Who is Joel Guy Jr? Tennessee man who boiled parents for $500K insurance jailed for life, labeled 'evil overkill'
KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE: The 32-year-old man, who slaughtered his parents and boiled them in "diabolical stew" for $500k insurance gets life in jail. The hideous act was labeled, "pure evil overkill" by the judge.
Joel Guy Jr. who got arrested in Thanksgiving 2016, for killing his parents, was ordered two consecutive life sentences on Thursday, November 19, after serving four years in prison. He got sentenced at a court in Knoxville, Tennessee. Knox County Criminal Court Judge, Steve Sword, slammed his crimes as "pure evil overkill" as he revealed the Louisiana man's fate. He said it was the "most extreme abuse of a course I've seen in 25 years, and I hope it's the most serious that I'll see in my career." 100 more years have been added to his life imprisonment.
The order of the punishment came after he was found guilty on October 2, 2020, in Tennessee for deliberate first-degree murders, three counts of felony murder, and two counts of abuse of a corpse, news outlets reported. Guy Jr. fatally stabbed his parents, 61-years-old Joel Guy Sr. and 55-years-old, Lisa Guy and dismembered their dead bodies, in order to cash in $500,000, in life insurance benefits after he came to know that his parents were planning to retire and no longer pay his bills.
District Attorney General Charme Allen said that she was "pleased" with Guy Jr's Thursday morning sentencing announcement. She explained: "My Office asked for and obtained consecutive sentences to ensure the defendant would never be released from prison. I hope that the citizens of this community feel safe knowing this offender is off our streets forever, and I hope that the sentence imposed today provides some measure of closure for the family that has been torn apart by these horrific acts."
Speaking at the sentencing, Judge Sword called Guy Jr's mind as "sick and depraved" – saying that even if he is sentenced for 300 years, it "wouldn’t be sufficient." "I don't see the potential for rehabilitation of Guy. I was watching him during the trial, he showed absolutely no remorse or despair over at seeing what he had done," Sword added, according to the news outlet.
Guy Jr's nephew, Preston said in a statement, during the sentencing, read: "After the day that my Papaw died, that I looked up to like a dad, I knew that life would never be the same. That you can’t even trust your own family, that you have to watch your back with everyone around you."
In 2016, Guy Jr. was arrested when he returned to his hometown in Tennessee from Louisiana for the holiday. Court documents revealed that Guy Jr penned chilling details in a notebook of how he planned to chop up his parents, flush chunks down the toilet, and melt their fingerprints. Bullet points in the handwritten notes read: "Douse killing rooms (kitchen?) with bleach. Flush chunks down the toilet, not garbage disposal… don’t have to get rid of the body if no forensic evidence,” he wrote, adding he planned to turn the heat up “to melt fingerprints and dry everything." The notes also included directions like, "Kill him with the knife, clean up mess from him before she gets home. Kill her with knife... place her in shower. Turn on hot water and point at her to get rid of forensics." The notes then describe how he allegedly sought to place his father’s body in a plastic bin and use it to pull him into the shower alongside his mother’s body to wash away evidence. The notebook then continues "Cut off his arm and plant flesh under her fingernails. Use sodium hydroxide to destroy his soft tissue and soften bones for transport. Baste once every hour to accelerate." In order to keep him away from the eyes of the police, one note also read, "Set her phone to send me a text message late Sunday to prove that I was in BR (Baton Rogue) and she was alive." Two bins with semi-solid human remains were also found at the crime scene, as reported by the Knox County Sheriff's Office
The notebook was allegedly found in a backpack in the guest bedroom where he had been visiting for the Thanksgiving holiday, prosecutors said in court. According to a report by The Sun, "he hatched his plot after his parents grew tired of funding his never-ending studies."
Investigators believe Guy Jr first stabbed his father to death in an upstairs exercise room on November 26, 2016. He is then believed to have attacked and stabbed his mother to death when she returned home after the holiday shopping. Prosecutors also say that he stabbed his parents, a total of 70 times. He knifed his dad 40 times while his mom was out grocery shopping, and when she returned he stabbed her 30 times. He then dismantled their dead bodies and then tried to dissolve the remains, including his mother's head in a pot filled with acid.
Knox County Sheriff's Office Major Michael MacLean testified: "Joel placed pieces of the bodies in an acid-based solution in an attempt to destroy evidence." Knox County Sheriff’s Office Detective Jeremy McCord described the massacre inside the Guys’ home as “the most horrific thing I’ve ever encountered in police work – in my life.”