Episode 163:
Police Find Boiling Pot & Murder Recipe Left Behind by Victims’ Beloved Son
On November 28, 2016, Lisa Guy was due at Jacobs Engineering for her last day of work. She was a human resources manager and had planned to say goodbye to her colleagues in person. By lunchtime she had not arrived and was not answering her phone. Her boss, Jennifer, called the police in Knox County, Tennessee, and asked for a welfare check.
No one answered the door at the two-story house in Hardin Valley. When the officer lifted the mail slot, hot air and the smell of decay came out. Sausage and bacon lay scattered near the entrance, and both of the couple's cars were in the garage. He went in through the garage door. The thermostat was set to 90 degrees. The couple's wallets lay on the living room table beside a large hammer and a rifle. In a pot on the kitchen stove he found Lisa's head. Upstairs were a man's severed hand and two large plastic drums holding the dismembered remains of Lisa and her husband, Joel, in chemicals. The family dog was shut in a bedroom, dehydrated but unharmed. No door or window had been forced.
The Son They Were Proud Of
Joel Guy Sr., 61, was a pipeline design engineer with three daughters from his first marriage. With his second wife, Lisa, six years younger, he had a son, and he gave the boy his own name: Joel Michael Guy Jr. The family called him Michael. Lisa helped raise her stepdaughters as her own. In 2016 Joel retired, and the couple decided to sell the house and move about ninety miles away. Michael was 28, and they felt it was time he supported himself. Lisa told colleagues she felt terrible that she could no longer help him and that they would talk it over at Thanksgiving. On November 24, Michael and his three sisters came for dinner. Lisa talked about a Christmas party at the new house. Michael was smiling with the rest of them. Two days later, on the morning of Saturday, November 26, Lisa bought sausage and bacon at Walmart and drove home. She was not seen again.
The Medical Student Who Wasn't
Michael had always been a strong student. His parents understood that he was at the top of his class in medical school at Louisiana State University and planned to become a plastic surgeon, and they paid for an apartment near campus so he could concentrate on his studies. When detectives called the university, it had no record of him being enrolled in medical school. He was unemployed and had been lying to his parents for years, and they had just told him the money was about to stop. He had found another source. Lisa's life insurance would pay $500,000 if she died or disappeared. With his father alive the money would be shared, so he decided to kill them both and make it look as though his father had done it. Police arrested him at the apartment the day after the bodies were found. In the trunk of his car were a meat grinder and cans of gasoline.
The Notebook in the Backpack
What led police to him was a backpack left in the house. Inside were a notebook and receipts. The notebook listed the steps: buy a knife, use bleach to break down the bodies, run hot water over them in the shower, break the bones with a sledgehammer, flush what remained. It included a plan to put Joel's skin under Lisa's fingernails so that it would look as though he had attacked her, and the final step was to burn the house down. The receipts showed hydrochloric acid, hydrogen peroxide, bleach and a knife bought between November 7 and 9, paid for in cash at self-checkout. The store's cameras showed the buyer was Michael. Investigators concluded that he attacked his father first, upstairs, while his mother was at the store. Joel was stabbed 42 times. Lisa came home around 12:30 p.m. and was stabbed 30 times; she had nine broken ribs and defensive wounds.
Final Thoughts
The plan failed over a cut. Michael had sliced his thumb badly during the struggle with his mother and could not finish what he had started. On November 27 he drove back to his apartment to have it treated at a hospital, intending to return in a few days. He left the backpack behind, and the welfare check came before he did. While awaiting trial he left a note threatening to gouge out another inmate's eyes, which observers took as an attempt to appear mentally ill. In 2020 a jury convicted him on every count, including premeditated murder and mutilation of a corpse. He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms plus four years. He appealed on the ground that officers had entered his parents' home without a warrant. The courts held that the entry was lawful because it was made during a welfare check with signs of an emergency.
Joel Guy Jr. sat through Thanksgiving dinner with his family two weeks after buying the supplies for their murder, and nobody at the table noticed anything wrong. His parents had supported him financially until he was 28. Were there warning signs a family could reasonably have been expected to see?
WE DOCUMENT.
YOU DECIDE.
Our interpretation is only one possible perspective.
