cover of episode #542 - Biting Off More... - Wiggins, Mississippi

#542 - Biting Off More... - Wiggins, Mississippi

2024/11/9
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Small Town Murder

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James Pietragallo 和 Jimmie Whisman: 本期节目讲述了密西西比州维金斯镇一起令人震惊的谋杀案,凶手Terrell Anterion Johnson因精神疾病和家庭暴力问题长期困扰,最终杀害并肢解了他的母亲Sherry Johnson。案件中涉及大量的血迹、凶手的精神状态以及法律程序的复杂性,引发了社会对精神疾病患者的关注和对司法公正的讨论。 James Pietragallo 和 Jimmie Whisman: Terrell Anterion Johnson虽然有良好的家庭背景和军旅经历,但他患有精神疾病,并有暴力倾向,多次因家庭暴力、袭击等罪名被捕。在监狱中,他还袭击并咬伤了另一名囚犯,这进一步显示了他的暴力倾向和精神状态的恶化。他的母亲Sherry Johnson长期以来一直试图帮助他寻求治疗,但最终还是未能阻止悲剧的发生。

Deep Dive

Key Insights

Why did the troubled man in Wiggins, Mississippi, continue to engage in violent and crazy behavior despite efforts to help him?

Despite numerous attempts to help him, his behavior escalated due to underlying issues that were not addressed, leading to increasingly violent and senseless acts.

What unusual and violent act did the man commit while in jail?

While in jail, he attempted to eat a man's face, reflecting the escalating nature of his violent behavior.

What did the podcast discuss as a popular sport in the 1800s that involved performance-enhancing drugs?

Pedestrianism, a popular sport in the 1800s, involved performance-enhancing drugs like cocaine, and featured competitors with large mustaches.

What documentary did the podcast mention that deals with exorcism and a controversial court defense?

The documentary 'The Devil on Trial' discusses a case where the defense claimed the defendant was possessed by a demon, leading to a controversial trial.

How can listeners access early and ad-free episodes of Small Town Murder?

Listeners can access early and ad-free episodes by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts, or by using Amazon Music if they are Prime members.

Chapters
The episode introduces Terrell Anterion Johnson, a troubled man with a history of mental health issues and violent behavior. His actions escalate to increasingly violent and bizarre incidents, including a severe attack on an inmate in jail.
  • Terrell Johnson has a history of mental health issues including psychotic disorder, schizophrenia spectrum, and chronic delusional disorder.
  • He has been arrested multiple times for various offenses including domestic violence, assault, and resisting arrest.
  • In jail, he severely attacked another inmate, biting off his nose and lips.

Shownotes Transcript

Translations:
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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express. Yeah, choo-choo. Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. Hi, I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us. Jimmy, you are on. He's, like, hyped up today. It's so early. He's in on it today. He's like, I'm ready to go. I'm not going to be late ever again. That's right.

I doubt that. I've just figured out time, James. If you're not early, you're late. If you're not early, you're late. That's right. If you're not 10 minutes early, you're 10 minutes late. If you're on time, you're late. That's right. So we're going to get into this Small Town Murder Express. Two pounds or 10 pounds of murder in a two-pound bag. I'm sorry. There we go. Fun stuff here. Head over to shutupandgivememurder.com. Get your tickets for live shows online.

Austin, Texas, you are up next. There's not many tickets left. So get in there right now and finish them up and get in there and buy them. And also Boston and New York. Phoenix is sold out. And there is still time to get your tickets and watch the virtual live show. What a show. It was so fun. Wait till you see our costumes.

We committed. And The Case, too, is wild. A really fun show. But it's available for two weeks after October 30th. So if you're in that range of to, what, November 13th or whatever. 2024. You got 2024 in case you're listening next year. Check that out. Shut up and give me murder.com. So much fun. Can't wait. Also, patreon.com slash crime and sports is where you get all the bonus material. Bring it for me.

Anybody $5 a month or above, you get everything. Yes, sir. Entire back catalog, hundreds of bonus episodes you've never heard before. New ones every other week. One crime and sports, one small town murder. Hey, you know what? We're feeling generous. You get it all, baby. Take it all. Take it all. This week we're going to talk about...

For crime and sports, we're going to talk about a weird old-timey sport from the 1800s called pedestrianism. Fascinating. And there's performance-enhancing drugs and fighting. And it was more popular than baseball and soccer. And it's the weirdest thing you're going to hear. Oh, yeah. We'll talk all about it. Old school. Then, for small-town murder, we're going to talk about that exorcism documentary, The Devil on Trial. It's about the...

I think it's one of the only cases in history where they tried to use demonic possession as an actual alibi or an excuse or a defense. And we'll talk about that and some other cool exorcism type stuff here. All of that and more, patreon.com.

slash crime in sports. So get in there right now. That said, it's time. Let's jump right into this because we have a seriously wild story for you today. I mean, just wow, you're going to be shaking your head after this. So I think it's time everybody sitting out there. Let's all take a deep breath. Arms to the sky. Let's all shout. Shut up and get murder.

Let's do this, everybody. Let's go on a trip, shall we? All right. We are going on down south again. We were in Alabama this week. Normally, we don't lump the places in together, but this week is how it worked out. It's fun to do different regions because then you get a taste. But here we're going. We were in Alabama. Now we're going to Mississippi. Okay. Here. This is Wiggins, Mississippi. Yeah. Like Chief. Chief Wiggins. That's Wiggum.

Oh, yeah, it is. With his Wiggins. Okay, like a Dr. Seuss book. Yes, W-I-G-G-I-N-S, Mississippi. Southern Mississippi, down in the old Mississippi panhandle there. Yes, sir. That's what I like to call it. That is where Alabama and Louisiana kind of intrudes on Mississippi down there. It's an hour and a half to Mobile, Alabama to the east and about an hour and a half to New Orleans to the west. Oh, look at that. It's right in between these two places. It's about five hours to our last Mississippi case.

which was in Horn Lake, and that was called Burning Your BFF. That was wild stuff there. So, yeah, that was a crazy-ass episode. This is in Stone County, area code 601, population here 4,282.

So a decent-sized small town. Sure. Still a very small town. 4,000 is not that much. Not that much, but it's not like 400, which is what we've been a couple of them lately. Median household income here, it's low enough to be a problem, I would think. $48,784. So much.

Yeah, more than $20,000 less than the national average. Median home cost here, $138,900. Get out of my life. That's the median home cost here. Unbelievable. So actually, the $48,000 isn't that terrible when you put it in context with that. And it's very inexpensive to live here overall. History of this town. Okay, 1886, James Madison Hatton, who was the son of Wiggins Hatton. Yeah, that was the first name. Wiggins. Wiggins Hatton, his name was. Wow.

Homestead at 160 acres of north central Harrison County, and they needed to have a definite place to meet and trade and exchange news. Right. Everybody to get together, so a small village was established on a portion of James Madison Hatton's land. Sure. It was called Nile City. Oh, okay.

He didn't name it after himself or his dad. Niles City, in honor of Judge H.C. Niles. Great guy. And then they tried to get a post office in that name in 1896, but there was already a Niles City, Michigan. So the post office department said, no, thank you. Already had a Niles City? Niles City, which makes no sense because there is...

There's a bunch of city names and town names that are in every state. Yeah. How many Springfields are there? Right. There's a bunch. It's a joke. Even Caledonia. There's like 30 Caledonias. Cala what? There's like 20 Miamis in this country. More than one person had the idea to name it Caledonia. Yes.

So to honor Wiggins Hatton, they named it Wiggins here. This is great. One of the first things they needed to do was build a town jail. So they built a town jail. It was a 12 by 20 foot with 10 foot high and had two rooms.

Now, they said it had to be very well-constructed. They were very concerned about people breaking people out. So it was so well-constructed that a few years later, as a Halloween prank, some of the teenagers from the area, young boys from the area, overturned the jail. The whole building. They turned it upside down. They flipped the jail over. Like it's a Volkswagen Beetle. Yes. That's a prank right there. They came to work the next day and they were like, I'll be a son of a bitch. Dog my cats. This is a goddamn.

Goddamn jail. How are we going to get that thing back on its side? We're going to have to arrest only people walking on their hands from now on. This isn't going to work. So later they decided that we should construct a new jail. The children can't overturn if the kids could overturn. Imagine what an angry mob or like a group of outlaws. Perhaps a buddy could spike that to the ground. Why are circus tents built stronger than this?

They had some fires, of course. 1910, a fire destroyed all of the business part of town and a few residents as well. Sure. And the meeting place was moved to a room located in the southwest corner of the school building, and they had to fix shit, and they rebuilt it with brick buildings. In 1912, the American Pickle and Canning Company was founded. Is that a... Wow.

Wow. Absolutely. And then the plant burned to the ground in 1913. Of course. A year later, and then it was replaced again. Reviews of this town since we've never been here. Right. I don't know what's going on down there. Let's find out. Maybe other people do. Here's five stars. I love Wiggins, Mississippi. Sure you do. Fuck yeah. I've always lived here. Is that right? Ever since forever. Son of a gun.

Most of my family is here. I love the small town atmosphere filled with people who genuinely care about you. Well, they at least care about your business because they're nosy. I think that's what it is. I don't think they care about you, but they care what you and your husband did and talked about. And they're going to tell their friend. There's no other town like Wiggins. And I'm proud that this is my hometown. Jesus. Here's three stars. My town is, and then in quotes, all right.

Not the best to live in, but it'll do. There are some troubles in this town, and quit don't have the money to fix some things here. I mean, quite. That's what I would think, yeah. That's why I want to move on to better things and get away from the troubles of this town. Finally, two stars. There aren't many things to do in Wiggins, nor are there many restaurants to eat at. There's only 4,000 people. That's what I mean. There's only one high school and one middle school. It would be nice for more things to be opened up.

They make it sound like there's a bunch of closed restaurants that they're just... They won't let you in. It's all set up in there. You look in, there's booths and shit. The kitchen's all cleaned up with stainless steel shit. They're like, they won't let us in. Open it up. The sign just says closed. I swear we'll buy stuff. Just open it. Things to do here. Here we go. The Mississippi Music, Food, and Trail Ride Festival. Trail Ride, too. Trail Ride. It is put on by Independent Chicks Entertainment. Oh, wow.

Oh. Yeah, and it's expected to draw nearly 10,000 people to this town, which is more than double. This town's about to grow by three? They're going to triple the population in this town. There's something for everyone with live music, a car show, a talent contest with cash prizes. Those are always entertaining, as we know. Vendors, food, and more. Festival goers are invited to bring their lawn chairs, tents, and picnic blankets, too. Bring your tents. Bring a tent.

Horses are even welcome here. Andy, whatever you got. Donkeys, horses. Pack your relatives from out of town. Bring them in. Ride that motherfucker in with a tent on the back of him. There's a contest for the best dressed cowboy and best dressed cowgirl as well. What does that even mean? I don't know. Fringy. Yeah. Turquoisey. Lots of stuff.

Silver? Is all I can imagine. I don't know. I don't know. Like a fancy cowboy? Yeah, do you want him dressed like 1940s cowboys? Do you want like a 40s movie? Yeah. Do you want the Three Amigos cowboy? Or are we talking about like a real guy who actually does work on the fucking range here? On a ranch hand or fucking... Or Martin Short fighting El Guapo. Which one would you prefer? Musical performances will be given by Lil A. Yep.

Okay. TJ Eubanks. Yep. They always go by initials. It's so weird. That's the newlywed game host that's his kid there. Eubanks. Bob Eubanks. Bob Eubanks. That's him. Fyaflame, and Fyah is F-Y-A-H. Fyaflame, as opposed to any other kind of flame. Jones...

That's the person. Jones. Yeah. That's all. And others. I mean, all these people are vague as fuck. You might as well just make the rest vague. That's all. The auto show portion of the festival will feature DJ Baby Boy and Babies with an I and BOI as boy. Yeah. DJ Baby Boy. Hmm.

They said it's the first time they've hosted the event in Wiggins, but they've hosted it all over the place. It's $25 to get in, which is steep down there. I guess all those people require fees, huh? They're not doing it for free. Oh, you mean TJ Eubanks won't show up unless all of his rider needs are met? What are we talking about? DJ Baby Boy doesn't do shit for free, buddy. Oh, boy. And there's also the Stone County Fair. Yeah.

Which features a horse show, a queen contest, a goat, lamb, and hog show. It's not fair if the lambs have to compete against the hogs. That's not right. Goat, lamb, and hog? Okay. Yeah. That's a ham. A talent show. Yeah. Eventually it'll be ham. Yeah. A talent show. They all have talent shows. I hope there's just some rude redneck of Simon Cowell. You know what I mean? Yeah. There's got to be one, right? I doubt it. That's good. Everybody's just going to support him. That's fine.

That'll do. Well, next. Nick, there's a dessert contest. Sure. Obviously. That fits in here. And then live entertainment, the Lincoln outfit, which I think would be an unpopular band down here. Not the Lincoln outfit. Generally not. That's called the Union Army. That's the Lincoln outfit. That's called the people that made us do this work ourselves. Fuck them. Fuck that shit. So there's also brides and midway shit and everything. That said, let's talk about some murder. Here we go. Okay. Well,

Let's start out with a young man. Yep. All right. Terrell Anterion Johnson. Terrell? Terrell is his first name, but one R, two Ls, which is an odd spelling. And his middle name is Anterion. A-N-T-E-R-I-O-N. Anterion, which sounds like a space warrior. Anterion from the planet GlaxoCo. Like, what the fuck is that? Wow.

It sounds like a transformer. You know... Anterion! I saw a name, Cle Anthony, and it looks like Cleanthony. That's not good. Yeah. That's so bad. Yeah, you need an apostrophe in there. Like DeBrickashaw. You gotta DeBrickashaw that bad. Cleanthony? No. So Terrell Anterion Johnson. He's born in 1989. Old Anterion here. Yes. Now, he is born into a very good family. He's the only child... Yeah.

Yeah. A very close and good family here. His parents are his parents aren't married. They never will get married. Oh, but this father is a very well-known reverend, Baptist reverend named the Reverend Rob Harris, which I wonder if how much of his congregation knows about his father.

His wayward children. Yeah. And his mother is Sherry Johnson. So there's Reverend Bob Harris as the father. He takes the mother's name, Sherry Johnson. But they're both – she works in schools. He's a preacher. They're very well respected. She's from a very close-knit family. She lives on Johnson Road. Really? And like most of the people who live on the street are related to her.

Okay. And it might be a family name of that. It is. No, it is. It is, really. Because all of them, there's like eight different houses on there that are Johnson's. History down here. That's it. So they had their son when they were very young as well. I think Sherry was 22 when she had him. But they were never married. Yeah.

Now, Terrell, as a young man, he served in the U.S. Army. He was in the U.S. Army. He attended community college for a while. But he had some problems. He just can't ever get it together. And we'll find out. He's got some mental issues. And that's the main issue here. He holds a lot of temp labor jobs, some landscaping and things like that. After the military? After the military, after trying to go to college. He can't hold down a...

Yeah. Real, you know, a nine to five basically. Well, you're, we catching up with him. Well, after college would be 2008. Wow. I mean,

I mean, or after Army 2009, 10, around there. Yeah. So he, yeah, he's attending community college. I mean, this isn't like way back in the day. This guy's on fucking Facebook. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not Instagram quite yet, but he'll get there. He could be on Twitter. It's possible. Next year. Next year? I think. Is it 2011 or 9? I think 2008 was when it really started picking up. Yeah. So he does all that. Never really steadily employed as an adult, though. Oh. Doesn't have the same job for a year where he goes to work and comes home and can't work.

Yeah, it is tough when you don't have a contract to do it. Yeah, I can't really do that. So now he received from what the army said, substantial psychiatric and psychological treatment in the past from multiple things. A psychotic disorder, schizophrenia spectrum and chronic delusional disorder.

If you put all three of those together. That's a man seeing shit and lashing out. Yeah. If someone's schizophrenic who's seeing shit and then they're psychotic also, that is a fucking scary combination. So history of hospitalizations has violent disputes with random people, family members. No one knows what the hell's wrong with them other than those three things. And he's not real receptive to treatment either. He's so kind of out there. 2015.

Wow, he has a banner year in 2015, we'll say. He's arrested three different times. And one thing, the worst thing he does, he never even gets charged for, which is wild. He's arrested three times, multiple charges, including domestic violence, assault, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, marijuana possession. His mother called the cops for help with him because she didn't know what to do with him anymore. And he assaulted a police officer in one scene.

He's a mess. The first time the officers are called, this is called to the house. His mom calls him out. He's living alone. It's those two living at home. It's her only child, too. So he got mad, Terrell did, when his mother told him to, what do you think it was? Clean up. Turn off the TV. Is that right? Yeah.

When's the last time you got mad because your mom told you to turn off the TV when you were five? The Smurfs are on? Certainly too young to do anything about it. Yeah, this man is in his late 20s. So he freaked out. He balled his hands into fists like a child and said, what are you going to do?

Yeah. How are you going to make me do it? So his mother, fearful he was going to have a fucking meltdown, called the deputies, the sheriff's deputies, to try to calm him down. And he didn't get calm. He actually got more agitated about the whole thing, fought with the deputies, and they had to tase him multiple times in his own mother's living room to try to calm him down. Like a lot. They had four or five times they had to tase him.

So once he was shocked, they handcuffed him, took him to jail. Four days later. He's out. Oh, he's out by then. Yeah. They let him out. You know, he's feeling much better now. And four days later, they had to come back to the house because Sherry reported that she and her son were talking in the kitchen and he grew belligerent in her words. Her son picked her up and threw her. Oh, boy.

A distance of seven to eight feet out of the back door and into the yard, injuring her right arm. Threw her out the door. Picked her up and tossed her out the door. He's a big guy, too. He's not a small guy. He's like an athletic guy. He looks strong. He bounced her. He took her ass and said, out the door, Mosh, when she flew through the goddamn air. We won't have any of your shit in this establishment today. She called deputies for help and then fled next door to her mother's house. Okay.

His grandma lives next door here. So they show up, and it's just him alone when they get there, Terrell alone. He fought with the deputies. They try to handcuff him. He's taking swings at them. He's fighting them. So they had to tase him four times on this occasion. So he's been tased like almost ten times in four days. That's a lot. It can't be good for your heart and other things, I would imagine. Those things like...

They instantly turn something in your blood into sugar. It does something chemically. It's not good. It's not good at all. It's not good for you. No, certainly not. It raises your blood sugar or something. It does something to your blood that...

When your muscles contract, it does that. Yeah. It's weird. I know what you're talking about, too. There's a protein in it that it messes with or something. Yeah, it does something to your blood. It's not healthy. It's not good for you. Not for four fucking shocks in four. Eight, seven, eight. A lot. A lot. It's like eight to ten over the course of four days. That's too much. These four stunnings, he's so agitated this time, that doesn't even do it. He's still fighting with them. Oh, boy. So they have to beat him with a baton.

After stunning him four times to get him into custody. By the way, these cops are not against him. One of the cops is a cousin of them and knows them well and used to be this guy's mentor.

They're not like they're on his side. They're just a beat up. They know the family, like all these guys. It's a small area. All the cops. One of their relatives is a sheriff's deputy, too. So they are not just that guy. Another guy. So they all somebody on scene is crying because they don't want to do this. They know they're not just like, oh, let's go take a guy down. This is they know this guy. So they're like, they don't want please. Terrell, don't make us beat the shit out of making us do this. Kicking them, punching them. Yeah. It hurts me. Fuck. So they had to take him to jail again. Yeah.

May 2015. Okay. Yeah. There was a complaint of someone stealing gas from a gas station. Yeah. Put gas in and drove away. Didn't pay for it. All right. That's a fascinating thing that's still available. It's why it's very rare that that's still available. I can't believe you can. That's.

There's some small towns that are like that. They don't have pay first. You can gas up first, then go pay for it. They don't have a way to lock the gas pump. Crazy. No, they just have... It's just open. We trust you. Yeah, the power's on. They may not trust you in the big city, but here we trust you. So they try to pull him over because it's his vehicle that they described. He won't pull over. No. Nope, he won't pull over. They finally get him to pull over at a gas station

Another gas station. He is told to stay out of his vehicle and leave the air and not leave the area. Stay right there. And, of course, he didn't. He got back in the car, took off again. He then takes off and ends up driving the car.

leading them on a chase to a house out in the county. Sure. I don't even know whose house it is. Ends up in the house and has a standoff with the cops. He gets in the house before he locks it up and has a big standoff with the cops. Eventually, he surrenders, mainly because he had to be treated at the hospital for shitloads of self-inflicted knife wounds that he was doing. He's just cutting himself. He's cutting and stabbing himself while he was in there. So eventually he gave up. He's like, I guess I got to go to the hospital. I'm all fucked up.

There's no good outcome for this. No. This is fucked up. He needs medication would be a... Inpatient. Inpatient, medication. He needs all the Asians here. Asians and Asians and everything else. He can't operate any vehicles or... No.

Or jobs, obviously. That's what I mean. You can't give this guy power tools. That's not a functioning member of society. We need to take care of him. So June 29, 2015, he's in the Stone County Correctional Facility. Yeah, of course he is. It's rough. So there he encounters Jaron Stubbs, who's an inmate who's there for methamphetamine distribution. Fantastic. Very nice guy here. He's a federal pretrial detainee housed in this place. And I guess here comes Terrell, who...

They got in an argument, and we'll talk about why in a moment here, but during the attack, Terrell attacks this man and beats him severely. And this guy said he didn't know that Terrell was going to attack him. Yeah.

He said, in fact, before the attack, the only interactions they ever had one-on-one was this guy a couple weeks before that telling Johnson that Johnson couldn't take food belonging to other inmates in the cafeteria. He was just taking food off people's plates. Like, dude, you can't do that, man. I wouldn't tell him. I wouldn't.

He'll learn. Someone's going to fucking stab him. I'm not teaching him. What Terrell is considered in prison would be called a bug. That's what they call these guys. They call the crazy ones that aren't in a mental unit, they call them bugs.

Everybody avoids them. Yeah. They sit by themselves in the cafeteria, usually maybe three, four at a time. Sure, sure. They'll sit together, and that's the bug table, we'll call it. The bugs know they're nobody. Everybody knows not to fuck with them. They're fucking mentally ill. They're out of control. And you don't tell them not to do shit or do shit. There's no reasoning with them. No, and that's what it is. You have to beat them to death if you want. It's easier just to avoid them. So most of the inmates, they just avoid the bugs. That's what they do. And that's what Terrell is. He's a bug. Okay.

And this guy decided to try to, I guess, I don't know. And who knows how he told him? We don't know if he's like, Hey man, just for me to get pissed off. Or he was like, Hey motherfucker, don't take shit on people's plates. Either way. There was no, there was no problem at that moment. Okay. It happened a couple of weeks later. So Stubbs, the Jaron Stubbs here, he was only, only resided in the same zone as Terrell J zone for a two month period. Okay. And, uh,

So apparently he said that Johnson not only attacked him, attacked several other people around him. He just started going nuts. All at the same time? All at the same time. But he really, really attacked Stubbs. He beat him severely and bit his nose off his face. Jesus. And bit his lips off.

He bit his nose to the point where when they took him to the hospital, it was sitting in a cup of ice next to him. He bit his nose off his body and spit it on the floor. Then bit the man's lips off.

Have you ever heard of that? I've seen it, not by a person. Not a lip. But I've seen a lip get torn off. That is wild. It's fucked up. I've never heard of two men fighting and one man biting the other man's lips off. I've never heard of that before. Yeah, Tyson stopped at the ear. Yeah, it was a nibble.

He didn't go in for a whole nose. Just to taste. That guy took his whole nose. Whole nose off. So this guy will end up suing the government, the federal government because it's a federal prison, alleging that Terrell was only in general population because his cousin, Captain Ray Boggs, is a local sheriff's deputy. Right.

And that's the thing here. We're dealing with a small town. Yeah. And they the cops know him. And rather than him being in isolation, which is should be a lot of times where they put these people so they can keep their medicine and all that kind of shit. They just put him in gen pot because that's where he wants to be. Who gives a fuck what he wants?

They wanted to help him out. So after the attack, Stubbs was brought to the prison infirmary, but his injuries were deemed sufficiently serious that they couldn't fix them there, so he was sent to the Forest General Hospital. The hospital staff advised prison officials that he'd receive better care at another facility. Yeah. We can't really do this. We can't do plastic surgery here. Well, that was just at the hospital. And then so they moved him again to the Merritt Health Center. Mm-hmm.

So he's been moved all the way around here with his nose on ice, with his nose on ice. He received subsequent plastic surgeries on his mouth and nose. However, after a surgery on October 15th, 2018, he's they stopped giving him treatment.

And he said he still has trouble breathing through his nose. He's all fucked up and he wants more medical attention. The complaint said once they put the nose back on, they were like, that's good enough. It's on. What do you want? So they said that he was not given pain medication while being transported, despite him, you know, having his nose and lips bitten off and bleeding profusely from the face. And then you put my upper lip on the bottom and the bottom on the top. What are you doing? What are you doing? This is I look super weird now.

So he said that jail officials failed to protect him from assault, violating his 8th and 14th Amendment rights. According to the lawsuit, they unlawfully mixed Johnson, who was a county inmate, in with federal pretrial detainees. Okay. The lawsuit also alleges that Johnson was unstable, mentally ill, and posed a threat to other inmates.

and claims that Stubbs should have been placed in an isolated cell, but because of his relation to Captain Boggs, he was moved around the jail, and the jail kept him in the general population. It alleges that employees at the jail failed to keep Stubbs safe and were untrained to handle the assault.

Very few people are trained to handle a nose that's off your face. Most people are ill-prepared to put lips back on a person's face. To stop a person that does that from doing it. It's so shocking. Yeah.

Well, that's not normal behavior. Where would you start? Even in prison, that's like, holy shit. What are you doing, man? If that's aberrant behavior for prison, you know you're fucking nuts. You didn't file down a toothbrush? You're just biting faces? Man, so Stubbs alleges that the jail staff were aware of the mental illness of Johnson and should have kept him in an isolated cell for disciplinary problems. Also, it suggests that Johnson was allowed to remain in the general population, posing a threat to other inmates.

It complains that the complaint says that the Federal Bureau of Prisons has failed to pay for required plastic surgery, leaving Johnson deformed and suffering from PTSD whenever he views his face in the mirror. Yeah. Or when I go to the fucking dentist. Yeah. Seeing a tooth. Anything. Well, they're like, open up. And he's like, it's already done, pal. I can't close. Got you covered.

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This show, Small Town Murder, is sponsored by BetterHelp. We all could use some therapy. And sometimes, you know what you have to do, though? You have to take a step back and thank the people who help you. You know what I mean? Sure. Thank them. I'd like to thank you, and I'd like to thank Sarah, people who keep me sane in this world, who I enjoy spending time with.

And we can always talk to. You're welcome. And you should thank the people in your life, too, because that's, you know, it's good. It's a good thing. This month, it's all about gratitude on BetterHelp. And along with the person and people that we just talked about, there's other people that we don't get to thank enough. Ourselves. You never thank yourself. You thank others. Thank yourself. It's sometimes hard to remind yourself and ourselves that we're trying our best to make sense of everything. The world's crazy. Stuff's going on.

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Visit BetterHelp.com slash Small Town Murder today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Small Town Murder. Stubbs also claimed jail officials said he told jail officials he would like to press criminal charges against Johnson, though that has not been notified of the state of the prosecution. They never charged him with this, by the way. This is what I mean. He almost killed a man by eating his face. Right. And they didn't even charge him with shit.

At minimum, it's assault. But, I mean, it's battery. It's assault, battery, attempted murder. There's all sorts of shit that it could be. So he wants a million dollars as well as $400,000 in compensatory damages. I think he deserves way more. I think that's crazy. Now, in 2016, because Johnson was being held in jail awaiting trial and stuff. So in 2016, he pleads guilty to all of his other shit, not the attacking the inmate.

His sentence is five years in prison, but it's suspended. What? They say, no, no, no. We need him on the streets. He's a valuable member of society, Mr. L. Johnson. How did he get such a great lawyer? So they suspend the five-year sentence and instead give him three years of probation. Not even five years. Oh, yeah. Like the sentence, three years of probation. Okay.

Now, his probation officer said that she tried to get him sent to prison, but the state never followed her recommendations. She constantly tried to get him put away. She's violating them always. Yep. In 2017, in March, his probation was revoked.

And he was ordered to attend and successfully completed an inpatient drug and alcohol treatment program at the VA hospital. Okay, so he tested dirty. Yeah, I mean, that's the other thing, too. He likes drugs and booze. What's drugs? He's doing math?

Don't know. When your brain – well, you know he likes weed. You know that much. But I don't know if he's – maybe that will calm him down a little bit. You don't eat people's faces on weed. No. I mean, I've heard of the munchies. That's – yeah. Jesus, Jimmy. That's a bit far, right? Thanks, Uncle Jimmy. Good God. How old are you? That's the oldest man joke I've ever heard in my life. That's the first thing I thought of. Well, I mean, you eat when you're high. Third thing. Number third one. Ah!

First one's a work joke. Second one's bad. Third one's the right one. Yeah, that's true. That's a comedian's credo, everybody. That's what we say in our heads. Not that. You get a Snickers, man. Yes. I love it, though. Yeah, that's what it was.

This is real munchy out of candy. The guy's got to have, it's got to be something hard drugs though. Yeah. He's got to be doing something else. Also, I think if your brain chemistry is that fucked up, you have schizophrenic shit, delusional disorders. I think any messing with it,

Yeah, it's got to be weed. Yeah, it could push it here. Yeah, we're like on a if you got like a base that's got like a square top of that super narrow. Oh, fuck. Yeah. And it's ready to just either side. He's the leading tower of Terrell right now. He's about to fucking fall at any moment. So, oh, boy. She said that he was kicked out of the V.A. program after that. And.

And she said the probation officer said she recognized the violent tendencies of Terrell and wanted him incarcerated, but the state wouldn't follow her recommendation. Sure. She said, when I was his PO, I tried everything in my power to get him sent to prison. She didn't want to deal with him. Wow. Yeah, I can't deal with this guy. Yeah.

That's almost you almost want to falter for being lazy, for not doing her job to take care of somebody. But how fucking crazy do you got to be to make a parole officer go? This isn't this is crazy. Yeah. But also how many people have a parole officer that really wants to put them in prison and can't get them put in prison? Usually a parole officer and I'll be all sending you right back there.

She said, yeah, tried to do everything in her power. And Jackson would not allow that. Whatever they said, they called me from Jackson, which is the capital. They called me from Jackson asking, quote, why I was being so hard on him.

He ate a man's face. What the fuck are you talking about? I think you got to keep that guy in line. And asking me why I wouldn't allow him to go to the VA for treatment. Just send him in for treatment. He's fine. Yeah, but the VA. He's got connections. His family has connections is the problem. Right. And it's not helping this guy. He needs help. He doesn't need to be. I wonder what did this. So she said that he'd already been kicked out of the VA, but given no other option by a higher ups in Jackson, had sent him there again. Wow.

Try that again. She said she told Jackson that they didn't know the type of person that she was dealing with. You don't know this fucking guy. Right. I get whatever. You know somebody who's telling you something. You read a report. Right. This motherfucker is crazy. Dangerous. I said, what do you do for a living? He said, Captain Crunch. That doesn't make sense. I don't know what to do. I can't deal with this guy. Yeah. And I've read his report. And every time he tells me he's hungry, I get very scared. I get scared. Exactly. Start covering my face up. Yeah.

Yeah, wear a ski mask for every visit. Or a medieval helmet. Oh, shit. A fucking huge one. She said, but they didn't listen, and I had to recommend to the judge that he be given another chance at the VA where he got kicked out again. They can't do it. They're not prepared and qualified to deal with it. And this is in a rehab center where people sometimes have some problems, but he has mental illnesses that are not what they deal with. He lives in Wiggins?

He lives in Wiggins on Johnson Street with his mom. This town is incapable of caring for him. No, and it's even worse because this town, he has too many connections. So he keeps getting soft landings. God damn. I mean, not that he needs punishment, but he needs, I don't know, he might, but he needs help at something. He needs something. Guidance. He can't just go out and be a person. No. He needs mental health guidance. He needs a lot of shit going on here. He needs...

Look, there are people in the world. Life is bowling. Some people need the fucking gutter covers. That's yeah. Some people need the bumpers and he needs them. He needs them bad. Yeah. And also if you could put like 20 pins out there for sure, you can get a lot of them to really set it up, make them feel good. You know, minimum 12, 12, 15. Yeah. Let's get an extra row. If he gets 10, we'll call it a strike. You know what I mean? He doesn't have to get them all. Just give him extra chance to hit the pins.

So in May 2017, he's sentenced to attendance and completion of a long-term drug and alcohol treatment program with the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Yeah. So that's what he gets sentenced to then. Now –

By April of 2018, the court ruled – so this is almost a year he's in there. The court ruled that Johnson had successfully completed the DOC's drug and alcohol treatment program, and his probation was increased by two years, and he was released from incarceration. That was the deal. You can get out, but you have to – Get this program done. You have to be on probation. We have to be able to keep an eye on you. Yeah. I would say. Forever. So, yeah, for all time, in a room –

Preferably with cameras on it all the time. It padded. It padded. A lot of stuff here, yeah. So he's going to get out and move in with his mom again, with Sherry Johnson, because he has nowhere else to go. So Sherry Johnson here, she's born in 67, so she's 51 at this point, 2018. She comes from a very tight-knit family, like we said. Her mother, her sister, two of her brothers all live in different houses near her on Johnson Road. Wild, wild.

So this is how it goes. Johnson comes from the type of family that follows, quote, this is from Boggs, by the way, the captain, police captain and relative, said that they're the type of family that follows what he calls, quote, the old ways, not like that, of sitting outside on Sunday afternoon and just talking.

Okay. Old-timey. Yeah. A family member grills out a lot, and all the families get together to eat on the street. Okay. Southern barbecue day. Somebody. And, yeah, somebody's getting together on that street and doing everything. After church.

Oh, absolutely. They're going to church for sure. We know that because Sherry's big in the church. At this point, she's a guidance counselor at Hattiesburg High School. That's what she does for a living. Oh, really? Sherry, yeah. Sherry had been a counselor. Her son could use some guidance counseling. No shit. So-

She'd been working as a counselor since 2014. Before that, she worked in the Harrison County School District from 2007 to 2014. And that's what they said. Now, she also she worked at North Gulfport Middle School, part of the county school district from 2010 to 2014. Also worked at a school in Mobile.

Now, Darrell L. Williams and his wife, Catherine, were Sherry's next-door neighbors on the other side. Mom on one side, them on the other. When they lived in – or I'm sorry. This is when they lived in Mobile. They were their neighbors. And this is through Terrell Johnson's middle school years. They lived in Mobile. So this guy said his wife and Sherry Johnson still remain close friends and stay in touch. So –

They're nice people. Terrell was around the same age as this guy's son. And they played football together. They had sleepovers together. They were, you know, neighborhood pals. Yeah. Two 12 year olds live next door to each other. You like football. I like football. We're best friends now. Do you have one? Let's throw it. Let's be Milhouse and Bart. Like, you know, we have nothing in common, but here we are. So they did all of that. They had sleepovers. William said we were always at their house or they were always at our house.

And then the Johnsons moved to Stone County and moved to Wiggins. And that's when Terrell joined the military after high school and all that kind of thing. Everybody said over the years, Sherry Johnson is always right there in her son's corner trying to help them, always trying to get them treatment, trying to help them.

Taking him in. She never says you're too much. You can't come to my house. Never. It's all her friends says she loves him unconditionally and she's she knows he's got problems and she's known for a long time. They thought like the army would help him out.

But if you're schizophrenic, the Army isn't going to help you with that. You've got three different mental health challenges there. That ain't easy. You've got a lot of problems. So the police had visited her home numerous occasions, as we know. Now, June 3rd, 2018, Sherry goes to church that day. Of course, it's a Sunday. And she even made plans with her friend after they talked after church that later in the day they were going to get together to go over some more Bible stuff.

They didn't get enough church that day. What? Not enough church. They were like, let's go over a couple things on this. I don't really understand, Joe, but let's talk about it. Let's find out about them tonight. What do you say on a nice Sunday night deal? But she said that night she never heard from Sherry. Oh. She called Sherry. Nobody answered. She figured it out on her own. What the hell? I guess we're not going to find out the mysteries of the Bible tonight. No one's figured it out in thousands of years, and I guess it's not going to be us either. Okay. So...

This day, she had talked to a couple people on the phone, not this lady, but a couple other people, relatives and such, and said that Terrell's having a bad day. It's not great. She said over the phone to two different people that he was, quote, psychotic today and has lost his fucking mind without the fucking. Because, you know, she was in the Jesus and shit. But he's lost it today. He's lost it today. So no one hears from Sherry.

the third, the rest of the day on the third. No one hears from her on the fourth. No one hears from her on June 5th. So June 6th, 2018, Jerry's brother said, this is bullshit. He had called a bunch of times. He went over to the house to say, where the fuck is my sister? And Terrell had said that she went on a cruise with her friends. Oh,

She didn't tell anybody. Nobody else knew about this. It's one of those. People do this a lot. The last minute cruises. You're sitting around. You're like, I'm going on a cruise tonight. And you just leave. That happens very. People don't plan that shit for months in advance and buy special clothes. Throw a windbreaker in a suitcase and off you go. I'll buy the rest on the ship. She's already got tons of sundresses. Everything's fine. I'll bet you they got a mall on that ship. Don't buy it all.

So they didn't believe him, obviously. And they said, well, let us come in the house. And he said, no, you can't come in. Stay out. They were like, okay, that's not going to work. So the brother, Terrell's uncle, calls law enforcement because he said he wants a welfare check because Terrell won't let him in the fucking house. And they know she's not on a cruise because she would kind of probably tell you ahead of time. Some big information. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm going to take off work. It's a, it's just, it's a big thing. I need a ride down to the Gulf coast. I need a ride to the ocean, you know, things like that. So the sheriff's department, stone County, uh, first went to the Johnson home on June 6th to do the welfare check. And, um, captain Boggs arrives. That is the cousin. Yep. He's the guy there knows them all his life and everything. And, um,

So they arrive, and Terrell is on the porch when they arrive. And he walks down into the driveway to meet them, greet them. And they say, hey, we're just your uncle called looking for your mom. And you wouldn't let him in and just what's up. And he said, yeah, I told him already. Same thing I'm going to tell you guys. Her friend picked her up, and they were going on a cruise. They jumped on a carnival. That's it. I don't know, man. Last minute cruise invitation. It happens.

So they said, okay, well, that makes sense. I mean, yeah, it's good to get away. But just to reassure your uncle and the rest of your family, you know how people get. They get nuts. Just let us go take a little looky-loo. We'll do a once-around. You're gone in five minutes. You go back to what you're doing, and we'll go find. And he said, yeah, sure, no problem. Come on in. Okay. So they came on in. I guess just didn't want to take shit from his uncle. Yeah. But he's okay with his cousin Boggs here. Interesting. They walk around. Everything in the house seems fine.

They get to Sherry's bedroom and her door's locked. Oh. They're like, that's interesting. Why would she lock this? Why would you lock this? Now, during this, Johnson's walking around. He's got shorts on, no shirt, and he's just kind of pacing around in circles. Yeah. They said, this door's locked. How do we get that? And he said, I don't know. She locked it before she left town, man. When she leaves, she locks the door so I can't get in there. There you go.

So they're like, huh, okay, yeah. She's on a cruise, though, and they're like, okay, yeah, but we have to check all the rooms. It's just part of procedure. We have to check it off the box. There's a form. What if we just kick it? There's a form. So they end up figuring out how to open the door, and Jesus Christ, when Captain Ray Boggs opens the door here, he said, quote, when I entered the bedroom, I immediately noticed blood everywhere. The walls, the bed, the floor, the ceiling were covered in blood.

Butcher scene in there. I mean, fucking covered in blood like someone exploded in there. Look, when I'm going to rush out the door, sometimes I throw a little behind. You know what, too? You cut yourself and you spray it. They found everything. Ceiling walls, floors, just smeared. It's smeared. It's spattered. It's everything. What's your excuse, man? They also find a bloody butter knife and also a serrated knife nearby that doesn't appear to be bloody except for some spatter, but not.

But the butter knife looks like it's covered in blood. What? Yes. So they're like, okay, something bad happened in here. The bog said, quote, I must have been to a hundred crime scenes in my career, but never one like this. It was heinous. So...

They they're like, hey, but she's not in there, by the way. There's no Sherry. No Sherry. Just blood everywhere. They're like, listen, what happened? You know that that roommate. Right. Like this is this is fucked up. Where is your mom? She's on a cruise.

No, she's not without her blood. She's not. Not without a fucking. What did she take? Because she didn't take this. She's a few pints short. Yeah. So I don't think she's getting a fucking groove. She's low. She's woozy. She's a little low, yeah. Two of those tropical drinks, she's going to fall over, man. It's not going to be good. She's not going to have to worry about boat sickness. No, certainly not. She's already dizzy. So finally, he said, she's in the backyard. And they go, okay. And they walk out the back door.

and they find Sherry. She's just right there? Her body is laying by a tree. It's just strewn over by a tree in the corner of the yard. Problem is, there's no head on the body. What? It's a headless body laying there. So they're like, um, hey, um...

head a little more help a little help uh they end up finding her head on the other side of a fence he threw it about 12 to 15 feet from the body he just took it off and threw it took it off threw it like a grenade wow don't need that what year is this 2018 this is crazy this is fucking crazy so it's it's insane so they were bog said that law enforcement was attempting to be

respectful while they talked about it, but Boggs said, it's already out there, so I can tell you. Her head was detached from her body, but out of respect to the family, I'm not going to go into that. That's my cousin. That's my cousin. He said, this is by far the worst thing I've seen in law enforcement. Part of it is knowing the family and knowing the suspect. How did he think? That no one would, he could just hang out in the house? Those three pieces of mental illness, man. Wow.

Jesus. So they asked him, like, what happened, bro? Why? And he said, we got in a fight over credit cards. Yeah. She has no head. Over credit cards. He didn't punch her in the mouth or anything. She has no head. He could have just bit her nose off like the other guy. He didn't bite her lips. Leave the rest of her head alone. Took the whole head. So a fight ensued, and they fought. It looks like that Sherry fought back, too. They fought, and he said he choked her until she stopped moving.

Then she wasn't dead. She was unconscious. He choked her unconscious. After choking her, he saw that on her, this was in her bedroom, on her nightstand there was a butter knife. So he grabbed the butter knife, used the butter knife to

And his, quote, hands and teeth to take her head off. He bit her head off. He chewed through her fucking tendons and spinal. A butter knife isn't getting through that shit. He chewed his mother's head off. And then wiggled it until it came free.

What in the shit? And his hands just tearing shit apart. How long ago? Three days ago. He did this on the third. Good Christ. This happened on the third. And he just left her outside. They said, why did you... First of all, why'd you take her out of her room if that happened in her room? And he said, I didn't want it to stink up the house. Oh, man.

I like my house to smell good. The answers are so crazy. They get worse and worse. This is the craziest person we've ever talked about, I think. How do you ask any more questions? Yeah, so he told them that, yeah, he just didn't want to stink up the house, man. He's going to ruin the house. It gets in the carpet.

There's no resale. Can't do that. Yeah, then what am I going to do when I want to resell this bad boy? Sometimes paint doesn't even fix it. So Sherry had stab and cut wounds to her neck and head area, but there's no other visible injuries to the rest of her body. Just...

A butter knife. Choked her out. Yeah. His hands, teeth, and a butter knife to decapitate a person. Unbelievable. I'm not going to get too gross here, but think about there's a corpse. Yeah. Think about if someone gave you a butter knife and said, get that person's head off. Yeah. You'd go, what the fuck am I going to do that? And they go, use your hands and teeth.

How crazy would you have to be to go, oh, yeah, duh, thanks, sorry, that's a good idea. I didn't even think about that. That makes more sense. That makes much more sense. So, yeah, that is crazy. So Boggs said he was told the press he was close to Johnson's. He even was a mentor to Terrell years ago, tried to help him out. He said Sherry was a really good lady, a really good mother, and really loved her family. He said the family's in disbelief. So are the people, many people around the area who knew Sherry.

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Just like Lumi, it's safe to use anywhere. Check out Mando at shopmando.com and get 15% off with code SMALLTOWNMURDER. Smell fresher, stay drier, and boost your confidence from head to toe with Lumi. Now back to the show. And he said also it has a wide impact on the community because the family is so well known in such a small community. He said this is a family who stays together and looks out for one another. He's talking about his own family, by the way. Right. Which is amazing.

They'd be out there having cookouts and gatherings after church each Sunday. People knew, know, and love this family. And this has impacted a lot of not only her family, but the community, her friends, and the students she had counseled in her career, too. Yeah. Miss Johnson won't be in today because her head is on the other side of a fence. And it's the most uneven. You know what I mean? Yeah.

The recklessness of that decapitation is crazy. There's no attempt to dismount? Nothing's clean. It's just torn. Oh, it's torn chunks. Things are dangling. Jagged would be a good way to put it. Yeah, it's a jagged. Oh, my God. And he didn't try to get away with it. No. He locked the door through a body in the back. He didn't even cover it up with a tarp. He just thought they'd look in the house and leave. I don't think he thought that far. I don't think he cared. I don't think he thought.

I really don't. I don't think he's capable of. No, because nobody locks the door and goes, they won't want to look in there. Out of sight, out of mind. No, man.

So the autopsy says she died from blunt force trauma and that her body exhibited evidence of numerous previous assaults as well. He beat the shit out of his mom. He's been beating the shit out of his mom. While the head trauma would have caused her death, they weren't able to determine if she was dead when her head was removed, but he said she was unconscious. So I'm going to go with him because it would be better for him to say she was dead. And he goes, I don't know. She was just unconscious. I started cutting her head off. She couldn't stop it. Wow. So he cut a live person's head off. That's unbelievable. That's...

With a butter knife and used teeth. Yeah. And probably, if you wait until after somebody's dead for a while, a lot of that blood is not, it's not, you know what I mean? It doesn't have the force behind it. Right. It's still got a pump. Boom. Yeah. That's why it's everywhere. It's still popping. God damn. So they collected two knives, multiple blood stains, and a comforter, which was located near the body. It was just out in the yard. It was too bloody. So he threw that out too. It was going to stink. God.

The jury, for the jury later on, they have DNA evidence tying him to the murders. Not that you need it. You got his words. I mean, you got his words, and he's the only guy in the house. It's pretty easy, yeah. So, yeah, he confesses on an audio tape to killing his mother. He said he and his mother got into an argument over credit cards. He said he tried to walk away, but she kept at him. Yeah. Tried to get away from her. She kept breaking my fucking chops. You can divorce a wife. You can't do that to your mom. No. No, you can get your own fucking apartment, though. You can do that. Yeah.

He said it escalated into a fight. And Boggs said, he told me that he beat her up real bad. He said he got out of hand. You think? The understatement of the year. You sunk your teeth into your mom's neck. I think the understatement of the year is showing up to a headless body that's had its head chewed off and thrown over a fence and going, well, this got out of hand.

That's almost sarcastic. Yeah, it's almost like what would be said on fucking SVU by Ice-T. Yeah, this got out of hand. Well, it's like a bad sitcom. Like, that went well. It's one of those. Like, it's a bad fucking sitcom cliche. God damn it. That could have gone better. Why did he say that? So this guy said, yeah, he decapitated her with a butter knife. His words, he used his hands and teeth to decapitate his own mother.

His words. Now, while being led into court to do his plea or the initial appearance, he's being led. They get him out of a police car and they walk him across the street into the court. And there's a shitload of people there, media and stuff. Trying to see what an absolute monster looks like. And they're asking him questions. He turns and says, quote, I plead guilty. And then they said, could you explain? And he said, you'll have to ask my lawyer. And then he walked inside.

Okay. This guy's a party. This guy's a fucking party. So his attorney now, Jim Davis is his attorney. Isn't that the guy who draws Garfield, I believe? Yeah. I think it is. His attorney, Jim Davis, taking a week off from Garfield. Yeah.

Feeding him lasagna. Yeah. He's feeding Terrell lasagna. Said his client has a history of mental health issues and is working to get all the documents from me because some of this shit's from the army. That's hard to get documents. He said, quote, this is not a normal homicide. No? You think? So I think that a lot of cries out. A lot of it kind of cries out that something is strange here. Yeah. I would say. Yeah. This doesn't happen. It happens.

Daniel Pearl was put down much more humane. Oh, my God. This is crazy. This is insane. This is nuts. No, this is unbelievable. Yeah. If you shipped him off to some like terrorist camp and they said, how do you take people's heads off? And he told them, they go, oh, God, Jesus, we're going to have to send you. We can't work here. I'm sorry. I mean, we're brutal, but you are. That's too much. And nobody wants. Do you want to taste? No, no one. Why would you do that? You get it in your mouth.

So the lawyer goes on to say, and this is funny, this is the best ellipses of all time. He goes, the allegation of decapitation is very dot, dot, dot. There's a why behind that. Is that you think? And I think trying to determine the why is very important. And that's going to be one of our major things to try and resolve. Yeah. How fucking crazy is this guy?

He said that his client was insane when he committed the crime. And prosecutors, though, say he wasn't insane. He was under the influence of drugs and he knew exactly what he was doing. What drugs was he on? Who knows? They don't know. They're saying it was drugs, not crazy. So his lawyer indicated that the hearing, that it was too early to say whether to use an insanity defense for Johnson. If there's ever a time to use an insanity defense. I mean, this is it, right? A guy with diagnosed mental illness who did the craziest fucking thing on earth that's ever happened. I would say this is...

If ever the fucking stars are going to align to get an insanity defense, this is the case. Yeah. A mental health guy that documented that chewed through a neck? Yeah. Chewed through a larynx. Okay. Chewed through your mom's larynx. Your mother. That's your mom. Yeah. That's crazy. Jesus. So he said after the hearing, the lawyer said that he'll take time to acquire Johnson's hospital records.

He said, I've handled numerous insanity cases. And he said he'd won one or two. But he said, trust me, jurors don't like them. So you better have a very strong case if you bring that to a jury. And that's true. Jurors reject that shit no matter how crazy you are. I think this one's a slam dunk. Wow.

He said the decapitation concerns him the most, though. He said, yeah, I think there's a why behind that, and I think we need to determine it again. Sherry's friend said this. She said she came to the hearing to support the family.

She said, I mean, a young life gone from such a positive person that had such an impact on kids and our families and our community. We're praying for his family, praying for the community, praying for Hattiesburg High. And I just hope that justice will be served. Go Mustangs. Go Wildcats. Probably the Wildcats.

Either that or like the Jeff Davises or some fucking Confederate shit. The Stonewall Jacksons. So his dad shows up at court. Really? The good Reverend Rob Harris shows up at court. Now he shows up? Now he shows up. Where were you? You're a bit late. Where were you during the chewing, sir? Yeah. And he said he didn't want to comment on the case. He recently retired as the head maintenance man for Stone County, the whole county, and is a Baptist minister there, they're talking about.

Now, while they lead our guy out of court here, they're trying to get him to say something. He passes the Sun Herald and the TV cameras, and he turns to them and he says, I've done it. And then keeps going. Oh, boy. So you put those together. I plead guilty. I've done it. So he's saying that. Talk to my lawyers.

Funny thing is, he might get his mom's insurance money still. What? Okay, he could receive $150,000 of her life insurance policy and inherit her estate as well. One of her brothers had been named as the administrator of her estate, which is being probated in Stone County. And the judge will decide how the insurance and estate money should be distributed only after Terrell Johnson's mental competency to stand trial is determined. Yeah.

They said if he's crazy, he could get it all. Oh. If he's not convicted of a violent crime, if it's not guilty by reason of insanity. Against her. Yeah. So they said Sherry didn't have a will. Terrell was the only beneficiary listed on the 51-year-old's high school guidance counselor's life insurance policy. Oh.

Alpha Life Insurance Corp. has deposited the payout from her policy with the court until a rightful beneficiary is established. Money from the sale of her cars and house, which is being repaired, will also be painted, I hope, will be deposited into an estate account as well. They said unless Johnson willfully killed his mother, willfully being the main word, he could, under state law, inherit her estate and be awarded the proceeds of insurance.

Insanity, if that ends up happening here, they said his lawyer said that the court records that show said in court records that Johnson does not object to money being held in trust until the murder is resolved. So it's fine that that's good. So it's going to be held in a trust here. In addition to representing Johnson in a criminal case, Davis is also serving as his guardian in the estate case because he can't do shit on his own here. So, wow.

Instead of Johnson's convicted of first degree murder, he will not collect the money because the charge involves a willful or premeditated killing. However, an insanity defense or guilty plea or a conviction or guilty plea to manslaughter means under state law that the killing was not willful and he could collect the money. So even manslaughter.

They said, though, the lawyer said, we haven't settled on a defense. We're still in the early stages. But there are a lot of mental health records in this case that would make it a very easy to establish lack of mental capacity case. And that could lead to a finding of not guilty or manslaughter. And he said that delusional history dates to his early days in the military. He's had these problems. And that was documented by the military. It's very obvious.

So they have a psychiatrist they put him in front of here. She's a psychiatrist, Sarah DeLand from New Orleans. And part of her report is

Regarding his competency to proceed, it's my opinion with reasonable medical certainty that due to his mental illness, Mr. Johnson does not have the ability to perceive or to understand the nature of the proceedings, to communicate rationally with his attorney. Rationally would be the word there, I mean, to recall relevant facts and to testify in his own defense. His thought disorganization prevents him from being able to testify relevantly or be cross-examined. He cannot focus on the topic and he has problems with his perception of reality.

Yeah. It is my recommendation to the court that Mr. Johnson be found not competent to proceed and be hospitalized for inpatient competency restoration. So fix him up so we can try him. Yeah. But this happens. That was in 2019. Nothing happens with all of this. I guess they're going through all the mental shit to find him competent finally till 2024. This year. This year. August as a matter of fact. Five years to get him straight. Just a couple months ago. Yeah. Yeah.

So at trial, they're going to go to trial with this. Wow. The judge warned the Johnson family before testimony started they shouldn't gasp or otherwise display their emotions in front of the jury. Said this is a very emotional and difficult case and testimony to hear. So if you can't hear it, get the fuck out. You got to go. So his attorney here, this is Terrell's attorney again, argued his client should be acquitted because he didn't know what the fuck he was doing when he killed his mother. The prosecutors disagreed.

One prosecutor said the defendant knew what he was doing on this day. When he killed his mother, he knew it and said they were going to show the jury Terrell statements to deputies where he confessed to killing his mother, said the defendant and his mother got in an argument over credit cards. The defendant then admitted to assaulting and choking his mother in her bedroom and killing her. The jury will hear how the defendant described using a knife and his teeth to remove his mother's head from her body.

The defense said his state of mind when he committed the murder was what mattered, not how he behaved days later. Told the juror that he has a serious mental condition. Fucking three of them, as a matter of fact. He said he's clearly delusional in his thought process. The prosecutor then presented one of his uncles, one of his mom's brothers, and he said he called law enforcement for the welfare check. They have a battle of the shrinks.

Because the defense psychiatrist said he's out of his fucking mind. And the state psychiatrist said he gets it. We think he understands what's popping off here. Wow.

Which is pretty remarkable. I don't know. That's a ballsy thing to say. I would fucking say so. I don't think there's anybody capable of doing what he did that is... Even remotely sane? Yeah. That buys their own groceries. Unless they were on like a 12-day meth binge. Yeah. And that's... I don't think you're very sane after a 12-day meth binge. No, no, no, no. No sleep. You've murked a shitload of brain cells. Yeah, you're fucking messing everything up. Now, the verdict comes in. There's...

There's 18 minutes of deliberation.

Huh. Which doesn't seem like a lot. That's the fastest ever. That seems like one vote. Yeah. Oh, we're all in agreement. Great. All right. Let's get out of here then. Call that guy back in. Tell him we got it. Oh, he's taking a piss. All right. We got to wait because it was 12 minutes. We agreed on it. We got to wait for him to get back from pissing and grabbing a smoke outside. Let him wash his hands. So after 20 minutes of deliberation, they find him guilty of first degree murder. Everything. I don't think this guy could premeditate a shit. Never mind this murder. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

I mean, I think, yeah. He couldn't premeditate a ham sandwich, this guy. I think that they're doing the old how long does it take to premeditate? You know what I mean? Yeah. The second he grabbed that knife. Well, then every murder is premeditated then. But I think that's what they're doing here. That's wild. They got a set of premeditation time. There's no planning to this. No, but the second you pick up a knife in a way of.

You know what? He choked her out. He had time to stop there. I guess. He was still alive. That was the killing part. It was an overt act with... He's just so aggressive, though. ...aggressive intention to kill. I don't know.

He had no way to assume that second degree, though. You think so? Fuck yeah. No intention of an argument that escalated into a murder. Second degree. That's not a premeditated crime. I don't know. But the way he killed her, I could see that if you like slap somebody and they fall down, hit their head. No, no. Second degree is like actual murder. Oh, yeah. Second degree is malice is involved in it. Yeah. Because that's what takes it from not manslaughter to murder is not like it's the Sarah Boone case that we just watched. Yeah. That case, she got found guilty of second degree murder.

Yeah. And she fucking zipped a guy up and went away. That was way more premeditated than this. Yeah.

And they said that it happened, but the way she was talking shit to him and everything, there was malice behind it. She intended him harm. So this first degree, like I said, if this guy is in the middle of making a ham sandwich, I think he goes, oh shit, I'm making a sandwich. Where did this come from? I don't even think he remembers. It's bad. He doesn't premeditate what goes on it. No, he didn't premeditate mayonnaise, this man. Never mind murder. So the sentencing comes around here and...

Wow. I mean, what do you do with this guy at this point? Hospital forever. Well, not quite. You, sir, may fuck off. Life without parole. Prison forever. How many bodies? Yeah, unless they keep him in a ward. You can't ignore him forever. You can't not medicate this guy. You can't just let him...

roam around with people he's gonna be eating people's feet he's running sweatpants amongst to him teeth are a weapon yeah yeah he doesn't need a knife a shank he just smuggled 30 of them in this motherfucker he will saw your head off of these fucking things i don't remember but enough to bite your face off it's a lot 32 28 28 something like that

So, wow. The DA says we commend the Stone County jury for seeing through the defendant's insanity argument. Yeah. They're acting like he's not insane. Right. I don't care if you're a psychiatrist, layperson. Anybody can hear anything. Just hear what I just told you. Ozzy Osbourne, his mom. That's it. He bit her head off. You go, that's crazy. Malingering. Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. He's faking it for special treatment. And he's really, to me, you know what? If he's faking it, he hit it out of the park, man. He faked it to the back row. That is the ultimate faking it until you make it. Holy shit. Jesus. They say, as ADA Burrell told the jury in closing arguments, this defendant got high, got mad at his mom, and killed her.

It's that simple. No, it's not. That's not that simple. He had her blood in his mouth. A lot of it. Yeah. He had her viscera fucking flashed in her mouth. Oh, he bit every vein in her neck through. Imagine he had to get sprayed hardcore. Splashed.

Holy shit. They said, we know that this trial has been painful for the family and are hopeful that the closure of the criminal case can help in the healing process. How? No, you can't. Nothing's going to help in the healing process. That doesn't heal. No. There's a fucking head missing. So anyway, there you go. There's Wiggins, Mississippi. What the fuck?

One of the craziest goddamn cases we've ever talked about, I think. Unbelievable. That is wild stuff. So, yeah, he did that, and he's life without. I don't know. I don't know what they're doing with him in there. Like I said, I don't know if he's in solitary, if he's being isolated in, like, whatever, or if he's in the mental health unit. I'm not sure. He's certainly wigging out, James. He's doing something.

Fucking hell. Wow. This place is a nightmare. That was the first one they popped in there. I'm never coming back.

I love it. So, yeah, there you go. Don't stay out of Wiggins, I guess, because this place is crazy. It's a mess. They all know each other and it's fucking insane. So if you like that episode, they all know each other and they still fuck each other. Fuck each other. Stay out. Stay out of there. It's no good. Barbecue probably is good. But outside of that, you can leave.

So do that. Head over to shutupandgivememurder.com. Also, leave a review on whatever app you're listening on. Shutupandgivememurder.com. Get your tickets for live shows. Austin, Texas. You're up left. Not that many tickets left. So get in there because it's going to sell out before the show for sure. It's crazy. And we have Phoenix sold out the next night. Fucking amazing. And then Boston.

Almost sold out, too. And New York were releasing the rest of the tickets. I think we just did. They should be out now. They're released. Done. And that's the last of them. If you've been looking for Tarrytown, those are the ones that we have. There's no more left after this. So, yeah, get them right now because it was like just a few dozen released. That was it. So get in there right now. Get your tickets. Also, tickets for the virtual live show, which is still available if you're listening, anytime before November 13th.

It was November 13th, 2024. You can get it. It's available for two weeks after the October 30th air date. It is fucking hilarious. It's terrific. A story almost as crazy as this, by the way. It really is. You're going to... That's too back-to-back. It's too much. It's too much. Yeah, we've really had a lot going on with this week here. So definitely check that out. Shut up and give me Murder Duck.

Patreon.com slash Crime and Sports. What happens there? Oh, it's all the Patreon. All the bonus stuff happens. You can get anybody $5 a month or above. You get everything. You get a whole big back catalog, hundreds of episodes you've never heard. You get new stuff every other week. One Crime and Sports, one Small Town Murder, and we give you all of it for $5. We're wigging out. I'm telling you, it's too much. We're biting heads off, everybody. We're crazy. We're crazy.

It's an insane fucking offer here. What a deal. So for Crime and Sports this week, we're going to talk about pedestrianism, which isn't what it sounds like. It was the most popular sport going in the 1800s. And it actually had performance-enhancing drugs. Guys were getting coked out and fucking big mustaches and shit. It's wild stuff from the 1800s. Old-timey insanity. Then for Small Town Murder, we're going to talk about that documentary, The Devil on Trial, which is...

about so that's part of it it's an exorcism thing where they tried to exercise this child and then later on he had a his defense in court was that he was possessed by a demon so he's not guilty if this guy who chewed his mom's head off and is really crazy if he's not if he's guilty demon boy is guilty too we'll also talk about just some exorcisms things because it's

I find that shit fascinating. So we'll talk all about that. Patreon.com slash Crime and Sports. And you get a shout out at the end of the show. That said, also listen to Crime and Sports. Listen to your stupid opinions because that shit was banging too this week. So keep coming back. Keep hanging out with us every goddamn week. And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

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