Jerrie Lynn Acklin

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She was a hardworking single mom fighting to get ahead and to help others.

She would have done anything for anyone that asked.

Always had a smile.

But when this mother of five disappears without a trace, her friends and family fear the worst.

We're all creatures of habit.

So, I mean, pretty soon you start wondering if maybe there's something going on.

And I was like, oh no, what on earth could have happened?

As police begin a desperate search, a disturbing narrative begins to emerge.

There were family secrets involved.

She was going to get what she wanted, one or the other.

There were droplets of blood in and around the kitchen table.

It went from a missing person to foul play.

This is someone who went absolutely crazy.

It's just a horror story.

June 3rd, 2014, Batesville, Arkansas.

It's 3 p.m.

on a quiet Tuesday when the second wave of nurses at Eagle Mountain Assisted Living Facility are due to begin their shift.

It's a variety of levels.

They have assisted living, independent living, and there's also some nursing home care.

But as caregivers clock in, concerns begin to to mount.

65-year-old nurse Linda Stingley has not shown up for her shift, and no one seems to know why.

Her coworker tried to reach her.

She called her multiple times, even made a Facebook post asking if anyone knew where Linda Joe was.

I thought, well, maybe she just overslept, or maybe she had to go take care of something for her parents or something, you know, and didn't have a phone signal.

Others, knowing Linda's dedication to her job, sense something worse.

Ms.

Stingley never missed work, so they were close to her.

They had apparently worked on that same shift for quite some time.

Her coworkers were worried about her.

With fears mounting, Linda's coworkers contact the Independence County Sheriff's Office for help.

Police agree to swing by Linda's home and conduct a welfare check.

They're just needing someone to be checked on, just looking for someone in need of help actually in the residence or something to that effect.

As law enforcement officers make their way to Linda's home, news of her disappearance reaches her friends and family.

I was doing chores when my phone rang and

they told me if Linda didn't show up for work.

Your mind goes all over the place trying to think of where somebody could be and trying not to look at the negative side.

I was like, oh no, what on earth could have happened?

Mrs.

Stingley did not lead a life that takes risks that would put her in a position to statistically become a victim more than you or I.

To not call and to not show up was not typical behavior for a woman like Ms.

Stingley.

I kept thinking this has got to be.

a bad drink.

Linda Joe's mother tells police this is not something my daughter would have done.

She would never walk off and not tell us where she's gone.

Oklahoma native Linda Joe, Canada, was dedicated to faith and family above all else.

Yeah, go to church on Sunday, say grace before the meal, that kind of family values.

My daughter is friends with everybody.

She didn't have anything much, and she saw somebody in she tried to help them.

She had a Bible with her.

At many occasions, her family talked about her telling them to just turn to the Bible and that anything they needed to know would be there.

Married at 17, Linda and her husband, Billy Schouse, settled in her home state of Oklahoma and started a family.

Linda married him and had Michelle and Chris.

We'd have family get together.

She was so fun-loving, you know.

After five years of marriage, Linda and Billy divorced.

But Linda had another chance at love when she met Jerry Stingley.

With her two children in tow, Linda and the kids made a new home with Jerry.

The happy couple embraced the idea of a growing family and quickly added three more kids to the brood.

She was working at the time when she met this guy and I thought at first that everything would be okay.

Linda married him and then Gerald was born in 1972.

Julian was born in 73.

Then Corey was born in May of 74.

But after 13 years, the couple's marriage ended in divorce, leaving Linda a single mother.

She had five kids and was really trying just to make it all work.

Faced with the daunting task of raising a large family on her own, Linda set out into the workforce to support her children.

She decided to go to school for nursing and was working as a single mom so hard to really achieve this education and have a better life for her family.

She was going to school.

She would

study all night.

She was working at whatever she could find.

Linda rose to the challenge and soon secured work caring for the elderly.

She loved getting to go and be around the elderly people that were in nursing homes and everything.

And she was working at

assisted living place

where she gave all the medicine and everything like that.

She's pretty devoted to it.

She did love her job.

While Linda's oldest, Michelle, had already left the nest, her second daughter, Jerry Lynn, was often called upon to help run the household.

Linda worked a lot of second shift at her job, and she would leave at three in the afternoon and would come home later in the evening or even close to 10 o'clock at night.

So you would assume that a lot of things fell onto Jerry.

As Linda's fourth child, Jerry Lynn forged her own path from a young age.

She was just a normal child.

She played basketball, was a very good basketball player and everything,

but was very belligerent about, I'm gonna do what I want to do and you can't tell me what to do.

She was fun to be around.

She just drove around town like everybody else did, nothing else to do.

She was a little bit of a tomboy, a little bit hot-headed.

She taught back a lot.

As Jerry grew older, she grew more independent.

and her relationship with her family became more strained.

She was expected, I think, to kind of hold the fort down while mom worked a lot.

lot.

I do think that was an issue just from things I've seen while I was there.

You know, like Linda would ask her to do dishes or do this a lot.

And there was a little bit of haggling, which, you know, teenagers do that.

Jerry Lynn really had

some animosity and growing up.

And, you know, I mean, some kids are just...

troubled kids, but she seemed to really have that my way or no way and some animosity toward her mom.

Right Right after she graduated high school, she

continued to get worse

and a lot of the time Linda did not even know where she was.

She wasn't a bad person or anything like that, but she did have a short fuse as, you know, like I'd seen her get upset with people over very small things.

At the age of 19, Jerry followed in her mother's footsteps by becoming a young parent.

Jerry then found out she was pregnant.

She just quit her job.

Her car was basically junk by then.

I don't know what she would have done if Linda hadn't took her in.

After giving birth, Jerry tried to care for her son Dalton, but it soon became clear that she lacked some of the maternal instincts that Linda proudly displayed.

When she had that baby,

within six weeks, you knew she wasn't okay.

She would leave the baby with Linda.

Even though Linda was working, she had to try to make arrangements.

It just more or less abandoned him, left him with Linda.

Linda would do anything for her children.

She always said, you make mistakes, everybody makes mistakes.

While Linda worked hard to raise her grandson, the behavior of her own teenage son, Corey, became cause for concern.

The prosecutor's office and law enforcement were familiar with Corey Stingley.

He had been in trouble.

Corey got on drugs before he ever graduated.

He went into the National Guard and I think Linda thought that would straighten him out.

Linda worked so hard and then just there was always another problem down the road.

That's what it felt like.

If this kid was getting it together, that kid wasn't.

Despite life's ups and downs, by 2014, Linda seemed content.

Even her relationship with now 40-year-old Jerry Lynn appeared to be on the mend.

Linda had said Jerry had made some bad decisions and that she hoped that she would do better.

Linda had worked so hard in her life and was finally getting to a point where she wasn't going to have to work anymore.

Things were really looking good.

Linda, who was always very driven, loved her job, but it was coming toward retirement.

But when no one can reach Linda on June 3rd, 2014, panic sets in for those that love her.

As you can guess, I

practically became hysterical.

I kept saying, she's okay.

They'll find her.

The next day, as officers make their way to Linda's home for a welfare check, Dispatch collects all the information they can from her worried coworkers.

The last time her coworkers had seen Linda Jo, she was working a shift the day before, and she got in her car and left that evening.

They hadn't heard from her since.

We're looking for the last person that probably saw her before she went missing.

The search is on.

Coming up, police search Linda's home.

She was not in the house but her car was still there.

Someone could have been walking the road and taking her.

As the hunt for Linda intensifies, a new search effort begins.

They could not get it together about why both of these women were missing and was there another person involved.

We may have someone on the loose that is willing to very quickly injure and kill someone.

It kept going through my mind.

I'm probably not going to see my daughter alive again.

On June 4th, 2014, Law enforcement in Independence County, Arkansas performs a welfare check on 65-year-old Linda Stingley after she failed to arrive for her shift at a local assisted living facility the day before.

Family lived around here, lived close, and actually met deputies there at one point in time.

And they actually let the deputies in the house and look around.

They looked for her.

She was missing.

She was not in the house, but her car was still there.

As police and family walk from room to room, everything appears normal.

No signs of a struggle at all.

Nothing out of place.

Nothing that would really raise any suspicions that that was a crime scene.

But Linda's relatives do notice one thing that raises alarms.

Family members couldn't find her purse.

So, you know, we have Mrs.

Stingley missing along with her purse.

Someone could have been walking the road and pulling door handles on cars and driveways and taking her.

taking her purse that way.

However, in this case, Mrs.

Stingley is also missing, so that kind of rules that out.

Linda Joe's purse missing is obviously concerning to police, but it doesn't really help them with a timeline.

When she left her work that evening, did she get home and leave with her purse?

Doesn't really give them a lot of answers.

Police speculate whether there may be an innocent explanation for Linda's disappearance.

Every day, a vast majority of those cases that are filed, those reports that were filed with adults, typically are non-founded.

The people show up within a day or two because adults have their own lives that they don't necessarily share with everybody.

One would assume that a friend picked her up and they went out together or one of her sons picked her up and they went out together.

You look for the most innocent explanation first and usually it is the most innocent explanation.

Linda was very widely liked, very widely respected, had children, grandchildren, and was basically your average quiet taxpaying citizen.

Super, super sweet lady.

She was very, very kind.

Always very kind to me.

I've never seen her be cross with anyone ever.

With Mrs.

Linda Stingley, that was the thing what was initially kind of put everybody at ease too, that she was okay, that she was going to show up,

just because there was no one that would really be an enemy to her.

There was no one that would be purposely out to get her.

As officers prepare to leave Linda's home, they're met by a concerned neighbor.

She had been keeping an eye on Linda Joe's house because there had been a couple of break-ins.

She'd been broke into

twice.

The first time they took her TV and stuff like that.

They never did catch anybody on either one of them.

Of course, neighbors are going to be concerned about any break-in in their neighborhood.

So she's kind of surveilling the house just as any good neighbor would do.

She noticed a car parked behind Linda Joe's house.

The car was a maroon Pontiac Grand Prix.

It was spotted earlier by neighbors.

They thought it was strange because it had been there the whole day before while...

Ms.

Stingley was at work.

And her neighbor was worried enough to say, that's a strange car in her driveway.

I'm going to take down that license number.

So the Sheriff's Department runs the license plate number that the neighbor has given to them, and it goes back to one name.

It's Jerry Lynn Ackland.

After talking with Linda's neighbor, investigators return to the station and call Linda's mother, Joe Canada, to ask about Jerry Lynn's car.

They told me about the neighbors seeing the car

and I knew it was the color of Jerry Lynn's car.

It was parked behind the house, which she never done.

According to Joe, Jerry Lynn has been experiencing some recent difficulties, including having trouble finding a place to live.

It appeared that within the few days or weeks before this happened, she was really just staying with whoever she could find to stay with.

It seemed like it was almost a one day at a one-night-at-a-time thing.

I just kind of got the feeling that she may have gotten into drugs.

From her appearance, it did not appear that she was taking care of herself.

She stayed at her son, Dalton's, and she set a fire in the closet there.

And that's when he came up to our house and he told me,

he said, I don't know what's wrong with mom,

but something

is.

You get the picture of Jerry Acklund, who is somebody that's really out of options.

She had really burned her bridges with almost everybody that she knew.

She did not have a good relationship with family members, apparently, and she didn't have a game plan.

According to Joe, Linda did her best to help Jerry Lynn get on the right track.

Linda told her, you need to get a job.

I cannot take you in anymore.

And she had come back the week before all this happened.

And

Linda talked to her again.

And she said, I'm going to apply

now and I'll be back in touch with you.

She tells police that Linda Joe and Jerry Lynn had a tense relationship in the past, but everything seemed fine right now.

Investigators obtained Jerry Lynn's number and attempt to track her down.

She didn't answer.

Nobody knew where she was

or anything.

We can't get in touch with Jerry.

Family had tried contacting her as well.

With all of these little things, law enforcement and the family decided that this was not an innocent situation.

They were missing and it needed some attention.

With less than 24 hours having passed since Linda was reported missing, authorities now fear her daughter, Jerry Acklin, may also be in danger.

What initially spun everybody up to where it became a full response.

Time is kind of against you at that point.

That was their fear that both were missing and there was something that they couldn't piece together.

They could not get it together about why both of these women were missing and was there another person involved.

Unsure of the missing women's fate, police quickly leap into action.

There was a Bolo be on the lookout for this particular car, the Red Grand Prix, Miss Acklund, and Miss Stingley.

As they await tips from the Bolo, investigators continue interviewing Linda and Jerry's loved ones, wondering who might have wanted to harm the mother and daughter.

The first thing we thought of was Corey, her son, and he had been released from prison right after mother's dying before this happened.

The prosecutor's office and law enforcement were familiar with Corey Stingley.

He had been in trouble down through the years.

Law enforcement was wondering where Corey was.

If there was a disappearance, could he be responsible for that?

Coming up, a new discovery casts a dark shadow on the investigation.

Someone was searching through the trash for these lottery tickets and found something.

That's kind of when all of our division, our criminal investigation division, kind of got involved very quickly.

And a trail of spending puts investigators on the chase.

They were starting to develop information that her bank account was being accessed by someone.

Her stuff was used here, a check was cashed here, things aren't adding up.

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It's been 24 hours since 65-year-old Linda Stingley was reported missing.

And investigators in Independence County, Arkansas are desperate to find her.

She didn't show up to work, which was very out of character for her.

And her work contacted some family.

tried to make contact with her.

Family went to the house.

Her vehicle was there, but she wasn't home.

Now, they fear another member of the family, Linda's 40-year-old daughter, Jerry Lynn Acklin, may also be missing.

We don't know how long Jerry's been gone.

They're just trying to find her.

While Ebolo for Linda and her daughter, Jerry, spreads across the state, investigators are also interested in locating Linda's 38-year-old son, Corey Stingley.

Some family was helping us try to develop leads of what could have happened, and she did have a son that had very tedious tedious relationships with named Corey.

So that was the initial suspect at the very beginning.

Corey struggled to stay on the straight and narrow, having been in and out of prison for the past 20 years for various fraud and theft charges.

He was

in prison for a while.

Then he was out.

Then in probably six or eight months, he was back in.

And every time, Linda would do everything she could when he got out.

They immediately thought because of his criminal history that he must have some involvement or that he was at least the first person that needed a look.

They bring him in for questioning.

He's very open, very forthcoming about his relationship with his mother.

They had a very tense past with each other, mostly because of his criminal history.

Police ask Corey where he was the day his mother vanished.

He had the best alibi you could have.

He was actually incarcerated in another jurisdiction in their jail at the time.

So he was ruled out almost immediately.

As police contemplate their next move, they receive a call from Linda's mother, Joe Canada.

Jeremy called.

She told me she was out of state.

She said, I know.

Mom Smith and I ought to see you in a while.

Joe tells police that unfortunately Linda Joe is not with her daughter.

And then Jerry Lynn says she has not heard from her mother either.

While Jerry Lynn's phone call does bring some relief regarding her own safety, plenty of questions still remain.

When Jerry calls Joe, that automatically eliminates half of the mystery.

We know that Jerry is alive.

We know that there was not a double abduction in this scenario at all.

But where is Linda?

She's still missing.

They were holding out hope that she was with her daughter, and now it's getting even more grim.

On Wednesday, June 4th, two days since Linda was last seen by her coworkers, police receive a major breakthrough in the case.

Law enforcement 112 miles away in Bryant, Arkansas, report that a resident has stumbled onto something unsettling.

Apparently, there are people who look for unclaimed lottery tickets, and this person was searching through the trash for these lottery tickets and found Ms.

Stingley's identification, her nursing card, her driver's license.

And then not only did they find it, but they were actually nice enough to contact law enforcement right away and let them know, like, hey, this doesn't make sense.

Why is this here in the trash can?

Any woman is still going to have their personal belongings with them.

They're not going to just throw it away in a dumpster.

So for an investigator, this is a really concerning turn.

That set up even more red flags to the authorities.

I just honed in right there and said, we know she's missing, but we don't know if she's alive.

Hoping to uncover more clues, detectives head to Linda's bank and request access to her financial records.

Police want to know, have those credit cards been swiped anywhere and by who?

They were able to determine through her banking information that either a debit card or a credit card had been used at a convenience store slash gas station.

The debit card had been used about 30 miles from Linda's house.

Two checks had been written on Ms.

Stingley's account and those were cashed.

So they were starting to develop information during this period of time that her bank account was being accessed by someone.

Examining the locations of the transactions, investigators uncover a trail of fraud that starts near Linda's home and moves over 100 miles south through Arkansas.

They kind of had a trail all the way from Batesfield down to Bryant, Arkansas.

So we stopped off at all of those places to see if we could get any kind of video and what kind of evidence we could get there on the way down there.

They went to the owner or the manager of the store of the gas station.

Typically, they have surveillance both inside the store and in the parking lots and they comb through that surveillance footage.

As police scroll through the footage, they hit pay dirt.

We can see that was Jerry's vehicle.

As police scrub the video, something else catches their eye.

On the surveillance video, they see a medium-build, dark-haired woman.

They're able to get a close look at this person's face.

Turns out it is Jerry Lynn Acklin.

Ackland.

That was a victory moment.

We're on to something here.

Authorities now have proof that Jerry lied to her grandmother about where she was when Linda went missing.

We found video of Miss Ackland in her car getting gas at Ball Knob and then going into a bank and then also going through a drive-through at another bank cashing some checks for Mrs.

Stingley.

So that was a good indication that they were on the right track.

I know in my own mind that if they found Jerry Lynn, they would find out what happened to Linda.

Police focus on locating Jerry Lynn, starting by taking a deeper look into her background.

They ran her information to the Arkansas Crime Information Center and found that she had felony warrants.

At some point prior to this time, she was working as a home health nurse or a home health aide, and the allegations were that she had forged HEC or checks on one of her clients' accounts.

Well, now investigators are really starting to put the pieces together and they're very concerned about where Jerry Lynn is.

On the afternoon of June 4th, a patrol officer zeroes in on the suspect.

A trick for a lot of patrolmen that have been doing it for a while, you know, it's work smarter, not harder.

If you're looking for someone, go to your local Walmart and go to your local hotels.

Drive through the parking lots and look for the vehicles.

Officers don't have to look for long.

A police officer with the Bryant Police Department was driving through the Walmart parking lot, found the car that matched the license plate and the description.

Coming up.

Detectives come face to face with their biggest lead in the case.

The patrolman that went up, said, hey, got a couple warrants for your arrest.

And details of Linda's disappearance send the investigation in an unexpected direction.

She came with another name of a suspect, a guy named Harry Stanley.

At some point, a fight broke out and he began beating Jerry's mother.

It's been nearly 36 hours since 65-year-old Linda Stingley was reported missing.

After uncovering evidence that her daughter, Jerry Lynn Acklin, has been using her credit card, police have just located Jerry's vehicle at a local Walmart.

The patrolman noticed that her vehicle was in the parking lot, that the license plate matched, and he just waited, you know, at the end of the parking lot.

Moments later, Jerry Lynn emerges from the store.

Went up, said, hey, got a couple warrants for your arrest.

You know, told her that that she was also related to a bolo for her mother's disappearance.

Once Jerry Lynn is transported to the Bryant Police Department, investigators waste no time questioning her about her mother's disappearance.

The first explanation was a non-explanation.

I don't know anything about it.

It was denial.

I mean, it was basically, I don't know where my mother is.

I haven't seen her.

Hoping to elicit a truthful admission, detectives confront Jerry with the evidence they have against her.

They started to reveal a little bit of information to her that they knew what was going on.

Finally, Jerry Lynn fesses up, telling police everything.

At that point, she said, I killed my mother.

But someone else really did the killing.

She come with another name of a suspect that killed her mother together.

It was actually a guy named Terry Stanley.

Jerry Lynn tells police that she recently met Terry on a dating website and was taking him to meet Linda the night of June 2nd.

They went to Miss Stingley's house and at some point when Jerry Acklund and Terry and Miss Stingley were at the house, Terry initiated some kind of argument with Jerry's mother and this fight broke out and he began beating Jerry's mother.

And then as Ms.

Stingley was crawling towards her daughter, Ms.

Stingley was crying, help me.

And then Mr.

Stanley finished her off.

It's a horrific story that presents investigators with a frightening possibility.

We have someone on the loose that is willing to very quickly injure and kill someone for a checkbook or a credit card or whatever.

Investigators move quickly to bring Terry Stanley into custody.

He was located fairly quickly, brought in for questioning, and asked about

Jerry Acklund.

Do you know her?

He told us I'd just met this woman on dating site, everything.

We went on like one date, one or two dates, something like that.

We'd been texting back and forth and all this stuff, but other than that, I haven't seen her in a while.

When police inform Terry that he he has been implicated in the murder of Jerry Lynn's mother, he denies involvement.

He said, I'll tell you anything you want to know.

You can search my phone.

You can talk to my employer.

Here's where I've been.

I can account for every minute.

Detectives take Terry up on his offer and begin to look into his whereabouts the night Linda was killed.

It doesn't take long for them to determine that Jerry Lynn still isn't telling the truth.

Essentially, they were able to determine through phone records, other means, that he was not with her when Jerry Acklund tells us Miss Stingley was killed.

With Terry Stanley cleared, police turn back to Jerry and pressure her to come clean.

At that point, she's ready to take responsibility for everything.

Jerry Lynn tells police that it all started on June 2nd when she and her mother got into a heated argument.

She had gone to her mother's house just looking for a place to stay and her mother wouldn't let her stay there and they got into it.

According to Jerry Lynn, the argument between mother and daughter soon intensified.

From that point, it devolved into somewhat of a rant about her brothers and

how her mother never did anything for her.

And that's when things escalated to the point to violence.

She says that she reaches under the table and gets the scissor jack, the car jack, and starts hitting her mother with it.

It knocked Linda to the floor.

Linda got up and slapped Jerry.

in retaliation and apparently made Jerry angrier.

It was a crime of passion.

You don't just hit someone once.

And if rage is involved, it's not just, I'm going to hit you once.

She beat her mother and kept beating her, kept beating her, and she wouldn't die.

Jerry tells investigators that her mother managed to somehow make her way from the living room into the kitchen where Linda took her final breaths.

She was gurgling blood and trying to talk to her and that ultimately she just did not want to see her mother suffer anymore.

So she took a knife and stabbed her several times with the kitchen knife which ultimately ended her life.

After listening to Jerry Lynn's story, detectives are stunned.

I do not know why she felt like she needed to take her mom's life, but there was some anger issues there toward her mom.

And I don't really know that it had to do with the place to stay.

I think that sometimes those things just build and build and build.

Maybe she was just looking for money to buy drugs and, you know, maybe Linda wouldn't give them to her.

You try to grasp for straws.

You know, you look for some reason that somebody does something like that.

How does Cherry Man limp

with that

picture in her mind?

And it's a picture that's in my mind

of

her being beaten to death.

It's just something that I cannot get through.

We're trying to rationalize what may be irrational thought and that's really impossible to do.

Coming up, a twisted case comes to a devastating close.

She took law enforcement officers all the way to the spot to recover the body.

It was wrapped in a blanket and then just left there.

That began the nightmare that's been my life.

After a shocking confession, Investigators now know that 40-year-old Jerry Lynn Acklin is responsible for the murder of her own mother, 65-year-old Linda Stingley.

Jerry beat her mother to the point that she kind of snapped to for a second and realized there's no way to fix this.

So what does she do?

She goes and gets a knife and stabs her, you know, and finishes the job.

While police know how the murder occurred, they still haven't found Linda's body.

Jerry Acklund tells us, my mother's dead.

The murder occurred in Independence County.

The body is in the Malvern area.

Following Jerry's directions, police begin the grim search.

It was just a short distance off of the road back into the woods.

It's where her mother's body was dumped.

It was wrapped in a blanket and then just left there.

This was Arkansas in the summertime.

It's hot and humid, and it was not good.

Decomposition had already started.

With the recovery of Linda's body, Jerry Lynn is officially charged with murder.

Around midnight that night, I was told my daughter was dead, and they had Jerry Lynn in custody.

That began the nightmare that's been my life.

Linda was always there for her children.

I just can't imagine that that Jerry would turn on her that way, you know, to actually take her life.

With Jerry Lynn in jail, police prepare for her trial by collecting additional evidence.

We actually found Mrs.

Stingley's purse in Jerry Acklund's car when we served a search warrant on it.

As we dug a little bit more, there was a OEM Pontiac scissor jack.

That was very obvious that just as Acklund had described in her interview, that she used a tire jack to beat her mother until she stopped breathing because it was absolutely covered in blood and hair.

Next, police obtain a search warrant for a thorough sweep of Linda's home.

They were able to determine that there had been a lot of blood that had been cleaned up.

There was, while not immediately visible, what was visible was like underneath chairs and things in the kitchen.

They started to see blood spatter and that sort of thing.

And then they looked into the dryer and there was blood in the dryer.

They were able to verify that that was a crime scene.

But it's pretty grim as far as the particulars of the murder.

And then as we start investigating these crime scenes and serving the search warrants, we kind of find, you know, just how grim it actually is.

With an overwhelming amount of evidence against her, Jerry Lynn and her lawyers agree to a plea deal with the state.

The offer that was accepted was a term of 30 years on murder in the first degree,

followed by 20 years on residential burglary, followed by six years on theft of property.

So these sentences were all to run consecutively with each other, which means one right after the other.

And that was a plea that the family could live with and one that we ultimately entered.

On April 28th, 2015, Jerry Lynn Acklin enters an Arkansas courtroom for her sentencing.

Linda's devastated family waits, hoping to learn the reasons behind the heinous act.

When Jerry Lynn came into the courtroom, the judge said to Jerry Lynn, he said, would you like to make a statement?

And she said, no.

And I remember feeling just like we will never, ever have a statement from Jerry Lynn.

That she doesn't even have the courage to turn around and look at her family.

What I'd like to say to Jerry Lynn, if you would

look us all in the eye and tell us why you did this to the person that

gave birth to you, went through hell to raise you, and then you did this.

Maybe we might have a little closure.

Instead, Joe Canada is left picking up the pieces of her shattered family.

That would be, you know, a horrific thing to have to deal with for your granddaughter to kill your daughter.

You know,

that has to be something she's having to live with every day.

I go to her grave often and talk to her, say, I know you're okay now,

and I'll see you one day.

But oh, how I miss you now.

And how I wish I could hug her

like I always did.

Jerry Lynn Acklin is currently incarcerated at a women's facility in Wrightsville, Arkansas.

She will not become eligible for parole until 2040.

How hard is it to kill a planet?

Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene.

Are we really safe?

Is our water safe?

You destroyed our town.

And crimes like that, they don't just happen.

We call things accidents.

There is no accident.

This was 100%

preventable.

They're the result of choices by people.

Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime.

These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet.

Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it.

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