A Mississippi woman will spend the rest of her life in prison after killing her son and stuffing him into a fake wall at her residence.
On July 23, 2nd Circuit Court Judge Randi P. Mueller sentenced 69-year-old Jerri Roby to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the shooting death of 42-year-old John Gaither. Roby pleaded guilty to first-degree murder.
According to WLOX, in December 2023, Gaither’s brother reported him missing to the Harrison Police Department after not seeing him for a week. After a missing person investigation was opened, the victim’s stepmother, who lived in California, also reported to the police that she received a letter allegedly written by Gaither stating he had gone to the Philippines to meet a woman. She didn’t believe it.
Upon an initial interview, the defendant told investigators her son had taken an Uber to Louisiana to buy a car. As a result of Roby’s inconsistencies, a prior 1995 murder conviction in Florida, and her use of several aliases, they responded to Roby’s house with a search warrant. During the search, authorities found a Home Depot receipt in the defendant’s trash for the purchase of two rolls of patch, 15 bags of sand, and seal tape, straw, and a dumpster bag.
About a month later, both Gaither’s brother and stepmother claimed they had alerted authorities after receiving text messages and a phone call from someone they believed was an imposter. Authorities returned to Roby’s residence with a search warrant and discovered a fake wall in the front section of the home. After breaching the wall, they found a wooden box and the body of Gaither in it, covered with the same items the defendant had purchased at Home Depot.
During the defendant’s arrest, she swallowed a significant amount of prescription pills, and officers rushed her to the hospital. An autopsy report showed the victim died from a gunshot wound to the back of the head.
Upon her release from the hospital, Roby admitted to investigators that Gaither shot himself in the back of the head and had fallen into the wooden box. The defendant claimed she then covered him with the materials she purchased from Home Depot.
However, during her plea hearing before Mueller, Roby told the judge that she shot her son in the spur of the moment to put him out of his misery because he was depressed.
The judge didn’t buy it based on the evidence that the murder was planned and premeditated, reported Super Talk.
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