A Murderer’s Synthesis
Part 1: The Amalgamation of Poverty, Meth, and Ignorance
This is a true story, an account of one sister’s fight to unleash with candor the truth behind her brother’s brutal slaying at the hands of his own brother. Because this is true, it is also unsettling. This piece is vibrant with the realities of murder and describes morbid details of dealing with such an event.
I counted the miniature pies two-by-two; cherry, strawberry, apple, blueberry, and cheesecakes. Over 100 were ready to go fill the bellies of people I loved. This was a labour of love, free to anyone who would like one. On my porch, standing beside the folding tables laden with offerings that had kept me sane during the start of the pandemic, I realized how different my life felt from what I grew up in. I had a literal white picket fence, something I thought only happened to the most elite.
I can’t hold it in any longer. I have to tell the truth, my truth, the real truth, about what happened. I have to confess what I know and get it out of me and into the world.
I grew up in Whitley County, Kentucky, the last city and county in the state along Interstate 75 before meeting the Tennessee border. A sleepy town running on coal and methamphetamines, I was determined to get out before the town took me. I joined the military at 17, was married at 18, had my first baby a few months after my 21st birthday, and only ventured “home: when absolutely necessary. I wanted to be as far removed from the history and nightmares that haunted me no matter where the sun was. The older I’ve grown, “home” has a different meaning to me, but those hauntings haven’t forgotten my roots.
One of the things about growing up in a small town with few opportunities is that people will very often learn to make their own way. An interesting type of entrepreneurship, making and selling drugs was a definite career path passed down through generations, and because it didn’t require any formal education, it was a popular career choice. In middle school, I met the first person who offered me meth. Of course, the first bit was free. It’s almost as if these kids took everything they’d watch their parents and other relatives do just to couple it with what we’d learn about sales in our business management classes, and were successful all without even so much as a business card. When a person is able to make three to four times the minimum wage, the lines become blurred. Birth control was very difficult to obtain, but there was no shortage of grown men sleeping with underage girls (what we call rape, but they call “getting a girl ready”), consequently forcing her to bear a child (abortion was unheard of, and the closest clinic was at least 3 hours away in Louisville, KY, which was an insurmountable issue for nearly everyone), without having a highschool diploma. Most of the county and town lived remotely on back roads that weren’t safe to navigate due to weather for part of the year, and which didn’t have sidewalks, bike lanes, or Uber. No taxis go to hollers, y’all. These people still had children to feed, clothe, and diaper, but didn’t have a way to get to a proper place of employment.
With so few opportunities for “honest work” but even fewer options for government assistance that would sustain a family, many felt they didn’t have anywhere to go but to the hollers and hills where they found labs and stills. And so, they did. They’d sell at school, at their part-time after-school fast-food jobs, at the only public park. We had a single small shopping mall, and we knew which store to go to if you’re looking for something. If the clerk can’t help you find what you need, they know someone who can.
The things needed by people in my town were, of course, not found on the supermarket shelf. There truly weren’t enough jobs because of the lack of revenue for everyone to even have a single job, but the pain was numbed by opioids, alcohol, and other drugs. That’s the funny thing about poverty; it’s easy to assume people should and could just go get a job, but when there are serious barriers to employment like this, it’s impossible. Having a child born into this town and these circumstances increases the population but does not at all improve the percentage of available jobs. Unemployment rates are extremely high in high-poverty areas like Appalachia.
My brother Jimmie was unlucky, in some ways, and just plain stupid in others. He was hotheaded, somehow both ignored and coddled and generally known in our hometown as a nuisance. Once Appalachian poverty takes hold of you, it can be very difficult to escape its claws. Jimmie spent most of his youth trying different drugs, drinking, and even helping to operate meth labs.
Jimmie was born in November 1988 to parents who had just barely recovered from having me. My mother had left my father, which I’d hoped had been a forever adventure in a new state, but we returned shortly thereafter. I lived with my grandparents, and Jimmie chose to live with my parents for the most part. He endured horrific abuse but refused to leave, and as a small child, he didn’t know a love that didn’t hurt, so living with grandparents who showed love by making a meal together or reading a book felt so odd to him, I’m sure. Even when this had been reported to teachers, we were told to keep quiet about it. So, we did. We learned to be quite convincing when telling stories of how bruising occurred. Every time I’m complimented today on my ability to tell a story, I think back to the times when it was necessary for survival, at least in my kindergarten mind.
About a year after returning to my dad, in August 1994, Joseph was born. He was a beautiful little blonde-haired baby who loved me and followed me around as soon as he was able. I was about six years old, but my dad, being an alcoholic, couldn’t be bothered to care for the two older children or keep a job, so the bulk of responsibility fell on me. I moved back in with my parents full time, and my dad was very happy, as he said, “Ah, the house maid is home!” I’ll never forget that title and those words.
My mom worked one or two jobs at a time and went to school full time as well, in hopes of education being the key to a better life. First and second grade became exhausting for me; I was learning how to coordinate night feedings and to use punctuation. Babies can be extremely difficult for many parents, but for a child who couldn’t even ride a bike, I felt lost. There was no internet, and when Joseph was sick, it was me who stayed home from school, “sick” myself, to care for him. Without Google to help as a last resort, and the lack of adult oversight, I asked my grandma to let Joseph stay with us, too.
He was still under a year old when he and I both moved into my grandparents’ home full time. My grandpa was nearing retirement and was able to help take care of my little brother and me. Still, Jimmie was so very young and maintained he’d rather live in the abusive home where there’s no adult interaction or responsibilities since that looked like freedom to him. Poverty and abuse often go hand-in-hand; definitely not always. Sometimes wives who cannot afford to feed their children cannot stop their husbands from getting them pregnant. Their husbands know sobriety can’t compete with how good being high feels. Eventually, the stress of it all goes somewhere, and in my family, it went into belts and fists and whatever was around, and then more deeply into bruising, internal bleeding, and broken bones.
I answered my phone on its second ring. My middle brother, Jimmie, spoke first.
“Hey sis, how are ya?”
My voice froze. I croaked out an incredibly unconvincing, “I’m okay.” I didn’t want to talk, and I wasn’t interested in facilitating this conversation.
My brother drawled on about a whirlwind romance with a much older woman who shares my same first name, who has many almost adult children, and is prescribed painkillers due to a car accident, but don’t worry — he would never use them. I remembered all the times I watched this same brother steal painkillers from elderly and extremely ill family members. I was reminded of him raising his daughter in a home with a meth lab with her mother. The times of being arrested, banned from stores — the list goes on. A product of poverty, Jimmie’s drive somehow didn’t include perseverance and determination.
Disinterested in small talk, I ask why he’s calling. We aren’t close, and we don’t talk. My kids don’t even know what he looks like, for good reason.
“Damn I can’t even call my own sister just to shoot the shit?” he quips.
“I’m not a ‘shoot the shit’ kinda person, and I’m busy. Did you need something?” I sigh heavily, waiting for the guilt trip about not sending money or me being the “perfect” or “good” kid to come up. Born 20 months apart, Jimmie never failed to remind me throughout the course of our childhood and then young adulthood that I was somehow successful only by luck or birth order. Hard work definitely didn’t have a hand in success, if you listened to his narrative.
“I just wanted to see if you were coming down for Memorial Day weekend.” By “coming down”, he meant to my hometown, where our youngest brother, had just moved. We didn’t celebrate holidays during our childhood or ever as a family, so this was an odd question.
“Why? What’s going on?” I was always suspicious of anything Jimmie said since most often the question asked was not the question intended.
“Ya know, just hangin’ out with your bros, with the fam.” I sighed audibly and rolled my eyes.
“No, I don’t plan to. I don’t think you should, either. Leave Joseph alone, please.”
Jimmie laughed. “You were always so nosy. Glad you won’t be there so we can actually have fun!”, he chuckled as he hung up on me.
I called Joseph later that day. Two weeks before, he had moved onto my family’s property, and into the home where our aunt had lived prior to entering a nursing home. My brother had two little boys and a wife I knew quite well since they had lived with me off and on again for about a decade. Joseph told me about the move, and how he was excited to start a work-from-home position with a friend in a couple of weeks. He boasted about his youngest son’s wild nature and his oldest son’s love of reading. My sister-in-law and brother were settling into this new, slower way of life; the internet was slow, the people were slow, even the day seemed to go more slowly, he said.
“Are you guys doing something for Memorial Day this year?”, he asked. I told him we weren’t. “Jimmie wants to come down. I’m not sure why; I mean, he’s my brother, but I don’t know why he wants to drive over four hours. It’s weird, right?”, Joseph asked.
“Yeah, that’s weird. I don’t think it’s a good idea. Maybe he’s turning into a new person.” I wasn’t entirely convinced of this, and judging by Joseph’s responsive cackle, neither was he.
I told Joseph what I’d planned for dinner, and since my beef stew was one of his favorites, he groaned. “We should’ve moved back up there!” and we both laughed.
“Yeah, you should’ve. You’re still welcome to!” I said. A heaviness came over me when I imagined my baby brother there, alone, with our middle brother. We hung up the phone and I continued through my typical duties, having this nagging dark cloud anytime I’d think about the impending trip. Jimmie was known as sort of a hurricane; he comes in quickly and takes out and takes down anything and anyone in his path. I had no idea what was coming.
My phone rang at just after midnight on May 25th, 2020, just two weeks after my conversation with Jimmie, and about a month after Joseph had moved to a remote area of Southeastern Kentucky. This was a place with no hospital, hollers and compounds even the police won’t go near. My hometown has few redeeming qualities, but my grandma and aunts still lived there. Joseph wanted to take care of them as they age, be able to farm since we had dozens of acres, teach his children to garden, and fish from the river we did as kids.
My heart sank when I noticed my mom’s name on the caller ID. Much like my relationship with Jimmie, my mom and I were not close and didn’t talk just for fun. It was most often very serious with a specific tone and purpose. I answered the phone and could hear my mother crying.
“It’s your brother. Joseph. He’s been shot. Jimmie….Jimmie shot him,” My mother cried into the phone. My blood ran cold.
“What happened? Where is he? Is he alive?” Military training along with a parentification history settled in. This was not the time to panic.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. He’s in Williamsburg.”
“Okay. It’ll take me a few hours to get there, but I’m headed there right now. I’ll find out what’s going on and call you as soon as I know more.” I hung up the phone as I gathered necessities and woke my husband. I had to be there.
I began calling everyone who lived nearby, like my grandma and aunt. My sister-in-law, my brother’s wife, wasn’t answering the phone. No one was answering. I called a former schoolmate turned deputy who told me to come down if I could.
“It’s bad. Real bad. Girl, I’m sorry. It’s so bad.” He barely choked out to me.
My body was on high alert and I continued trying to call anyone so I could be prepared and know what to expect. No one was answering. My phone rang again. I answered without even a glance at the caller ID.
“I killed my brother. I shot him. I killed him, he’s dead. I can’t believe it. He’s dead. He’s fucking dead.” Jimmie wailed into the phone.
“What do you mean, what happened?” I calmly asked. I knew Jimmie and that if I showed I was upset, scared, worried, angry, or concerned, Jimmie would go silent.
“We were playing and I didn’t know there was one in the chamber. I put it to his head and then he was fucking exploding all over me.” The brutal recollection of the event not an hour prior was certainly a shock to me.
“Okay. Did someone call an ambulance? I’m almost there.”
“I don’t know. I left as soon as he hit the ground.” This wasn’t a startling confession to me; Jimmie has always had zero accountability for his actions, so him murdering someone and leaving the scene immediately is exactly how I’d expect. That’s why, when he first called, I tried to maintain my composure to at least keep him in Kentucky.
Jimmie hung up on me and didn’t answer as I called him a few more times. I called his girlfriend who also didn’t answer. My grandma, aunt, and sister-in-law still weren’t answering. I just wanted answers.
It was about 3 a.m. and I was forty-five minutes away from the home where my brother was shot when my dad called. An extremely strained relationship riddled with drugs, alcohol, abuse, and just plain shitty parenting, I also maintained my distance from my father.
“Well, he’s dead.”
I sat unmoving and felt the blood drain from my face. My veins felt like icicles.
“Joseph? Joseph is? No, that can’t be right. This can’t be true. I’m sure they’ll be able to bring him back.” I tried to comfort everyone with this notion that Joseph would somehow survive this. People have survived worse, so I knew he would, too. He had to. He had to.
“Nope, he’s just dead.” My dad’s voice was incalculably cold. I absolutely believe he was upset, but I’m also certain he was, at the very least, drunk, which only encouraged the distant and terrible delivery of this news. I hung up the phone and cried silently for only a minute before Jimmie began calling me again.
“I’m in Tennessee. Or maybe not. I don’t know.” Jimmie cried into the phone, sobriety still not taking hold.
“Hey, what are you doing? It’s okay, just come back. Let us talk so we can figure out what happened. I just want to know. Please come back.” I pleaded gently with the person I absolutely hated the most, out of sheer desperation.
“No, if I come back, they’ll arrest me for murder and I am not going back. No!” Jimmie hung up, again. A man with a record, he was unwilling to face police or consequences.
I keep expecting something to change. For the police to decide to prosecute; for Jimmie to take responsibility in any way; for my parents to see that they’re sequestering themselves away with a killer while ignoring the living child and grandchildren.
My ex-husband still lived in my hometown so I asked him to venture out and just see if my grandma was okay. I just needed to know if she was alive. Elderly but still very spritely and strong, I was most concerned about her and what she possibly witnessed. My ex-husband confirmed she was alive and he could see her sitting outside, but wasn’t permitted to get closer.
As I came into town, the weight of being in this forgotten cesspool grew greater. I was only about fifteen minutes away at this point.
I was shivering at the end of May.
Approaching the home, I could see no police lights and hear no sirens. Everything was fairly dark with areas roped off with crime scene tape. I saw no ambulances or emergency vehicles. I had expected to see so much more. As I got out of the car and walked toward the police, I was first greeted by an officer who didn’t know me and asked me to leave, and then by the classmate turned deputy who allowed me closer to my family. I was still not allowed to talk to anyone or have any connection. I was just to stand around and wait. My phone rang, again, and it was Jimmie. I put him on speakerphone.
“Hey, where are you? I made it to the house. Can you please come to see me? I need to check on you,” I asked.
“No, no I can’t come there, I cannot go to jail. I can’t!” Jimmie screamed at me.
“Okay, listen, I’m here with the police and they just need to know what happened for the report, that’s it. Can you just tell them, please?” To my knowledge, I was the only one on the scene who had made contact with Jimmie, and the police had very little information. The deputy began gently asking Jimmie questions in an effort to gather information and get answers. Jimmie answered some of them and admitted to taking all the weapons he could carry and tossing them out along the highway. At one point, he admitted to leaving loaded guns off the roadside in Kentucky, Tennessee, and “other states” (but never confessed which states). Evidence was missing.
The same deputy approached me a few minutes later. It was nearing 4:00 in the morning. He asked if I wanted to tell my sister-in-law, my grandma, and the rest of the family. I didn’t; who would want to be the person to break that news? But it was down to me or the deputies who don’t know my family well. The police began wrapping up their investigation. There’s no chaplain for this; there isn’t an on-site counselor or doula of some sort. You receive the news, and they leave. I decided I would be the one.
It took another half an hour or so for the police to actually let me talk with my family. I opened my mouth to tell my sister-in-law, Amy, what had happened, and that her husband was gone, and her phone rang right away. It was the hospital; a secretary of some sort cheerfully told Amy that Joseph was dead. Amy hung up the phone which continued ringing for days, it seemed.
I could not shake the feeling, while watching everyone around me mourn, that this was not accidental. I couldn’t ignore the first phone call, the confession. My family didn’t know the truth (and truly, many don’t and will discover it while reading this very article. Perhaps this isn’t the best way to communicate the information, but it is what I’ve chosen), so many were asking about Jimmie and were worried about him. As I later discovered, my sister-in-law, Jimmie’s girlfriend, and Joseph’s friend and his wife were all present and, in varying degrees, witnessed the murder. All stories, aside from Jimmie’s and his girlfriend’s, lined up as nearly carbon copies.
The next few days were a blur; there was an incomplete, damaged family. People were being pulled all around, and stories were floating around about what actually happened. Stories were made up as some sort of fucked up coping pastime, and some people ignored it altogether. There was no shortage of terrible comments like, “He’s better off now!” because, yes — what father wants to be alive to parent his children? Clearly, it’s better to be buried since that lends itself to fatherhood so well. The insensitivity was surreal.
Because our hometown was so close to the Tennessee state border and we had no local hospital, Joseph had been life-flighted to the University of Tennessee hospital. Amy, his wife, had managed to keep him alive despite a point-blank bullet fired into his head. Joseph coded in the air on the flight to Tennessee but was brought back. This happened again at the hospital. He passed away for the final time in Tennessee; he’d lost too much blood and his blood pressure could never be stabilized. The hospital’s location brings about its own host of issues. The crime happened in Whitley County, Kentucky, but the body is in Tennessee. Autopsies were to be performed in both jurisdictions.
By this point, my hatred of Jimmie had only grown larger. I hadn’t heard from him since the night he murdered my brother. My parents wanted consistent updates and, somehow, to have an opinion of what the funeral should be like, yet didn’t ever come by, show up, ask what was needed, or offer to pay for any of these now incredibly unexpected expenses.
My grandma, Amy, and I went to the funeral home to plan. Now, if you’ve never had the opportunity to do this, count yourself lucky (and get life insurance and a plan for your own demise, please.) because it’s grueling and terrifying. Everything is absolutely final. There are no re-dos. This is it, the complete end and a beginning that no one wants. We planned Joseph’s funeral and I agreed to collect photographs for a slideshow. You also have to meet with the person conducting the ceremony and do all of that, while mourning. You get to choose music — the last music you’ll listen to with them in the room. I chose “Pulling the String” by Mudvayne:
You’ve got to just know
I’ve got to leave
It’s time for me to go
So here’s the note
I’ve left the key
I hope that when you find this
I’ve left you with a happy ending…
Goodbye
Joseph was a late person. In general, you needed to give him a time an hour earlier than actually expected so he’d be on time, and even then, he was sometimes late. Joseph was well-known for his habitual inability to manage time. So, when it turned out two autopsies were actually insufficient and Frankfort, where the State Medical Examiner’s office was, also needed to do their own autopsy which added another day onto an already-planned funeral countdown, the irony wasn’t lost. I let everyone know that Joseph would be, indeed, late to his own funeral. I cope with a sometimes-morbid sense of humor. The one-day delay allowed us to collect Joseph’s wedding band and bring it back.
The night Joseph died, a moth came into the kitchen and taken up residence near the microwave. The doors had been open nearly all night, so this wasn’t unheard of. The moth disappeared by the morning. On the eve of Joseph’s funeral, we gathered up some of his favorite things to take photos using his wedding band. His band wasn’t something special or terribly expensive; as a late person, my brother also lost things often. His current band, the one he died wearing, was a replacement I’d purchased online since his others were…somewhere. As we began photographing different things, a Luna Moth landed on Amy. Knowing the story of the Luna Moth, we were taken aback by this and included him in our photos.
Before the funeral, we realized the crime scene hadn’t actually been cleaned by police. As it turns out, this is not a thing that police do. I called a few places that specialize in crime scene cleanup, but they wouldn’t travel so far. It was so bizarre to me that cleaning up my brother’s blood, tissue, and brain matter from the cement-covered porch was left to family. We were the ones who had to scrape off whatever parts of him were now embedded in the white beadboard ceiling. We had to buy the bleach and gloves, and then scrub the concrete to remove any trace of him or what had happened. I’ll never forget the simultaneous peace and fury I felt as I watched the last of his blood drain down the side of the porch, forced by the water hose he used to water the garden he’d just started. He was going back into the earth but I have never felt so unsettled in all my life. With a little bit of bleach, water, and elbow grease, it looked as if this had never happened. As if the brutality committed wasn’t so bad after all.
I wrote my brother’s eulogy sitting in a hotel room that felt as hollow and empty as I did. I needed my words and love to convey through my typing, but it felt like such a heavy task. I don’t quite recall writing the words, but as I emailed them to the pastor, they seemed adequate.
My Joebear,
I’ve been sitting here since Monday morning trying to figure out what I wanted to say. What final words I needed to get out. This is completely surreal and I feel like someone is going to wake me and tell me it was all a really horrid dream and you’re still alive. We have made the arrangements and know this isn’t the case, but we all can still wish. It’s 11:11pm the night before your funeral, and all I wish for is you to be alive with us. You permeate all of my memories; as I think about the course of my life, it was always charted with you in mind. Knowing I had to keep my life together to take care of you kept me in line. You needed me as much as I needed you. We had each other. Even at 25, you’d climb on my lap sometimes and say “Mama, rock me!” like when you were a baby. You’d climb in my bed and hang out with me. You were the first person I told when I found I was pregnant with all my kids…even before my husbands. When I was sick, you took care of me and when you were sick, I took care of you. I love the bond you had with my kids and how well you loved them, and them you. We had plans, and I was excited to take them to the beach this summer. I was looking forward to hearing about your new job. You were going to go with us to Biwater as usual this fall. You were going to go with me when/if I got my first tattoo. We were supposed to be together forever. We promised. We pinky swore.
And you were going to go to college.
And you were going to buy a house.
And you were going to watch your kids grow up.
And you were going to watch my kids grow up.
And you were going to watch everyone else’s kids grow up, too.
And you were going to live a really full, awesome life and die of old age.
And, you were robbed of that. Of all of this. There are so many things I want to say and so many feelings I feel. The anger and rage I feel about this injustice are so great and you know, as I have always taken care of you and your family, I will make sure this is taken care of, too. I will make sure that Amy, Elijah, and Oliver are always taken care of. I have loved them since the day I met them all, and I will be there for them. Nothing will ever be the same and a day won’t ever come where you will be forgotten or you won’t be missed. A day won’t come where we won’t wish you weren’t here. But, we will always make sure your boys know who you were. We will have photos and videos of you around and speak of your memory often. You will never be forgotten.
You’d be delighted to know you were late to your own funeral. It’s true! We had to reschedule, and if you were here, you’d think that was incredibly funny. Almost as funny as your 80 year old grandma wearing a Deadpool t shirt because she knew you liked Deadpool. Madeline’s name is Maddiecakes in your obituary because I don’t know if I ever heard you call her anything but Maddiecakes — that was the nickname you gave her. Your sense of humor will be so missed.
Maddiecakes will always remember all the things you did together and how she was your girl. She would run past everyone, including her dad and I, to go straight to you. Audree has had you since she was born, and now she’s twelve. You have been a significant part of her life, and she knew she could always call you for anything. And Nathaniel — your Natedog. I don’t even know where to begin! You and that boy were also inseparable. I have so many photos of you two cuddled up, sleeping, or playing, or you cooking with him. Or playing “HAYO” (Halo). You were there for school pickups, birthday parties, family dinners, parades, events, my dog’s birthdays…whatever happened, you were always there, you were such a big part of us.
And your love? Oh. I could talk for hours about how you spoke love into the world. You loved with a love that was more than love (and you did like your Poe!) Tonight (Saturday night), Amy and I quickly took some photos of your wedding band before it’s placed on your hand for the last time. The night you were killed, a huge moth came into the house and stayed. We released it. As we took photos of your wedding band, a huge moth appeared nearby and stayed. It settled on Amy and seemed so calm until she tried to put it down in the house. It clung to her and wanted her. The moth will be preserved in a shadowbox, when it’s time. Maybe it’s nothing, but we feel like it’s you. You’re here, you’re with us. It isn’t okay and it never will be, but you’re with us and you love us. You’re near. We can talk to you and feel your presence. We all wish things were so different, and this sucks. But having some reminders helps us to go on. We have to go on, somehow; I really don’t know how. So many of us have gaping wounds because you made up a large part of us. I don’t know how to heal that wound so we can continue going, but we have to. We have to go on. We have two little boys who look like you, and need you, and love you, who need us to. So, we will. We will go on because we have to and we will not fail you. Just as you would know, you can depend on us. You can depend on me. I am your big sister, I am your mama, I love you more than words could ever say, and I will always take care of you. Now and forever, my baby you’ll be. I love you.
Love,
Jessica
I asked if my parents or Jimmie could send something to be read at the funeral, or included in Joseph’s casket. They’d all told me they wouldn’t be attending the funeral. They declined.
Immediately after coming home from the funeral, I began contacting every involved agency I possibly could. Amy wasn’t really able to do this, which I absolutely understood, but all of us needed answers. The sheriff’s department in my hometown said I had to contact the investigating detective, so I did. Week after week, month after month, we were told there was no new news. Because Jimmie disposed of the guns, there was little evidence tying him directly to the crime.
Jimmie was a few inches taller than Joseph, so when he put the barrel of Joseph’s own gun to his left temple, the bullet was directed down instead of straight across. Joseph had endured some terrible burns on his left hand that left him hospitalized as a toddler. My dad was right — this method certainly taught Joseph a lesson, and he never messed with open kerosene heaters again. However, this also meant Joseph had nerve damage in his left hand that made it impossible sometimes for him to grasp an object with his left hand. On the night Joseph was murdered, everyone had been drinking and some had been smoking weed. Joseph had a hard enough time holding a broom with his left hand when he worked for me at a commercial cleaning company, so the idea that he somehow managed to open his safe, get out his gun, load it, and then bring it back to commit suicide in front of his wife and friends seems extremely far-fetched, but that’s how Jimmie has painted this picture for everyone.
What we learned in the months directly following Joseph’s murder was that Joseph had unloaded and locked away all his weapons, since he had been drinking and his children were running around. His sons were very young, about 5 ½ years and 18 months old, and he wanted to prevent an accident. While Joseph was talking with friends, Jimmie snuck into the bedroom at the back of the house where the safe was, and where Joseph’s sons were sleeping. Jimmie fished out the gun and loaded it, and then hid it in his pants as he walked back by Amy, who was choosing the next song to play on their Bluetooth speaker. Jimmie concealed the loaded gun for an undetermined amount of time, before pulling it out and then fatally shooting Joseph in front of everyone. Jimmie’s girlfriend had already gotten their belongings together even though they’d planned to stay for a few more days, and along with that, they took the cash Joseph had left on his dining room table, along with whatever weapons they could grab while everyone else tried to help Joseph and Amy. Jimmie had his license taken quite a while before this happened after yet another DUI, so his girlfriend was driving their getaway car. She drove him wherever he asked, allowing him the opportunity to dispose of all evidence and even check into a hotel room where they could take showers and put on clothes purchased with the money stolen from Joseph.
Following the funeral and burial, life went back to normal for nearly everyone else. Joseph wasn’t their brother or husband or father. Joseph was a person they knew but didn’t know. He wasn’t an integral part of their lives or existence. He was just a person. My sister-in-law wasn’t ready to return to live in the home she shared with my brother, and where he died, so she brought her kids and stayed with my husband and me. Two weeks after Joseph’s murder, I had an odd feeling and encouraged Amy to take a pregnancy test…in which she discovered she was pregnant. In January of the following year, the daughter my brother always wanted was born. She took the middle name Josephine after her father.
Around the six-month mark following Joseph’s death, I was finally told by the detective that this was going to the Grand Jury, and I couldn’t have been more excited. Finally, justice. Finally, an answer, and a murderer off the streets. I thought daily, sometimes hourly, that Jimmie would come after me or really any of us, as we were witnesses to his prior issues and current ones. My husband and I bought a large home around the same time, so by Thanksgiving of the first year without Joseph, we moved to a new city and didn’t share our address in hopes of maintaining safety and security.
In April 2021, a month shy of the one-year anniversary of Joseph’s murder, the detective called me again. He still didn’t have a death certificate or cause of death, but the case had been brought before the Grand Jury and due to lack of evidence (since so much was destroyed), Jimmie would not be prosecuted. Everything was being dropped, and it was over. Jimmie now gets to see his daughter grow up, he gets to experience the highs and lows of life, he can do simple things like teaching his little girl how to ride a bike — all the things he robbed Joseph of. He ran and ran, and it worked out for him. I’ll never forget the time I saw Jimmie tagged on his friend’s social media post. The title was something like, “Hanging out with my brother!” I commented a rhetorically rude but necessary question: “Oh? A brother? Will you shoot and kill him, too?”
Around August of 2021, we finally received a copy of Joseph’s death certificate. Despite overwhelming evidence that what happened could not have been self-inflicted, his murder was ruled a suicide. Jimmie had perpetuated this belief to anyone who would listen that Joseph was depressed, sad, and lonely, and had told Jimmie he wanted to kill himself. Jimmie maintains, to this day, that Joseph was upset with Jimmie and set him up to look like a murderer.
Recently, my parents and Jimmie bought a house and moved to a place where I was not given updated phone numbers or addresses. A week ago, a massive tornado wiped out the town where I believed they still lived, but I found out later that hadn’t been there in quite awhile. The last conversation I had with my mom was about a month ago.
“Not sure if you want nothing to do with us as Amy does, but I want to tell you I love you and I always will,” my mom texted me.
“Amy is incredibly hurt and trying to survive. I hate Jimmie and I don’t want any exposure to him whatsoever. He did something unforgivable.”
“Let’s agree to disagree. Love you all”
“Yeah no — he’s a fucking murderer and this is why I’ve distanced myself. You chose the side of a piece of shit who put a gun to his brother’s head and pulled the trigger, then ran all over from the police.”
My parents have yet to help pay any of the bills for therapies, unexpected funeral and related expenses, the car payment for the car my brother worked so hard to get, insurance, diapers, and supplies needed when one parent is widowed and can’t work as they did before, and everything else that’s required when an integral part of a family unit is taken out of such hate. We now have six children in our home, and none of them know their grandparents on my family’s side.
I keep expecting something to change. For the police to decide to prosecute; for Jimmie to take responsibility in any way; for my parents to see that they’re sequestering themselves away with a killer while ignoring the living child and grandchildren. I hold hope that my parents will see that the upbringing we had directly contributed to what has happened, although Jimmie’s poor choices are only his own. I don’t fail to see the damage an abusive, coercive, alcoholic and drug-riddled childhood and youth have had, either. But, correlation does not equal causation. For far too long, excuses have been made for everything Jimmie has ever done wrong; “it’s not his fault, he’s messed up from childhood” isn’t a good enough excuse when a man point-blank shoots his brother and then runs so he can’t be charged.
I will probably wait all my life to see true justice, or for people to really understand what happened. But now, right now — I can’t hold it in any longer. I have to tell the truth, my truth, the real truth, about what happened. I have to confess what I know and get it out of me and into the world. Will Jimmie ever tell the real truth, and face consequences like an adult? I guess we’ll see.
This is a true story without embellishments. Some details have been left out as they weren’t necessary to the flow and storytelling. Please contact the author directly with any questions.
