The Gruesome Murder of Joel and Lisa Guy
Their son did nothing but take from them; when they finally said no to him, he took their lives.
Thanksgiving 2016 was pretty typical for the Guy family: Joel Guy, Sr., 61, and his wife, Lisa Guy, 55, hosted their blended family at their Knoxville home: Joel Sr.’s three daughters from a previous marriage, along with their spouses and children, and the couple’s son, Joel Guy, Jr., 28, who was single and until recently, had attended college at Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
This year was a little different, but in a good way: Joel Jr., who was normally very stand-offish, seemed happy and outgoing. This was a drastic difference from previous years, when he would stay in his childhood bedroom, only coming out for meals, and rebuffing any attempt at conversation with silence or a snide remark. This year, he smiled and socialized with the family during the entire visit. He interacted with his nieces and nephews — for the first time, really — and even gave them some of his old toys.
After the holiday, Joel Sr.’s daughters left with their families, but Joel Jr. stayed. It didn’t seem odd to anyone; after all, Joel Jr. had been dependent on his family his whole life. At 28, he was still in college, and had never worked or supported himself. Joel Sr. had tried to cut him off before, but Lisa took a job so that she could continue sending money to their son.
Though she was doing it for Joel Jr., Lisa was good at her job and well liked by her co-workers. So when she announced that she was going to retire in two weeks, her co-workers planned a special retirement lunch for her on the Monday after Thanksgiving.
But when she didn’t show up for work that Monday, her co-workers were worried. Lisa was always dependable; she would have called if she was going to be absent. She wasn’t answering her phone, so her supervisor called the Knoxville police to conduct a welfare check.
Once inside the Guys’ home, the police immediately noticed how hot the house was, and a strong, eye-watering odor of chemicals.
Just inside the door, bags of groceries were scattered near the door, the ice cream and other foods melting, as though someone had simply dropped them as they walked in.
Several large jugs of bleach, rolls of trash bags, and other cleaning supplies sat on the kitchen floor and table.
And on the stove was a large stew pot with a lid on it, the burner on beneath it. The police officer simply turned the burner off, but didn’t look inside. Yet.
As they walked through the Guys’ home, they found even more grisly evidence: on the staircase were blood stains on the carpets and walls. Nearby, they saw the thermostat showing that the heat had been turned up to 90 degrees. They could also hear a dog barking from somewhere upstairs.
Upstairs, police found bloody knives and the Guys’ clothing in piles on the floor, along with large containers of drain cleaner, hydrogen peroxide, and other chemicals. The dog they were hearing was inside the laundry room, where he had been shut inside for days.
After calling animal control to come take custody of the dog, they continued their search.
In the exercise room, near a large area of blood spatter, they found Joel Sr.’s severed hands.
Then, in the master bathroom, they found something that would stay with the detectives for years: in two large blue plastic bins, the dismembered remains of the Guys were submerged in acid, dissolving “in a diabolical stew of human remains,” according to the officers.
As investigators recovered the Guys’ remains from the house, they realized that Lisa’s head wasn’t in the tubs. They would later find it in the stewpot that had been bubbling on the stove.
An autopsy would determine that the Guys had been stabbed dozens of times, then dismembered and their torsos cut open to facilitate the acid solution dissolving their remains.
Further searching revealed a wealth of clues in the Guys’ home. The most damning piece of evidence: a spiral notebook prosecutors would call the “book of premeditation” found in Joel Jr.’s childhood bedroom. It was filled with handwritten to-do lists describing how to kill the Guys and dispose of their bodies, such as “Get killing knives,” “Bring blender and food grinder — grind meat,” and “flush chunks down the toilet — not garbage disposal.” It also included notes about how to dissolve their remains, including turning the heater up all the way to speed up the chemical reaction with the acid.
There were also notes about how much money and assets — including an insurance policy — the Guys owned.
That final detail provided a clear motive. Whoever had killed them knew about their finances and was counting on collecting Lisa’s $500,000 life-insurance policy.
In questioning the Guys’ friends and family, police learned that both Joel Sr. and Lisa had recently decided to retire. They had just sold the home in Knoxville — the one they had been murdered in — and had purchased another, smaller, home in Surgoinsville in northeast Tennessee. Before they were killed, they had told several people that they were going to break the news to Joel Jr. that they were no longer going to support him, so he was going to have to “stand on his own two feet.”
Store surveillance from days earlier captured Joel Jr. buying several of the items found at the crime scene and in the “book of premeditation,” including knives, bleach, and acid.
When police went to arrest him in Baton Rouge, he attempted to flee. He was quickly apprehended with a brand-new food grinder in the trunk of his car.
Though he thought he had created a genius plan — including programming his mother’s phone to call him one he was back in Baton Rouge, in order to establish an alibi and confuse her time of death — it had all fallen apart when police were called to their home before Joel Jr. could finish destroying the crime scene by setting fire to it.
Joel Guy, Jr., was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, three counts of felony murder, and two counts of abuse of a corpse. His trial began Sept. 28, 2020.
The prosecution argued that Joel Jr. had attacked his father while he was on his treadmill in the exercise room, then ambushed his mother when she came home from the grocery store. He then dismembered them in the shower and placed their remains in the acid solution. However, he apparently cut his hand during his crimes, so interrupted his crime-scene clean-up to go to a store for first-aid supplies, where he was caught on camera. It’s not clear why he abandoned his elaborate plan before he finished carrying it out. Perhaps he felt he needed to get back to Louisiana to try to establish an alibi; perhaps it had simply proven to be too physically difficult and he just gave up, hoping the fire he had thought he’d set would erase all the evidence.
His defense was that he had been so happy and outgoing, he couldn’t have been planning a murder.
After only four days, he was found guilty on all charges and given two consecutive life sentences plus four years. He will be eligible for parole in 130 years.
