The Brotherhood And The Murder Of Genore Guillory

0:05 M M. A Wall Street line, Shackle Chaine, Oh someome girdie, it's calling my name. There is no mercy and it's been a tentery juice as the huge stream game Rango three. Come here by me or die inside these walls, inside the wild hadn't went more girls?

0:59 I Hey everyone, and welcome back to Bloody and Gola, a podcast one forty two years and making the complete story of America's bloody is prison. I'm Jim Chapman, and I want to thank everyone for checking us out this week on Bloody and Gola. And look, we don't just feature the history of America's bloodiest prison. Although last week's episode, man, I went way back. If you are into the history of prisons in general, but especially Louisiana State Penitentiary, check that episode out. I think it was really interesting. But that's not all I do. I also feature stories of the incarcerated there, and today I'm going to take you not only through a case and an investigation, but also the conviction and eventual incarceration at Louisiana State Penitentiary of those responsible for the murder of Janoor Guillery. And before

2:32 I get into it, I want to shout out Miss Nicole Bess. I would say, quite a while ago she sent me a message asking me to do a story on this particular case. And so miss Nicole, I finally got to it, and here it is. I hope you enjoy it. So I'm going to take you back to June twenty sixth, in the year two thousand and in the small community of Clinton, Louisiana. Now on a seemingly normal Monday morning, a deputy sheriff by the name of Ronald Johnson. He gets a call to perform what's known as a wellness check at a home in East Feliciana Parish.

3:15 So he shows up to this rural house and as soon as he gets to the door, he's welcomed by what you would referred to as the scent of death. Just an odor that is unmistakable. I know a lot of you out there when there's a pet, maybe you lived by some woods or something, and an animal gets killed in the woods and you can smell it after a couple of days. Well, that time's ten right now, even for this season, Deputy, it took him aback. So he makes entry into the home and that scent intentifies and he's almost like a bloodhound. He's following the strength of that just horrid scent, and that scent eventually leads him into a master bedroom where just an absolutely gruesome scene awaits him. So he peers into that bedroom and there he sees the body of a forty two year old named Jenior Gillery. She is lifeless and nude on the floor. The scene was so gruesome, in fact, that he walked outside the house, picks up his CB two radio for back up to the house, and throws up by his patrol car, now detected by the name of Don McKee. He arrives on the scene shortly after, and

4:47 they get to work trying to figure out what the hell happened to this woman. So before I go any further, I want to give you a little information on Jenior Gillery and who she was. She was a beatiful black woman. She lived a modest, yet fulfilling life in a two story wood framed home on the end of a gravel road in Clinton, Louisiana. And as common in that Clinton, Louisiana area, most of your homes are surrounded by some acreage. These aren't neighborhoods, and she had several acres that surrounded her home. She also had a love for animals, dogs in particulars. As matter of fact, she had thirty dogs that she kept safely kindled in her back property. And she also loved horses, and she had four horses which she stabled nearby. Now, in her personal life, Janor was a personnel specialist at an insurance firm in Baton Ridge, which is about sixty miles from where she lived in Clinton, and she absolutely loved her job. She was known by her colleagues as very very professional, very kind, very positive, and very generous. As a matter of fact, a coworker of hers named Linda Kuno actually described her as the most generous person she ever encountered. So this is not

6:18 someone you would think would end up with the fate that I'm about to tell you about. On this particular Friday, Janor had taken a half day off to clean her house. However, on that Monday, when she failed to arrive at work, which was not like her at all, her friends knew something wasn't right, something had to be wrong, so they started calling her cell phone and they get no answer. Voicemail, voicemail, voicemail. So they call her house and it's busy. They call it again, it's busy. They do this for several hours and it's obvious the phone is off the hook on her landline. So that's when they reach out to the East Flea Sienna pair of Sheriff's department and they say, hey, can you go check on miss g as she was known.

7:14 So back on the crime scene, Detective McKee, he finds himself making entry into the residence. He noticed that a side door to Jennor's house was a jar and there was a pretty intimidating black and tan chiwd tied up right outside that door. He didn't notice any forced entry into the home as he stepped inside, and he did notice bloodstains on the hardwood floor and they were very prevalent, which told him this is going to be a bad scene. So in the kitchen he sees a utensil drawer that was still open and there were several bloody knives inside of that drawer. As a matter of fact, in this section of the house, it was obvious to the detective this is where Geniore was initially attacked, and it appeared that she was pursued throughout that house in an attempt to escape whoever did this to her, And it was obvious that that scene culminated in the bedroom where it appeared.

8:22 The chaos pretty much reached his peak. Inside that bedroom, Detective McKee, he saw the same thing that that Deputy Sheriff Ronald Johnson saw. Gennoor's body was crumpled beside her bed. Her skull in particular, just bore the marks of a brutal assault. He noticed knife wing puncture marks in several areas, and even gunshot wounds. Glancing around the room, he really saw the story. There was broken furniture, shattered glass, even streaks of blood across the walls. It was just horrific.

9:02 As he's investigating this scene, as you would think, word kind of starts to get out. I mean, this is a small town, right and there's at this point a ton of police cars on the scene. Everybody, all these neighbors, even though there's a lot of acreage between everybody, they see him driving down the road and they're calling other neighbors what happened to miss g And eventually a gathering starts taking place in front of the crime scene that included family, friends, even co workers, left work and drove to Jenor's home. So the investigation is on right, and they're working it from the inside out. As they work all these cases, you start with the people closest to him, and you roll them out and keep going outside that circle, if you will. In that circle, it leads them to a young white couple named Philip and Amy Skipper. Now this young couple, they were navigating challenges, a lot of challenges in life. At this time. They were new parents.

10:04 They were just twenty three years old, and they had recently welcomed a baby boy. They were also caring for a fifteen year old by the name of John Bellio, and Jenore, being the generous person that she was, she wants to take them under her wing, right, she wants to help them, so she gave them some employment opportunities, including taking care of her dogs and horses and maintaining her property, and they kind of became friends. As a matter of fact, she even facilitated a birthday celebration for that new born son of theirs. And the Skippers, who did not even have a telephone, they were more than welcome to use Jenior's phone anytime she made that available to them when they needed to use the phone. So police they work the case and they come across a situation involving Jenore and one of their own, a forty five year old Baton Ridge police officer that was recently hired by the department, and there were some claims that he had been stalking Gennore according to her co workers and friends. Now her co worker said that he was bombarding her with phone calls at her workplace, sometimes two three times a day, and they had only been on him one date and it was pretty brief, and according to Genial's colleagues, it quickly soured. There was just nothing there,

11:35 but she felt uncomfortable with this guy. She would talk to her friends about it, and she tries to distance herself from him. She even tells her friends, look, if he calls me at the office, just say I'm not here, say I'm busy. I don't want to talk to this guy. Now, despite making it what you would think would be completely obvious to this guy that she didn't want anything to do with him, it just made him pursue her harder. He would show up uninvited at Genor's home and he would be seen kind of lurking around her office while she was there. In one evening, while she was attending to her horses, he shows up at her house unannounced, which really concerned her, and shortly before her tragic death, he even indicated any message on her cellphone that he was going to come visit her that weekend, so obviously a lot of red flags to detective Damn McKee. So McKee he asked this BRPD officer. He says, man, you're popping up all over the place in this case. Would you mind taking a polygraph? And the police officer agrees to do that, and guess what, he fails that lit detective tests. Now doesn't necessarily mean you're lying. False positives happen a lot. That's why it's not admissible in court.

13:02 But it's not good. So the detective lets him know, hey man, you failed this lit of detector test. I want to talk to you about this some more. And at that point the BRPD officer says, fuck that, I want my lawyer. I'm not saying anything else, so he lawyer's up. They don't have enough evidence at all. They don't have any evidence in order to kind of keep him locked up, so they have to let him go until they can get some evidence, right, So detective McKee he's doing everything at this point that he can to find a link between this BRPD officer and the death of Genore. He's looking for evidence anywhere, and he does end up finding a few things a twenty two caliber weapon and some matching bloody footprints, but nothing concrete enough that would definitely say this police officer killed Jeniore. Out throughout this case, obviously the local media starts taking notice, and especially when a BRPD officer is involved in the case and maybe even looked at as a suspect, they're on it and they publish a headline and that headline said police officer suspected in slaying, which obviously totally shocks the community, puts everyone on edge. And the detective McKee

14:32 he has to walk that back and so he does some interviews and he says, look, we were looking at this guy. He had a relationship with Jennoor, but there was nothing concrete to say he's involved in any way, shape or form, etc. And sadly, eventually that case grows kind of cold. You know, detective McKee, he's busy, he's working other cases. As a matter of fact, at that time it was like he was a magnet for higher profile, harder to solve cases. They had a murder of a local drug dealer he was working. They had a man who was killed in his own home that he was working in addition to the Jenore case, and they even had a disappearance of a two year old boy. During that time, a criminal known as one Eyed Boo was killed and he was working that case, so he had plenty to keep him busy. And unfortunately, there just wasn't anything there in the case of Jeneire in her murder that would lead to anything at that time, but the case of Jenire Guillery in particular, it haunted that detective.

15:46 He wanted to solve it. He couldn't get the images of the brutality of that case out of his mind. Yet every clue he tracked led to pretty much a dead end. He was quoted as saying, I couldn't find one bad thing out about this woman. Every lead I chase seemed to vanish, and I'm frustrated. However, on July twenty seventh of twenty twenty one, there was a breakthrough in that case when a call from a detective in Tangipahoa Parish changed everything for the detective. So another detective call McKee and he said, I heard you were looking into a year old homicide and I have a victim here that I'm working with that has some information on that possibly. Now, the victim in that case was a twenty three year old woman who was involved in an abusive relationship. So she files a complaint against her boyfriend for assault in tangipahoe A Parish, and she mentions that her boyfriend also had information about the murder of a woman in Clinton known to Manny as Miss g. So these two detectives, they're talking to each other on the telephone and McKee is fired up about this new information and he hangs up the phone. He says, we're coming there.

17:16 We want to talk to her, and he rounds up his sheriff, who is known as Sheriff Bunch and Detective Joel Odom. They speed towards Tanjebaho Paris to see what information they could get out of this twenty three year old victim. So that twenty three year old victim, she tells McKee the same story regarding her boyfriend and what he told her, and that boyfriend's name was Donnie Fisher. So they look in to Donnie Fisher and this guy, y'all, he is about as shady as they come. He was only twenty six years old, yet he had a rap sheet as long as a free and CVS receipt. He was a drug dealer, a thief, an armed robber. He's not exactly the guy you'd want your kids to hang out with, or you'd want to hang out with if you were an upstanding citizen.

18:14 Right. So they go to talk to Donnie Fisher and they pull him into the station and they question him and McKee was armed with these crime scene photos and as they're talking to Donnie Fisher and y'all, this is a tactic in law enforcement, he starts pulling out those gruesome pictures and he picks the most heart wrenching ones of Janor's lifeless body on the floor with blood everywhere, her head barely recognizable, and he slams those photos down on the table in front of Fisher and he yells did she deserve this? And right there Fisher breaks and oh, what a story he has to tell. So Fisher reveals that the night after Jenore was murdered, he and his girlfriend moved in with none other than Philip and Amy Skipper, along with a teenager name John Ballelo. And he says that they were actually hired to clean up Jenior's house after the murder by Jenior's family, and when they were all busy with the cleanup, he said, balle Loo casually drops a bombshell about how they took out Jenore. He basically says Balleto spills all the details. He said that

19:46 Balato said they shot her, stabbed her, and even used a baseball bat. And it gets worse. He even told Fisher that post mortem they took turns. He went on to say that later that night, after they clean up the house, Philip Skipper he's pissed at balle Loo because he heard him telling Fisher all this. So the next day, Skipper tells Fisher, hey, man, let's go take a ride. And they get in the car and they start hitting down these country roads and rural Louisiana right and one of these roads in particular, is just totally deserted. Nothing on either side of the road. You're in the middle of nowhere. And Fisher said, at that point, I thought he was going to kill me and just dump me in the middle of nowhere, but he said instead Philip Fisher actually confirmed Ballelow's story, saying what would you think about I told you we killed miss g and Fisher said he responded with I wouldn't think nothing. You wouldn't trust me no more. So Philip Skipper kind of ends the conversation with if if you ever talk, I'm going to kill you. God forgives, but the Brotherhood don't. And I'll get back to what the Brotherhood is a little later on in the story. So back to the investigation,

21:17 and when you're working a murder case and you're a detective, there's three things that you need. You need means, opportunity, and motive. And guess what, Philip Skipper he had all three. He lived right across the street, he had easy access to the weapons, and even had a key to Genoor's house through his wife. But the big question was why why would he want to kill her? I mean, initially the Skippers were friends with Jennire, but as the detective dug deeper, he found out there was a situation that caused a rift between the Skippers and Jenore and it came down to a goat of all things, sa McKey.

22:10 He discovers that a month before Jenore's death, one of Jenoor's pitbulls killed a goat that belonged to the Skippers. So Amy Skipper, the wife, she goes over to Jenoor's house and she basically rips her ass over this over a goat, to the point that Jenore is crying. The fight was so intense, in fact, that Jenore told several of her friends after this and even stated that she was done with the Skippers for good. But the detective, he's thinking, there's no way a goat would cause them to murder Jenore so brutally, so he keeps digging and he discovers something else that would be an even larger motive, and that was a twenty five thousand dollars life insurance policy that Janore had in which Philip and Amy Skipper were the beneficiaries. So when the detective asked Fisher if he knew anything about this, Fisher claimed that Philip was actually expecting a larger payout somewhere around one hundred thousand dollars, and was furious when he found out it was only a twenty five thousand dollars policy. So that quickly we have motive. So on August eighth of twenty twenty one, McKee,

23:42 along with some state troopers and detectives, they gear up for this big operation at the Skippers trailer. And at this time it's been over a year since Janore was murdered, so it's a pretty tense situation. So they break down the door and they they find several things. They find a stashing knives, they find a couple of baseball bats. They even find some twenty two caliber ammo, and even a handful of spent shellcasings from a twenty two. Now that's important because she was stabbed, she was hit with baseball bats, and she was shot with a twenty two caliber weapon, and why the hell would you have spent shellcases? Right?

24:29 Nobody keeps that, So McKee he doesn't waste any time. He swoops up the evidence, and then he swoops up Philip Skipper and he charges him with the first degree murder of Jenoor Guillery. Then a few days later, he's hot on the trail of balle Loo, who was hiding out at a friends trailer. But when the cops come a knocking, balle Lo isn't exactly playing to go down without a fight, so he makes a run for it into the woods. But after about thirty minutes of playing hide and seek the Tingjibahoa deputies, they unleashed the canines and balle Loo. He don't like the canines. He doesn't want any of that. He comes out of hiding and gets arrested. So throughout this story there's someone I haven't told you about, and this guy is a real piece of shit. His name is Johnny Hoet, and Hoit probably had the worst rap sheet of all of these fools.

25:36 At just twenty two years old, he already had aggravated robbery charges, assault charges, just a rap sheet as long as my arm, and he had the tough guy look. His head was shaved almost to his scalp. He had this real thick go tee. He just looked like the kind of guy that you're not necessarily going to pick a fight with. Right, pretty intimidating looking guy. But Hoyt was not your average scumbag. He was also the mastermind of a budding skinhead group called the Brotherhood, and alongside him were his original crew members guess who, Philip Skipper and John Blello and these guys they weren't just hanging out, making up their own little club. Right. They had the letters g fb D tattooed across their back and guess what that stood for? God forgives, the Brotherhood doesn't. And according to Donnie Fisher, Hoyt was also involved in the murder of General or Guillery. So the detective he goes on the search for Johnny Hoyt and he actually finds him serving time in a federal prison where he was placed three months after the murder of Jim Nor for possessing three sought off shotguns by a felon. Here's what happened.

27:06 After all the dust settled in this murtyer and everyone was interviewed and the pieces were pieced together. Philip Skipper John Ballelo. They hop into Phillip's pickup truck and they had to Hold in Louisiana. Now Holding is a small town, it's about forty miles from Clinton, and they're on a mission. They're going there to pick up Johnny Hoyt. So they pick them up and they head back to Clinton and they're getting drunk, doing shots, they're doing drugs. They're doing a ton of value actually, and things take kind of a dark term when balle Loo he just starts firing a twenty two caliber revolver into the sky and he turns to Philip and he says, would you like to kill him? N word? And I'll let you fill that in. So, once they get back to Skipper's trailer, balle Loo is so shitfaced he can't hardly get out of the truck.

28:08 He steps out of the truck and just busts his ass and then they go into the trailer. But around one am, Johnny Hoyt he decides to wake up Ballelo from his drunken stupor, and he says, it's time for you to earn that tattoo on your back, So take your shoes off so you don't leave no footprints, and let's go. So, with Ballelo leading the charge, they walk out of the trailer and they walk across that gravel road and they walk up to Jenoor Guillery's house. So balle Loo he claims that this was all over an initiation into the brotherhood, and in his version, it all went down like this. Lisa, she approaches the side door of Jenniore's house and y'all, Lisa is Johnny Hoyt's girlfriend, and she kind of faked that she needed some money, she needed to buy diapers for her baby, and did Jenore have any money for diapers? And as Jenniore's talking to her about this, Philip Skipper, Johnny Hoyt and John balle Loow they're in the background. They're in the shadows waiting for their opportunity. Jenoor, she's clad in a long blue nightgown. She's accompanied by her child, and her child's name was Cleo. She answers the door. She's talking to Lisa,

29:40 and Hoyt jumps into the door and punches Jennore. The dog. The child then lunges at Hoyt. He's defending his owner right but balle Loo manages to restrain the dog and he takes the dog and ties the dog with a rope nowhere, then takes off running. She's trying to get to something and she grabs the phone in the kitchen. She grabs her keys at the same time. She runs to the front door, and the front door is locked, and she's fumbling with those keys and just drops the keys on the ground. She finally goes back to the kitchen. She tries to pick up the phone. It gets slapped out of her hand, which is why the busy signal was being reported by her coworkers. Remember I told you that at the beginning, and there's a trail of blood.

30:30 You can just follow her throughout that house. She gets to that drawer in the kitchen. She opens the drawer, she grabs a knife, but Hoyt, he's relentless and she's just unable to defend herself effectively. She takes off running again. She retreats to that bedroom, and that was pretty much her last stand. She gets shot in her left hand and arm. She continues to fight, but ultimately she was stabbed multiple times by Lisa, numerous wounds, one of which pierced her left long and then, as if that weren't enough, the perpetrators pick up a ceramic lamp and a couple of baseball bats to ensure she was dead. Balle Loow was even quoted as saying she fought all the way to the end. So the four perpetrators at that time, they looted the home of the jewelry. They take the dog, they tie it up right outside the door, and they returned to the trailer. At this point, they get indicted for first degree murder and a salw other charges. Philip Skipper was also charged with the repeated aggravated rape of John Balilo, who they found out he had been raping after balle Loo had been in his custody for three years.

31:55 They also indicted Lisa Hoyt. Now, this involvement in the brutal martyr of Jenial Gillery surprised even the most hardened investigators at first, but later after Sheriff Bunch figured her out, He's like, that girl is absolutely evil. She comes from an evil family, now McKee, he didn't quit once the arrest happened. He kept digging, looking for as many details as possible about these four killers, and he found out that less than two weeks after Janior Gillery's murder, a dope dealer in Saint Helena Parrish, a guy with the habit of flashing wads of cash, he had been shot in the head on the gravel Road. Someone then set the dope dealer and his pickup truck on fire, and just after that murder, Lisa Hoyt told friends that she was the one who shot the dealer in the head, and her husband, Johnny Hoyt, he helped burn the body.

32:54 He even found out the four of them also dabbled in grave robbing. They broke into coffins and they would steal jewelry, watch his gold teeth from the body of the dead. Balelo even said it was dirty work. They would pry open the lid of one coffin spot a nice ring and when they pulled the ring off, the finger came off with it. What a fucking bunch of sick people. Lisa even bragged to a friend that an antique watch she wore came from a grave and the sheriff said they were taking people's teeth and making necklaces out of them. Wow. So they're sitting in jail and something very shocking happens. The charges actually get dropped after the lab results came back. There were no identifiable fingerprints at the crime scene. The baseball bat McKeith found at Philip Skipper's trailer had been outside for a year, so the rain had washed away any DNA evidence that might have been used on it. The gun used to shoot Janoor had been a revolver. There were no shell casings from the crime scene to compare to those that I told you McKee had found in Philip Skipper's trailer, so they just didn't have anything to compare. According to Ballelo, the gun itself had been broken into pieces and tossed

34:26 into the Amy River and Hoyt, Philip and Lisa, they all refused to talk. They weren't saying anything. Only Ballelo was saying all this now. The life insurance policy which did pay out twenty five thousand of Philip and Amy Skipper three months out after the murder, it was really just circumstantial evidence. Just because somebody gets life insurance doesn't mean they killed somebody. Right, the second and third hand accounts from people who came forward and said they heard Philip and others admit to killing Janore Guillery, that was all considered hearsay in court. The only thing they had was John Ballelow's statement, and that's not you know what I mean? Is he believable? I mean, this guy's got kind of a record. He's not exactly someone that a jury would believe in a lot of cases. But the cops they want to take it to trial. The DA he didn't. He didn't think there was enough there. So in January of two thousand and two, four months after their rest guess what. All the charges get dropped, except for balle Loo because he had confessed during telling the police about this whole scenario, he gets left in jail. Now, later that year, voters in East Feliciana their outrage over this and they end up voting the da out of

35:58 office and put in a year aggressive new district attorney who was still the district attorney incidentally in East Feliciana parish. His name was Sam d'aquilla, and I've actually met him, he's been in the studio now. Before Daquilla's election, Sheriff Bunch extracted a promise from the aspiring district attorney that if he got elected, he would take a fresh look at the Guillery case. And he also lobbied Dquilla pretty hard. He wanted the case prosecuted, and Daquilla wanted it prosecuted as well. McKee said that Daquilla was on board from the get go. Now, unlike other prosecutors, Daquilla wasn't afraid to take a chance, and as soon as he took office, he reopened that Guillery case. Although he knew the case had problems, he wanted a jury to decide it. So Daquilla charges all four with second degree murder. It was a simpler charge to prove and less cause to prosecute the first degree murder. The charge didn't allow for the death penalty, but in Louisiana, second degree murder does carry a mandatory life sentence, and life means life in Louisiana.

37:14 So he then offers a deal to John Ballelo. He had been in jail since his arrest in August of two thousand and one, and he basically told balle Loo, look, if you'll testify against the other three, Daquila would let him plead guilty as a juvenile and recommend a sentence of juvenile life, which would get him out of jail on his twenty first birthday. And it's important to note without Ballelo's testimony, Daquilla has nothing. He has nothing. That's the only person that witnessed any of this right. So he had to cut a deal with the devil, basically, and he said, we tried to make the best case that we could, and in July two thousand and four, in East Feliciana jury they find Philip Skipper guilty of second degree murder Johnny Hoyd. He then goes on trial in February of two thousand and five, and guess what, He's also found guilty of second degree murder and both were sentenced to life in prison. In Bloody Angla, now Lisa Hoyd, she pleads guilty to manslaughter and she gets sentenced to the maximum of manslaughter which is forty years in prison. And in exchange for his testimony, Ballele was prosecuted as a juvenile. He pled guilty to second degree murder was sentenced to What's none as juvenile life. No charges were ever filed against Amy Skipper. Both Don McKee and Sam Daquilla were convinced that she didn't play any

38:44 part in Jenore Guillory's murder. When asked what he thinks of them, meaning Johnny and Lisa and Philip, Sam Dequilla shook his head and said, those are some evil people and that is the tragic story of miss Jenor Guillery and the incarceration and Bloody Andngla of those who killed her. Thank you so much for listening. I'm about to get real active with the Patreon so check it out, check us out on Facebook, give us a follow. Please rate the podcast if you have not yet done so, and you're enjoying the content. And until next time, I'm Jim Chapman for Bloody and Gola, a podcast one and forty two years in the making, the complete story of America's bloodiest present Peace.

39:56 A Wall Street Line, Shackle, Change, Oh, Gluesome Gird. It's calling by the name, there is no mercy and it's been a tentery juice. As the huge stream game Rango the three. I'm here behind. By, here to die, inside these walls, inside the wild and when the wars I know it's Aboody Angle, obody Angle, the bad and bad