Down South Death Demon - Edwards, Mississippi

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Hello, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express.

Yay!

Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy.

Yay indeed.

My name is James Petrigallo.

I'm here with my co-host.

I'm Jimmy Wistman.

Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on another crazy edition of Small Town Murder Express.

All aboard the murder train, pulling away from the station.

We have some insane stuff for you today.

Just a

wild guy who,

remember the boxer Butterbean?

Yeah.

He may have had something to do with this.

We'll talk about it.

It's crazy.

Butterbean somehow involved in this, which is insane.

Tremendous.

We don't often talk about

long expired.

Not expired.

Is he dead?

I think he is dead, isn't he?

No, he's still alive.

He's still alive?

He looks like dog shit.

There is an AI picture of him saying that he's fighting soon.

He looks like dog shit.

He's not fighting.

Don't believe it.

Okay, well, there's no sports involved in this.

It's just a matter of, you'll see.

But before we get to that, very quickly, absolutely head over to shutupandgivememurder.com get your tickets for live shows seattle you are up in october our next two are sold out next three are sold out then we have seattle get your tickets for that at the moore theater it's a beautiful theater we've been watching

for years since we first started going to seattle can't wait for that shutupandgivememurder.com also get yourself patreon patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all the bonus material anybody five dollars a month or above you're going going to get so much stuff.

First of all,

hundreds of back bonus episodes you've never heard before immediately upon subscription.

Then you get new ones, one crime in sports, one small town murder every other week.

And this week, what you're going to get is athletes who've made $100 million or tens of millions of dollars and are now broke.

And for small-town murder, part two of Ted Bundy, a quote, trying to help find the Green River Killer to save his own ass and everything else.

And I call it Bundy versus Green River Killer.

It's a comic book I'm thinking of here of writing.

For Bundy's benefit.

For Bundy's benefit.

So there you go.

Patreon.com slash crimeinsports.

And you get all the shows, all the shows we do, Crime in Sports, Your Stupid Opinions, and Small Town Murder, all ad-free with your Patreon.

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It's the best deal going.

And you get a shout out at the end of the show, too.

So get on that and get in there and come see us.

That said, I think it's time to sit back.

Here we go.

Let's all clear the lungs and let's all shout.

Shut up.

And give me murder.

Let's do this, everybody.

Hey, let's go on a trip, shall we?

We love trips.

We're going to Mississippi this week.

Down in with all the S's and the P's and the I's here.

Mississippi, Edwards, Mississippi, to be exact.

It's beautiful.

Lovely down there.

Nice.

I mean, it's pretty.

There's lots of woods and stuff.

It's nice.

It's nice and mountainy, yeah.

Not really, but woody.

There's a lot of woods and things like that.

It's in west-central Mississippi, kind of just over in the middle of nowhere.

It's not really close to much.

It's close to Jackson, which is

not a major metropolis.

It's about three hours.

The geography of Mississippi has escaped me

for good.

It has escaped.

That means it was once housed there, which I also doubt.

You can't escape without being there first.

To absorb it?

Doesn't escape me?

There you go.

It's It's about three hours to New Orleans, about four hours to Birmingham, Alabama, if you go the other direction.

And it's about four hours to Faulkner, Mississippi, our last Mississippi episode, which was episode 588, the four-letter murder, which was insane.

Mississippi never lets us down with crazy murders.

This is in Heinz County.

H-I-N-D-S Heinz.

Oh, like the background.

Like your quarters.

Yeah.

Area code 601.

Population around here, 1,060.

Not a lot.

1,060.

Hog farming territory is where we're at here.

Median household income in Edwards, $28,688, which is well under half the national average for median household income.

But the median home price here,

it's all kind of fits, $102,900.

That's the median home price.

Everything has just scaled back about 40 years here.

That's it.

30 grand is a good salary, and 100,000 is a price of a house.

Good house.

It's interesting.

A little bit of history of this town here.

The first town in the Edwards community was known as Amsterdam.

That was the first town.

I don't know.

It's got to be way different than Amsterdam, the Dutch city.

I can't imagine there's much restraint being lifted on things like that.

No, no red light district in Edwards.

These towns, by the way, have come and gone like four times.

The The town was big in the 1830s and then just faded away.

Just the town like no longer existed after a while.

Mainly because an epidemic of cholera in about 1832

caused that, and they put the railroad in a little bit further away than they wanted them to.

So the town just died between the cholera and lack of railroad.

Then in 1897, there was a yellow fever epidemic.

Fantastic.

Completely decimated the town again.

They were saying there were some families with every family member who was ill at the same time, and people were dying and being buried without their family even finding out because everybody was just hidden away in their houses.

Oh my gosh.

The yellow fever.

Reviews of this town, yellow fever aside.

Here's five stars.

It's quiet and calm without all the noise that the city makes.

It's the exact review I would expect from this town.

You betcha.

Here is three stars.

World's only cactus plantation.

That's not.

I feel like Arizona is missing out, if that's the case.

They're missing the boat on something.

There's a specific word there that changes things.

Well, yes.

We call them nurseries.

We call them farms and things there, but I assume cactus growing.

The cactus plantation is still open, but hurry.

Okay, cactus are notoriously fast on the getaway.

John's 81.

The guy who runs it, I think, is John.

He's 81 and has had three major surgeries.

He told me he's looking for a buyer to carry on the business.

Who the hell doesn't want to get into the exciting world of cactus growing?

He also said I should tell all my friends his business is still open, albeit much smaller than in happier times.

He used to have 10 greenhouses.

Now he's got two, one on the property and one down the road that's got nothing but

bromelades in it.

Another kind of plant.

The one I was in was about one quarter full of Easter lilies.

Seeing as, and seeing is with an apostrophe in everything, seeing as how we are just four days away from Easter, John said he'd be delivering lilies all morning.

Well, now that we're all caught up with John from the cactus plantation, and finally business is dying.

Why have they gone all day if you need to buy anything?

Just in case you want to rob the place.

One star.

Edwards is a small town several miles east of Vicksburg and is normally overlooked by travelers.

Yeah.

The town only contains a preschool and a handful of convenience stores.

The population is under 2,000.

Yeah, how many,

much more stores do you want?

There's nobody there.

What about the cactus plantation, man?

Yeah, come on.

What about the Easter lilies?

And has been on the downslope over the past 60 years.

That's a long slope.

60 years.

That's one of those, like, it doesn't seem like a slope until you see the whole road and you're like, shit, that's a lot.

It's a lot of, it's a big grade to that.

I do not recommend.

I don't know what the tenants a ghost has to pay to

haunt a place for 60 years?

Holy shit.

I do not recommend purgatory for ghosts.

I do not recommend anyone staying in this town.

Don't stay.

Just no one.

Things to do.

Edwards May Day Jubilee.

May Day.

May Day.

Calling for help.

Help Miss Now.

A highly anticipated community celebration that brings people together for a day of food, fun, and entertainment.

This year, we're turning up the nostalgia with 90s-themed experiences, all while honoring our theme, bridging generations, building community.

Then it says, let's kick it 90s style.

Let's kick it.

Let's kick it 90s style.

There's a parade at 10.

There's live entertainment that's so good that we don't know the names of any of the acts, which always means

excellent stuff here.

Family-friendly activities, bringing the community together across generations.

They say this is more than just a festival.

It's a chance to celebrate our history, support local businesses, and create lasting memories.

Whether you're a vendor, performer, or community member, we invite you to be part of the magic.

Oh, the magic, the pageantry of Edwards May Day.

That said, let's talk about some murder here.

Holy shit.

Getting into it a touch early because we got a wild story that is a lot deeper than I initially anticipated.

Okay.

Let's talk about a guy first here.

James Cobb is his middle name, C-O-B-B, like Ty.

James Cobb Hutto, H-U-T-T-O III.

Wow, okay.

Jimmy Huddo III.

Yes, there is.

There's a junior and then a senior.

He's born June 7th, 1971.

He is from the Jasper, Alabama area, which we have done an episode about, by the way.

Prettier Than Coal, I think was the name of it.

If I remember, there was coal in the title there somewhere because there's coal there, coal mining.

His mother and father, his father's obviously James Cobb Hutto Sr.

His mother's name is Phyllis Jones, and both the father and the mother are a mess.

I mean,

dad's an abusive alcoholic.

Oh, beats the shit out of everybody in the family.

Yeah.

But mostly just leaves, though.

So that's actually preferred to beating the shit out of everybody.

His mother

has bipolar disorder in a quite a severe and for a long time, untreated way.

Mental health.

Yeah, bipolar, but she wasn't treated or, you know, anything like that.

She's also has

multiple substance abuse problems.

So when you mix bipolar and substance abuse,

you cannot expect your brain to make good decisions.

You just can't.

Well, her frustration

might be leaning her to swing hard with the substances.

You know what I mean?

All sorts of things will make it.

Everybody just keeps telling you you're crazy and you got no way of getting help.

You're just going to

fix it your own way.

More than likely, her parents are alcoholics and she's an alcoholic.

and it's

genetic, too, is also part of it.

And just, you know, however she came up.

Either way, she's very neglectful.

And so is the father, obviously, of James III here.

Huddo.

Very neglectful.

She ends up remarrying

after dad takes off a guy named Larry Jones, who somehow is worse than dad.

Really?

Yeah, she's got a type.

So we can imagine what her dad was like.

Just think about that.

Yeah, an alcoholic who beats the shit out of everybody.

Larry Jones, the stepfather, an abusive alcoholic who not only beats the mother, beats the kid up too.

Why not?

I never understood beating up someone who's, first of all, you shouldn't beat any kids, but to beat up a kid who's not even yours is wild to me.

That is a hugely a choice.

That's a crazy boundary overstep, right?

That's not even your kid.

Who are you hitting?

What are you doing?

Don't hit your kids either, but Jesus Christ, at least you can say, I brought you into this world.

I'll take you out.

You can't even say that.

I didn't do shit.

I married your mom, and I'll beat your shit out of you.

That's a weird thing to say.

That's probably because the dad isn't around and he feels he has to do something.

Well, he's also an alcoholic who is an abusive alcoholic.

It's just what he does, whoever's around.

He beat

little Huddo so bad at one point that he caused a two-week absence from school because he was so knocked around.

He needed two weeks to

weeks off of school, so it didn't show.

It's wild.

And then there's other times where he is sent to live with his father and they beat the shit out of him.

His father and his stepmother both abuse him.

It's a little crazy here.

There's also well-documented report arrest reports of Larry and Phyllis with countless hospital visits after she beat the shit out of her.

It's bad.

Now, if things couldn't get worse for little Huddo III,

he is sexually abused by multiple family members,

including what he says and what everybody says at the time, because there's another family member who also said they were abused abused by this person, was his aunt, his aunt,

his aunt Faye, who is Virginia Faye Rardin, H-A-R-D-O-N,

who, by the way, is both his grandmother and his aunt.

Fantastic.

That's...

Why not?

Roll that around in your brain for a little while.

Oh, boy.

So in the first four minutes of this story, we have a kid who has the same grandmother and

his grandmother and aunt are the same human being.

Number one.

That's where we're at at this point.

They don't share the same DNA.

They share the exact same DNA

face and hands.

All sorts of everything.

Now, he was sent to live with Aunt Grandma, Faye.

Oh, Jesus.

For his own protection

because he was getting beat up at home so bad and abused at home.

So she molested him for years, allegedly.

Not really, allegedly.

It's kind of a proven thing, but allegedly we'll say for purposes of the podcast.

So

that's not great and apparently she's not the only one plenty of other family members abusing him also did this yes and this is there he's got a cousin named sammy who's had the same exact things happened to him and he backs up all the stories and says no that's that motherfucker is a molester and so's him and uncle frank or whoever the hell you know whatever

so um now he the other thing is when he was seven he actually tried to go to the police

yeah to get the stepfather out of the house.

At seven years old, he went to the police station and said, my stepfather beats the shit out of my mom and beats us all up, and we got to get him out of the house.

And they laughed at him.

He recognized at seven how wrong this was, and the police did not see it.

They tussled his hair, gave him a jolly rancher, and sent him on his way.

Told him, ah, isn't that cute?

So obviously, there's some problems here for this guy.

Now,

he's never treated at all.

He's never has counseling or anything like that for any of this shit.

He's got terrible coping skills, very impulsive.

He's super angry and aggressive.

And

he's got what a psychiatrist describes as a tendency to split later on.

Not personalities.

That's a matter of

idealizing somebody immediately.

They're the perfect person.

And then completely the devaluation of them comes all at once.

Wow.

You've met people like this before, too.

The one fell swoop, they just cut them off.

Yeah,

the first, they're looking for something that that person's fucking them over.

And the first hint of it isn't even whether it's true or not, just whatever their brain takes as a hint.

Now that person's nothing, and they're worthless.

And two seconds ago, they were the greatest thing who's ever existed.

So

it's interesting here.

They say kind of mix signals from the family will do that to you.

Now,

he gets into number one, crime, but number two, also he gets into fighting, like cage fighting, MMA fighting.

He wants to get into that.

Oh, he wants to do it.

He wants to do that.

No, no, no.

He wants to do it.

This is when, like in the 90s, when he's in his 20s, he wants to do this.

In the beginning, he started out in tough man competitions.

And, you know, he's 6'2 ⁇ , 230 pounds, bald head, big, stocky guy.

You know, that's

a weapon right there.

That's what I mean.

This is not the guy you want to put out into the world abused and damaged and untreated for this shit.

So

he,

this isn't going to help his brain issues also if he's been knocked around.

Now we're going to punch him in the head more.

So he later on gets an adverse childhood experiences score from a psychologist of 10 out of 10, which basically means

everything you can have that fucks up your mind and your development as a child, he has them all.

What do you recommend?

So he gets married, obviously.

Got to do that.

Sure.

And he gets married to a very normal, stable woman.

That's the thing, too.

He gets like the opposite of his mother, essentially.

He marries a woman named Catherine, who is just a very patient and kind lady.

They're going to have three kids.

Three.

Wow.

This guy needs three kids.

Okay.

Terrible with responsibilities.

Can't hold a job.

Doesn't pay bills.

Doesn't do shit like that.

Never physically assaults his wife or kids, which is honestly a fucking miracle.

Yeah.

But absolutely has no interest in maintaining the responsibilities of a husband and father.

But I am happy for him for getting beyond the damage that he can still have sex.

That's wonderful.

He made three kids.

The bills are three months late.

The lawn is up to his knees, but he didn't punch anybody.

So that's good.

He probably aren't doing great either.

No.

So when he gets into the tough man slash MMA scene, he goes by Hitman Huddo.

Okay.

Which sounds cooler than James Cobb huddo, I think.

So hitman huddle over here.

He gets involved in all this shit.

Now, Catherine, the wife, says that he changed immediately when he started competing in tough man shit in like 97.

Isn't it crazy how you

stoke somebody's ego and tell them they're great and all of a sudden they change?

Well, yeah, and they're getting hit in the head too a lot, which also isn't going to help.

She said, when we were in high school, he didn't smoke.

He didn't do drugs.

This is not the same person I knew back then.

He's smoking and doing drugs now?

Now.

Well, yeah.

Why else would you get in a tough man ring unless you were on drugs i mean come on especially in the 90s those guys were yeah they were like tough guys from the bar they weren't like you know right people who trained for this since they were five like we have now no they're a guy that that holds a blowtorch during yeah a welder who'll kick the shit out of you and then go home and beat his wife up too you know

he cuts aluminum plates all day yeah works around metal so catherine said after the cage fighting started he changed like a switch.

Angry one minute, normal the next.

Enter Butterbean.

Okay.

Now,

he's living in Jasper.

Jasper happens to be where Eric Butterbean lives and is from.

Yeah, that's where he's from and he lived.

And he's got his own little thing going on down there, like his own little promotion, basically.

And he ends up.

befriending Butterbean.

Wow.

And that's how this goes.

Butterbean said that Huddo, he's known him for years from around the area and from training and stuff like that.

And he said that he was scheduled.

Huddo was scheduled to fight on an undercard on one of Butterbean's undercards in 2008.

But

Huddo was walking.

He got arrested while walking to the event.

Nice.

He was walking to the event wearing only his fighting shorts.

Okay.

Exactly what he was going to get into the ring like.

He didn't say, I'll put sneakers and a shirt on and walk there.

Then when I get there, I'll take my sneakers and shirt off.

He just got ring ready and then said, all right, hit the road.

And then he just started walking.

So that tells you right there, that's a weird guy, right?

So he said, yeah,

he got arrested while walking down the interstate for whatever reason.

I don't think you're allowed to walk on the interstate, probably.

So

Butterbean said, in his own mind, Muhammad Ali in his prime would have to watch out for him.

Oh.

So that's who he thinks he is.

He thinks he's the toughest guy in the world.

I'm better than the best.

The greatest.

So April 20th, 1998, he is arrested for criminal trespass in the third degree.

So while they're questioning him for that, he made a statement that incriminated himself further in other crimes,

including the sexual abuse in the first degree and kidnapping in the first degree of a 17-year-old girl.

Janks.

In one, the amazing thing, in one article, they say he

had a, quote, affair.

This was in the court documents.

I'm sorry.

It said he had an affair with an almost 18-year-old girl.

Oh, hitman.

An affair with an almost 18-year-old girl is called raping a child.

That's what that's called.

That's what that means.

You can't do that.

I had a rape with a child.

That's not an affair with an almost 18-year-old girl, but that's the state of Mississippi put it that way in their court documents, which blew my fucking mind.

That tells you whoever the author of those documents were when they were describing what happened, where their mind is.

So

he's charged with that.

Now, these are, there's warrants relating to these two offenses, so he's going to be held.

He's being held on a criminal trespass charge while they

prepare all of that shit.

Takes them 12 days to take him to court, though, which is violates the law.

You have to have a certain amount of time.

72 hours, I believe, to make your first appearance unless there's some crazy extenuating circumstances and 12 days, unless there's been an earthquake and an alien attack.

12 days.

You can put him in jail for 12 days?

Before he saw court.

Can't do that.

No.

Now, sexual abuse in the first degree is a Class C felony.

Kidnapping in the first degree is a Class A felony.

And so they recommended a minimum bail of $1,000 for the sexual abuse and $3,000 for the Class A.

So they set bail at $4,000.

So they said that the judge had concerns that the minimum bail in the case was too low because, you know, it was kind of a teenage girl and all this type of thing.

This is not okay.

And they said the state said that the bail was increased.

They want the bail increased because of his disruptive behavior while in jail.

Oh, he's, you know, we're coming out of here.

He's a mess in jail.

He does not like jail.

So

he ends up pleading guilty on June 4th, 98, to the charge of criminal trespass in the third degree, and he's sentenced to serve 30 days in jail for that.

Then he's entitled to have bonds set at $4,000 for everything else.

So that's how that works.

Somehow, I don't think it's the same case, but in 2002, he is again in trouble for sexual abuse of a 17-year-old girl.

I don't know if it's the same one that's still going on for years, but I don't think it is.

I think it's a different one.

Again, it said said this was, he was involved in an affair.

God, Jesus.

Interesting.

Now, basically, he did not like being called a sex offender, hated that.

Yeah.

We get real mad.

Now, the state calls him a sex offender is the thing.

I get young pussy.

What's wrong with you?

So he refuses to register as a sex offender.

He gets very angry during his mandatory sex offender sessions because he doesn't think he belongs there.

Either way, he's sentenced to two concurrent 10-year terms.

So 10 years in prison, he's sentenced to.

Okay.

All right.

You were doing something for 10 years.

10 years is generally...

That's a good chunk of change.

That's a stiff sentence, yeah.

He served three and a half years before he's paroled, you know, because he seems like a guy who really is going to make a go of it on the outside.

Good lord.

Now, in jail, the Walker County Sheriff John Tyree said that Huddo was a...

He's a big, tough guy, and he's a pain in the ass to have in jail.

He says he caused trouble during his regular jail visits over the past decade.

Basically, whenever he's in jail, he's a pain in the ass.

He said, quote, he's a big guy.

He gave the staff of my county jail some problems from time to time by being rowdy.

So now his marriage is over once he gets out of jail.

His wife.

Yeah, she's not going to deal with that.

We just did three and a half years for statutory rape, essentially, or whatever the fuck.

So she said, maybe I'll take the kids and go somewhere else.

She sticks around the area, but they're not, you know, she doesn't move away.

They attempted a reconciliation at one point, but she wasn't having it.

She said, I never even went after child support.

I just figured it was a lost cause.

She didn't even want to talk to this man ever again.

No, and she knows he's not going to pay anyway, so what's the point?

He wouldn't even pay the bills in a house he lived in.

He's going to pay bills in the house he doesn't live in?

No.

Right.

If he does, then you have to give him the address of where you are, and you don't even want to see this man.

That's the other thing.

She said that during the reconciliation period before the divorce, she saw him going through the mandatory sex offender group, and that really pissed him off a lot.

Now, he has all sorts of charges, including trespassing, misdemeanor, domestic assault, harassment from phone calls, reckless driving, general

smorgasbord of jerk-off shit that he does.

His aunt, not the one, not Aunt Faye, a different aunt, Lois, said growing up as a little boy, he was a wonderful kid.

We don't know what happened.

We don't know what the fuck happened.

Listen to this show.

We just told you.

We just told you.

She knew that part.

So September 10th, 2010.

Okay.

Okay.

He, there's a, right before, I'm sorry, right before September 10th, meaning in the year 2000, the local law enforcement in Jasper, Alabama said that they're always looking for Huddo, basically.

Always.

If he's out, he's doing something.

So if you see him, grab him because he's going to be guilty of something.

I'm on on the lookout for him.

Yep.

He said, so far this year, we've been out here 12 times, meaning looking for Huddo for his house, a bar, somewhere where he's the guy that they're looking for.

A dozen times.

A dozen times.

So on September 10th, 2010, he buys a Camaro in Jasper, Alabama in cash.

I don't know what year Camaro he got.

A bad one, I'm assuming.

Probably that 84 somewhere.

Something that the Berlinetta, the real shitty one.

It's like a two-cylinder.

It's an RS.

It's not good.

Not good.

So he buys it cash money here.

I bought it straight cash in Jasper.

Straight cash.

$800 in Jasper, Alabama.

He gets in the Camaro.

I don't think it's registered or has, you know, probably any insurance or anything like that.

But he immediately drives to Clinton, Mississippi, which is a three and a half hour drive.

Oh, it does great.

He's going there.

Yeah.

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Now, the reason why he's going here,

why would a guy purchase an emergency Camaro and get right in and unregistered and drive three and a half hours immediately?

What would make a man do that?

You've got a new CD.

You got to listen to it.

Only pussy will make a man do that.

Oh, boy.

Only a lady.

And that's what he's doing.

He's going to visit his ex-girlfriend.

Oh, Sherry Lawson over at the Comfort Inn in Clinton.

Oh, I'm going to impress the pants right off the wait till I see the comfort in a Camaro.

She's the one saying, I'll meet you at the Comfort Inn.

You know, that's the spot in town.

But he's like, wait till she sees my new wheels, boy.

So they spent Friday through Monday morning together, just a copulating like little bunny rat.

Four-day fuck fest.

Four-day fuck fest.

Absolutely.

Well, two full, one night and one very early morning.

She said that he said he was trying to get back to Alabama after that.

He was going to leave.

So Monday, September 13th, 2010, the Camaro won't work anymore.

It lasted four days.

That ride was all he could get out of it.

So

that has that towed to a local repair shop.

And

yeah, so he's got that.

He's got paperwork.

He gave the repair paperwork to his ex-girlfriend for some reason and said, Tell you what, if you want it, you can keep it.

You can go pay for whatever needs to be fixed, and then it's yours now.

Yeah.

I don't know if that's a legal transfer or what, but that's what he said.

So

near about a half mile from the Comfort Inn is the,

there's a Mississippi College.

It's what it's called.

They didn't think to give it a name.

They were just like, it's a college.

It's in Mississippi.

So on this college campus is a gym called the Baptist Health Plex.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, so the Baptist Health Plex is on the campus and it's a half mile from the Comfort Inn, you know, walking distance.

So

Hudo walks over there.

He's bored.

Okay.

He's got all his, you know, his balls are drained and he's bored.

So the balls are drained and my car broken.

I got to go work out.

Got to get a workout in.

So at 3 p.m., he walks over to the facility and multiple people see him at the facility at 3 p.m.

He starts talking to shitloads of people.

He's very social, by the way, somehow.

He starts talking to all these people.

It's mainly old people in this, by the way, at 3 o'clock on a Monday working out.

Yeah.

It's all elderly people.

So he starts telling everybody that he has cancer.

Oh, he just chose this now.

Yeah, he says he has lung cancer.

He's dying.

Oh.

Just about dead.

He's half damn near dead, basically.

All right.

He also said he has no family.

His car just broke down.

And he just needs some help getting back to Alabama.

And when anybody said, well, how come he came here to begin with?

He said for cancer treatment.

Because everyone goes to rural Mississippi for cancer treatments.

That's where all the good hospitals are.

The Comfort Suites is the only place.

The Comfort Inn has the best chemo around.

So one of the employees there said he seemed a bit strange, like he was maybe on something, maybe some kind of speed or something.

Just seemed like he was kind of amped up.

Yeah, it's chemo lately.

Either that or just like, you know, he's had the energy of like, like a cage fighter would be the best way to put it, like an an MMA guy.

That's all.

Well, jacked up.

Well, jacked up.

Another employee said, overzealous, eager to talk to people that were in the facility, acting out of the ordinary.

And a woman named Jan Cossett, who we'll hear from a little later, too, said he was catering his story to the people that were around him, trying to entice people and pull people in.

Okay, so changing it a little.

Yeah.

Making the juicier.

Yeah, and certain people, they'll watch someone work a room like that, and they're like, I don't think so.

He's like a guy at, you know, 1.45

a.m.

at the bar in Arizona trying to find a lady at the last minute.

And they're like, I see what you're doing.

I got to get asked.

Yeah.

You said you were a lawyer two minutes ago.

You told that chick you were a stockbroker.

You're full of shit.

I don't like that.

So 3.30 p.m., a woman arrives for her regular workout.

Her name is Ethel Winstead Simpson.

And she's born in 1929.

She's 81 years old.

Good lord.

And she's going out for

her workout.

So you can imagine she is a spirited old broad.

She is not one of these,

she's not a meek little thing.

She likes to do shit.

She has bright red hair and dresses real flashy.

And yeah, she's a character, this lady.

She's cool.

She's known for.

She's actual workouts, huh?

Yeah, she's going there to work out.

She's known for being real upbeat and have a lot of energy and a lot of personality.

She lives in Clinton with her brother Vivacious is the word they all use.

Oh, I thought,

damn it.

I thought that was her brother's name.

No, her brother Vivacious.

She's share.

I heard you say she was gregarious.

I said vivacious is what they all said.

So she shared a home with her brother Thomas.

Okay.

She goes to a small Bible study group at the First Baptist Church.

She's always wearing brightly colored clothes.

That's her jam.

Bright red hair, brightly colored clothes.

Everybody knows this gal.

She's fun.

Absolutely.

She drives a silver 2002 Mercedes-Benz.

Nice choice.

She's doing all right.

Her husband died in 2005 of lung cancer after a long, drawn-out illness.

And she's got a son named Ken as well.

Now, Jan Cossett, that HealthPlex employee that said before he was trying to entice people,

She said, quote, probably one of the most generous, giving people I've ever met in my life.

Never met a stranger talking about Ethel.

She said that Ethel was a friend, a member of the church that I attended, and a member of an organization called the Red Hat Society.

Do you know the Red Hats?

I do.

Do you know who they are?

Okay.

When I first, before Stand Up, Before Everything, when I was in my early 20s, I ran a murder mystery dinner theater that we wrote and put on, and it was a spoof of a dinner theater.

You know, it was a fucking, it's kind of dorky, so we made a spoof of it, and it was funny.

So, anyway, one night, the Red Hats booked the entire show

it was like a hundred ladies and they all they're all over 50 you basically have to be over 50 and want to go out and party at least once a month basically fun yeah so they have gatherings and this was their gathering that month was our thing and these ladies were crazy and they were fun and yelling shit out and they were like they were nuts these ladies so do they wear the same hat or are they all different just a red hat crazy hats just different red hats but you wear a red hat and that's like so it's it's older ladies who like to go out and do shit and have energy.

So that's what they are a part of.

So she said that she was just one of the most generous people ever.

Another person from Ethel's Bible study said she's always helping someone.

That's how Ethel gets down.

So Huddo finds her and starts chatting her up right away.

Oh, no.

Yep.

He's walking around.

He's been there about 30 minutes.

And number one, he claims he has cancer and it's the same cancer her husband has.

So right away, she's interested.

She's sympathetic.

She's sympathetic.

By 4.30, she's been there for her hour workout.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They leave together.

Really?

And she drives him to the Comfort Inn in her Silver Mercedes.

So at some point, she's there for a minute at the Comfort Inn hanging out.

At some point, she goes home briefly and then goes back and picks him back up from the Comfort Inn.

Okay.

She's going to get him something, yeah, or she's going to change.

Change probably from her workout gear, I would think, or whatever.

Now, her brother, who lives with her, didn't even see her when she came home and left.

He wasn't on her own.

She got in that fast, yeah.

She got in and out.

Now, at 8.36 p.m., her Mercedes is caught on traffic cameras heading toward Vicksburg.

Okay.

8.45 p.m., the Riverwalk Casino has surveillance footage of the Silver Mercedes parking and two people getting out, elderly woman with red hair, brightly colored clothes, and a bald man wearing Nike flip-flops.

This is our, this is huddle.

They enter the casino together.

Inside the casino, they're there from 8.45 to 11.24 p.m.

in the casino.

It's a great place for a guy with lung cancer.

Perfect place with lung cancer and no fucking shoes on.

Put some shoes on.

See, well, maybe you can borrow one of those oxygen tanks from those old ladies at the slot machine.

You never know.

He's going to need it.

It's going to choke him to death in there.

No, shit.

So security footage shows them gambling together.

Wow.

Shows her purchase dinner.

They went out to dinner at the casino restaurant.

She paid for everything.

The bill is about $40

for casino meals.

They're seen at multiple slot machines.

You know, they're talking.

Huddo seems real relaxed and social, and they're going back and forth talking, and they seem to be having a good time.

Just some friends hanging out.

A weird grouping of friends, an 80-year-old lady and a 40-year-old guy just hanging out together, but that's fine.

So by 11.24 p.m., the Riverwalk Casino surveillance footage shows two figures walk out.

It's her and him.

They exit together.

They both get in the Mercedes with Ethel driving and they leave heading east on Highway 61.

Okay.

Now, September 14th, 2010, this is this night, but, you know, an hour later, basically, 12.44 a.m.

So same night, crossed over into the next day.

They are staying up.

They're hanging out.

I mean, Ethel parties.

Ethel is not fucking around.

She is going to get the most out of her remaining years.

I like it.

She goes harder than I do.

I'm not going to parade.

Oh, I'm not working out and going to a casino in the same day.

That's not happening.

Going out after that.

Not happening.

I'm done.

So the Comfort Insecurity footage shows them the Mercedes arriving.

Yeah.

Huddo getting out of the car.

And that's it.

No passenger is visible.

It's just him in the Mercedes.

Driver's seat, huh?

Yeah, and he enters room 237, which is the same shining reference.

Oh, it is.

Room 237 is the room the lady in the tub was, and they have a documentary called Room 237 about all the creepy, weird shit from the shining.

So that is the grossest scene of that movie.

Yeah, that's that is

as a kid, dude.

That messed me up because I saw it and I was like, oh, fucked up.

I was like, awesome.

Oh, God.

No, no.

As a kid, I never realized how quickly you could lose a boner until that point in my life, I think.

Get out of there, Jack.

No, go, go.

I saw boobs.

What happened?

Ah, Jesus.

So at 12.48 p.m., so 4 a.m., four minutes later, he's seen leaving the room wearing a different shirt.

He had a white shirt on, changed to a dark shirt, same Nike flip-flops, and appears to be moving pretty quickly.

At 12.51, he leaves in the Mercedes, going back toward the direction of Vicksburg.

He's alone.

Okay.

But he's got her car.

1.15 a.m., he arrives back at the AmeriStar, or this is a different one, the Ameristar Casino in Vicksburg.

Security footage shows him arriving, parking the Mercedes, getting out, entering the facility alone, acting normal, playing slots one in the morning, playing slots for 45 minutes, talking to employees,

cashes out $47 in tickets and leaves at 2.11 a.m.

Now at 3.07 a.m., a tag reader, a license plate tag reader on the I-20 in Rankin County sees the Mercedes heading east toward Alabama at 75 miles an hour with one person in the car.

Okay.

A bald guy, mind you.

And it's cooking.

And it's moving.

Highway speed.

Yeah.

So September 14th, the same day that this is all happening this night, now 7 a.m., so the next morning,

Ethel's brother Thomas said he woke up and saw that Ethel hadn't come home.

And he said, that wasn't like her.

We looked after each other.

So at 8:30, he calls 8:30 a.m.

The brother calls Ethel's son, Ken, says, you know where your mom is?

And she says, no.

So he says, no.

Ken calls his mother's phone, no answer, goes to the health plex.

It's not even open yet.

Drives all the usual routes she travels to go to her normal things and doesn't see her car, doesn't see her anywhere.

Then by 10.15 a.m., he contacts the Clinton Police Department.

Okay.

They do an investigation and in the first couple of minutes they figure out what's going on exactly.

She was last seen at the Baptist Health Plex, last seen in this area anyway.

She left with an unknown white male who all the employees gave a very good description of, by the way.

The Mercedes is missing from her residence, and there's no activities on her credit card since the casino.

Okay.

So they put out a bolo here for a silver Mercedes-Benz with a Mississippi license plate and possibly a female elderly woman in danger is their bolo.

So same day,

Huddo pops up at his Aunt Faye's house.

He's hanging out there.

Really?

At Aunt Faye's house.

He lives there a lot of times.

Yeah.

Wow.

Now,

at the house is Lois Rutledge, who is another one of his great aunts.

Okay.

She, I don't know if she lives at this house or is there all the time or whatever, but her and her son are there, who is

Huddo's cousin.

Yeah.

Now,

okay.

She sees him in the Mercedes.

He showed up the afternoon of the 14th in North Birmingham at their house.

This is Aunt Faye and Aunt whatever her name is,

Aunt Lois' house.

He didn't tell his aunts.

He told them a different story.

He said that Rutledge knew that his mom had recently given him $5,000 from a legal settlement to buy a car.

So the aunt said, I said, well, that's a pretty sharp car

for the price that your mother gave you.

Like, you got that for five grand?

How'd you do that?

It's an eight-year-old Mercedes.

How the fuck did that happen?

She said that he was asking strange and asked his aunt Lois if she wanted to see a dead body.

Holy.

She said, My remark was, hell no, but he popped the trunk.

It only contained a box, though.

Okay.

Nobody.

She said, quote, he tells tales.

Yeah, he does.

Okay.

So she left the house again and returned with her son because he was acting so weird.

Huddo is sitting there on the couch.

Lois said when she got back, quote, I said, where's Faye?

He said, oh, she got a little ill and went into the bedroom.

He said, she doesn't want to talk to y'all right now or anybody else.

She just wants to lay down.

So then Huddo asks his aunt for money, Lois.

So

she said, quote, I said, Jamie, she calls him Jamie,

I will let you have it if I can spare it.

And my son was sitting here and looked over at him and said, Mama, just let him have it.

Like, let's get him out of here, basically, I think is what she was doing.

So she gave over $20, and then Huddo and the cousin, Lois' son, leave.

Lois said she then watched television and fell asleep.

Okay.

Okay.

September 16th at 9 a.m.

Huddo calls the house saying he's in Panama City, Florida.

He calls Lois there at Aunt Faye's house.

Aunt Faye said, or Aunt Lois said, he said, let me talk to Faye.

I said, she ain't up yet.

Huddo then laughed hysterically and hung up.

Okay.

Okay.

So she called out to her sister, Faye, because she didn't like the laugh and pounded on her door, but it was locked, her bedroom door.

So she couldn't get in.

So later, she called the the fire department who broke down the door and found her body in there oh fay's dead faye is dead at 68 years old the aunt said lois said there was blood all over the sheet blood on her hair and face

and um yeah they at first they thought it was natural causes there's blood all over i don't know how that's possible

Her face just exploded, man.

She's naturally bled, bled to death.

Just bled out, dude.

You know how that happens.

You get a certain age, your body can't hold the blood anymore.

It just lets it all out.

Yeah, if you're anemic,

a nosebleed will get you.

Yeah, so they contact the coroner's office, and the coroner's office finds signs of foul play.

And she's basically beaten to death in her bedroom.

Dang.

Blunt force trauma is what they're going to attribute this to.

Now, this is the woman who he says molested him for years and years.

So, where the hell is he?

He's not in Florida.

No.

He called his ex-wife Catherine that morning, then just showed up at her job in Jasper driving the Mercedes.

So much for Panama.

Nope.

He's a Panama.

Not here.

Catherine said he looked drunk.

Well, not really drunk, but he was stumbling a lot.

He's on something.

She said this.

She said, he said, you know, Kat, I hurt my hand.

I about broke my hand.

I got in a fight.

He had scratches all up and down his arm.

fighting his aunt.

She said that he told her that he was in a fight with a man in a parking lot of a Vicksburg casino and told her that he'd been talking,

he'd been taking Lortab and Xanax, which is a pain reliever and Xanax.

So,

you know,

she showed her.

A pain reliever is one thing to say.

That's a narcotic.

Yeah, that's a narcotic pain reliever.

Yeah, that's not Advil or Motrin or some shit like that.

So she, after he showed off the Mercedes, Catherine said that he told her he was going to the Auburn football game on September 18th, and then he left.

Great.

Got plans.

September 17th, 2010, at a hog farm off Highway 22 in Edwards, Mississippi.

Yeah.

A local farmer said, quote, I found her in my grain bin.

Oh, my.

Okay, he went in to feed his hogs, and there's a large metal grain storage container that's about six feet tall, used for storing hog feed.

It's in a very isolated, dark location to keep the feed nice, obviously, about 200 yards from the main road.

And this guy said that he

opened up the feed thing and saw a body partially covered

by hog feed, basically.

Oh, boy.

He said red stains that appeared

to be blood stains were on the rim of the container.

And they also said there was apparent hand prints in the blood.

It required dental records to identify it as Ethel Simpson.

So

the autopsy showed injuries consistent with a single blow to the side of the head and neck.

Although they identified a neck injury, they couldn't state if it was from strangulation, from twisting it, or from a blow.

Oh, golly.

She has a skull fracture ear to ear, complete skull fracture.

That's a, that's a shot.

Well, think about 81-year-old peoples.

Their bones are people's.

Their bones are half the density of mine or yours.

It's like an egg.

And a woman, too.

It goes goes worse.

They get osteoporosis and everything.

Yeah, it's tough on them.

So they said the type of force you see in a car wreck or falling from a great distance,

a broken neck also, fractured spine at C2, C3 with a complete severing of the spinal cord.

That's like picking her up and slapping her head on the ground.

Okay, she was like made of balsa wood or something.

Everything just exploded and broke.

This is horrifying.

They said either this or the skull fracture would have killed her.

One of the two, obviously.

She also had a crushed wimp pipe consistent with strangulation or blunt force.

There was bleeding in her neck muscles, blunt force trauma to the head with multiple impact sites, soft tissue defects, facial injuries, defensive wounds on the hand, bruising consistent with a beating, and brain bleeding,

subdural hematoma.

And they said this indicates consciousness during the attack as well.

So she wasn't even unconscious.

What the fuck, man?

The doctor said she was essentially beaten to death.

After either the broken neck or skull fracture, she likely lost consciousness rather quickly.

Holy shit.

This is horrifying.

So September 17th, same day they find Ethel

in the morning.

There's a guy named Mark Ambers Cox, who's 56.

He's at a convenience store near Auburn, Alabama.

Okay.

He, this is crazy.

He said that he met Huddo and they struck up a conversation in the convenience store.

And this Ambers happened to tell him that he has some land for sale nearby.

So, Huddo said, love to take a look at it.

So, they said, sure.

So, this guy and Huddo ended up going out to the 5,300 block of Highway 29 North in a wooded area where Huddo stabbed Cox in

the neck and torso several times.

What the hell?

Absolutely fucking just

blitz-creaked him and stole his wallet.

Okay.

This guy had enough left in him to call 911 while he was bleeding out in the woods, and he ended up actually surviving the knife attack.

He got stabbed like eight times.

It was wild.

So he said, I was meeting him about some land I was selling.

He just started stabbing me.

No warning.

Wow.

That's crazy.

So by 2 p.m., now they're chasing Huddo.

Because now they're looking for him.

They know the car.

It's all triangulated here.

So they said, we stopped this Silver Mercedes from the Bolo, attempted traffic stop, but he fled.

Of course.

So they chased him.

He's going 100 fucking miles an hour, weaving through back roads like the Duke boys.

Fucking

Dixie's playing in the horn when he goes over a jump.

For sure.

I mean, it's wild.

They're chasing him up to 90 to 100 miles an hour through Auburn, into Lee County, multiple units.

He finally crashed into a median.

And then once he crashed into the median, he got out, had his hands up, was cooperative.

He's done.

This was at the Alabama Highway 51 and U.S.

Highway 80.

So they swarmed him.

He's wearing blood-stained flip-flops.

Okay.

Not smart.

Yep.

Not good.

There was blood visible on the driver's seat, and Ethel's purse was in the trunk.

They said, what's up with this?

And he he said, quote, y'all got the wrong guy.

Mark Cox did it.

Oh.

Yeah, he did it.

It's the guy stabbed up there.

That's why.

Yeah, the guy from the Landsale.

Yeah.

So they bring him in for an interrogation at 3.30.

He claims they were giving him promises for cooperation that will result in rewards for him, which you can't say if you tell us this, you get this, but you can say, might help you out later on if you tell us.

So,

the judges tend to look a little kindlier, juries tend to look a little kindlier on it.

If your prosecutor might be less apt to really throw the book at you.

So, this is an hour and 42-minute minutes of all of this shit, of an interrogation.

He said, I met her at the gym, old lady.

She wanted to help me out.

We went to the casino, had a good time.

Then Mark Cox showed up.

He killed her.

I just took the car because I was scared.

Oh.

He's blaming the guy he stabbed in Alabama.

Yeah.

Meanwhile, he's was never there.

He's got strong alibis, and he never doesn't know any of these people.

He's never even been in this area.

Crazy.

So he confirms the casino trip, admits to taking the Mercedes, places himself with the victim.

He did all these things, but just claims someone else did it.

You know, just gave somebody else the wrap.

So, yeah, they find that Mark Cox, due to credit card records, cell phone pings, witness statements, and work time cards, he was never anywhere near Mississippi.

Hilarious.

End of the interview, he said, do I need a lawyer?

And they said, well, that's up to you.

And he said, I want a lawyer.

So they terminated the interview.

Problem is, in a half hour, the Birmingham police come and show up.

And now they want to talk to him, and they're unaware of the fact that he lawyered up already.

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Now back to the show.

Okay, so they talked to him for two hours and 19 minutes about Aunt Faye's murder.

He said, I don't want to answer questions, just want to make a statement.

That old woman in Mississippi tried to mess with me.

She reminded me of shit Faye used to do to me.

Oh.

An 81-year-old woman tried to molest you when you're 40, is what he just said.

Get the fuck out of here.

She tried to molest a

cancer patient.

Yeah, that's how it goes.

You got to diddle a cancer patient, you know, see if they're still have some feeling left in them.

You know what I mean?

We know if they're ridiculous.

Fucking ridiculous.

He said, I didn't go to Faye's house.

Mark Cox must have followed me from Mississippi.

So now Mark Cox followed him, and he's just going to kill him.

Wherever he is, he's going to kill whoever's around him, essentially.

I'm just going to, yeah, just around him.

Not really.

Just to frame him up.

A few days later, September 22nd, the third interrogation, this is at his request.

He requested to speak with the investigators.

And this time he said, you don't know the same Ethel that I do.

Oh.

He knew Ethel for five hours.

Yeah.

He said, she was all over me at the casino.

I had to get away from her.

Charles Manson couldn't tote my gym bag, he also said.

What does that mean?

That means he's a good murderer, I assume.

Yeah.

But Charles Manson couldn't tote my gym bag is the most strange.

Is that the most like those two things just don't go together?

Imagine Charles Manson with a gym bag.

It just doesn't fit, right?

Yeah.

Then he said, quote, I've done worse things than this.

Okay, go on.

This is terrifying.

And when asked about the murder, though, he said, ask Mark Cox.

He was there.

That's all he would say.

The next day, he requests another interrogation, and he said this about Ethel.

Quote, she was a horny old broad.

I had sex with her the first day I met her.

Oh, boy.

He said, these old women, they think they can buy young men.

She touched my leg in the car, my back, said things like Faye used to say to me.

So he's saying,

then he said, quote, lethal injection, firing squad, electric chair, I don't care.

Do it tomorrow.

Hell, do it today.

You can't kill me enough times for what I've done.

Okay.

All righty.

That's interesting.

So

he never denied anything.

He's charged with murder, obviously.

He's charged with murder in Mississippi.

Alabama said they're going to wait for this to see how this plays out for a while here.

Fair enough.

He has a public defender who immediately pulls out because he's crazy.

Butterbean said, quote,

they asked Butterbean about this, of course.

Butterbean, what's going on with this?

He said, quote, I wouldn't put it past him just because of how crazy he got in the end.

I wouldn't put it past him.

Wow.

Butterbean expects this behavior.

His aunt Lois that found Aunt Faye said, it's just hard to believe that one of our relatives done this.

I loved him because he was family.

Right now, I have no feeling in my heart for him whatsoever.

After I saw my sister's face black and blue and beaten, I can't feel nothing for him now.

He used to be Ken.

We used to be Ken.

At the arraignment, the judge has to, you know, ask him to confirm his name, and he says, they call me Hitman, Hitman Huddo.

Oh, boy.

Don't say that while you're being arraigned for first-degree murder, please.

That's dumb.

So Mississippi and Alabama agree to let him face trial first in Mississippi, and the agreement stipulates that he be returned to Alabama for trial once the case in Mississippi was over, if they decided to go forward.

Because they assume he did that first.

So they're going chronologically.

They try to get some statements thrown out that he made, obviously.

The ones he made about, you know, I've done worse than this.

Charles Manson couldn't tote my gym bag.

You know, all the guilty things that he said.

Also, they're wondering about whether his sexual battery is going to come in, his other one.

And his lawyer, they're arguing over the difference.

I got to read this quickly.

They said, when you look at our sexual battery definition, meaning can a Mississippi or an Alabama sexual sexual battery come into Mississippi where they have a different definition for it?

Basically,

he said, when you look at our sexual battery definition, it's a person is guilty of sexual battery if he or she engages in sexual penetration with a person without his or her consent.

The obvious difference between Alabama's sexual abuse in the first degree and our sexual battery statute is the term penetration, the word penetration.

How many times are you going to say that in court?

Our law clearly states that penetration

is just even the slightest of touching.

In fact, any touching of a woman's genitalia is essentially penetration in Mississippi, which means in Mississippi, they don't have a dictionary of what that means.

It's a different thing.

Words mean things.

They do.

There's also a bunch of shit about his competence.

And basically,

the judge says he's competent.

There's a state guy who says he's competent.

And then there's somebody that the defense hires who decides not to give any report at all about him.

Oh, because they don't want to lie under oath.

They're like, I don't know.

They say they don't have it.

They don't have it, basically.

They think he's malingering and faking, and they don't know what the hell's going on.

And also kind of crazy.

Fair.

The defense counsel convinces the prosecution to extend a plea offer.

So they offer him a plea

there, which

he ends up, he aborted the plea,

though he didn't want the plea, and acknowledged to the court that he'd been disruptive and uncooperative in the past and promised to conduct himself appropriately going forward and he wants to go to trial yeah so they have a good boy in court i will so they have a change of venue because nobody in this county hasn't heard of this everyone knew ethel she lived there forever so it's uh right outside of jackson uh this cost the county a shitload of money because they have to sequester jurors and hotels and all this shit in the openings the prosecution says she was lively she was vivacious she loved to socialize she had a very busy life.

She loved to travel.

She loved to eat.

She loved people.

She was alive and full of life.

Ken, her son, described her as colorful in the way she dressed.

She also had bright red hair.

She's a lover of people.

And one of the qualities that people love so much about Ethel was how much she loved people and how outgoing she was.

The defense in their opening says, quote, Mr.

Huddo requests we present no defense.

He wants the death penalty.

Oh, really?

Yeah,

the judge said, Mr.

Huddo, I can't allow allow that you have to put on we've got a trial something that's why you have a lawyer so

at one point in the trial in the beginning he's he gets a day off for injury he tells the judge that his leg shackles have injured him so the trial is delayed while they check out his injury to see if it's legit the whole trial is just him acting crazy and i got to get through this quickly but it's nuts um

He missed a bunch of this shit.

There's an outburst during his cousin Jason Wilson's testimony where Huddo says, quote, don't give a fuck about none of them, especially them, them, or them.

I don't care.

Fuck all of y'all.

See that?

Fuck y'all.

And he gives the fingers to everybody.

He did that to the judge, the prosecutor, the witness, and a bunch of family members in the jury or in the gallery.

The defense said, Your Honor, I'd like a recess after that.

That'd be nice.

Yeah.

And Huddo says, no recess.

Tell them about Alabama.

The murder's there.

Tell them everything.

Tell them.

A court officer approaches and and Huddo says, you're wasting money.

Y'all can kill me today.

I don't care.

Do it today.

Do it today.

And the judge says, you can go ahead and remove him from the courtroom.

Thank you.

So that ended the day's proceedings.

Interesting.

Then he tells the judge the next day, I got some things I want to say.

Oh, great.

He jumped up and said, I don't give a fuck about the death penalty, then gave the middle finger to the entire audience in the courtroom.

Again, the jury didn't see this.

Then he told the judge also, everything's going to come out.

Everything.

Then

this is wild.

Mark Cox testifies.

He said, Never met him before in my life before the day he stabbed me.

Never been to Heinz County before this trial because his defense is Mark Cox did it.

And Mark Cox is here.

And he's here.

He said, he called about buying land, met me at a convenience store, then stabbed me.

What the fuck?

Wow.

There's DNA evidence.

Simpson's blood, Ethel's blood is on his flip-flops.

And the match frequency on this blood is is one in 276 billion.

So one in, you know,

a hundred times the population of the world, not 100, 50 times the population of the world, essentially.

So,

yeah, that's a lot.

So

there's that.

He, by the way, somehow, he said he was incompetent.

Their thing is, we're incompetent.

He's incompetent to stand trial.

He went from that to, I get to assist in the defense.

I get to be my lawyer, too.

Yeah.

Okay.

So So he tries to question some witnesses.

Oh, my.

Oh, yeah.

He has an outburst where he shouted obscenities and made gestures at the jury, which is a good move, as well as injecting prejudicial facts that have been excluded from the trial.

He struggled to follow the questions that were written out for him.

He couldn't read real well.

He didn't ask a question that was allowed.

He was confused about what the witness had testified to or which witness it even was.

He said, you testified to this.

And he goes, No, I didn't.

And it was some other witness.

So he didn't even know what the hell he was talking about.

Unbelievable.

He referred to himself in the third person

and just acted nuts in general.

It's wild.

Apparently, during one of these cross-examinations, he exploded and yelled and did all of that.

He was removed again.

Then, at one point, this is the court document says, in a moment of either dark comedy or immense sadness, we'll put it that way.

His counsel renewed a request for the trial court to find him incompetent.

This is his lawyer trying to save him.

He objected to his own lawyer.

Oh, Lord.

He said, Your Honor, objection.

And they said, what the fuck?

No.

This is, you can't object to your own.

You can't have a motion and an objection from the same table.

That can't happen.

What are you doing?

Think about that.

That's a ridiculous, like bad comedy movie if that would happen.

Last day of trial, more repeated outbursts leading to his dismissal from the court.

He asked the judge if he could be dismissed to his cell rather than sit there.

The judge refused.

So he flipped off the prosecutor and said, fuck you.

Just like that.

In closing, the prosecutor said, ladies and gentlemen, we've seen all the behavior and the actions of James Huddo during this trial.

And I want to get one thing clear before we go any further.

Nowhere in these instructions will you ever find an instruction by this court that

you are to determine whether or not James Huddo is insane.

No matter how crazy you think he is, he said, this is not a decision for you to make.

That issue

hasn't been raised at this trial, so it's not anything you need to consider when you go back to deliberate.

Just fry his crazy ass, is all he's saying.

Two hours of deliberation, they find him guilty.

Okay, now, during sentencing, he's got a prior violent felony, heinous, atrocious, or cruel acts, beating an elderly woman to death.

Also, during a robbery, his mitigation case was just basically

that he was abused as a child.

That's it.

That's his whole mitigation.

And this is for the death penalty.

And they just, they brought a, they brought a woman out who is a social worker, Dr.

Julie Schroeder, who had a bachelor's degree in psychology and a Ph.D.

in social work.

So not a psychologist, essentially.

And she tried to say that he was probably bipolar as well, because his mother was bipolar and he was abused.

And they said that

when Ethel touched him, he told her that it reminded him of the shit Faye would say to him and he just lost it.

Okay.

The judge prohibits a PTSD diagnosis because she's not a psychologist and specific treatment recommendations, again, because she's a social worker.

His mom testifies for him.

Really?

For the first time she's been there for him in his fucking life and she's there.

She said, his stepfather beat us both.

I had cracked ribs, split lips, lost teeth.

Jamie saw it all.

I'm bipolar.

I think Jamie is too, but never diagnosed.

His father told him he was a mistake.

Beat him so bad he missed two weeks of school.

Then, during the testimony about the sexual abuse of him as a child, he said, Your Honor, we don't have no further questions for the witness.

She can be excused.

And they tried to keep going, and he said, stop.

I don't want this.

Pass her to the prosecution.

Pass her off, damn it.

His attorney said, Jamie, please.

And he said, I'm ready for parchment.

Take me to death row.

Let's go.

Parchment.

Parchment.

No, parchment.

I think that's the.

What is that?

I don't know.

That's probably the prison name.

The jail that has the, yeah.

So the prosecution said, Dr.

Schroeder's not a psychiatrist, not a psychologist, just a social worker.

No diagnosis for James Hutto.

What's the nexus between abuse as a child and murdering an elderly elderly woman you just met?

There is no nexus.

Victims of molestation don't lose their concept of right and wrong.

Correct.

Fair enough.

Less than an hour of deliberation for this.

The jury comes back.

You, sir, mate, fuck off.

Death by lethal injection.

Well, that's something.

He beat an old lady to death.

Yeah.

So he then turns to the prosecutor, gives her double middle fingers and says, fuck you, bitch.

The judge says, Mr.

Huddo.

And he says, I don't have no respect for you or any of those sons of bitches in here.

Okay.

He's going to appeal on a bunch of legal things, basically, that, you know, his first, he asked for a lawyer on his first interrogation, so the second one shouldn't have done this, and a bunch of very small ticky-tack things, which are important, but they have DNA, and he beat an old lady to death.

You're going to fucking prison.

This is trouble for you.

That's it.

So he is currently in the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchment.

So there you go.

Death row, unit 29.

He's on 23-hour a day lockdown, but they say his likelihood of actually being executed is extremely low.

Really?

Because they have 36 people on death row in Mississippi, and

they have no protocol for how to execute them, and they haven't executed anyone in 13 years because they don't have the drugs, they don't have the things, they don't know how to do it.

So

there's that.

Now, the Baptist Health Plex now requires IDs for all non-members.

Oh.

And a buddy system is encouraged for seniors.

And there's a sign that says, for your safety, please do not leave with anyone you don't know well.

No,

at the airport, where it says, don't take rides from non-whatever the fuck.

Yeah, it's that thing.

They also had neighborhood watch programs expand, which you could have had 100 neighborhood watches.

That wouldn't have helped this at all.

Senior safety seminars, church security teams formed, and police presence increased at senior venues.

So Ken Simpson, who is

Aunt Faye's son, said, my mother died because she was kind.

Oh, I'm sorry, this is Ethel's son, Ken.

Okay.

Said, my mother died because she was kind.

We can't let kindness become a death sentence.

They also, in the legislature, enhance penalties for crimes against the elderly, mandatory reporting for suspected elder abuse.

That's for doctors and hospitals and police.

Funding for senior security, center security, cross-training for adult protective services, and the Ethel Simpson Foundation was established in 2014, which provides security equipment to senior centers, funds self-defense classes for the elderly.

81.

I don't know how much you're going to defend yourself.

You're made of crackers at that point.

Like you can't.

Throw them, bite them.

You're made of saltine at that point.

Okay, yeah.

Educates about predator tactics and has helped 47 facilities in Mississippi.

Here's the other thing that we had to get to.

Investigators believe there's a shitload more victims.

This is not the first time he did this.

There's no way.

Yeah, there's no way he did this the first time.

There's gaps in years of his history, where they don't know what happened.

There's references he made himself to several other murders in Alabama.

The pattern suggests an escalation over time.

So there's several unsolved cases being reviewed, including there's families still searching for three missing elderly women in Alabama between 2008 and 2010 that disappeared, and two elderly in Mississippi missing from the same period.

Damn it.

He's an old lady serial killer, dude.

This is disgusting.

In 2025, his final appeal is denied by the U.S.

Supreme Court, and legal battles appear exhausted, although we don't know if he's ever going to get executed.

Inmate number 183663 and recently wrote into a magazine called

JukejointMag.com.

What did he say?

He wrote like a big poem, kind of.

From Juke

called Bumblebee in Paradise.

Okay.

Lil Bumblebee, Lil Bumblebee in Paradise, enjoying his domain and endless nectar, his whole world.

He enjoys the nectar and all his hopes and dreams are becoming one of the beautiful flowers he gorges himself on every day.

He's had many a brother and sister bumblebees making the transition to become beautiful flowers gushing with nectar.

And it goes on from there about these bees and all this weird shit.

It's awful.

Yeah, it's weird.

one named Dauber,

whatever.

And at the end, it says, James Cobb Hutto III was born in Jasper, Alabama.

He's 52 years old now and he loves everybody.

He's also

imprisoned for killing multiple fucking women.

So old lady.

So there you go.

Very quickly.

That's Edwards, Mississippi.

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