A 32-year old Tennessee man, Joel Michael Guy Jr., is to be tried for the murder and mutilation of his parents — Joel Michael Guy Sr. and Lisa Guy — on September 28.
He has permitted the court to impose upon him the death penalty in the form of a handwritten note, but in spite of this and the gruesome nature of his crimes, prosecutors have decided not to resort to execution.
Son planned parents’ horrific murder
“In the event that I am eventually found guilty of first-degree murder, I contend that the waiver above, if permitted by the court, would free the court to sentence me to death, imprisonment for life without the possibility of parole, or imprisonment for life,” the note reads. Guy has made clear, however, that he does not admit to murder.
So far, the Tennessee man has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of corpse desecration, and one count of felony murder, for the slaughter of his parents in November 2016, according to Crime Online.
The prosecution states that the killings occurred after Guy’s older siblings left their parents’ home in Knoxville, following Thanksgiving, and due to the murderer’s knowledge of his parent’s plan to cut off his financial aid. According to Washington Post, Guy was, at the time, residing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with his dog and lacking employment.
The murder was not impulsive — a notebook found in the couple’s home shows that their son was planning it for some time, presumably after hearing about his parent’s aforementioned scheme.
Victims’ heads were found in boiling pot of water
Lisa Guy and Joel Michael Guy Jr.’s dismembered corpses were found by the former’s employer on the 28th of November after Lisa failed to show up for work, the myriad of different body parts scattered all over the household.
Knox Country Sheriff’s Office detective Jeremy McCord, in a June hearing, testified that he found the two’s torsos in bathroom bins, Guy Sr.’s hands on the bedroom floor, and Lisa Guy’s head in a pot of boiling liquid on the kitchen stove.
In addition to all of this, it appears Guy did not finish the “job”, as evidenced by the above condition of the bodies and the blood splayed all over the house’s walls.
Indeed, prosecutor Leslie Nassios has said that the man-slayer left the house after spending a night there committing the crime but suddenly left for Baton Rogue to get treatment for some cuts on his hands.
The trial has been delayed several times, due to both the fervency and staunchness of Guy’s lawyers, and the COVID-19 pandemic, reported by Knoxville News.
An action that has significantly hampered efforts to incriminate the Tennessee man is a judge’s ruling in late-June that the search warrant used to infiltrate Guy’s apartment in Louisiana was improper, therefore rendering the items seized unusable in later trials.
The selection for jurors is scheduled for September 24, with the trial itself beginning on September 28.