MS mom knew son was dead & buried at home, but wanted to keep ‘the ruse up,’ police say

An ex-convict from Florida knew her son was dead and buried in a large wooden box in her Gulfport home for weeks but told Mississippi police she “wanted to keep the ruse going” about her son’s demise as long as she could to avoid any trouble, Gulfport police Det. Justin Clifton said.

The woman, who has used a series of aliases, but now goes by the name of Jeri Lynn Roby,kept up her lies and more after relatives in Florida repeatedly called Roby to find out the whereabouts of their loved one and Roby’s son, John Allen Gaither, 42.

Gaither’s relatives started getting worried after they didn’t hear from Gaither after Dec. 10, Clifton said, because he usually checked in with family almost daily.

“They were concerned for him because it was unlike him, and he has never disappeared for any length of time,” Clifton said.

Over the next couple of weeks, the family grew more concerned after Roby dished out a series of lies about her son’s whereabouts, forged her son’s handwriting in a letter to his relative saying he was OK, sent bogus texts and pictures of him from his phone and more, Clifton said.

The family also knew Roby had killed before, in Florida in 1993 when she shot Christina Racey in the back of the head and kept her body in a car for days before Roby’s capture. She later served time for manslaughter in that killing and was free and living in Gulfport with Gaither at the time of his disappearance. At the time of the Florida murder, Roby went by the name of Jerri Lynn Isreal.

During a preliminary hearing in Gulfport in February, Clifton outlined a series of evidence in the case, including how police connected Roby to the killing of her son after finding Gaither’s body inside a wooden Armour-style box behind a makeshift wall, boarded-up door, and a window sealed shut in a room at Roby’s home on 6th Street.

Gaither died of a gunshot wound to the back of the head, the detective said.

Inside his makeshift grave, Clifton said, police found Gaither covered in some of his clothes along with sand and mulch that police traced back to purchases Roby had made during two different trips caught on camera footage from Home Depot, including one trip to the store with her boyfriend, Robert Wayne Tannehill, 86.

Tannehill has since been arrested on a charge of hindering prosecution, though more charges could follow.

The detective said Roby likely used the sand and mulch and layers of polyurethane plastic wrapped around the box and other things she had purchased to try to conceal the smell of her son’s decomposing body.

Clifton said he and other investigators collected evidence during the investigation to show that Gaither’s last known sighting was Dec. 10.

Those sightings included camera footage and time stamps that showed Gaither spent some of that morning at the storage unit where he kept cars to work on and a second stop at Ollie’s on Pass Road, where he bought a red tote and some cleaning supplies for vehicles.

A search of his bank accounts, Clifton said, showed Roby started making withdrawals from Gaither’s account after he went missing, though she did have authorization to use the accounts.

Those withdrawals included the maximum $500 limit for withdrawals from some ATMs and a $5,000 withdrawal Roby made after cashing a check that she had written to herself on the account. After hearing that evidence and more details about the investigation, Justice Court Judge Albert Fountain found enough evidence to bind the case to a grand jury for indictment.

At the hearing, Harrison County prosecuting attorney Herman Cox successfully argued that Roby, now 67, should remain jailed without bond because she is a danger to the public and a proven flight risk, since she already jumped bail after her first arrest for murder in Florida in 1993.

Camera footage, digital receipts, and missing money

At the hearing, other evidence came out about what police learned during the weeks-long investigation that started with the Dec. 22 missing person report filed by Gaither’s stepmother and other relatives.

Because of Roby’s lack of cooperation, repeated lies meant to stall the investigation and steer police in other directions, and that his body was hidden, it wasn’t until Jan. 18 that Clifton said he and other Gulfport police officers finally found Gaither’s body lying face-down with his head on pillow in his makeshift grave.

When police first went to her home, Clifton said Roby told them, just like she had told relatives, that Gaither had driven to Louisiana to sell or purchase a car and hadn’t returned.

When police asked for consent to search outside the home and in a garbage can that hadn’t been emptied and more, he said Roby acted like she was going to cooperate at first, then asked the police officers to leave, saying she had to meet a friend and they would have to come back later.

Before the police officers left, they looked in her outdoor garbage, Clifton said, and found one of the Home Depot receipts.

Then, he said, Gulfport police went to a storage facility on Highway 49 in Gulfport, where relatives said Gaither often went to work on cars he stored there.

Eventually, he said, police realized that the blue Ford Fusion that Gaither drove was still sitting in the yard at Roby’s home.

They searched the car, and none of the tools were missing, and there was the receipt from Ollie’s inside.

An Uber trip, a drug cartel and the Rio Grande

As Gulfport police gathered more and more information contradicting information Roby had provided, Clifton said her stories kept changing.

When Clifton confronted Roby about how her son didn’t drive to Louisiana in his blue Ford Fusion because it was still parked at the home, Roby had a new story.

This time, she told police he had taken an Uber instead of his car to Louisiana to sell a vehicle, but a police review of Gaither’s ride-sharing records showed that he had not used Uber or any other ride-sharing service at the Gulfport home.

Then came more stories.

One was that Gaither had met an Asian woman on a dating website and left the country, he said.

Another was that Gaither had gone to Mexico to try to save a girl from a drug cartel and his phone fell in Rio Grande during the escape.

After that, he said, Gaither’s relatives started getting strange text messages from Gaither’s phone they knew had not come from him.

As Clifton continued the investigation, he said other things started happening. Suddenly, he said, Gaither’s relatives said they were receiving more bogus texts from Gaither’s phone.

As Gulfport police neared the day they would find Gaither’s body, Roby’s actions became even more erratic.

She called the Police Department and left a message saying her son had suddenly shown up at the 6th Street home in the middle of the night with a Hispanic female, grabbed some cash out of the freezer, and left in an unknown vehicle and “that she didn’t know how to contact him because he didn’t have a phone.”

A trip to Florida, a bogus call and more

After Gulfport police found Gaither’s body, Roby said she hadn’t told the truth about what happened because she thought she would be arrested for having been a convict in a home with a gun.

Instead of admitting to any wrongdoing, Clifton said, Roby said her son was the one who shot himself in the back of the head, but that it was an accident.

When the shooting happened, Clifton said, Roby said blood started pouring out of his head “like a waterfall.”

Roby said she didn’t call for help because she feared being arrested and wanted to “keep the ruse going as long as she could.”

Eventually, he said, Roby gave police the .380-caliber semi-automatic handgun that was used to kill her son. She got it out from under the driver’s seat of her car.

She also admitted to some of her lies.

She said she was the one who mailed the bogus letter to Gaither’s stepmom and forged his handwriting. She said she had driven to Florida to send it because she thought police would believe it was her son.

Clifton said police found hundreds of pages of letters at Roby’s home, where police could see she had been practicing how to forge her son’s handwriting.

In other admissions, Clifton said, Roby told him that at one point she had her boyfriend called Gaither’s brother on Gaither’s phone. She said he was supposed to act like he was Gaither.

When the call was made, Clifton said, Gaither’s brother knew it wasn’t him, told the boyfriend he was calling the police, and hung up.

Roby griped to police about her boyfriend’s call to the brother, Clifton said.

“She said she gave him one little task, and he messed it up,” Clifton said, adding that Roby claims her boyfriend had also helped her seal up the window near her son’s makeshift grave and went to Home Depot two or three times to buy the sand, mulch, and other items.

She made other admissions, he said, but when he tried to get her to tell him what the motive was for Gaither’s death, Roby said, “That’s what a trial was for.”