Cold Case Files DNA Speaks S01E07 A Deadly Premonition
When 31-year-old Linda Slaten is brutally strangled in her Lakeland, FL home in 1981, a complex web of suspects emerges. The case takes a dramatic turn when a DNA hit exposes the sinister underbelly of a seemingly peaceful community.
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00:00My mother was an outgoing person, fun-loving, that was the way her spirit was.
00:18They saw Linda laying diagonally across her bed, it would have been a slow, slow painful
00:24death.
00:25And he come in, he pulled a gun out and pushed her down and put a gun to her head.
00:34The police, they came after Jeff quite a bit.
00:39They collected DNA evidence, they had no idea how valuable that would be 40 years later.
00:46It was aggravating.
00:50My mom was killed almost 40 years ago.
00:54And every day you think, was this son of a bitch ever going to get caught?
01:20We're fixing to approach the residence.
01:24We went to his house and it was kind of like earlier in the afternoon.
01:36I was a little worried because it was a very angry killing.
01:40Hello?
01:41I think he's not going to answer the door.
01:53He broke into our house and beat and strangled my mom and then left like nothing.
02:02There was really no emotion from him.
02:06You've been wanting a name for almost 40 years and then all of a sudden you get handed the
02:10name and it's like, I never had a clue.
02:30Judy and Linda Slayton were sisters.
02:33They both lived in the same apartment complex.
02:36They would meet for coffee every morning.
02:39And that particular morning, Judy had came down and knocked on the door and nobody came
02:47to the door.
02:53And as she was walking away to go back to her apartment, she glanced over toward where
02:58Linda's bedroom was and noticed that the window was open and the screen was missing.
03:09When Judy looked into the window, she saw Linda laying diagonally across her bed.
03:16Her feet were off the edge of the bed, hanging down.
03:19There was blood present and she could see an object around her neck.
03:24She screened and got the attention of a maintenance worker and then they got somebody to call 911.
03:33Lakeland police arrive in minutes.
03:37Through the window, they see Linda Slayton's lifeless body.
03:45But authorities have another problem.
03:48Where are her two sons?
03:50Tim and Jeff.
03:51Tim was only 12 years old at the time.
03:54Jeff was 15.
03:57There was a concern that the kids may still be inside, not knowing exactly what they were
04:03going to see or find.
04:05They're knocking on the doors, knocking on windows, and they're not getting any response
04:10from anybody.
04:13First responders can't afford to wait a second longer.
04:17So they decide to enter through another window and saw Tim in the back bedroom.
04:24And they saw the kids were okay.
04:28I kind of looked up and I was like, why is the cop waking me up?
04:32And he said, go outside with your brother.
04:36He never mentioned my mother's name.
04:39So I get up and I start walking outside.
04:42And when he opened my bedroom door, they were coming out of my mother's room, opened her
04:47door, and that's when I saw the whole crime scene.
04:53I saw my mother's partially clothed body hanging off the bed with a yellow clothes hanger around
04:58her neck and then blood everywhere.
05:02So I knew right then she was murdered.
05:11She was laying crossways across the bed.
05:15She had her dress pulled down below her breasts and her dress pulled up.
05:22It was bunched up on her midsection.
05:25Her flip flops and her underwear were on the floor on the carpet beneath her.
05:32She had a coat hanger that had been put around her neck and tightened down that you could
05:37actually see how tight it was in her skin.
05:42I've seen a lot of homicides and a lot of blood and things like that, but I had never
05:49seen any kind of scene like what happened to Linda Slate.
06:03At the time of her death, 31-year-old Linda has begun to turn life around for her family.
06:10My mother and father met in their teenage years, way back in the early 60s.
06:17My mother was 15 years old when my brother was born.
06:22She was outgoing, fun-loving, and just go do things all the time.
06:27That was the way her spirit was.
06:34Linda's outgoing personality masks a troubled home life.
06:39My father, when I was growing up very young, he was an alcoholic and he was a mean person.
06:47And when I was a little kid, I can remember they would fight a lot.
06:51My mom eventually left him and took me and my brother to Florida because his drinking
06:55was just out of hand.
07:00Things start looking up for Linda and her kids when they move to Florida in 1974.
07:06We stayed with our grandparents, but it was fun then because we lived on a farm.
07:13I mean, we had a 400-acre backyard to play in.
07:17She eventually got an old Chevy Impala, I remember it being dark green, we called it
07:21the green machine.
07:24And me and my mom and my brother, Jeff, we would just go to the beach or just a park
07:28to have a picnic.
07:36Linda sells the green machine to help make ends meet.
07:40That was just one of the many sacrifices she made for her children.
07:46My mom would make her own clothes and walk to work.
07:50We grew up poor, but she could always make these awesome meals all the time.
07:55It's like, wow, how'd she do that?
08:02The night before this all happened, Tim actually came home first from football and was hanging
08:10out with Linda.
08:12Me and my mother went next door to the neighbor's house, and there was three other couples there.
08:18And then the women were all at the table playing cards.
08:24It was a pregnant woman that was there reading people's palms.
08:28And she read my mother's palm, and she looked at her and she goes, you're gonna have a very
08:32short life.
08:35I think my mom gave her a puzzled look, like, how do you know that by reading somebody's
08:39palm?
08:40Well, I guess the woman was right, because she was dead the next day.
08:58When police entered Linda Slayton's bedroom, it wasn't really disorganized in there.
09:04The bed was made.
09:06You could see footprints on the floor, and they did find a shoe print on one of Linda's
09:11pillows.
09:14Based on the footprints, it appeared that the person entered through the open window
09:19where the screen was missing.
09:24Linda's body is sent for autopsy.
09:27As police launch their hunt for the killer, crime scene investigators immediately make
09:34what could be a key discovery.
09:37There was some partial palm prints on the window sill.
09:41It turned out that they were able to lift using tape, dusting it.
09:47It's misleading the way TV portrays prints.
09:51People have an assumption that you get a print and they're automatically going to catch somebody.
09:55But you have to be able to match that print to a suspect.
10:01In the critical hours following the crime, police work to gather as much information
10:06about Linda's relationships as possible.
10:11Neighbors tell investigators that Linda was having problems with her oldest son, Jeff.
10:18Linda's actually telling neighbors that she don't know what to do with Jeff.
10:22She's being rebellious, and she just don't know how to handle that.
10:28My brother Jeff was a typical teenager, you know, mouthy, cocky, wouldn't argue.
10:37So him and my mom would have arguments from time to time.
10:42Linda Slayton was a tiny woman, 15-year-old.
10:46Jeff was a football player.
10:48He was a very healthy kid.
10:53A cop looked at my brother Jeff and said, you know, you're a big guy, you got strong hands.
11:01You could kill your mom.
11:02I remember kind of anticipating this interview and thinking, OK, let's make sure that he
11:20talks about this.
11:25I wanted him to know that every single time that he would say a lie that I was going to
11:29call him on that.
11:31We know you know the answers.
11:34We ultimately got closer to the truth.
11:48Detectives are eager to question Linda's 15-year-old son, Jeff, about an argument he
11:53had with his mom the night in 1981 before she was killed.
11:59The night before this all happened, Jeff came home from football.
12:04He was hungry, and he got frustrated with Linda because there really wasn't a whole
12:10lot in there.
12:11So he got aggravated with her and stormed out of the house.
12:18According to Jeff, he jumped on his bicycle, he rode up to his grandparents.
12:23They fed him, and then they brought him back around 9.30.
12:27And he didn't know where his mom was at the time.
12:30And she came home from next door, told him that there was a little get-together next
12:34door, and that's where she was.
12:38Jeff was watching TV, and then he went to sleep.
12:47Twelve-year-old Tim also tells police where he was that night.
12:52Tim was on a community league team, and his coach had picked him up, and he had went off
12:57to football practice.
12:59And then the coach dropped him off, 7, 7.30-ish.
13:04The original detectives did a phone interview with Timothy's football coach, and he told
13:10them Linda did step to his truck when he was dropping the boys off and ask him how Timothy
13:16performed at practice that day.
13:19Both boys' stories are confirmed by their grandparents and football coach.
13:26But investigators aren't satisfied.
13:31The police took us down and put us in a tiny room with no windows.
13:35One cop riding, one cop recording, asking us questions.
13:39The cops, they came after Jeff quite a bit.
13:43Jeff agrees to submit to polygraph testing.
13:49The main questions they asked was, did I murder my mom?
13:53Did I kill Linda Slayton?
13:54Did I know who killed Linda Slayton?
13:56I was in a state of shock.
13:59I didn't know why they was doing it to me.
14:02I didn't hear nothing.
14:03And that has been so hard to live with, that I didn't hear nothing, because I would have
14:06killed that son of a bitch, but I didn't hear nothing.
14:12And that's hard to live with.
14:13I lived my whole life.
14:14I was in an apartment.
14:15That happened to my mom, and I didn't hear nothing.
14:21Jeff was polygraphed on two occasions.
14:25The first time was inconclusive, and the second time they were able to determine that he was
14:33not involved.
14:34Three days after Linda's murder, the autopsy report lands on detectives' desks.
14:47The autopsy results showed that Linda had died from strangulation.
14:55They noted that the coat hanger, how tight it was around her neck, and that they were
15:03claw marks, which appeared to be from her trying to get this thing off of her to be
15:10able to breathe.
15:11And she also had an injury inside her vaginal cavity.
15:15It was a laceration.
15:17And we believe something was inserted in there that caused that injury, and that's where
15:21a lot of the blood came from.
15:25They're trying to get any evidence what they can off of the victim.
15:32So you're going to do fingernail clippings and scrapings.
15:35You're going to do the sexual battery kit.
15:39They were able to collect semen, and they found that the semen was intact, which was
15:45very helpful.
15:49But there was no database for semen or blood types or anything like that.
15:54They would have to habit test it, try to make a match on a possible suspect of a blood
15:59type.
16:09As investigators search for the killer, Tim and Jeff say goodbye to their mother.
16:16It was sheer hell.
16:21Looking at where she was trying to get this coat hanger off her neck, and the people at
16:24the funeral home try to make it up and look as best they can, but you can just see where
16:27she was digging so hard, trying to get that metal coat hanger out of her neck and fighting
16:32for her life.
16:33It just, I can't picture the hell my poor mama went through.
16:51The boys' grandparents do the best they can to give Tim and Jeff a normal life and routine.
17:02After about two weeks, we went back to playing football and hanging out with my friends.
17:09Coach Joe and the coaches were supportive.
17:11My team players were supportive.
17:15This coach and one other coach would come pick me up quite often or take me home.
17:23Coach Joe and the other coaches, they knew the game, and we were trying to learn the
17:27fundamentals of playing the game of football.
17:30We looked up to these guys.
17:34The pain was still there, but it was good to get back into a routine, you know, to live
17:38life again, to get on with my life.
17:44As Tim and Jeff try to move forward, police turn to another member of the Slayton family,
17:51Linda's ex-husband.
17:56Frank Slayton was somebody that the investigators had to look at because of the past relationship.
18:03He was bad.
18:04He drank bad.
18:05He was a bad alcoholic.
18:06I didn't know who could have done this.
18:09I thought, you know, my mom divorced him, took his two sons away, so I thought it was
18:13my own dad.
18:14It did it.
18:27Best I recall, she said, come to my bedroom at this particular place.
18:33His demeanor is like a sociopath.
18:36I mean, just no emotion.
18:39How did her breasts get exposed?
18:42I guess I did it.
18:55It was important for the investigators to look at Frank Slayton since they had such
19:01an up-and-down, rocky relationship, and he had threatened Linda in the past.
19:05Jeff Hadley had been only maybe six years old at the time.
19:15My dad came home from work, and he had already been drinking, and me and Jeff and my mom,
19:23I believe, were fixing to eat dinner, and he come in, and he pulled a gun out and pushed
19:30her down and put a gun to her head.
19:35And my brother, Jeff, went there and jumped on him, tried to get the gun out of his hand.
19:41Oh, I was only seven.
19:42I was seven years old when that happened.
19:44Oh, yeah, it was bad, because he sent me back out the door, and he slammed the door back.
19:49It took my big toenail and the meat on top of my big toe and peeled it off, and blood
19:53was going everywhere.
19:55But I felt like it saved my mom.
20:03Detectives tracked Slayton down in the Alabama town Linda fled years earlier.
20:09Police questioned him by phone.
20:12Frank Slayton only lived 10 hours away and could have easily drove over and committed
20:17this crime and drove back.
20:20His alibi was being at home during the time of the homicide.
20:25My dad was, he was already remarried, and his wife said he was there.
20:31Anytime you have a suspect that you're looking at, you have to try to verify that alibi.
20:37Sometimes the alibi is, I was at home by myself, and how do you prove that?
20:42But if you can't disprove it, then there's really not a lot you can do with that.
20:47They remain a suspect until you can rule them out.
20:57With the suspect pool shrinking, authorities use every tool available in 1981.
21:04You know, they didn't have the DNA swabs like we do now and so forth, so, but they took
21:09a lot of people to the Lakeland General Hospital at the time, pulled hair, took blood samples
21:17from them, which at the time they were just blood typing, and they were just struggling,
21:24striking out.
21:25You know, they just weren't getting anywhere.
21:29You marry your cases as an investigator, so when you do run out of leads and there's nothing
21:33to follow up, and it's very discouraging.
21:41By the following year, leads dry up like morning rain in the hot Florida sun, and the case
21:48of the young mother murdered in the night goes cold.
22:04After my mom was killed, I gave up on school.
22:08I dropped out of school when I was 16.
22:13The day she got murdered, my childhood got murdered.
22:15That's when I stopped being a kid.
22:16It was that day she got murdered.
22:18I still sleep with a gun next to me every night.
22:21Even today, I got to go through the house and look.
22:25Somebody be hiding in the shower.
22:26Somebody could be under the bed.
22:28Somebody in the closet.
22:29And I got to go through my whole house, still today, and look and make sure there ain't
22:33nobody in there so I can relax and try to get some kind of sleep.
22:36You know, you go from fear and sadness, then you go into anger.
22:48Oh, it made me and Jeff just angry, you know, that this SOB's still walking around breathing
22:55air and then my mom's, you know, on the ground dead.
23:00And you try to think who it could have been.
23:02You're always beating yourself up.
23:04Try to think who it is.
23:05Who could have done this?
23:06It was funny, though, before my mom got murdered.
23:17More than a decade passes before a new lead surfaces.
23:23Frank Potts was the serial killer suspect from Polk County.
23:30It struck an interest with Jeff because some of the family actually knew Frank Potts.
23:36And Frank Potts actually had a relationship with one of Linda Slayton's neighbors and
23:40was possibly in the apartment complex at the time of this homicide.
23:47Somebody had been in the jail with Frank at some time and said that he confessed to him
23:52that he was the one that murdered Linda Slayton.
24:07Any time you have a convicted killer that gives a confession on a crime, you get excited,
24:13especially when somebody like Frank Potts is the guy and he's a suspected serial killer.
24:28Frank Potts was an actual friend of my mom and the whole family.
24:32Frank Potts was an actual friend of my mom and the whole family.
24:36We found out he wasn't a good person until later on.
24:40I know that they were looking at him for several other murders in Alabama somewhere.
24:46The main case that Frank Potts is in prison for was handled by the Polk County Sheriff's Department.
24:54So I went with a detective and my little brother, Tim, and we went down there and I hadn't seen him in person.
25:03Jeff and Tim asked him, what do you know about my mother's murder?
25:10And he didn't know nothing.
25:13That was the end of it.
25:15And we had to move on.
25:18There again, you know, we got our hopes up high and then nothing.
25:22Then the months come on and the years come on.
25:33When I got involved in the case, I had been in the criminal investigations division for about 10 years.
25:40And I saw that we had this book in the sergeant's office that had a whole bunch of unsolved homicides.
25:49And the first case in the book was Linda Slayton from September of 1981.
25:56I saw that we had DNA in palm prints and that when this happened, obviously DNA didn't exist.
26:08Luckily for us, our investigators collected this evidence and stored it properly.
26:16We needed to send samples off to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in hopes of actually getting a DNA profile.
26:26Detective Grice gets a break when the FDLA comes back with a full DNA profile of the killer.
26:35To actually have a DNA profile, knowing that once you identify this person, you know, you got a suspect.
26:44I mean, that is huge.
26:46When the profile is submitted to the National Database, however, no match is found.
26:52Detective Grice is not deterred.
27:05The Lakeland Ledger did an article on the 20th anniversary, which Jeff and Tim was a part of.
27:13Which ultimately led me to getting them to come to the police department for the first time,
27:19so I could meet with them and tell them, somebody is looking at your mother's case.
27:28He went down the whole list, you know, and was taking off names.
27:32We were able to use the killer's DNA profile and do the comparison to the original DNA profile.
27:41Comparison to the original suspects that were listed.
27:46One of the suspects eliminated with DNA is Frank Potts.
27:53But Frank Slayton, we did not have his DNA at the time.
27:58So ultimately, it was Jeff that actually brought in his dad one day.
28:06Frank Slayton consents to a DNA test.
28:09And the results show that he is not a match to the unknown suspect's DNA.
28:16For Tim and Jeff, it ends 20 years of wondering.
28:22It felt good knowing that, for sure, it made me feel good.
28:30My dad apologized a bunch of times on me and my brother.
28:33He would tell us how sorry he was, he wished he never knew about alcohol, you know.
28:37And he would just tell us he was so sorry he lost his family because of drinking, you know.
28:43And he tried to make it up, you know, and he did it.
28:46When me and my brother started having kids, you know, he was being as good a grandpa as he could to them.
28:50I know when he passed away, it tore my son up quite a bit.
28:53Because he was pretty close with him.
28:58Detective Grice continues to submit DNA for comparison.
29:03But a match never comes up.
29:08The last few conversations that I had with Jeff and Tim was, I got nothing.
29:13I got nothing else, you know.
29:15And that hurts. It really bothers you.
29:20Detective Grice makes the difficult decision to retire.
29:25When Brad Grice retired, I said, well, I'm going to take my last breath and die and not know who murdered my mom.
29:31I remember thinking that.
29:32I'm going to take my last breath and die and not know who murdered my mom.
29:35I remember thinking that.
29:36And I'm starting to come to terms with it, you know.
29:51When I first got on the case, I met with FDLE and just kind of talked through, like,
29:56maybe we missed something on this one piece of evidence.
29:59Can I send that in?
30:03In November of 2018, a call comes in from the FDLE that reignites the case.
30:11And they said, hey, this is a new technology that we're doing.
30:14You guys' case seems to fit that mold of what we need.
30:18You have some DNA that we can test.
30:20And ultimately, our staff was very much on board with trying to get this tested for the genetic genealogy.
30:26I became involved in this case in June of 2019.
30:32So once my work begins, I have to build in their family trees to find that common ancestor.
30:40Fortunately, we had enough data that I was able to identify these three genetic networks,
30:45find the triangulations,
30:48and narrow it down to just this one man.
31:08I'm the mother of a son.
31:11I'm the mother of a son.
31:13And hearing that Linda was murdered in her own home as a single mom
31:19with her two little boys asleep in that home was devastating to me.
31:26With investigative genetic genealogy, we are comparing against voluntarily provided DNA.
31:33And so when the suspect's file is uploaded,
31:36it's going to be compared against all of those people's genetic markers that have opted in to launch the DNA test.
31:44And so we're going to be comparing against all of those people's genetic markers that have opted in to launch the DNA test.
31:51And so we're going to be comparing against all of those people's genetic markers that have opted in to launch the DNA test.
31:57So once that comparison has been done by the algorithms,
32:01we'll get a list of people who share DNA with our unknown suspect.
32:09So in this case, I was able to build three separate match clusters, or what I call genetic networks.
32:17Once I'd built all those trees, I had three different common ancestral couples.
32:22And I knew that the suspect must descend from all three.
32:28Who is the one person or immediate family that descends from all three of these sets of common ancestors?
32:35Once I got to that family, I could see that there was only one son
32:40that could have been the person who left his DNA behind at the crime scene.
32:47He connected to the matches through both sides of his family and through three of his grandparents.
32:54So that is a really high confidence potential identification.
33:03In just days, C.C. Moore cracks the case that's haunted investigators for decades.
33:11Detective Tammy Hathcock received a call that said they had some results.
33:15So we set up a conference call in a conference room.
33:19So they started going through the report, and then they got to the page where it talked about Joseph Mills.
33:27And I said, I know this name. Why do I know this name?
33:32So I found a sheet, and it said Joseph Mills.
33:36And I read that we had interviewed him back in 1981, like two days after the murder happened.
33:43It was Tim's football coach.
33:52Joseph Mills, the football coach who dropped Tim off from practice the night before Linda's murder, is now 58 years old.
34:02We find out that he's living in the same exact house that he lived back then.
34:06He lives there with his wife. His kids are grown. He's got grandkids.
34:09So he just lived a normal life.
34:13Mills has only one blemish on his record.
34:17I was able to learn that Joseph Mills had been arrested in 1984 by the Lakeland Police Department for a grand theft.
34:24And at that point in time, they actually took fingerprints and palm prints.
34:30So I immediately submitted a request to have his prints from that arrest compared to the prints from the crime scene.
34:38The unfortunate thing about it was that the prints that we had were not of APHIS quality.
34:44It's a system that they run fingerprints through.
34:48So it had to be done manually.
34:55The prints match.
34:58But detectives still have one more hurdle to clear.
35:02Getting a recent DNA sample to confirm he is the match.
35:08Joseph Mills had a serious condition.
35:12And so he pretty much stayed at home most of the time.
35:15He had a colostomy bag from cancer.
35:18So he didn't leave very often.
35:22And that's where we decided to do a trash pull.
35:28Working with Polk County Refuse, Lakeland authorities collect Mills' trash once it's been left on the curb.
35:38It's not the most glamorous thing. We're actually, we're in dress clothes.
35:42And I was just digging through the trash like it was Christmas Day.
35:46I was trying to find specific items that could be tested for the DNA.
35:52They actually found a discarded colostomy bag and some Q-tips that were used to clean up the wound.
36:00And also some tape that was used to hold that colostomy bag on.
36:04So when I found that tape, I thought this is going to have some kind of DNA on there.
36:09Whether it's hair, whether it's skin cells.
36:12I remember packaging it real quick and having the crime scene girl write everything up.
36:16And I drove it straight over to FDLE that afternoon.
36:18Because I wanted to be able to get that tested as quick as possible.
36:25I was on pins and needles. I was like, oh my God, oh my God, we are almost there.
36:29We're going to get this guy.
36:35FDLE
36:47I was actually on vacation because it was my birthday.
36:50I was sitting in the pedicure chair getting my toes done.
36:53And I got the phone call.
36:56I kind of was like, maybe this is FDLE.
36:59Because she had told me that she was going to call me with the results.
37:03I said, hey, I'm off today for my birthday.
37:05And she said, I've got a birthday present for you.
37:15I started screaming inside the nail shop.
37:18Everybody just kept looking at me, but I was super excited.
37:21We're fixing to approach the residents.
37:24Police issue an arrest warrant for Joseph Mills.
37:29Hello?
37:41We placed him in handcuffs.
37:42We read Joseph Mills' Miranda right and placed him in the car.
37:46We got him into the interrogation room and we actually asked him.
37:57It was very bizarre dealing with him because the motions were not there.
38:02It was very bizarre dealing with him because the motions were not there.
38:24And so we did present him with several pieces of evidence.
38:32He realized that he was kind of in a bind and then he started to put it all on Linda.
38:37Started blaming Linda.
38:44He said that on September 4th, 1981, as he dropped off Tim in the parking lot,
38:51he had a conversation with Linda Slaton.
38:55Joseph said that Linda basically invited him over for some type of a good time.
39:00Joseph said that Linda basically invited him over for some type of a good time.
39:01And when he got there, she was already there with the hanger around her neck.
39:05And they started engaging in sex.
39:13She asked him to tighten the hanger down in a kinky sex game type of thing.
39:20But, you know, if you seen how deep that hanger was into her neck,
39:24but, you know, if you seen how deep that hanger was into her neck,
39:27you know it was down half an inch.
39:29And there's no way that somebody will allow somebody to do that to them.
39:35And then you also see where she clawed her neck trying to get the hanger off.
39:50Bills is charged with first-degree murder.
39:53After 38 years, Lakeland police can finally tell Jeff and Tib
39:59that their mother's killer is behind bars.
40:01♪♪
40:09It was your football coach,
40:10and you rode in the car with this son of a bitch
40:12after the fact.
40:14I mean, that just makes you mad.
40:18You know, I was sitting this close to him,
40:21and I have a picture of us,
40:23I think it was taken a month after my mom was killed,
40:27and this lineup of all these football players,
40:29and he is standing right behind me in the picture.
40:32♪♪
40:42To avoid a possible death sentence,
40:44Linda's killer pleads guilty.
40:47Both brothers will finally have the chance
40:49to get an answer from Mills.
40:52I don't know why you can't tell me why!
40:54Why'd you have to murder my mama?
40:57He wouldn't ask me.
40:59He said they're like the coward he was
41:00with his cold, black murder.
41:01No, I just didn't make an expression.
41:03He was heartless, didn't care.
41:05And I started hollering at him, and I looked at his picture.
41:08This is me and my mom, my brother.
41:09We was happy, and you took her away from me.
41:12And I started hollering at him like that.
41:14And then I showed him the picture of the grave site.
41:16You see that? That's where my mom was at.
41:17She's there because of you!
41:19You murdered her!
41:20And I hate you!
41:22And that's why I told him he could burn in hell
41:23fast enough for me.
41:25I hate him.
41:26♪♪
41:30Joseph Mills is sentenced to life in prison
41:34without the possibility of parole.
41:38He's a cold-blooded murdering monster.
41:42Sometimes I think maybe why I didn't hear anything.
41:46It's probably that dirtbag went down to her like this,
41:49and like, Linda, you say another word or fight me anymore,
41:51I'm gonna go in there and kill Tim and Jeff, you know?
41:53And the love that a mom has for her kids,
41:56she probably just went along with it
41:57to keep us from getting murdered.
41:59♪♪
42:04I know when she took her last breath and she died,
42:07she was thinking about me and Tim.
42:09♪♪
42:17Joseph Mills took my childhood from me,
42:19and I had to grow up very fast after he killed my mom.
42:22♪♪
42:27Still don't know why he did it.
42:29He won't say.
42:30♪♪
42:34That's aggravating.
42:36He got to live his whole life out,
42:38and she was taken out when she was young...
42:44for senseless crime.
42:46♪♪