The Invisible Criminal
In the last few weeks, I’ve been contemplating a question that has come up in my crime fiction.
How do you get someone to commit a crime for you?
Crimes by proxy, as they are officially termed, are surprisingly common in the real world, the most notable being contract killing and terrorism. One of the more famous examples doesn’t fit either category.
The Manson Family murders have been written about in exhaustive detail so there’s little reason to do so here. One of the more remarkable aspects of the case is that Charles Manson, arguably America’s most famous living murderer, never actually killed anyone.
Still, Manson was directly responsible for the deaths of seven people and deserves the multiple life sentences he received. His unique brand of LSD-induced Svengali style loyalty proved effective, if not especially successful. Manson may have accomplished his goal but he still went to jail.
Murder is an especially terrible crime to commit by proxy. Of all individual felony categories defined by the FBI, murder is one of two that is successfully investigated more than fifty percent of the time, the other being aggravated assault. (Here’s a neat little tool released by NPR that lets you explore the clearance rates of specific crimes by zip code.)
Property and financial crimes seem like far better options for realistic depictions of successful crimes by proxy. It does happen in the real world. An Australian woman admitted to laundering money for a criminal organization after accepting a work from home position she found on a government job website. Since she found the job via the government, she assumed it was legitimate but soon grew suspicious as she was being sent large sums of money to ship to locations in southeast Asia. No arrests have been made in the case.
But since true crime and mystery fans have a preference for an intriguing murder, locating at least one committed by a clueless proxy is something of a moral imperative at this point.
Discounting successful contract killings and the few proven instances of frame jobs, the former is rather boring in my opinion, we’re left with surprisingly few examples. But this brings us to the strange and fantastic circumstances surrounding the deaths of Billy Payne and Billie-Jean Hayworth.
Their bodies were discovered by a neighbor in the small rural town of Mountain City, Tennessee. No physical evidence had been left at the scene by the perpetrators. Shell casings had been collected and no fingerprints were found. The only DNA came from the victims. Some publications described the January 2012 murders as being committed with “military precision”.
In less than a week, investigators had arrested their first two suspects, Marvin “Buddy” Potter and Jamie Curd. Evidence quickly mounted against the duo during searches of their homes, including guns, knives, and printed pictures from the victims’ Facebook profile with words like “bitch” scrawled across them. The only thing missing was a motive, which slowly started revealing itself when Curd failed a lie detector and asked an investigator a very strange question: “Is the CIA here?”
Other than living in the same small town, Buddy and Jamie had another strong connection. They both loved the same woman, Janelle Potter. And they’d do anything to protect her.
A diabetic with severe learning disabilities in her early thirties, Janelle had moved to Mountain City with her parents, Buddy and Barbara Potter in 2004. She spent much of her life isolated and unable to connect with other people. Her strict and overbearing parents didn’t help matters much. The internet finally gave her much needed connection but so did Billy Payne. Payne had a reputation as “a nice guy with time for everyone.” He started including her in group activities and even set her up with his cousin, Jamie Curd.
Things took an ugly turn when Billy started seeing Billie-Jean. Janelle started accusing the couple of cyberbullying and other forms of harassment. She told her parents and Jamie that they also threatened rape and death. The two Billies told friends and relatives, Jamie included, that Janelle was the one harassing them. Then things got weird and incredibly violent.
Jamie and Buddy were contacted by a man who claimed to be a former high school classmate of Janelle’s that found his way to the CIA. He cared for Janelle but claimed no romantic interest. He simply wanted to protect her from Billy and Billie-Jean.
The exact web of emails, deception, and social media posts that finally convinced Buddy, Barbara, and Jamie that Janelle was in legitimate danger are voluminous and difficult to discern. What quickly became apparent to Johnson County investigators was the sheer number of spelling errors and general inaccuracies most of the correspondence contained.
While the case against Jamie and Buddy was largely secured, prosecutors were less sure about Barbara and Janelle. For a successful conviction, they needed proof that the agent was invented by Janelle. He called himself “Chris” in his communications, but the documentation and photos he provided were too realistic to be completely written off.
Considering Janelle had lived a sheltered life, investigators started with her high school classmates. One had become a police officer in Delaware and shared his vague memories of a girl named Janelle. Chris Tjaden was stunned to see pictures of himself used as part of the ruse. And no, he had never been a CIA agent.
Janelle and Barabara continued to claim innocence, even appearing on ABC’s 20/20 for an interview. There is some evidence to support their claim. Barbara wasn’t present at the shooting nor is there evidence she knew of Janelle’s plot. She simply failed to report the crime in advance and deservedly received a life sentence.
At trial, defense counsel argued that Janelle’s mental impairments precluded involvement in a complicated plot to convince her family to kill on her behalf. They presented evidence of her mental age being that of a fifth grader. She also failed to report the crime in advance and received a life sentence but could be eligible for parole around her eightieth birthday. I’m not sure how to feel about her sentence, just as it was. I don’t know that she ever deserves parole. Or imprisonment.
It’s now accepted that Janelle, using photos of Tjaden’s Facebook profile, catfished her parents and boyfriend into killing the couple out of jealousy. She had a crush on Billy from the beginning.
Billy and Billie-Jean had a child born shortly before their murders. Billie-Jean died holding him in her arms as bullets pierced her flesh. He was found in his mother’s arms, covered in his mother’s blood but unhurt. His name is Tyler.
Crimes by proxy are complicated and terrifyingly common. After learning about the invisible criminal behind the death of Billy and Billie-Jean, I don’t really want to think about them anymore.
Andrew Egan is writer and editor of Crimes In Progress. His work has appeared in Forbes Magazine, ABC News, Atlas Obscura, Tedium, and more. You can read his article, “Any Which Way but Down or A Fair Amount of Male Nudity in the American West” in the December 2016 issue of Blue Skies Magazine. He is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. His novel, Nothing Too Original, is available now for Kindle and paperback.
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