AI Summary
5 min readIn the small town of Mountain City, Tennessee, a place where people rarely lock their doors, a young couple was murdered in their own home in the early morning hours of 2012. Billy Payne, 36, was shot in the face and had his throat slashed while still in bed. His fiancée, Billy Jean Hayworth, 23, was shot once above the ear as she ran into her seven-month-old son Tyler’s nursery, shielding him from the attack. The baby was found unharmed, wrapped in his mother’s arms, covered in her blood. There was no sign of forced entry, nothing stolen, and almost no physical evidence left behind. The bullet recovered from Billy’s pillow had an X carved into its tip—a crude modification to make it fragment on impact. Law enforcement, who typically saw only one homicide a year in Johnson County, were stunned. For weeks, the community feared a killer was on the loose.
The Online Feud and the Potter Family
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:51) **The Small Town Setting** - Mountain City, Tennessee is introduced as a safe, close-knit community where violent crime is almost unheard of.
- 2 (03:02) **The Discovery of the Murders** - Neighbors find Billy Payne and Billy Jean Hayworth dead in their home, with their infant son Tyler unharmed beside them.
- 3 (05:11) **Crime Scene Investigation** - Law enforcement walks through the house, revealing a clean, professional-looking murder with no signs of struggle.
- 4 (08:08) **The Question of Who Could Do This** - The brutality of the crime leads investigators to suspect a professional hit, as the scene is unusually clean.
- 5 (11:49) **The Victims' Lives** - Family and friends remember Billy Payne and Billy Jean as happy, loving people who adored their infant son.
- 6 (14:38) **The Online Feud Emerges** - Investigators learn about a bitter Facebook and social media war involving the victims and a local woman named Janelle Potter.
- 7 (16:35) **Introducing the Potter Family** - Janelle's background and her overprotective parents, Buddy and Barbara, are described as a reclusive, paranoid family.
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Show Notes
When a young couple is found dead, police learn they were involved in an online feud and uncover a deadly catfishing scheme. (OAD 4/5/2024)
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