Dissecting the Griffin Case: Murder, Feuds and Fear

Imagine if your world was rocked by the discovery of a decomposing body near your home - a body that would later be identified as a local "troublemaker". Join us as we unravel the chilling tale of Tommy Griffin and his sister Connie Branum, two siblings caught up in the tumultuous culture of feuds and fear in their small mountain town. We dissect the close-knit, often explosive, dynamic of these small communities, the deep-seated distrust of law enforcement, and the unspoken, yet ever-present, concept of 'mountain justice.' 

We walk you through the twists and turns that dominated the Griffin siblings' murder investigation, where leads dried up, and suspects were cleared for lack of motive. We tackle the suspicion around Bobby, the prime suspect, and the peculiar circumstances that led to the discovery of Connie's last known whereabouts. Strap in as we unpack the courtroom battle where Connie's character was under attack, and the eventual guilty verdict for James Dillinger and Gary Sutton. 

So join us on this ride through the good, the bad, and the downright ugly sides of small-town life. Welcome to the episode you won't want to miss.

References :

https://casetext.com/case/state-v-dellinger-7

Murder comes to town: season 2 episode 1

Transcript

Tiffany: 0:13

Welcome to Rogue and Wicked.

Wendy: 0:16

It was finally warm out. So I know that you and I like got the fuck out of the house. We're like oh, it's finally nice, it's been cold.

Tiffany: 0:23

Yeah, I'm over here sipping coffee because I just went on that freaking kayaking trip today. See, 4.5 miles I did. And let me tell you what, at 39 years old, it is not a walk in the park to go down a river that has, I guess, some kind of undertow, because I could not keep it straight once we got towards the end and it was wild, yeah, like I was crashing into the shore and everything.

Tiffany: 0:51

It was a lot, and so now I'm sunburnt, i am exhausted and I can't do anything else for the rest of the day, and I'm even like I'm sitting here sipping liquid crack. right now You hear that Some MS or what is, it MSMR, I almost said ASMR for your earbuds.

Wendy: 1:11

Barts into that.

Tiffany: 1:13

Yeah well, I need it because if I don't drink this shit I'm going to be assed out like halfway through this thing, so don't mind me.

Wendy: 1:21

So I've been playing in the garage and the shed and paint all day outside, and I mean I was recycling some of the spray paints and some of the old canvases that I've had like stored and I gave them all color symmetries, stencils and spray paints. I'm going to use those as the backdrops or whatever I'm going to paint on top of them, but for now they look like, you know, they go in unison with a color theme. I'm like, oh, i'm going to spray these stairs, i'm going to put symbols on the stairs, because we painted our porch black and white to do the whole Tim Burton theme, and Robbie and Bart were like we should add some neon green and purple so we could do the Beetlejuice thing, you know, and I'm like, yeah, you know they're coming out with a new movie too.

Wendy: 2:02

Yes, oh, yeah. so yeah, tell us about that, because I'm excited, dude.

Tiffany: 2:06

Oh, the movie. I don't really know much about it aside from, like, when I was a writer. It's going to be in it. Well, i loved Beetlejuice, so I'm excited about it. Yeah me too.

Wendy: 2:13

I'm like stoked about it, do you remember when we were kids That was like a thing. It was like how you kind of knew that you had that little goth twist in you as a child because you loved Beetlejuice.

Tiffany: 2:22

No, I just knew I loved gory horror movies and like slasher films and all those like zombie movies that came out Like that was the shit that I was into.

Wendy: 2:31

Yeah, same. Well, we know, because when we first met, we were like very excited about the fact that each other was in for that, yeah, but I was never like really goth Like, i wasn't ever a goth kid. Well, you know I use that term vaguely as an umbrella term that you know covers certain things that I like aesthetically, not necessarily, you know the way that it's thrown around pop culture. I don't like pop culture. So if I use the terms, they're so loosely based it's like a hardly even mean them.

Tiffany: 2:57

I'm an anarchist, i don't like to be labeled?

Wendy: 3:00

Yeah, i just. I don't like labels too much because I have a bunch of a whole bunch of things, but it does seem that that theme is my favorite. I can't even get away from it.

Tiffany: 3:09

Mine is the whole hippie thing. I like that whole like nature, natural kind of.

Wendy: 3:15

Those two things blend together like green eyes and purple eyeshadow, though They really do.

Tiffany: 3:20

Yeah, but I just wear black a lot because it makes me look skinny, and that's the only reason why I wear it, not because I love the color.

Wendy: 3:26

Oh, i love the color, but I also love hippie shit just as much, literally just as much.

Tiffany: 3:34

We're talking about the murder of Tommy Griffin and his sister Connie. So on February 24th in 1992 a man and his two children were enjoying a day of fishing at a little river in Townsend, tennessee. One of the children, a little girl, wandered off from the edge of the water and stumbled upon human remains. She called her father over to show him what she had found and he had called 911 to report the decomposing body of a man feet from the riverbank off a dock manning lane. The man was lying face down and just by visual inspection police determined that he had been shot in the head and in the back of the neck. Lying near the man's body were two expended 12 gauge shotgun shells. The man was disabled and he had a prosthetic leg. One man in town had a prosthetic leg. So police knew right away who this man was.

Tiffany: 4:26

This is a small town and everyone knew everybody. The police knew right away that the victim was Tommy Griffin. Investigators were able to determine that Tommy hadn't been shot where he had leaned, but that he had been shot up by the roadway, that the sheer force from the shotgun blast sent him tumbling off of the hill, down off the road and into the gully of the woods. This was near the embankment of the river, so close, in fact that if he had gone a couple more feet he would have ended up in the river, and if that had happened, investigators said he may have never been found.

Tiffany: 4:59

24 year old Tommy Griffin was known by local authorities not just because of the small town everybody knows everyone kind of thing but because Tommy was a bit of a troublemaker. He and his family were known to be a bit scrappy and Tommy had been in trouble before for a drunken disorderly. Tommy had grown up in a very poor mountainous section near the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. This is a heavily wooded area with trailers and shacks sparsely spread out randomly along the mountainside. The neighbors who lived there describe it as a place where everyone left their doors open and had gotten along with one another. The locals, however, sing quite a different tune. Grudges run high in the foothills and families would often feud with one another. Some of these feuds would last decades, to the point that families actually don't know what they were feuding about, but still feud because that's what they do.

Wendy: 5:54

This is why I have a problem with small towns. It's one of the reasons.

Tiffany: 5:58

It's wild to me because I hear so much about these backwoods towns and how they're like that, and I think it's mainly because the police just never show up when they're called. So they just kind of like take matters into their own hands and then they just get in the fights with each other and just kind of like guard their shit.

Wendy: 6:16

Well, i mean it's funny because it's either a friendly town or not so friendly town, but it's like having roommates. When there's that few people, you kind of all up in each other's business, as you said earlier. Oh yeah, so like if people get along, they're helping each other out. If they're not getting along, then there's real beef because they don't have anything better to fucking do. Yeah, probably not. I don't think there's much to do out there, you know, out in Tennessee by the hills.

Tiffany: 6:42

Yeah, in fact the locals said that most families had gotten along with each other, but they had their own code of conduct. They are weary of law enforcement and have a way of taking care of things themselves. They don't like outsiders and it takes the police anywhere from three to four hours to respond to a call. So they adapted what they call mountain justice. Yeah, like it just reminded me of like a back woodsy place where, if you were an outsider, it would be kind of scary. Like rolling up to the Smoky Mountains, where there's like shacks spread all over the place and you're out in the middle of freaking, nowhere, and there's no police coming to save you, you know yeah, I would find myself terrified in a situation like that.

Wendy: 7:24

It's probably because of all the horror movies that we mentioned earlier.

Tiffany: 7:28

That's what it is, Yeah because it's funny.

Wendy: 7:30

You know, we, both urban, inner city and people from the woods are scared to go there because of what they think's going on there. They, they're usually pretty right.

Tiffany: 7:38

Yeah, I know.

Wendy: 7:39

But those are scary. There's terrifying shit on that end of the fence too, though.

Tiffany: 7:45

Oh, there is, like I literally pictured, backwoods people with shotguns on quads patrolling the foothills and it actually scared me a bit. I thought about getting lost there and just like people coming out of the trees, like staring at me with shotguns and a wheat hanging between their teeth. I'm not making fun of them, I'm just saying.

Wendy: 8:06

And Stephen King does a lot of books like that too, whether those small town woodsy vibes, Yeah and I don't have a lot of experience with these small town woodsy places. So We do in horror movies and books, though.

Tiffany: 8:17

Yeah, that's, that's all I get my uh, get all my material from. so Viola Griffin was the first to receive the bad news about Tommy. Viola was Tommy's mother and investigators thought maybe Tommy had gotten into a feud with another family in town. They knew that once a family crossed someone, or imagined someone crossed them, then there was no going back. So when they questioned Viola they were hoping to find out information that would bring forth a suspect. She told police that two days earlier that Tommy's sister, 34 year old Connie Branham, had gone missing. also, she was a mother of three children. Viola said that Connie went looking for her brother and that she would call her when she had gotten to Blunt County, but that never happened.

Tiffany: 9:02

Tommy and Connie were extremely close Even when they were small children. they always had a special bond. Tommy looked up to Connie because she was a lot older than him. He viewed her like a mother figure and she was extremely protective of her little brother. Tommy and Connie's family was a large country family. They were simple and poor, as described by murder comes to town. Viola and Ben had five children all together, including Connie and Tommy. Connie was the oldest of the girls and Tommy was the youngest son. They were described as both being fun, loving, boisterous and playful, but also headstrong and self assured. Tommy's nieces and nephews loved to go to Tommy's house to play. He would laugh and play with the kids, but if you got out of line, beware, he was very authoritative when need be, which to me is a very country way of disciplining children.

Wendy: 9:51

I kind of like that Loving until you have to assert yourself. I think that's a good vibe.

Tiffany: 9:56

Yeah, and eventually put the smack down. So Tommy wasn't shy to whip his nieces and nephews if they were being bad. When Tommy was 19 years old, he had gotten in a terrible accident that cost him his leg. I couldn't find any information about what the accident was and his family didn't say what happened to him, but for two years he had to be rehabilitated and Connie stopped by his side When he was able. his family helped him to get a place of his own and Connie even mortgaged her home just so that Tommy would have a roof over his head. The night Tommy disappeared, viola told investigators that someone burned Tommy's home to the ground. This made it seem like there was a previous attempt on his life. Tommy wasn't home when the fire was set. In fact, tommy was in the county jail for public intoxication when the fire started. Getting drunk that night was the best thing that ever happened to Tommy. I'll tell you that, because then he missed the fire. But then later shit gets real.

Wendy: 10:52

Coming home to all of your possessions being set ablaze is absolutely heart wrenching. So I feel for him in this. Yeah, i do. Oh yeah, definitely Sure, but that's still. that's still. whew, man. I've had friends go through that and my heart broke for them. Oh yeah.

Tiffany: 11:09

No, i know It is devastating losing the things that you've worked hard for, you know. But he had just gotten into this place, like not too long before. That sister helped him get in there. That's relief, yeah, so I don't think he had a lot of stuff in there. I mean he might add some furniture and things, but I don't know how much stuff he actually had in there.

Tiffany: 11:27

After two days of not hearing a peep from Tommy, connie decided to head out to check on Tommy to make sure that he wasn't in bigger trouble with the law than he was letting on. The family was fed up with Connie enabling Tommy's bad behavior. Apparently this was an ongoing thing. Whenever Tommy had gotten in trouble, connie was bailing him out, whether it was with jail, a place to live or money. She was always there.

Tiffany: 11:51

When investigators had gotten all of this information, they had more questions than they had answers. Now they had possibly two homicides to investigate. Now their job had become twice as hard as it was to begin with. At this point investigators could only file a missing persons report on Connie because they had no body and no leads to her whereabouts. The bailiff said that Connie never bailed Tommy out the night that he was in jail. So as far as they knew, she never even made it to the jail.

Tiffany: 12:21

That Friday The jail did provide information that the two men had bailed Tommy out instead. The two men were James Dillinger and Gary Sutton and both went right to the station without having to be asked by police, and this was the day after Tommy's body was found. James was interviewed first. James was a 41-year-old carpenter and neighbor of Tommy's. James said that he often bailed Tommy out of jail and it happened more often than he would like. He painted himself as somebody who would always have Tommy's back And he said earlier that afternoon he and his nephew Gary were hanging with Tommy at a local watering hole called Howie's Hideaway.

Tiffany: 12:57

They were just drinking beers and shooting pool. The place was a dive bar. This was basically a roadside tavern that people just hung at and word around town was that it was seetious fuck. And by 7pm that Friday Tommy was pretty drunk and wanted some pills. According to Dillinger, he was a drug addict after he lost his leg, being that he was on pain medication for so long. So they left to go to a convenience store to score some pills from a drug dealer When they met up with a woman who also wanted some pills, so she came along for the ride. James said that he didn't like this woman and said that he had a bad feeling about her. He said she was driving an old Ford Falcon with a sloped back. She offered to work something out for Tommy if he got her some pills, alluding that she was going to trade sexual favors for the drugs. They allegedly left Sutton and Dillinger at the store and drove off together. Later on Dillinger and Sutton had gotten a call from Tommy saying that he was in jail. You know.

Wendy: 13:57

I find it a little suspect right away that a random woman managed to pop up out of the middle of nowhere, because this is a dive bar in a really small town and when you first started describing it I was imagining myself walking in there and everyone would know each other, like everyone in there would know each other and they're like some strange woman who didn't have a good vibe, wanting pills. It just seems like that sounds like something you would see in a city bar. It is.

Tiffany: 14:28

It's kind of suspect. It's a little strange, a little strange. Tommy asked Dillinger and Sutton to bail him out later on that night, after they did, they noticed the same woman sitting in the police parking lot waiting for Tommy. Tommy decided to ride with her and the three men parted ways. Dillinger told police that he wished he had stopped Tommy from jumping into this woman's car because that was the last time he claimed to have seen Tommy. When Sutton was interviewed, he gave the same details that Dillinger gave. The night that he saw Tommy. He told detectives about the woman, the car and her coming back for him Because their stories matched exactly. They had no way to disprove this.

Tiffany: 15:07

They followed the lead on the woman in the Falcon. The Ford Falcon she was driving was vintage so it would have been a rare model vehicle to find. Knowing this, the police figured that she would stick out like a sore thumb. Police found out there were five Ford Falcons registered in Blunt County. They even put in requests for neighboring towns at the DMV to see if they could find a few more registered Falcons, hoping to locate this mysterious, star-cared woman. Police believed that Tommy knew this woman previously because Tommy rarely left town, if ever, the exact same day that they were running the tags at the DMV, detectives met with the medical examiner to find out the results of Tommy's autopsy. It was determined that Tommy died between 6 pm on Friday and 8 am on Saturday. Tommy was last seen at 11 pm on Friday, so they determined that there was an eight-hour gap until Tommy was ultimately found murdered. The autopsy also revealed that the 12-gauge shotgun left buckshot pellets inside of Tommy's neck. The technician was able to retrieve two of the buckshots from the hull left by the blast.

Tiffany: 16:15

A few days later, a woman who lived across the river came forth with some information about the night of the murder. She recalled watching TV with her son and was startled at 11.55 when she heard gunshots, which would make the time of death less than two hours after Tommy left the jail with the mystery woman. As far as Connie was concerned, leads were starting to trickle in for investigators. One in particular was when the owner of a grocery store called and said that he had seen Connie in the store with a photo of Tommy, told him that Tommy had one leg and gave him her phone number.

Tiffany: 16:52

The grocery store owner watches Connie exit the store and walk to a white pickup truck. He witnesses her talking to two men in the truck. He didn't get a look at the two men's faces but felt like she knew these men. Police started asking everyone in the Townsend shopping center if they had seen Connie or these two men in the parking lot, just trying to like drum up some leads. Unfortunately it didn't pan out because not one person aside from the grocery store owner saw her or the two men in the pickup truck. So now we got two suspects right, we got two men in a pickup truck and it's like I don't know. I just kind of feel like I mean, i know the cops don't have any evidence to lock these two guys up, but I feel like it's kind of like a running theme here, you know.

Wendy: 17:36

Yeah, I agree It, just it seems like they're making the story up. Yeah.

Tiffany: 17:40

Yeah, i mean up until this point. that's what I thought.

Wendy: 17:43

Okay, yeah, i mean, exactly That's where I'm at. This point is where it feels just like they're fabricating this story. It's just because of some of the things I already mentioned earlier, as well as the parts that you just added and just stressed for the same reason.

Tiffany: 17:57

Yeah. So another tip came in from Martha Cole, who lived in a rundown shack a mile from the river where Tommy's body was found. Martha was very nervous. talking to authorities, She said her ex-husband Bobby came home all disheveled and he was acting really friggin weird. She noticed him throw his clothing into the wash and after the wash was done, he threw the clothes in the trash, which is really fucking weird. And later on, when he thought she wasn't looking, he took the trash bag to his car and put it in the trunk. So like what was he hiding?

Tiffany: 18:30

How big was that trash bag, i don't know, but that I was like, wow, that's mad suspect. Yeah, it is. Martha also told police that Bobby had a 12 gauge shotgun, just like the shotgun that killed Tommy. She hadn't seen it that night but she knew he had one. She heard the Tommy was killed by the same caliber weapon and thought that they were connected. Martha couldn't get her hands on Bobby's gun, but she did get her hands on two shotgun shells which she turned over to the police.

Tiffany: 18:57

Police looked hard into Bobby. They couldn't find anything that would give them. They couldn't find anything that would give him motive, and nothing in his background showed any clear cut red flags that would set off alarm bells in their minds. Investigators were frustrated when they couldn't find a lead that was going to take them anywhere. That is until they had gotten a tip from two men. The two men went hunting in the woods and right outside of their property they run into an abandoned car. This car was torched. It was pretty much burnt to the ground. Inside of the car was a set of human remains and the two men ran back to the house to call the police. When police arrived they were shocked because this wasn't an engine fire. They said it was burnt beyond recognition. When they looked inside the remnants of the car's frame they saw charred remains laying there inside. The person's head had been positioned against the door and the person was on their back looking up from the seat. The body was so burnt that they couldn't tell if it was male or female.

Tiffany: 19:57

When police interviewed the witness who found the car, they gave police another lead. The man and his wife heard a high-pitched whistling sound coming from the woods on Saturday, february 22nd. When they looked off into the distance they saw a fire but didn't think anything of it because campers and hunters frequented the area. This tip was eye-opening because Connie was last seen on the same day that the fire took place in the woods, making investigators think that this may be her body. The witness also claimed shortly after the fire a white pickup truck came barreling down the road. This runaway truck passed the property and cut through the night, getting swallowed into the darkness.

Tiffany: 20:38

The next day the CSI team came in to do a formal forensic investigation and they found two rifle casings on the floor, same number of shots, but a different gun than the one used in Tommy's murder. They suspected that the car was doused in gasoline before it was set on fire, and the fire started in the front seat. Based on the burn patterns, the official ruling, however, was ruled undetermined on whether an accelerant was used or not. Also, they couldn't determine if the person was set on fire post-mortem or while they were alive. Dental records helped medical examiners determine that it was in fact Connie who was deceased. She was burned so badly that she was partially cremated, which made determining the cause of death impossible for investigators. Save for the shells, right, yeah, except for the shotgun, i mean the rifle shells.

Wendy: 21:28

That's strange that it was like the same thing but a different gun.

Tiffany: 21:31

Yeah right, weird Ballistics tests determined that the shotgun shells Marsha provided weren't a match for the ones that killed Tommy. Bobby was officially cleared from the suspect list and it seemed like Bobby was hiding something from his ex-wife, but it wasn't murder. I want to know what was in his trunk. I mean, this whole time that's all I've been thinking about was what was in Bobby's trunk, i know it is wonder of what was actually in the trunk too.

Tiffany: 21:56

Yeah, like all I've been thinking about. Okay, so Bobby's cleared right, but like what was he hiding in his trunk? Like what was he putting in there?

Wendy: 22:03

all wrapped up. I know I want to know how big this thing was.

Tiffany: 22:07

Yeah and like why was he being all shady, like what the fuck was in his trunk? Was it another body? Like no.

Wendy: 22:13

Well, i know, that was the first thing I thought of, which is why I asked you how large it was, because, yeah, i had no idea.

Tiffany: 22:19

No, i don't know, they didn't say so. I guess we'll just have to. Maybe it, i don't know, could have been a roadkill or something. Maybe, i don't know, maybe the neighbor's cat who knows. So police had gotten a tip when the bartender from Howie's Hideaway told him that on Saturday night Connie was seen with Dillinger and Sutton. Here they come up again. Now, this was the night after the same bartender saw Dillinger and Sutton with Tommy Griffin. So at this point both victims were with Dillinger and Sutton the night before they both died.

Tiffany: 22:51

Police thought maybe they should be looking harder into the people that knew them the most. Yes, so on March 3rd 1992, police arrived at Dillinger's house and it was completely empty. I mean, this place was cleaned out. A neighbor said that Sutton and Dillinger packed up in the middle of the night and just left. Police decided to have a little look-see around the property. Now, they didn't go inside because they didn't have a search warrant, but they did look around the outside Because now Dillinger and Sutton were back on the suspect list. They haven't left mine yet, i know me either.

Tiffany: 23:25

In the woods police found the white pickup truck, which was the same white pickup truck seen speeding away from the car fire erratically. This gave police probable cause to look around further. In the yard they found a burn barn. I didn't know what this was until they described it on. Murder Comes to Town, but apparently a burn barn is like in an unofficial shooting range on somebody's property. All over the ground were casings of shotgun shells and some shells that were identical to the ones found next to Tommy's body.

Wendy: 23:55

You know that's one advantage to living in the country for real, though. Oh yeah, my dad and my uncle, dan, got arrested for trying to do that in the city, but shooting off at it in the streets. Shooting bottles in the streets actually. Yeah, yeah, that's no bueno.

Tiffany: 24:14

Inside the house they found a 303 British rifle, which was the same caliber as the gun shells found on the floor of Connie's car. Forensic ballistic testing proved that the 303 and the shotgun were both perfect matches for the shells fired and left at the scenes. They knew, by the lines and grooves that were fired from those particular guns, not just the style of weapon but the actual fucking gun. The media had gotten ahold of the case and put a burlow out for the two suspects, including photos, hoping that someone would come forward that they had seen them on the run. Police knew that these were mountain men and they knew how to survive off of the land. They were used to living in the backwoods, remember, and that if they wanted to, they could fucking disappear into the Smoky Mountains forever And to this day they now profess themselves to be hidden Bigfoot.

Tiffany: 25:11

Yeah, they would be like Bigfeet. Wait, is it Bigfeet or Bigfoot? I mean, if it's multiple Bigfoot, I think it would be Bigfeet, right.

Wendy: 25:19

Fish fishes.

Tiffany: 25:21

It's like octopussies, You know, that's a real thing. I love it. I mean me too. I thought that was great.

Wendy: 25:26

I'm going to start calling my.

Tiffany: 25:28

Yeah, i like it, and it's not octopi either.

Wendy: 25:34

It is one I want it to be Yeah yeah, well, yeah, if you want to pretend.

Tiffany: 25:40

Investigators were concerned about them disappearing and were hoping that they were wrong. While the search for the two suspects were commencing, police started interviewing people who knew both families. In the area, police found out that the Dillingers and the Griffins weren't good old pals like they thought. It turned out they'd been feuding for years and no one could even remember what it was that they were fucking feuding about, not even their own families, which is fucking crazy.

Wendy: 26:08

They're told to hate each other, yeah, maybe, yeah, that type of mentality. It drives me crazy, because I feel like this is one of the main, one of the main things that happens abroad. Abroad, i mean, why there's wars, you know, like civilians told to hate each other in other countries.

Tiffany: 26:25

Oh, okay, okay, Yeah, yeah, but I wasn't sure what you're referencing, so I wanted to make sure it's following along.

Wendy: 26:31

Yeah, it's like a small scale version of that where, like Romeo and Juliet, yeah, yeah basically, according to Tommy's sister, stella, the Dillingers would get drunk and fight the Griffins.

Tiffany: 26:42

Now this is already after the feud had begun. Like years before, this was a regular occurrence. The Dillingers were from Mill Creek, so they weren't originally from those parts. They were considered outsiders. Stala said that they used to bully everyone in the community. They were scrappy and if you didn't back down from the Dillingers they would just put you down. The Griffins were a scrappy family themselves, and so they claimed to have always stood up for themselves and fight back. The Dillingers would often bully other families too. Most of them wouldn't fight back, which caused a huge drift between the Griffins and the Dillingers because they just didn't lay down and take it.

Tiffany: 27:21

Police now believe that Dillinger and Sutton had gotten into it with Tommy the Night of the Murder. Tommy was killed because of it and Connie was right behind Tommy. She was hot on Dillinger and Sutton's trail because she knew about the family feud. In return, they killed Connie also. Police believed that Dillinger and Sutton served them mountain justice and as far as the women in the Falcon goes, she didn't even exist. She was a character in Dillinger and Sutton's story, trying to throw off police As the ink was drying on the arrest warrants, dillinger and Sutton come strolling on into the police station to turn themselves in.

Wendy: 27:59

I knew it was those two fuckers. I didn't want to call them Toejam and Earl, yet No, i can say Toejam and Earl.

Tiffany: 28:06

Investigators said that Dillinger was cocky and he told police they had not known him because they didn't have an eyewitness. Dillinger's thought that you needed someone to see you commit the crime in order to be punished for it.

Wendy: 28:20

That's like going into a mechanic shop and telling them how to fix your God. They know you don't know how to fix it. That's why you're bringing it to me.

Tiffany: 28:27

His lack of education made him believe that there was no other way to convict someone of a crime. He didn't take into account forensics, dna ballistics, fingerprints, eyewitnesses or anything other feuds, suspect behavior, you know, yeah, or any other tactics that the prosecution could use against you in a court of law. Dillinger was about to get a dose of reality on February 19, 1993, when the Toe stood trial for the murder of Connie Branham. Then again on August in 1996, in the trial of Tommy Griffin. I was able to find court transcripts from the trials which painted a timeline of what occurred the night of the murders. And this is what transpired in the courtroom. On February 21, 1992, alvin Henry looked out of his window around 9 pm and saw Tommy's house in flames after he witnessed Dillinger driving away from the burning home On the night of Tommy's murder.

Tiffany: 29:23

Three witnesses saw Tommy with Sutton and Dillinger the night that they were drinking in Howie's hideaway. Sharon Davis testified that she saw a man without shoes or a shirt walking down the Alcoa Highway. When she drove back that way a few hours later she saw a blue Camaro parked on the side of the road searching for something or someone. Later on two witnesses, at approximately 7 pm saw a fight ensuing on the Alcala I keep saying Alcala like it's Rodney Alcala Alcoa Highway, and both said that they saw two men fighting with a passenger and a blue Camaro who was being pulled from the vehicle. So this is starting to paint a picture here. We got two witnesses. The both say that there was a blue Camaro, that Tommy Griffin was shirtless, and now one of them saying that there were two men fighting the passenger, which would have been, i guess, tommy Griffin.

Wendy: 30:14

To think that they, you know, blamed it on a pillhead sex worker to get them off their trail.

Tiffany: 30:19

Yeah, I know It's wild. Well, they had to do something. I guess It's better that they made somebody up, though than, like, blame it on another actual person.

Wendy: 30:28

Yeah, i know, but I knew that they made her up Like this mysterious woman walks into a local dive bar. Yeah, right there. I was like, yeah, no, this doesn't feel right.

Tiffany: 30:37

Yeah, and I mean I know women do kill with guns, but like most of the time they kill with poison. So it's a little. It would have been a little odd for a female to like beat up, an, overpower a man and then shoot him to death, you know. So.

Wendy: 30:49

Yeah, and a mysterious woman in a population of 300 town, you know.

Tiffany: 30:55

Yeah, it's not like this is New York City, It's fucking like Backwoods, Tennessee, you know? dispatch arrived shortly after the call about the fight on the highway and saw a man in a pickup truck flashing his lights erratically. He was sitting on the tailgate with no shirt, were shoes on and appeared to have just been in a fight. He had abrasions on his back and neck. Next to the truck were two men. The man on the tailgate identified himself as Tommy Griffin. to the police officer He said that these men weren't really friends of his, and the two men kicked him out of the car after they had gotten into an argument. Tommy was then arrested for public intoxication and then taken to jail. So a fucking police officer actually witnessed Dillinger and Sutton with Tommy on the side of the highway when he got arrested earlier that night. So they are probably going to kill him then. but then the cops came.

Wendy: 31:50

Yep, he made it out twice out of the fire and that, but that's it Yeah poor dude, i know.

Tiffany: 31:56

So Dillinger came back and posted bond for Tommy. He was upset, though, when the officer told him that Tommy had to be there a minimum of four hours before being released. So Tommy ended up leaving with Sutton and Dillinger. Now what I'm assuming is because they were saying that he was in a car. they saw the Camaro the blue Camaro and then they saw the pickup truck. So I'm assuming that one of the two, either Dillinger or Sutton, owns the Camaro and either Dillinger or Sutton owns the pickup truck, because they were obviously two separate people with their own separate cars.

Wendy: 32:31

Haring the same, yet two separate guns.

Tiffany: 32:33

Yeah, but I think they lived like either together or near each other It didn't say, but I couldn't find information on that. But I think that they might have lived either together or near each other. At 11.55 pm two people testified to hearing gun shots at the same approximate time. Jennifer Brannam no, Jennifer Brannam saw Dillinger move an object that was the same size as a shotgun covered with a sheet from his truck to Linda Dillinger's car. Then she witnessed the next morning Dillinger removing the alleged gun from Linda's car and put it under his trailer. The second witness testified to seeing almost the exact same thing.

Tiffany: 33:12

The grocery store clerk spotted Connie the next day looking for Tommy. She asked him if she could leave her car in the parking lot. The clerk witnessed Connie talking to the two men in the way pickup truck, but the clerk couldn't identify who they were. A bartender at Howie's Hideaway said that Connie was talking to her about Tommy. Connie then started crying and told the bartender that somebody set Tommy's trailer on fire and it almost burned down. That's when Dillinger interrupted Connie and asked the bartender if she was sure she's seen Dillinger with Tommy that night. And he said it a couple times. He was basically trying to gaslight her in a saying no. Dillinger ended up telling the bartender that Tommy left with a woman planning a new story in her head about someone she didn't even see.

Tiffany: 33:55

A witness saw Connie get a little tipsy and start flirting with Dillinger. The two men tried to convince Connie to leave with them after she started flirting with another man in the bar. This seemed to upset Dillinger and the two men told her to go with them to go look for Tommy, but she refused. Sutton told Connie that her husband would be surprised when she ended up missing one day. So, being threatened, she agreed and left with them.

Tiffany: 34:19

At approximately 6.30pm, James Gordon testified that he heard the whistling sound and saw the car fire. At approximately 8pm, Barbara Gordon saw the white pickup truck speeding away like crazy down the road with two occupants. During Connie's trial, the defense tried a smear campaign listing all the arrests that she had and had been in jail for, mainly offenses of assault. It didn't help their case, but they did give it the old college try. Her medical history of depression was brought up, along with her abusing drugs, which to me, none of it even had anything to do with why she was killed. Like what is it like? Oh, she brought it on herself by abusing drugs and getting into fights.

Tiffany: 34:59

Right no, i totally agree, it was just like a slander tactic, but to me that just made the defense look like a bunch of assholes.

Wendy: 35:06

Right, i know this poor woman gets murdered and caught in a crossfire of these men and she's, like the only female really involved in all of this and they're slandering her.

Tiffany: 35:15

Yeah, let's slander the murder victim Like what the fuck is wrong with you. But to make the defendants look more human, it was brought up that Dillinger was bullied by his older brother and suffered his own abuse. It still doesn't make you look like a victim, my guy.

Wendy: 35:28

Oh, i mean they're out there bullying the entire town.

Tiffany: 35:31

so Yeah, yeah, exactly So. In Connie's murder they were tried together and sentenced to life. In Tommy's murder trial, both were tried together and both were found guilty and sentenced to death. James Dillinger died at 71 years old on death row. Gary Sutton still remains on death row today. Poor Toejam and Earl Yeah, one of them's dead and I don't know if that's Toejam or Earl, but they never confessed to the murder or talked about it after the trial. On changeorg there's a petition to get Sutton exonerated for his charges because his family believes there's no real evidence to tie him to his uncle. Dillinger the night of the crime. Yes, Stop.

Wendy: 36:12

That's the same family members who told him you needed to see the murder for it to be real.

Tiffany: 36:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Fuckin'-. All their witnesses saw him. You know they saw them together with these people. That's why I did the court transcripts before I got to this part, because I wanted you to see exactly how that whole ass night unfolded and how many fucking people saw the two of them with him.

Wendy: 36:33

Hell yeah, you know, what's great is that the town kind of worked together to take down a bully that took one of theirs.

Tiffany: 36:39

Exactly. Well, yeah, but half of them didn't even know it. So they believe that police lied under oath and that they were small town cops without training in homicide investigations. While I empathize with their pain after reading the trial transcripts, like I said, there were so many fucking witnesses that seen Sutton and Dillinger The whole two days these murders were committed, including the threats made to Connie the night of her murder I'd have to say I don't think he's innocent at all.

Wendy: 37:09

Yeah no, i mean not they don't have the behaviors of innocent people. Number one, number two their story was like suspicious as like fuck to start with, and the way that he acted when he was being interrogated. Like you don't have any proof, you know all of it is just-.

Tiffany: 37:26

Yeah, he's like you didn't see me kill him. No, unless there's some compelling magical evidence that shows that someone else did it, then I'm gonna have to go with the evidence on that one, especially being that it came from their two fucking guns. Yes absolutely Yeah. yeah well, they were proven guilty in a court of law, so obviously something. I mean there are people that do get sent to prison that are innocent, but these two were seen by every motherfucking body.

Wendy: 37:54

Yeah there was a lot to back it up to. Yeah.

Tiffany: 37:56

It was them. Yeah, there was also DNA and all that other shit. so, mm-hmm, i mean not DNA forensics. so it was more or less like oh look, we got the ballistics testing from your two weapons and they match exactly the lines and grooves in the shell casings.

Wendy: 38:12

Yeah.

Tiffany: 38:13

Like you, can't refute that.

Wendy: 38:14

Yeah, everybody's lying. Yeah, the police, the people in town, yeah, yeah, and I don't buy that. I think that these two, toejam and Earl, look guilty.

Tiffany: 38:24

Huh, that's not like copyrighted, is it that Toejam and Earl thing? Oh man, we are not claiming any rights to Toejam and Earl Mm-hmm. The family of Tommy and Connie never really had gotten over their deaths, Obviously. I mean, how could you, On Murder Comes to Town, you really feel for the family. They were very close knit and in each other's lives They seemed to be each other's entire world. I see how living in such a small community would make both bonds between families stronger than it normally would in a normal community. but Connie left behind her three children who miss their mother dearly. Tommy and Connie are both very missed and loved.

Tiffany: 39:04

While I feel for the Murder's family, I also feel bad for the victim's family more. All of this was over some stupid fucking feud that could have been resolved if there wasn't so much ego shoved around. I'm not blaming anyone, because it is what it is, you know. But what I'm saying is that holding grudges is good for no one and it only hurts people emotionally, physically, internally, and we gotta let it go and love each other. I think that's the moral of the story. Amen to that. So that is the story of Tommy Griffin and Connie Branham.

Wendy: 39:35

Yep, thank you for your effort this week. Tiff, i know we had a lot going on when you were procuring this script and I do, like you, know the sentiment at the end of this as well, because it is such a It's a great, terrible spectacle of, like the way that things do play out too commonly in regards to grudges. Yeah, as I said, in these situations and within families, to zoom in a little further and to expand out, as I said earlier, you know, abroad Like there are people who hate each other, for things like that have happened three generations before us, you know.

Tiffany: 40:10

Yeah, it just blows my mind like how you could hold a grudge that long and not even know what you're holding a grudge about.

Wendy: 40:16

Like part of ancestry healing, you know, is to, you know, take some of the darkness out of your bloodline and ascend, like you know, go above and beyond what the generations did before, and that's a really good way to go about it, to like bury old wounds and, you know, move on and heal together. Yeah.

Tiffany: 40:37

I hope that they do heal together and maybe, like that, changes their view. But I'm sure it has. You know, just like when you leave people that are that close to you, i think it kind of changes your view on the world in general. But they seem like like if you watch that episode of Murder Comes to Town, it's all about small-town murders, like in rural places, and you could see that their family is really tight. You could see that they still kind of hold a grudge. No, In the episode.

Tiffany: 41:02

Yeah, because I think it was a sister and she's scared to shit out of me. man, i wouldn't want to tango with her, but she was like looking dead-ass into the camera and she's like I forget what she said exactly, but she was like, yeah, around here Or no, we don't take kindly to outsiders here. She's like we serve mountain justice And I was like whoa, whoa, and the way she was like looking you dead in the because she was looking right into the camera hole like her eyeballs. So it was like she was looking right through the screen at you. You know, wow, and she had her head like tilt it down with her eyes up, like. So you felt like she was going to murder you. You know, like she had anger in her for-.

Wendy: 41:40

She had that. Fuck around and find out, look.

Tiffany: 41:42

But I don't blame her, though, because her family member died. you know what I mean. Like this was her family actually two of her family members died, you know, Connie and Tommy, so like I could see how you would be angry. Yes, but you could feel it At the people who've done it surely That they don't take kindly to them around there, like they didn't like people from the outside coming there Like it was they're not like welcome you know, Tightly knit community.

Wendy: 42:11

See this forest. this forest is my home, yeah. So it's You went from around here. I you know, that's a there are places like that, like in Florida too, where you're not from around here. They're in DAERU and they meet it.

Tiffany: 42:24

Oh yeah, like that's why I told you. I said it's it's like it scares the shit out of me After watching all those movies. Like there's horror movies about backwoods towns. Like you ain't gonna catch me driving through the mountains of Tennessee, you know I'm I'm good. Like y'all can keep it. I don't need to I don't want to come to your town if if you don't want me there, i'll stay out of Tennessee.

Wendy: 42:44

The only thing you know that I love that came out of there was El Gore. Hey, is he from Tennessee.

Tiffany: 42:50

He is, he is. Oh, wow, i didn't know that. Well, i mean, el Gore seemed kind of friendly, so Yeah, yeah, getting a little older these days, but I love that man. I haven't seen him lately so I don't know, but All right well-. That concludes our episode. So I just wanted to give a thanks to our listeners for bumping up our numbers this week and making us feel special. So keep sharing, cause. Sharing is caring.

Wendy: 43:13

And thanks to Tiffany too, cause she kicks ass doing these studies. Oh thanks. Bye.