This is the story of a shocking crime. A young couple, just getting out of bed and readying for their day, suffered a home invasion. Each of them was gunned down and murdered. When the mother’s body was found by a family friend, within her arms was her infant son, still alive but left for dead.
As unbelievable as that horror is, the reasons behind the killings are even more bizarre. Jealousy. Insecurity. Manipulation. Devious use of fictitious online identities. Undiagnosed mental illness. All of those descriptions are featured in this unforgettable case where a lonely, 30-year-old woman with limited intellectual abilities began a long, disturbing journey of preoccupation with other women who had things she didn’t. Things like popularity, attractiveness, relationships, children, and independence. Jenelle Potter had none of those things, and by journeying through her online correspondence, it was clear she didn’t like certain women who did.
This case took a weird turn as among people prosecuted was Jenelle Potter and her mother Barbara, Jenelle’s father Buddy and Jenelle’s secret boyfriend Jamie Curd as defendants in the killings. There were mountains of emails and Facebook posts, many of which were written by a “Chris,” whom no one had ever met. Jenelle posed as “Chris,” a man who represented himself to be a CIA agent and was preoccupied with Jenelle’s interests and investigating her enemies. Two of those enemies were these victims, Bill Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth. “Chris” manifested himself after Billie Jean began living with Bill and soon thereafter became pregnant with their child. The writings of “Chris” revealed a raging jealousy of Billie Jean. Through the fictitious identity of “Chris,” Jenelle wrote emails to her mother and boyfriend, telling them of the danger posed towards Jenelle by these victims. “Chris” told them of his surveillance efforts on the Payne home. He told them that the victims were planning to harm Jenelle, even kill her.
Chris was a CIA agent who was concerned about Jenelle. Seeing the cyberbullying she had endured, and worried for her safety, Chris got in touch with Jenelle’s protective parents, and her devoted boyfriend, warning them that Payne and Hayworth were a danger to Jenelle. He got especially close with Jenelle’s mother, Barbara, who thought of Chris like a son, though she had never met him. Chris claimed that surveillance of Payne and Hayworth revealed that the two of them were planning on harming Jenelle, that it was imminent, and that something needed to be done immediately. Chris promised that he would see them clear if they were to act to protect Jenelle. And so they did. Jenelle’s father, Buddy, and her boyfriend, Jamie, broke into the home of Payne and Hayworth and murdered them in their bed. What the police investigation turned up, though, made this crime all the more terrifying. Jenelle had been Chris the entire time, catfishing her family and her boyfriend to act in vengeance on her behalf. Using forensic linguistics and diving through the brambles that Jenelle laid to cover her tracks, police were able to put together a chilling portrait of a sociopath, made all the more ruthless by the anonymity of her online life.
Jenelle Potter, said she had trouble making friends. Because of health problems, including Type 1 diabetes, Potter spent most of her time living at home with her parents, who cared for her every day. She didn’t have a job or drive a car. While it seemed that Jenelle’s social life was finally blooming, she was being relentlessly bullied online with anonymous comments appearing on her Facebook page. Jenelle was always saying that somebody was mad at her. Somebody hated her. Somebody wanted to kill her,” Greenwell said. “She was paranoid about it. But Jenelle said there were real threats of violence against her. In one incident, police photographed a rock, that was found in the Potters’ front yard with the names Billy Payne and Billie Jean written on it. Eventually both sides ( Billy Payne and Janelle) deleted each other as friends on Facebook. According to Janelle: “I think that we did it to each other. I unfriended them. They unfriended me,” Jenelle said. “I did Bill first and then I think Billie did me. And I unfriended her.”
On Jan. 31, 2012, a friend of Payne and Hayworth found them dead by single gunshots to their faces. Payne’s throat had also been slashed as he lay in bed, and Billie Jean had been cradling their baby in her arms when she died. The 7-month-old boy survived unharmed. It takes a cold-blooded person to shoot someone holding a baby. Hayworth was holding her 7-month-old baby boy in her arms when she and Payne were fatally shot in the head. Her child survived but police found the screaming child covered in his mother's blood.
Prosecutors say that Potter had a crush on Payne and wanted him and his young wife dead after the two had a child together. Prosecutors believe that Jenelle Potter created a fake identity named Chris who worked as a CIA agent in order to fool her parents and her boyfriend and to get her father to kill Hayworth and Payne. Jenelle Potter's act of posing online as someone else is referred to as catfishing. Police later impounded Marvin Potter's truck and they found bags of shredded emails inside. An agent put them back together and found that in one email with Chris Barbara Potter said she wanted Hayworth and Payne dead.'We've had enough. No one wants to kill anyone but we will,' Barbara Potter wrote in the email. Barbara showed the emails to her husband who eventually decided he couldn't take the supposed threats against his daughter anymore.
Jenelle Potter's defense attorney argued that she has the intellect of an 8- or 9-year-old' to which the prosecutor replied: 'She may be on a fourth-grade level, but she has a Ph.D. in manipulation. Jenelle Potter, her mother Barbara, and her father Marvin are all serving two consecutive life sentences after being convicted in October 2013. Janelle’s boyfriend Jamie Curd took a plea deal of 25 years.
Actual investigation photos of the Potter's crime.
Billy Payne and Billie Jean with their baby.
Actual photos of the investigation
(The victims: Billy Payne and Billie Jean and the Survived Son)
Barbara, Jenelle and Buddy Potter
The shredded documents
Do you know a link to the emails written by "chris" by chance thank you i
ReplyDelete