she had used to very effectively manipulate her entire family. Janelle had basically catfished her own family into believing that she was in mortal danger, and ultimately, that caused her father to go out and kill Billie and Billie Jean.

A year and a half later, Buddy Potter, Janelle's father, was found guilty of killing Billie and Billie Jean and was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences. As for Jamie Curd, the star prosecution witness, he agreed to a plea deal that required him to serve 25 years in prison.

Janelle and her mother Barbara went on trial for their roles in promoting the double murder. Janelle's attorney argued that she was too childlike to murder anyone, and she shouldn't be punished because her father was overly protective. But the jury was not buying it, and ultimately she and her mother were both sentenced to life in prison.

Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. If you enjoyed today's stories and you're looking for more bone chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studios podcasts, Mr. Ballin's medical mysteries, bedtime stories, and run full. Just search for Ballin studios, wherever you get your podcasts and you'll find them all. Also, there are hundreds more stories like the ones you heard today, but in video format on our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin.

So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya.

Please tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived. We know the six wives of Henry VIII as pawns in his hunt for a son, but their lives were so much more than just being the king's wives. I'm Arisha Skidmore-Williams. And I'm Brooke Ziffrin. And we're the hosts of Wondery's podcast, Even the Royals. In each episode, we'll pull back the curtain on royal families past and present from all over the world.

to show you the darker side of what it means to be royalty. We rarely see Henry VIII's wives in their own light, as women who use the tools available to them to hold on to power. Some women won the game, others lost, but they were all unexpected agents in their own stories. Being a part of a royal family might seem enticing, but more often than not, it comes at the expense of everything else, like your freedom, your privacy, and sometimes, you.

even your head. Follow Even the Royals on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Go deeper and get more of the story with Wondery's top history podcasts, including American Scandal, Legacy, and Black History for Real.