Ohio to EXECUTE Youngest Death Row Inmate,He Murd3red A Navy Recruit Days Before Enlistment.NO MERCY

Ohio to Execute Youngest Death Row Inmate: He Murdered a Navy Recruit Days Before Enlistment (No Mercy)

Courtroom Broadcast & Sentencing

Reporter: A 19-year-old from Warren County is now the youngest person on death row in Ohio.

Prosecutor: The idea that he has no worth or value as a human being, so he is better off euthanized—that is for the brutal murder of a friend.

Justin Back’s Family: We have memories, but we will have no more with our son because of the choices that you made, Austin.

Reporter: And tonight, a bombshell revealed in court: he wanted to kill. Two families in court—one to see justice carried out for their son’s death, the other to beg for their son’s life to be spared. Good evening, I’m Sheree Paolello.

Co-Anchor: And thanks for joining us, I’m Mike Dardis. WLWT News 5’s Karen Johnson is live right now at the courthouse in Lebanon with new details from Austin Myers’ sentencing. Karen?

Karen Johnson: Mike, Austin Myers had another shot today. He asked the judge to spare his life. Last week, a Warren County jury recommended death for the 19-year-old. But at the official sentencing this afternoon, Judge Don Oda heard from Myers, as well as Justin Back’s family.

Prosecutor: Austin could have stopped it, but tells Justin, “It’s okay. It’s almost over.” You could have changed your mind many times, but you didn’t—especially when Justin was begging for his life. An 18-year-old Navy recruit begged his friends to stop choking and stabbing him; instead, they continued with the brutal murder.

Justin Back’s Father: I’m not going to stand up here and tell you how much I hate you. That is without question.

Karen Johnson: Today, Justin Back’s parents didn’t hold back as they spoke to Austin Myers, one of the teens who is now convicted of killing their son, Justin.

Justin Back’s Mother: I would just hope that every time you close your eyes at night, you see my son, Justin.

Austin Myers: I’ve made a horrible mistake. I’m only 19 years old, but I think there are a lot of good things I can do with my life if you allow me to keep my life.

Karen Johnson: Judge Don Oda upheld the jury’s recommendation and sentenced Myers to death.

The Crime: January 28, 2014

On the afternoon of January 28, 2014, two 19-year-olds drove 40 miles from Clayton, Ohio, to a quiet house on Corwin Road in Waynesville. They carried with them a homemade garrote built from a three-foot steel cable and two wooden cleats, a 6-inch pocketknife, rubber gloves, ammonia, and septic enzymes designed to dissolve a human body. They had spent two full days planning what they were about to do. They had a shopping list. They had assigned roles. They had rehearsed the cleanup.

The person who opened the front door and let them in was Justin Michael Back. He was 18 years old, a 2013 graduate of Waynesville High School, and less than two weeks away from reporting to the United States Navy. He had a mother who adored him, a stepfather who respected him, and friends who described him as the kind of person who could make anyone smile. He opened that door because the man standing on the other side was someone he had once called a friend.

Austin Gregory Myers had known Justin since the seventh grade. Justin had been the one who reached out to Myers back then—the quiet kid, the loner, the one sitting by himself. Justin invited him to his lunch table. Justin looked out for him.

Years later, Myers repaid that kindness by targeting Justin’s family home for a robbery and deciding that Justin had to die so there would be no witness. Myers distracted Justin in the kitchen while Timothy Mosley came up from behind with the garrote. When the wire caught on Justin’s chin instead of his neck, Mosley pulled out the knife and stabbed him repeatedly while Myers held him down.

Justin fought. He asked why. He begged them to stop. They did not stop. He died on the floor of his own kitchen from 21 stab wounds while the two men he had let into his home stood over him.

They wrapped his body in a blanket and put it in the trunk of a car. They stole a safe that Myers believed held $20,000; it held $70. They drove the body to a remote field in Preble County, dumped it behind a log, poured chemicals over it, and Myers fired two shots from a stolen handgun into Justin’s remains. Then, he suggested they go back to Waynesville and kill Justin’s stepfather, too.

They never got the chance. A neighbor had noticed the car—a silver Chevrolet Cavalier with a plastic rear window held on by red duct tape. Within 24 hours, both men were in custody. Within 10 months, Austin Myers was sentenced to death, becoming the youngest person on Ohio’s death row at 19 years old.

Timothy Mosley, the one who held the knife and delivered the fatal wounds, pleaded guilty and received life without parole. The case made national and international headlines. The BBC featured it in their documentary series Life and Death Row. Legal experts debated whether it was just to execute the planner while sparing the killer. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled unanimously, 7–0, that the person who designs a murder can be just as guilty as the person who carries it out.

But to understand how a gifted student from a middle-class home in Ohio—a kid who took music lessons, who was treated for depression, whose parents’ divorce sent him spiraling, ended up homeless at 19, planning the murder of the one person who had shown him kindness when no one else did, all for a safe that held less than the price of a pair of sneakers—we have to go back to the beginning.

Austin Myers: Early Life and Spiral

Austin Gregory Myers was born on January 4, 1995, in Montgomery County, Ohio. He came into a family that, by most outward measures, appeared to be middle-class and stable. His parents were together during his earliest years, and the household had the kinds of things many families in suburban Ohio had: a decent home, steady income, and access to opportunities that many others in the criminal justice system never had.

Myers grew up in the Dayton metropolitan area, a sprawling stretch of southwestern Ohio. His family lived in a community where people knew their neighbors. On the surface, nothing about Austin Myers’ early years pointed toward the path he would eventually take. But beneath that surface, things were not as settled as they appeared.

The Impact of the Divorce

Myers’ parents’ marriage was deteriorating. The household became a place of tension and conflict, and eventually, the relationship between his mother and father broke apart entirely. The divorce hit the family hard, and it hit Austin harder than most people around him realized at the time. The circumstances surrounding the split were painful, and the fallout left marks on him that would follow him for years.

After the divorce, Myers’ mother worked to keep the family together and provide for her son. She was a loving and present parent who did what she could under difficult circumstances. Myers was not abandoned or neglected in the traditional sense; he had a roof over his head, food on the table, and a mother who cared about his well-being. But the emotional damage from the broken home was real, and it began to show itself in ways that concerned the people around him.

As Myers moved through his early school years, he was recognized as being intelligent. Teachers noted that he was a gifted student—someone who had the capacity to do well academically when he applied himself. He took music lessons, which suggested a household that valued enrichment and development. But intelligence and opportunity do not always translate into stability, especially when the emotional foundation underneath has cracks.

Mental Health and Middle School Years

Myers began to show behavioral issues as he got older. At some point during these years, he began receiving medical and psychiatric care. His mother recognized that something was not right and took steps to get him help. He was treated for depression.

Myers attended school in the Waynesville area during his middle school years. It was during seventh and eighth grade that he attended the same school as a boy named Justin Back. The two became friends during that period, spending time together the way many kids in small-town Ohio did. They were part of the same social circles, knew the same people, and shared the kinds of experiences that come with growing up in a tight-knit community.

Justin Back, by all accounts, was the kind of person who went out of his way to include others. He had a habit of reaching out to those who seemed isolated or out of place, inviting them to sit at his lunch table, making sure nobody felt left out. Austin Myers, quiet and reserved as he was, was exactly the kind of person Justin gravitated toward.

That friendship, formed in the hallways and cafeterias of a small Ohio school, would not last. Myers’ life was about to shift again, and the move that came next would take him away from Waynesville and away from Justin Back. The move took Myers to Clayton, Ohio—a small city in Montgomery County about 40 miles northwest of Waynesville.

The Drift into Instability

When Austin Myers arrived in Clayton, Ohio, he was starting over: new town, new school, new faces. For a teenager already dealing with the aftermath of his parents’ divorce and ongoing mental health challenges, the transition was not easy. Clayton was a modest community within the Northmont School District, and Northmont High School became Myers’ new daily reality.

At Northmont, Myers continued to demonstrate academic ability. He was not a failing student; he had the intellectual tools to succeed in a classroom setting, and there were moments when that potential was visible to teachers and peers. But the behavioral issues that had begun to surface earlier did not go away with the change of scenery. If anything, the upheaval of relocation added another layer of instability to an already fragile situation.

Myers’ depression persisted through his high school years. The psychiatric care he had received earlier continued in some form, but the details of his treatment during this period remained largely private.

Life After High School

By the time Myers finished at Northmont High School, his trajectory was unclear. He did not have a clear path forward in the way that some of his peers did. In the months that followed high school, his situation deteriorated further. Whatever structure the school had provided—a daily schedule, a place to go, people to interact with—was gone. He was no longer a student with a routine; he was a young man in his late teens with no diploma-driven career path, no higher education plans, and no clear idea of what came next.

Employment was inconsistent. Myers moved between odd jobs and periods of unemployment, never settling into anything stable. He would pick up work for a short time, then lose it or walk away. The pattern repeated itself over and over—a cycle of brief employment followed by stretches of nothing. Each time, the gap between who he had been and who he was becoming widened a little more. The gifted student his teachers had once noticed was now a young man who could not hold down a job long enough to build any kind of foundation.

Money was a constant problem. Without steady work, Myers could not maintain a stable living situation. His circumstances became increasingly precarious, and at some point during this period, he lost his housing entirely. The homelessness was not the dramatic, visible kind that people associate with life on city streets; this was the quieter, more common version: couch-surfing at friends’ houses, staying with acquaintances for a few nights at a time, wearing out his welcome in one place, and moving on to the next.

It was an existence defined by dependence on other people’s generosity and by the constant, low-level anxiety of not knowing where he would sleep next week or next month. For a young man already struggling with depression and the emotional residue of a fractured family, the instability compounded everything.

Meeting Timothy Mosley

It was during this period of drifting that Myers began spending more time with people in the Clayton area who were in similar situations—young men without clear direction, without steady income, and without much to fill their days. One of those people was Timothy Mosley.

Mosley was a few months older than Myers, living in Clayton and occupying the same kind of aimless space. The two knew each other through mutual connections in the local social scene—the loose network of friends, acquaintances, and associates that forms naturally among young people in small communities where everyone is connected to everyone else by a degree or two.

Myers and Mosley began spending time together regularly. They hung out at Mosley’s house, rode around in Mosley’s silver Chevrolet Cavalier, and passed time the way young men without jobs or responsibilities often did: talking, smoking, watching television, and filling the hours with whatever was available.

The relationship was not deep in the way that long-term friendships are; it was more a product of proximity and circumstance. They were in the same place at the same time with the same lack of anything better to do—that was enough to bring them together. Myers was the talker, the one with ideas, the one who brought energy and direction to their interactions. Mosley was quieter, more passive, the one who listened and went along. It was not that Mosley lacked the ability to think for himself, but in the context of his relationship with Myers, he occupied the role of the follower.

Anatomy of a Premeditated Murder

While Myers’ day-to-day life had narrowed to the streets and couches of Clayton, his mind still held a map of his past. He remembered Waynesville. He remembered the people he had known there, the houses he had visited, and the neighborhoods he had walked through during middle school. Those memories were not nostalgic; they were practical. Myers thought about Waynesville not as a place he missed, but as a place where he knew things—where people lived, what they owned, and how their homes were set up.

One family in particular stayed lodged in his memory: the family of Justin Back, his former middle school friend. Myers knew that Justin still lived on Corwin Road with his mother, Sandy, and his stepfather, Mark Kates. He knew the house. He had been inside it years earlier, back when he and Justin were spending time together in seventh and eighth grade. He knew the layout, the neighborhood, and the rhythms of the household.

Most importantly, he knew—or believed he knew—that Mark Kates kept a safe inside the home. Kates worked as a corrections officer, a job that paid a steady wage, and Myers had formed the impression over the years that Kates stored a significant amount of cash in that safe. The number that settled in Myers’ mind was roughly $20,000. It was a figure that may have come from something he overheard years ago or from idle gossip among friends.

The source of the number did not matter; what mattered was that Myers believed it, and that belief never faded. Twenty thousand dollars for someone with a steady job and a stable life was a meaningful but not life-altering sum. For Austin Myers—homeless, unemployed, depressed, and watching the days blur together with nothing to show for any of them—it was a fortune. It was enough to change everything: enough to get a place to live, to buy a car, to eat without worrying about where the next meal was coming from. In Myers’ mind, that safe represented a way out of the hole he had fallen into. It was an escape hatch from a life that had shrunk to almost nothing.

The Turning Point: January 27, 2014

That piece of information sat in Myers’ mind through the weeks and months of drifting. It was there when he lost another job. It was there when he slept on another couch. It was there on the night of January 26, 2014, when he lay down to sleep at Timothy Mosley’s house in Clayton, knowing that the new job he was supposed to start the next morning was his latest chance to turn things around. And it was still there when he woke up on the morning of January 27 and realized he had overslept and missed the start of that job entirely.

Rather than scrambling to salvage the employment opportunity—calling in, apologizing, asking for another chance—Myers let it go. The pattern of lost jobs and missed opportunities had repeated itself so many times that this one barely registered as a setback. It was just another closed door in a hallway full of them.

But on this particular morning, instead of sinking into the usual frustration and inaction, Myers turned his attention to something that had been sitting in the back of his mind for months. He woke Mosley and asked him a question that would set everything in motion: Myers wanted to know if Mosley was interested in making some money. Mosley said he was. It was a simple exchange—two words, really—but it opened the door to a conversation that would end with the death of an innocent person.

Myers laid out two options: they could rob a drug dealer he knew, or they could target the home of Justin Back’s stepfather, Mark Kates, in Waynesville. Myers explained that Kates had a safe in his house and that he believed the safe contained as much as $20,000. He also mentioned that Kates kept a gun in the home. The information came from Myers’ memory of the time he had spent near the Back family during middle school, combined with whatever he had picked up through casual conversation or observation over the years.

Mosley listened. The drug dealer option was discussed briefly, but it was the Kates house that held Myers’ attention. The two decided to drive to Waynesville that same day to check out the house. They got into Mosley’s silver Chevrolet Cavalier and made the roughly 40-mile drive southeast from Clayton to Wayne Township.

The Rehearsal Visit

When they arrived at the Corwin Road home, they realized that Justin Back was home. With someone inside the house, a burglary would be too risky. They could not simply break in, take the safe, and leave without being seen or confronted.

Rather than abandoning the plan entirely, Myers and Mosley knocked on the door. Justin answered and let them in. Myers introduced Mosley to Justin, and the three of them spent 15 to 20 minutes together inside the house, talking casually. Justin had no reason to be suspicious; Myers was someone he knew from middle school, and the visit seemed like nothing more than an old acquaintance stopping by.

During that visit, Myers was paying attention. He was looking at the house, noting where things were, updating his mental map of the layout. He was sizing up the situation, calculating how they could get to the safe and get out. But with Justin there, the burglary could not happen that day.

The two men left the house and got back into Mosley’s car. On the drive away from Waynesville, the conversation took a turn. The problem was clear: Justin was home, and as long as he was there, they could not take the safe without being identified. Someone who knew Myers—someone who had seen his face and could connect him to the scene—was standing between them and the money they wanted.

The Escalation to Murder

It was at this point Myers proposed a solution: they would not simply rob the house; they would kill Justin Back first. With Justin out of the way, they could take the safe, clean up, and make it look like Justin had stolen the safe himself and run away. It was a plan that was both cold and calculated, designed not just to eliminate a witness, but to create a false narrative that would point investigators in the wrong direction.

Mosley did not object. He did not push back. The two men discussed methods. Myers initially considered poison. They attempted to acquire materials that could be used to poison Justin, but that effort was unsuccessful. The idea was abandoned, and they moved on to another approach: strangulation. Myers decided that they would strangle Justin with a wire, kill him quietly, and then take what they wanted from the house.

They drove back to Mosley’s house in Clayton, where the planning continued. Mosley took out a small notebook and began writing down their ideas—a shopping list of sorts for the items they would need. As the evening of January 27 wore on, the plan solidified. They would return to Waynesville the next day. They would bring everything they needed, and they would kill Justin Back for a safe full of money that, unbeknownst to either of them, contained almost nothing.

The Fatal Day: January 28, 2014

The morning of January 28, 2014, began with purpose for Austin Myers and Timothy Mosley. The planning phase was over; now it was time to execute what they had spent the previous day discussing and refining.

Their first stop was a Lowe’s hardware store in Trotwood, Ohio, a suburb of Dayton. Myers purchased a 3-foot length of galvanized steel cable and two metal rope cleats. These were not random items; they were the components of a garrote—a strangulation device that Myers intended to use to kill Justin Back. Mosley later referred to it as a garrote, and the two men assembled it at Mosley’s house after returning from the store. The steel cable was attached to the wooden cleats, which served as handles. When pulled tight around a person’s neck, the device was designed to cut off airflow and cause death by strangulation.

After building the garrote, Myers and Mosley made additional purchases. They went to a store and bought septic enzymes, ammonia, septic tank cleaner, and rubber gloves. The septic enzymes were intended to help decompose Justin’s body after the killing. The ammonia and cleaning supplies were meant to destroy evidence at the crime scene—blood, fingerprints, DNA, anything that could connect them to what they were about to do. The rubber gloves were basic precautions against leaving prints.

The shopping list that Mosley had written in his notebook the night before was being checked off item by item. Every purchase was part of the plan. Every item had a purpose. This was not a robbery that spiraled out of control or a fight that went too far; this was a premeditated killing with a shopping list, a weapon, and a cleanup strategy.

The Division of Labor

The plan itself had specific roles for each man:

Austin Myers would go to the door and engage Justin in conversation, keeping him distracted and at ease. While Myers occupied Justin’s attention, Mosley would come up from behind with the garrote and strangle him.

Timothy Mosley would act as the physical enforcer, armed with the garrote and a 6-inch pocketknife as a secondary backup weapon in case the strangulation did not go as planned.

The Cover-Up: Once Justin was dead, they would take the safe, clean the scene, remove the body, and stage the house to make it look like Justin had stolen the safe and disappeared on his own.

The idea of making it look like Justin had run away was a crucial element of the plan. By taking Justin’s clothing, his belongings, and the safe, they hoped to create the impression that Justin had left voluntarily. If the deception worked, his family might spend days or even weeks looking for him before anyone suspected foul play. That delay would give Myers and Mosley time to open the safe, spend the money, and put distance between themselves and the crime.

With the garrote assembled, the supplies purchased, and the plan rehearsed, Myers and Mosley loaded everything into the silver Cavalier and prepared to make the drive back to Waynesville. They put on the rubber gloves. They brought the ammonia, the septic enzymes, and the cleaning materials. They had bags ready for removing evidence and belongings from the house.

The Attack

It was now approaching midday on January 28, 2014. Justin Back was at home on Corwin Road alone. His mother and stepfather were at work. He was less than two weeks away from reporting to the United States Navy. He had no reason to expect danger. He had no reason to be afraid.

When the knock came at his door that afternoon, he opened it and saw a face he recognized from middle school. He let Austin Myers and Timothy Mosley into his home without hesitation. It was the last decision Justin Back would ever make.

Myers and Mosley arrived at the Corwin Road home at approximately 1:00 in the afternoon. Mosley parked his silver Cavalier in the carport, the car’s distinctive plastic-covered rear window and red duct tape clearly visible to anyone who happened to look. Andrew Raymond, the next-door neighbor, noticed the unfamiliar vehicle and saw someone coming out of the back door of the Kates residence. He did not recognize the person, but made a mental note of the car.

Myers walked to the front door and knocked. Justin Back answered. He saw Myers—someone he had known since middle school, someone who had been at his house just the day before—and let both men inside without alarm. The three of them sat in the living area and talked. The conversation was casual, ordinary, the kind of small talk that happens when acquaintances visit. Justin had no reason to be on guard; these were people who had been in his home less than 24 hours earlier, and nothing about their demeanor signaled what was about to happen.

After some time, Justin got up and walked to the kitchen. He offered Myers and Mosley something to drink and opened the refrigerator. This was the moment Myers and Mosley had planned for. Justin was in the kitchen, his back partially turned, his attention on the fridge. It was the opening they needed.

Mosley moved behind Justin. He had the garrote in his hands—the steel cable with the wooden cleats that they had assembled that morning. As Justin bent toward the refrigerator, Mosley looped the wire over his head from behind and pulled it tight, attempting to strangle him.

Justin reacted immediately. He fought back with everything he had. The struggle was intense and desperate. Myers grabbed Justin from the front, trying to hold him in place while Mosley pulled the garrote from behind. The three men crashed to the kitchen floor in a tangle of bodies and limbs. Justin was strong, and he was fighting for his life. He resisted with a force that neither Myers nor Mosley had anticipated.

During the struggle, Myers realized that the garrote had not landed where it was supposed to. Instead of wrapping around Justin’s neck, the wire had caught across his chin. It was not cutting off his airflow; it was not doing what it was designed to do. Myers called out to Mosley, telling him that the wire was in the wrong position.

Mosley, struggling to maintain control and unable to reposition the garrote effectively, reached for the 6-inch pocketknife he had brought with him. He pulled it out and stabbed Justin in the back.

Justin continued to fight. He was on the floor, held down by Myers, being attacked from behind by Mosley, and he was still resisting. He cried out. He asked why this was happening. He pleaded for them to stop.

Myers did not stop. He repositioned the garrote, pulling it tighter around Justin’s neck while Mosley continued to stab him. The attack continued until Justin stopped moving. The Montgomery County Coroner would later determine that Justin died from multiple stab wounds. The official count was 21 stab wounds inflicted during the struggle on the kitchen floor.

Justin Michael Back—18 years old, less than two weeks from leaving for the United States Navy—died on the kitchen floor of his family’s home at the hands of two men he had let through the front door.

The Aftermath and Disposal

The kitchen was covered in blood. The struggle had been violent and prolonged, and the physical evidence of what happened was everywhere: on the floor, on the walls, on the clothes of all three men. The clean, quick kill that Myers and Mosley had planned had not gone according to script. What was supposed to be a silent strangulation had turned into a prolonged and brutal attack that left the scene far messier and far more difficult to conceal than they had imagined.

With Justin Back dead on the kitchen floor, Austin Myers and Timothy Mosley turned their attention to the reason they had come in the first place: the safe. They searched the house and found it in a closet, but when they pulled it out, they discovered a problem they had not anticipated: the safe was locked, and they had no way to open it on the spot. Whatever was inside would have to wait until they could figure out how to crack it. Myers also located a handgun belonging to Mark Kates elsewhere in the home; he picked it up and loaded it.

With the safe in hand and the gun secured, Myers and Mosley began the process of cleaning up the crime scene. They used the ammonia and cleaning supplies they had purchased that morning to scrub the blood from the kitchen floor. They wiped down surfaces, gathered bloody towels and rags, and attempted to erase the physical evidence of the attack. The cleanup was hurried and imperfect. They were working against the clock, aware that Sandy and Mark Kates would be coming home from work later that afternoon.

They wrapped Justin’s body in a blanket and carried it out to the trunk of Mosley’s car. Then they went back inside and ransacked the house, taking the locked safe, some jewelry, credit cards, and various personal items belonging to Justin: his clothing, headphones, glasses, laptop computer, and phone charger. The idea was still to make it look like Justin had packed up his things, taken the safe, and left on his own. They stuffed bloody towels, rags, and rugs into garbage bags. They filled a laundry basket with Justin’s clothes and belongings. They loaded everything into Mosley’s car.

The Escape and Body Disposal

By approximately 2:00 in the afternoon—roughly one hour after they had arrived—they left the Corwin Road house. Mosley drove. As they pulled away from the neighborhood, he became paranoid. He was worried about being followed, worried that someone had seen them, worried that the car—with its distinctive plastic rear window and red duct tape—had been noticed. He took side roads instead of main highways, winding through the rural landscape of Warren and Preble counties.

At one point, Mosley pulled over in a remote area to check the exterior of the car for blood. While Mosley inspected the vehicle, Myers searched through the bags of Justin’s belongings and found his wallet. Inside was a little more than $100 in cash. Myers took the money.

They drove back to Mosley’s house in Clayton, where they unloaded the items from the car. They carried the locked safe upstairs to Mosley’s bedroom and changed out of their bloody clothes. The immediate crisis of the crime scene was behind them, but they still had a body in the trunk of the car that needed to be dealt with.

Mosley knew the area around West Alexandria and the rural stretches of Preble County. He suggested they dump the body in a remote location he was familiar with: a field near the village of Gratis, close to a place locals called Crybaby Bridge. It was isolated, wooded, and far enough from any main road that a body could go undiscovered for a significant period of time.

They drove to the location. Mosley pulled the car into the field, stopping about 20 feet from a fallen log. The two men carried Justin’s body from the trunk and laid it on the ground behind the log. The body was still partially wrapped in the blanket and still clothed.

Myers then poured ammonia and septic enzymes over the corpse. The enzymes were intended to accelerate decomposition—to break down the biological evidence that could link them to the crime. It was a crude and ultimately ineffective strategy, but it reflected the level of planning that had gone into the cover-up.

Then, Myers took the handgun he had stolen from the Kates home and fired two shots into Justin’s body. The gun jammed on the third attempt. Myers cleared the jam, ejecting the unfired bullet onto the ground where it landed in the dirt near the body. He did not pick it up.

After disposing of the body, Myers made a suggestion that revealed the depth of his thinking: he proposed that they go back to Waynesville and kill Mark Kates, too.