Joel Guy Jr. Asked for Execution — Full Crime Breakdown, Trial and Sentencing Revealed

Police Department Sheriff’s Office. >> It looks like wood. >> On November 26th, 2016, the Thanksgiving leftovers were still in the fridge when 28-year-old Joel Michael Guy Jr. turned a quiet Knoxville home into a crime scene that detectives would never forget. Inside were his parents. 61-year-old Joel Guy Senior and 55-year-old Lisa Guy.

 stabbed, dismembered, and partially dissolved in chemicals. The house smelled like blood, decay, and something else. Planning. But the story of how it got there started years earlier. Joel Michael had never worked a day in his life, not once. His parents paid for everything, his rent, tuition, groceries, even gas. He was in his late 20s and still a student, telling people he wanted to be a plastic surgeon.

 But he had no degree, no job prospects, and no friends. He was isolated, kept to himself. He barely spoke and never smiled. But his mother thought he was the best son in the world, and his father stayed out of it. And for years, the money just kept coming. But that was about to end. Joel Senior was recently fired from his engineering job, and his wife saw this as the perfect opportunity to hand in her two weeks notice and retire.

 But this would mean that they had to cut back on expenses and move to a smaller home. They already sold their two stories Knoxville home and were planning to move into the house Joel Senior grew up in, a small house in Sergoville, Tennessee. But to make ends meet, they had to cut off Joel Michael financially. They told the family their plans by text on November 17th, and they said that by Christmas, Joel Michael had to be able to fend for himself.

 But first came Thanksgiving. And since this was their last family gathering at their house, they wanted to make this an unforgettable one. But no one knew just how unforgettable it would get. One by one, Joel Michael and his older halfsisters, Angela Crane, Michelle Dennis, Chandisfin, and their families arrived at the house on November 24th, 2016.

 They were ready for a day filled with fun, food, and laughter. They all spent time together, looked through old photo books, and played games. Joel Michael had never been the social one in the family, and most holidays he kept to himself, staying in his old bedroom. However, that Thanksgiving, he acted differently. But what nobody knew was that he brought more than just his luggage. He had brought murder supplies.

He had a plan, and it was already in motion. From the moment relatives arrived, he was present. He was engaged, and he talked to all of them. He helped carry down boxes from upstairs, boxes his mother had filled with his old memories. Inside were his childhood toys, school papers, and some art projects.

 things she had saved for decades. Joel Michael gave some of those toys to his nephews, which seemed very out of character. He had never shown interest in the kids before, but that weekend he played with them. His older halfsister, Michelle, noticed this and other things. She had brought her laundry to the house that day. Her dryer was broken, so she used the machines upstairs.

 But when she parked her car, she immediately saw the two large blue plastic totes in the back of Joel’s vehicle. One nested inside the other with the lid sealed tight. She went upstairs, often hauling laundry, checking on her kids, and each time she did, Joel Michael followed her. He was always right behind her, which felt weird. Everyone left around 8:00 p.m.

 that night. Only Joel Michael stayed. And on Saturday, while his mother was out shopping for groceries, it was time. Joel Michael took his knife and attacked his father upstairs in the exercise room. The struggle was brutal. Joel Senior was stabbed at least 42 times. Blood sprayed across the blinds, the walls, and the carpet, and the Bowlex machine lay tipped over in the corner.

Joel, Senior, had fought back hard, but he lost. When his mother came home around 12:15 p.m., she walked in through the front door, not knowing what just happened. She placed the grocery bags in the foyer filled with packages of bacon, sausage, and ice cream, and made her way upstairs, but she would never make it back down.

Joel Michael ambushed her near the hallway where he stabbed her 31 times. After he was done, nine of her ribs were cut in half by the brutal force he had used. But at that moment, the real horror had just begun. Joel Michael needed to get rid of the bodies, and he had a plan. Maybe he watched Breaking Bad a little too often, but he thought it would be easiest to try to dissolve their bodies in the blue plastic containers from his car.

 He started with cutting off his father’s hands at the wrist and leaving the hands at the top of the stairs. He then cut off his mother’s head and carried it downstairs where he placed it in a pot on the stove and turned the burner on high. Her head boiled for hours. At the same time, he dismembered the rest of the bodies, cutting off his father’s arms at the shoulder blades, his legs at the hip, and his feet by the ankle.

 And when he was done with his father, he did the same with his mother. Then he stuffed the torsos and severed limbs into the plastic totes filled with acidbased chemicals. To make the chemicals work faster, he sliced deep into each body part, and he set the thermostat to 90° to speed up decomposition. He also thought this might melt his fingerprints.

Investigators would later call it a diabolical stew of human remains. But Joel Michael had made a mistake. He had injured himself. while stabbing one of his parents. The blood on the knife made the handle slippery. He had sliced open his thumb and was bleeding badly. That afternoon around 3:30 p.m., surveillance footage caught him at Walmart buying bandages and disinfectants.

 And a day later, on November 27th, he drove back to Baton Rouge to visit the student clinic for treatment. And while he was gone, everything fell apart. Lisa’s co-workers noticed she didn’t show up to work on Monday. She didn’t call or text, and that wasn’t like her. Her boss immediately called the police. An officer drove out to the house that morning.

 But from the outside, nothing looked off. There were no broken windows and no signs of a break-in, just a quiet two-story home with a forale sign in the yard. He knocked, but there was no answer. So, he left. But something still felt wrong. Hours passed and Lisa never showed up to work, not even for the goodbye lunchon they were throwing in her honor.

 She hadn’t called. She hadn’t texted. And that wasn’t like her. By late afternoon, a coworker called 911 again, this time with more urgency in her voice. Something was wrong, she said. Really wrong. When officers arrived at the house for the second time, it was still empty. But when they looked through the window, they saw groceries sitting on the floor.

By this time, the ice cream had completely melted over the floor and the vegetables had gone moldy. The officers also noticed there was a weird smell coming from the house. Something was seriously wrong. Using a garage opener found in one of the cars, they stepped inside and right away, a smell they’d never forget hit them.

 Inside the kitchen, the stove was on and a pot was boiling. But first, they walked toward the stairs where they immediately saw the severed hands just lying there. And this was only the beginning of the nightmare they would uncover in the house. Upstairs, the house was a chemical nightmare. There was bleach, acid, peroxide, drain cleaner, and lie.

 It was so bad that hazmat teams had to be called in. In one room, they found two large plastic bins. Inside were the dismembered remains of Joel Senior and Lisa melting. It didn’t take investigators long to track Joel Michael down. And that same day, November 29th, he was under surveillance in Baton Rouge. FBI and local officers waited outside his apartment complex.

 And when he walked toward his Hyundai Sonata, they arrested him without a struggle. In the trunk, they found a new item, a meat grinder. But he never told investigators what he planned to do with it. But Joel Michael had left more than just a mess behind. He left a road map. A spiralbound notebook found inside his backpack at the crime scene laid it all out.

 It was handwritten in his handwriting and detailed everything. The plan to kill, dismember, dissolve, clean, and eventually frame his father. He made some notes saying things like, “Douse killing rooms, kitchen with bleach, and flush chunks down toilet, not garbage disposal.” He wrote about flooding the house to destroy evidence, and about using his mom’s phone to send a delayed text on Sunday, something simple to make it look like she was still alive while he was already back in Baton Rouge.

 But the most chilling part, the motive. $500,000 would be all mine, he wrote. with him missing dead. I get the whole thing. Lisa had multiple insurance policies through her job. Life insurance and an accidental death and dismemberment plan which covered both herself and her husband. And as the beneficiary, she chose him and her son. But with his mother dead and his father missing, he would have been entitled to collect every cent of his mother’s death benefits and a third of his fathers alongside two of his halfsisters, Angela and Michelle.

It was clear he was after the money, and his motive, spelled out in his own handwriting, suddenly carried even more weight. Joel Michael went on trial in 2020. He pleaded not guilty to all charges, and his defense team said nothing. But the prosecutors didn’t need much. They had the notebook, the surveillance footage, the chemicals, the body parts, and the blood trail.

 They had the motive, and they had the timeline. But then something unexpected happened. Joel Michael filed a motion asking to be sentenced to death if he was found guilty. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life behind bars. If he would, he preferred to die. But under Tennessee law, it doesn’t work that way.

 Only prosecutors can pursue a capital case, and in this one, they chose not to. The judge denied his request, and the death penalty was off the table. No matter how brutal the crime had been, no matter what the jury decided, execution wasn’t an option. His halfsisters spoke up during trial. When Angela took the stand, she didn’t hold back.

 Dad said Joel Michael was going to be cut off. She told the court that he’d have to start standing on his own two feet, and Lisa agreed. And it wasn’t a sudden decision. According to Angela, the money issue had been talked about for a while, an open conversation in the family, but Joel Jr. had always been distant.

 The sisters shared group texts with their parents, casual jokes, life updates, the kind of stuff that held a family together. But Joel Jr. wasn’t in it. He didn’t text, didn’t ask questions. He likely didn’t even know the names of his nieces and nephews. He was acting different that Thanksgiving. Michelle said he wanted to play with the little kids. He never did that.

 It was subtle, strange, but at the time, no one guessed why. And on October 2nd, 2020, a jury saw through every one of his lies. They found him guilty on all charges. Two counts of premeditated first-degree murder, three counts of felony murder, and two counts of abusing a corpse. Joel Michael won’t see freedom in this lifetime or the next.

 His sentences stacked so high that he won’t even be eligible for release for 130 years. Judge Steve Sword didn’t sugarcoat it. As he handed down the punishment, he looked straight at Joel and said, “300 years isn’t enough time to account for what you’ve done.” But Joel Michael tried to fight it. In April 2023, he filed an appeal claiming the police had no right to search the house without a warrant. But the court disagreed.

Officers had been responding to a welfare check. Lisa hadn’t shown up for work, and the scene they walked into raised enough red flags to act fast. The officers acted within the law. Joel Michael Guy Jr. will live the rest of his life behind bars at the Northwest Correctional Complex in Typtonville, Tennessee. He’s not getting out.

 Not now. Not ever. He asked for the death penalty, but didn’t get it. Was justice served or is life in prison the real punishment?