-Jerry was such a nice man,
such a good person,
good-hearted, never would hurt a soul.
-He wanted his own business, something to make money.
-Jerry was gay.
He was always searching for love,
and it just didn't happen.
-A vicious murder.
-32 times he was stabbed.
-This is personal, some sort of personal rage.
-Was it someone Jerry just met?
-He was on multiple dating apps.
-Jerry was looking for a new roommate.
It could just be somebody he brought home.
-A prison pen pal?
-We have an inmate who has a criminal record
that's been released.
Did he come over to Jerry's house?
-Or perhaps an old friend?
-Wayne was a troubled fellow.
He would spend a lot of nights on Jerry's couch.
-What was it that led to a killer relationship?
I was like, "God, Jerry just signed his death warrant."
-He tried to fight for his life.
♪♪
-Ask anyone who knows 46-year-old Jerry Moore,
and they'll tell you this --
he never met a stranger.
Gregarious and kind,
Jerry has a knack for putting people at ease.
That's why it's so shocking
when, on a cold winter's night in January 2014,
his life is cut short by a ruthless killer.
The search for the culprit leads law enforcement
down a path of unexpected twists and turns,
where the truth is elusive and justice is not swift.
[ Line ringing ]
[ Siren wailing ]
-We pull up to the house,
and then I make contact
with the initial responding officers.
They said the neighbor across the street
called and said that they found the door open
and the house looked like it was ransacked.
I walk in the house.
As soon as I walk into the living room,
I see blood everywhere.
As I stepped further and looked over the edge of the couch,
that's when I observed the victim
lying face down in a pool of blood.
We go over to the body.
And then once they start pulling his shirt up,
that's when we start noticing the stab wounds.
He not only had stab wounds on his back,
but he had stab wounds on the front,
defensive wounds.
We learned the victim's name was Jerry Moore.
He suffered. He definitely suffered.
It was very apparent that he had been there
for more than several hours.
When you see injuries of this nature,
my investigative mind immediately goes to,
"This is some sort of personal rage,
something with a lot of emotion behind it."
-There was no forced entry at all into that house.
So right away, it's telling me
that whoever came into this house,
Jerry had to have known who they were and let them in.
You start thinking, "Okay, who did he have in his house?"
♪♪
-Jerry Moore is born on June 3rd, 1967,
in Orrville, Ohio.
-Jerry was a real sweet boy.
As he grew up, he was outgoing and happy.
If he just met you, he would do anything for you.
If you needed a dollar, he would give you $2.
-By the time he's two years old, Jerry's parents split up.
His mother has primary custody,
but he spends weekends and holidays
with his father and stepmother, Judy.
Jerry called me "Mom."
We just loved each other
and became the best friends there ever was.
He was real smart.
He could figure out anything.
Jerry tried to save every dime that he had.
He wanted to start his own business.
When he graduated from high school, he went into computers.
-As a teenager, Jerry has a knack for business,
but he silently struggles to find his place socially.
-He shared that he was gay when he was in his 20s,
and I told him, "I love you."
I don't care about him being gay.
-Despite the love and support from his family,
Jerry finds life in Orrville, Ohio, stifling.
With a population of just under 9,000,
the small town just isn't big enough for the life Jerry wants.
So, at age 29, he moves to Atlanta, Georgia.
-The Atlanta area is kind of what we call
the gay Mecca of the East.
He would go to the local bars trying to meet people.
Our friendship started in 1996.
I had gone out to a little local country-and-western bar.
[ Indistinct conversations, up-tempo music plays ]
-When I came off the dance floor,
he came over there and grabbed my shoulder
and spun me around, and he goes,
"I want to see who is this queen in the red Wonder Woman boots?"
That started our friendship.
Jerry and I -- we were always platonic.
We had fun, a good friendship.
But he always was wanting to settle down and have a partner.
-Jerry's love life is lacking, but his business acumen is not.
In 1996, he leaves the tech world
to try his hand in the real estate business.
-He told me that he just wanted something to make money.
He bought several houses, and he was trying to flip them.
You know, he just wanted to reach a level to feel successful
and his family be proud of him.
-Over a period of 10 years,
Jerry successfully renovates and sells dozens of properties.
And in 2006, he buys a place of his own
in Marietta, Georgia, 20 miles north of Atlanta.
-Jerry lived across the street. He worked from home.
He was just always there
and decorating his house and doing things.
And he was like another brother to me.
-He liked the fact that house had split living quarters
because, in his mind,
he always thought he would have a roommate.
Since he was gay, he thought another gay person
would get along great.
Jerry posted ads, and he had found someone to rent the room.
-His name is Ross.
Ross and Jerry hit it off as roommates and as friends.
A few months after moving in, they start talking business.
-The bakery that Ross worked at, the owner needed to sell it.
So Ross approached Jerry, and he said,
"You know, would you consider investing in a bakery?"
Jerry was open to it.
Jerry handled the money side of everything,
and Ross was the baker
and kept the operations going throughout the week.
-It's an ideal situation.
Jerry and Ross own it 50/50, and business booms.
Three years after they join forces,
Jerry and Ross have enough money
to expand and renovate the bakery.
-There was a whole new cake decorating room.
Ross was excited to show it.
And they had a grand reopening.
They had the highest revenues they'd ever made.
Jerry was quite excited.
-The bakery continues to flourish,
but on the home front, change is in the air.
In 2013, after seven years as roommates,
Ross decides he needs a place of his own.
He moves into a townhouse closer to the bakery
while Jerry looks for a new roommate.
But instead of a fresh start, Jerry is met with an awful end,
found dead in his living room, violently stabbed to death.
-This was my first case as a lead detective.
I've assisted in homicides before,
but this was my first time as being the actual lead detective.
And it's a lot of pressure.
The house was dusted for fingerprints.
Jerry's cellphone was collected.
That's an important piece of evidence.
-We made contact with several neighbors
to ask them about mysterious vehicles
or suspicious persons that they saw at the home.
-The neighbors, Pam and John Blair,
made the 911 call.
They were probably the closest with him.
They knew about Jerry.
They talked to Jerry all the time.
-They said Jerry was a partner in a bakery
with a gentleman named Ross Byrne.
They said Ross and Jerry lived together for seven years.
-Because he lived with the victim for so long,
he would have the most information
of who Jerry was friends with, who he had problems with.
So we made contact with Ross.
We told him that Jerry was killed.
He was surprised, and I asked him
if he would come in and talk to us.
Ross agrees to come into our headquarters.
-[ Groans ]
-He wasn't upset.
And I'm thinking to myself
right off the bat, "That's kind of strange."
Ross said they live separate rooms in the house.
Ross's room was to the back,
and Jerry's room was in the front.
They barely had a friendship.
The extent of their relationship was more just the business.
When it comes to stabbings,
I'll always look at somebody's hands.
And I'm looking to see if there's any kind of injuries
to show there was any kind of fight or struggle.
I looked at his hands,
and I didn't notice anything on his hands.
Ross is like, "Yeah, he was looking for a new roommate
and made mention that he possibly had a prospect
for a new roommate, but never had a name."
Ross told us that Wayne was a troubled fellow.
He was broke. He was homeless.
He would spend a lot of nights on Jerry's couch,
and at times he would borrow Jerry's car.
That kind of raised suspicions about Wayne.
Here's a guy that frequents Jerry's house,
possibly knows Jerry's patterns.
So this was pushing Wayne to the top of the list.
-We needed to find Wayne.
-Somebody really had some hatred
and really wanted to make sure he was dead.
-He's got a documented history of using a knife.
-He committed the murder.
We just had to prove it.
-Hours into the murder investigation of Jerry Moore,
his former roommate, Ross, tells Cobb County investigators
that Jerry used to allow a drifter named Wayne
to occasionally sleep on his couch.
Luckily, investigators discovered
that Jerry's phone is not password-protected
and his call logs are readily available,
making the search for Wayne that much easier.
-That night, we get Wayne's phone number
out of Jerry's phone. [ Keypad beeping ]
We subpoena Wayne's phone. [ Cellphone ringing ]
We get the records back from Verizon,
but all we get is a name.
We don't have an address associated with it.
We noticed a number that this Wayne guy
was constantly calling.
There was a lot of calls made to a female
by the name of Michelle Burnett.
We were able to get an address for Michelle.
Detective Stoddard and Sergeant Knoblach
went out to speak to her.
-We met with Michelle.
We explained to her we had information to believe
that someone by the name of Wayne
may have information to help us.
She said she hadn't spoken to him in the last 24 to 48 hours,
which was not normal.
-Michelle calls, but gets no answer.
-We need to talk to him, and she understood that completely.
We were hoping that she would be able to make contact
with Wayne at some point and see where he was at.
-Hoping Michelle connects with Wayne,
the detectives now need to identify
who Jerry Moore's next of kin is and inform them of his murder.
Around sunrise the next morning,
they being making the difficult calls.
-They call my husband -- Jerry's father, Larry --
and told him.
And I just fell to pieces.
It just tore me apart.
[ Voice breaking ] It killed me.
[ Sniffles ]
-Jerry's mother reached out to me.
She said the police called
and he had been murdered in a home invasion.
How in the world could this even happen to him?
My mind starts, you know,
playing out scenarios of how, when, and why.
When Jerry said, "Well, I'm gonna be placing ads
for a roommate again,"
I really felt like it's possible that some random person
without intentions of renting a place
didn't like gay people and was gonna answer the ad
and do harm to them.
So I phoned the Cobb County detectives.
[ Line ringing ] -I get a phone call
from Jerry's friend Randy.
Randy was very concerned
that Jerry brought the wrong guy home.
-I remember Detective Stockinger
asked me what I knew of Wayne.
-Randy mentioned that Jerry was trying
to help Wayne find a job,
so we know he's somebody close to Jerry.
-Knowing what I knew about Wayne
and how much he adored Jerry as a friend,
I just couldn't believe that, and I said,
"I don't think he's capable of anything like that."
-36 hours after Jerry Moore is found dead,
the autopsy report comes in.
While no foreign DNA is discovered on the body,
the savageness of the crime is clearly evident.
-32 times he was stabbed.
That amount of stab wounds...
You know, somebody really had some hatred for him
and really wanted to make sure he was dead.
-At this point, the investigators consider Wayne
their strongest suspect.
He's finally located three days after the murder.
-Wayne's friend Michelle
was able to get in contact with Wayne
and told Wayne that the police were looking for him.
So Wayne contacted us and agreed to meet with us.
He said he was staying with a female friend.
He was very fidgety, very nervous.
We know Jerry's killed sometime Sunday,
so we started asking him what his weekend looked like.
He said they hung out at his apartment for the day
and then went out to dinner.
And he actually gave us his name and contact information.
You know, obviously, I want to reach out to this friend now
and confirm if this story's true.
-Then Wayne says something
that grabs the detectives' attention.
-He said Jerry was pen pals and friends
with an inmate in Kentucky with the first name Chris.
Jerry found a lot of these inmates
through different inmate websites.
Wayne said this Chris guy
was supposed to be getting out of prison in September of 2013,
which was just three months before the murder.
And I said, "Why are you so concerned?"
And he said, "'Cause he talked about
that When Chris was gonna get out,
Chris was supposed to come visit Jerry."
-You have a convicted felon, possibly for a violent crime,
and now you're possibly opening up your home to them.
-Cobb County investigators
are on the hunt for Jerry Moore's killer.
And a statement from a drifter named Wayne
has police concerned.
Wayne claims he spent the day with a friend named Tibur
when Jerry was murdered,
and he thought Jerry had plans to meet up
with a recently released parolee named Chris.
But is Wayne telling the truth?
Or is he trying to throw detectives off his track?
-After we got done interviewing Wayne,
the first thing I did was reach out to this friend, Tiburcio.
Tiburcio confirmed Wayne's story.
-Investigators are satisfied that Wayne is being truthful
and cross him off the suspect list.
Now they turn their attention to Chris,
the parolee who was allegedly planning to move in with Jerry.
-We'd researched through the Kentucky prison system.
We went online and started searching inmates.
Eventually, I was able to identify a person
by the name of Chris Staggs,
who was released from prison in September of 2013,
which was just three months before the murder.
I reached out to the local sheriff's office.
They were familiar with Chris, and they told us
that he was living with his parents in Kentucky
and that Chris also had a girlfriend.
We learned that since he was released from prison,
there was no communications at all between Jerry and Chris.
We didn't completely eliminate him,
but he wasn't my main focus anymore.
It's a little frustrating because we had no direction
to go in at that time.
I want to prove to my supervisors
that they made the right choice by making me the lead on it,
and I keep hitting dead ends.
-Two weeks after his death,
Jerry's loved ones meet to honor their friend.
-We decided to hold a local memorial in Marietta.
And a lot of people turned out.
There was an opportunity during that memorial
for friends to deliver thoughts and memories of Jerry
and I do remember Wayne sharing
and I think that was healing for him.
And I'm just thankful that he could be there
and be a part of that.
-Both Randy and Pam brought it to my attention
that Ross Byrne never showed up.
-Ross, his partner, ex-roommate,
never showed up at the memorial.
It was just odd.
-That started raising a little bit of suspicion.
Like, here's this guy that lived with him for seven years,
owns a business with him,
and yet he doesn't show up to his memorial service.
Why?
During my conversation with Jerry's mom,
and she said Jerry wasn't happy
with the bakery business and Jerry wanted out.
That's kind of strange.
When we talked to him, why didn't Ross mention that to us,
that Jerry wanted out of the business?
That raised a lot of flags with us.
-After further interviews with friends and family,
we started learning that Ross and Jerry's
relationship wasn't great.
There was some tension between both of them.
-Thinking about Jerry and Ross
and the dysfunctional dynamic of their relationship,
it was like an old married couple who stay together
and just coexist, living in different parts of the house.
They just really weren't jelling well together anymore.
And so I conveyed that to Detective Stockinger.
-Randy said that Jerry was just tired
of dealing with the business and he just wanted out.
He wanted Ross to pay him $35,000
for his share of the business to buy him out,
and Ross just kept refusing to buy him out of the business.
-And there's something else.
Jerry had named his friend Randy Doolittle
as executor of his estate.
After the crime scene was cleared,
Randy collected Jerry's will
and a business agreement for the bakery.
-One of the provisions said if either party is deceased
that the surviving party will gain
full and free control of the bakery.
-Randy came to us, and Randy said,
"Hey, I got copies of this business agreement."
-When you start looking at this case,
who would benefit from Jerry getting murdered?
-Maybe Ross sees this
as his way of getting Jerry out of the picture.
If anything ever happened to Jerry,
Ross would get the whole business for himself.
This could have been the plan all along.
-When I read that, that was like a gut punch.
I was like, "God, Jerry just signed his death warrant
back when he signed that document."
-Three weeks after Jerry Moore is found stabbed to death
at his home in Marietta, Georgia,
Investigators are wondering if a business deal gone wrong
is a motive for murder.
-Money, love, power, revenge.
In almost every single homicide,
you can toss one of those at it.
So now we have money.
-We decide it's time to bring Ross back in
for a second interview.
He was holding back on us.
I started not being as nice
because I wanted answers.
That Saturday, he worked at the bakery all day.
And then that Sunday,
he said he had a housewarming party for his new townhome.
We subpoenaed the phone records for Ross's phone,
and we noticed that over the weekend
Ross calls this number over and over.
We start asking him about that particular phone number.
You know, we kept stressing,
"You're calling this number over and over.
You can't tell me you don't know who this number belongs to."
Finally he comes clean
and he says that this is his friend Jonathan Wheeler.
John is straight,
and he doesn't want people to think that John's gay,
but he was pursuing John,
hoping that he could develop a relationship with John.
Why is he so protective over this person?
There's more to not wanting people
to think that John's gay, too. There's more to this.
Looking further into Jonathan and Ross,
we learned that, after Jerry was killed,
John went with Ross to Key West.
We were able to pull up a Facebook account of Jonathan's
with him posting pictures,
almost like they're down in Key West celebrating.
We learned that Ross bought him the van
for his construction business,
would buy him tools, and kind of help him out
to get the business off the ground.
So we're looking at the amount of time
these two are spending together,
um, the things Ross is doing for Jonathan.
-And we found out that Wheeler had done a 10-year prison term
for an armed robbery of a Taco Bell.
The weapon he used during that robbery was a knife,
just like in Jerry's murder.
-Okay, well, we have a stabbing murder.
Ross has been hiding this guy.
This guy's done hard time.
It's a violent background, and his weapon of choice is a knife.
Looking into John Wheeler, we take that cellphone number
that we kept questioning Ross about.
We subpoena the phone company
for copies of all the phone records.
-Cellphone records for that number that John was using
showed him calling Jerry on Sunday the 26th,
the day of the murder.
-Why was Jonathan's phone calling Jerry?
This guy's starting to look better and better
for the murder.
-So we were like, "Well, we need to talk to John Wheeler."
-Jonathan's an angry, violent person.
Maybe he took all his anger out on Jerry that night.
-We wanted justice for Jerry. I was so frustrated.
-Cobb County investigators are zeroing in
on Jerry's former business partner, Ross Byrne,
and a man named John Wheeler.
Not only did the two men communicate with each other
over a dozen times on the day of the murder,
but Wheeler has a violent past.
His weapon of choice? A knife.
-We decide, "Let's bring Jonathan in for an interview."
He told us a friend of his introduced him to Ross
and Ross agreed to give him a job at the bakery.
But later on, he started his own construction business.
-John told us that he looked at Ross as a mentor
and someone he looked up to that would help him out.
-John didn't like Jerry for that reason.
So now we're looking at a possible motive.
Looking at Jonathan's history,
Jonathan's an angry, violent person.
He had the anger already towards Jerry.
And maybe he took all his anger out on Jerry that night.
-Investigators believe John Wheeler
may be hiding something,
but the only thing they have against him
are suspicious phone records --
not enough for a charge.
They have no choice but to let him go.
Then detectives dig deeper into his alibi
and notice an inconsistency.
-We learned that John was at Ross's housewarming party,
but when Ross was initially asked about
who was at the party, he never mentions John being there.
So we start taking the GPS locations for the calls,
and we're able to plot the cell towers
that these calls are hitting off of.
-Cellphone records for that number
that John was using showed him at the cookout
around 5:00 or so on that Sunday.
Then it showed the phone going all the way down
to Jerry's house.
Almost an hour later, it showed the phone
going back up to Ross's house.
So we decided to bring Jonathan Wheeler back in
for a second interview to confront him
on this cellphone location.
-He started getting angry,
so we started really pushing the buttons now.
-He couldn't give a good explanation on it,
and he became extremely agitated.
-So it started becoming
more of an argument than an interview.
I kept hitting him with, "Tell us why you killed Jerry."
-He ended up jumping up and said that he was leaving.
We had no legal right to hang on to him.
-He's gone, we're not getting a confession out of him,
but we shifted our focus at that point.
We said, "Let's bring Ross in for another interview,
and let's see if we can break Ross down
and have Ross give him up."
This is probably one of our last chances at Ross
to try to get Ross to fold.
I'm trying to see if I can break him down.
He was almost at a point
where I thought he was going to break.
And I'm thinking, "All right, we're there.
We're almost over that hurdle,
and we're gonna get him to give him up."
And then he just stops.
And he just doesn't give us what we need.
He knew the game, and he shut down.
At this point, I'm frustrated.
We know we're on to the right people,
but I can't get that last piece I need.
We had a circumstantial case, but it wasn't strong enough yet.
So you go back and you start looking back over things.
What did I miss?
I felt that I was beaten, that I lost.
-With Ross and John refusing to talk,
detectives are at a standstill.
Months pass with no movement on the case,
and Ross goes on with his business,
seemingly enjoying his doubled income,
even treating himself to a Cadillac Escalade.
-The detectives were onto something,
but they were always commenting about
how they just didn't have the hard evidence
to get a warrant for arrest.
I was so frustrated because the detectives did so much,
but Ross kept sliding by, and we wanted justice for Jerry.
-Here we are, eight months into the investigation.
I'm stalled.
I'm sitting at work and I answer the phone
and it's a sergeant from Woodstock Police Department
about 10 miles from Jerry's house.
And he's like, "Hey, I got this guy that showed up here,
says he's got information on a bakery murder."
And I was like, "Oh, my God, can you send that guy my way?"
And shortly after,
Michael Thomason shows up at our office.
He said his brother, a few weeks back,
made a confession to him
about killing a business partner of the bakery.
This is exactly the break we needed.
-Eight months after Jerry Morris is found stabbed to death
in his own home,
there's still not enough evidence
for investigators to charge their two main suspects,
Ross Byrne and John Wheeler, with murder.
But all of that changes when Wheeler's brother
comes into the station with an incredible story.
-The reason why he decided to come forward
was because Michael didn't want anyone else to get hurt.
-Michael also tells detectives
that John Wheeler confessed details of the crime
to his cousin and roommate, Cynthia,
and that Ross knew that Jonathan killed Jerry.
-She explains to Michael that John told her that,
after the killing, he went up to Ross
and Ross cleaned him up
and provided him a shirt and pants.
-Cynthia is brought in
and ultimately agrees to cooperate with investigators.
With her statement, they have enough to charge John Wheeler
with Jerry Moore's murder.
But Cynthia can't connect Ross to the planning of the murder,
only that John sought Ross's help after Jerry was dead.
They still don't have enough to charge Ross Byrne.
-Our theory is,
Ross doesn't have it in him to commit this crime,
so Ross put Jonathan up to this
and he sent John to go to Jerry's house to kill him
so he could take over the business.
-Ross was the person
who had the most to gain from Jerry's death.
-Jonathan was arrested,
but John refused to cooperate with us
or conduct any more interviews with us.
-Jonathan wouldn't give Ross up.
I don't know exactly what it was with that relationship,
but even through the whole investigation,
they lied for each other.
And it seemed like that they weren't gonna be the one
that gave the other one up.
-Four years after Jerry Moore's murder,
Jonathan's case comes up for trial.
-Cynthia testified in the trial against Jonathan.
Michael testified against Jonathan.
-Jonathan Wheeler was ultimately sentenced
to two consecutive life sentences
without the possibility of parole.
After we convicted Jonathan Wheeler,
the jurors all asked a lot of questions
about when we were gonna charge Ross Byrne
for his role in this case.
They believed, as we did, that Ross Byrne
was involved in orchestrating it, as well.
-After Jonathan's trial was done,
we started looking into Ross's financials
and building all this evidence to be able to show
how Ross gained from all of this.
But it still wasn't the strongest case against him.
But we decided to pull the trigger and say, "Let's do it."
-And we arrested Ross Byrne and charged him
for conspiracy to have his former partner,
Jerry Moore, killed.
-Ross is sitting in jail waiting for his court date.
-We decided to spread a rumor inside the prison
that Jonathan Wheeler is planning to flip on Ross
and implicate him in Jerry's murder.
-And Ross got nervous.
-Ross Byrne actually solicited another inmate
to have Jonathan Wheeler killed.
-An inmate came forward and told one of the deputies
that Ross was asking around,
saying, "Hey, is there anybody here that would be willing?
I'd pay him to kill him
because this guy's gonna try to flip on me."
-From a prosecutor's perspective,
this is great evidence of what we call consciousness of guilt.
There's no other reason why Ross Byrne,
if he was innocent of these crimes,
would want to have Jonathan Wheeler taken out.
-Ross Byrne is now slapped
with two "conspiracy to commit murder" charges,
one for Jerry Moore and one for Jonathan Wheeler.
Facing life in prison, Ross decides to take a plea deal.
-He ended up getting 20 years.
When the judge asked him,
"Are you in fact guilty of all these charges?"
he said yes.
He admitted his guilt.
This is one case I'll never forget,
not only because it was my first one,
but it was one of the most brutal ones I've worked.
-For Jerry Moore's friends and family,
the long wait for justice is over.
-He really meant something to all of us,
and especially to me.
If you were in need,
he was somebody good to have in your corner.
-I want everyone to know that Jerry Moore
was a wonderful, wonderful friend.
I miss his humor.
I miss adventures we would go on.
I just miss his friendship.
-Jerry Moore was a loyal friend and a shrewd businessman
who strove for success both personally and professionally.
His future looked bright, but he was betrayed by two people
he should have been able to trust,
two people who valued money over friendship
and put themselves before others.
An unsuspecting Jerry Moore never saw it coming,
all because of a killer relationship.