Vigilantes were members of Crew 41: Note article: "Killing Sex Offenders: The Apparent Hypocrisy of Crew 41" Posted in Related Deaths7-24-2013 South Carolina:
JONESVILLE, SC (FOX Carolina) - Union County Sheriff David Taylor said two arrests were made in a double-homicide case after two people were found dead inside a Jonesville home Monday.
Taylor said a neighbor called 911 at about 8:40 p.m. and wanted deputies to check on the residents in a home on Furman L. Fendley Highway.
He identified the victims as Gretchen Parker, 51, and Charles Parker, 59, and said they lived in the home where they were found dead.
Taylor said surveillance video helped them identify and arrest Christine, 36, and Jeremy Moody, 30, in connection with the Parkers' deaths. Both were arrested and charged with two counts of murder.
Jeremy Moody told deputies he killed Charles Parker because he was a registered sex offender and planned to kill another registered sex offender on his list on Wednesday had he not been caught, Taylor said. Taylor said Gretchen Parker was killed because she was with Charles Parker.
According to the State Law Enforcement Division website, Charles Parker is listed as a registered sex offender, convicted in 1991 of criminal sexual conduct third degree.
Deputies, neighbor discover bodies in Jonesville home
Taylor said a neighbor had stopped by a few times Monday, but no one came to the door so he called deputies, Taylor said.
Taylor said in a press conference on Tuesday that both victims were shot and also stabbed multiple times but so far, investigators have no leads and have not made any arrests in the case.
"Anytime you have dead bodies, and you don't know who's done the act, it's a threat," Taylor said.
An autopsy done on Monday morning determined that Charles Parker was shot twice, once in the neck and once in the chest, and also suffered from stab wounds, Taylor said. Gretchen Parker was shot once in the chest and stabbed multiple times, according to Taylor.
When deputies arrived, they found the back door open and heard dogs inside the home, Taylor said. He said deputies discovered the bodies of a man and woman in the living room, guarded by several dogs.
Taylor said investigators had to wait for Animal Control to take eight dogs, some puppies, two cats and chickens out of the house and secure warrants before going inside.
State Law Enforcement Division investigators were brought in to help process the crime scene, Taylor said.
Taylor said from everyone investigators have talked to, no one had talked to the Parkers since Saturday. He also said there were no signs of forced entry, though the door was left wide open.
"From everything that we can tell, nothing is missing at this time," Taylor said. "Everything appears to still be intact. The house was not ransacked. So it doesn't appear to be robbery."
According to Taylor, Jeremy Moody said he wanted to kill Charles Parker a year ago but he "chickened out" and then decided to kill him on Sunday. Taylor said Jeremy Moody got the tools necessary to go through with his plans, including a gun, knife, gloves and boots.
Taylor said the Parkers' exterior surveillance cameras showed the Moodys pull up to the home, pop the hood on their vehicle as if it was broken down then encounter Gretchen Parker.
He said Charles Parker came out of the home after his wife for a few minutes before returning inside. That's when the Moodys went inside the home, Taylor said.
According to Taylor, surveillance video shows both of the Moodys walk inside the home. He said Christine Moody appeared to have something in her hand while Jeremy Moody appeared to have a gun in his hand.
Jeremy Moody told deputies that he confronted Charles Parker, telling him he was not there to rob him when they said they did not have any money, according to Taylor.
"He says, 'You think I'm here to rob you, I'm not here to rob you,'" Taylor said Jeremy Moody told deputies. "[He] says, 'I'm here to kill you because you're a child molester.'"
Taylor said Jeremy Moody is affiliated with some type of group and is now under investigation in connection with crimes in other counties. ..Source.. by Erika Kent and Casey Vaughn and Joseph Pereira
Psychologist: To understand Union murders, take 'prison mindset'
7-26-2013:
JONESVILLE, SC (FOX Carolina) -
It's been said that no sense can be made of crime, but in the case of the double murder of Clarence and Gretchen Parker, deputies say the motive was clear, they say Jeremy Moody told them he targeted Charles Parker, specifically, because he was a child molester.
"Parallel that to the prison system," said psychologist Dr. Roger Rhoades. "Are there a lot of sex offenders hurt or killed (there)? Yeah."
Rhoades said that if you want to see some sense in what happened in Jonesville, you have to take a "prison mindset", and suddenly the case becomes clear.
"The bottom line is if this happened in a prison, there wouldn't even be a glitch, it would just be another day in prison life," he said.
Investigators said both suspects had apparent ties with the white supremacy movement, which has ties to the prison system.
Experts say in some of those circles, sex offenders are seen as below human.
Charles Parker's history as a sex offender included charges in two separate cases in both North and South Carolina, with one of the cases involving a child.
"(The sex offender registry) is an easy hit list of people, who are considered by many to be the lowest of the low," said Brenda Jones, director of Reform for Sex Offender Laws, an organization dedicated to protecting sex offenders' civil rights.
Jones said the connection between white supremacy groups and their hatred of sex offenders is documented.
"If you have people that are prone to hate crimes, then this is just a very, very easy target," said Jones.
No one FOX Carolina spoke with suggested sympathy for what sex offenders have done, but said that those capable of harming sex offenders need to be watched as much as the offenders themselves.
"It's amazing when people are flagged and the authorities are watching him, a lot of times their plan is thwarted," said Rhoades. ..Source.. by Derek Dellinger
Note this 7-26-2013 article, and so far non other, infers Moody got names from the State registry, but the Sheriff says Moody was going through OUR REGISTRY see next article following this one:
When the Offender Becomes the Target, Arrested Killer Planned to Kill More Sex Offenders
A South Carolina man, along with his wife, has been arrested for the death of a sex offender who hasn't done anything wrong to him or his family. He only knew about him, his offenses as well as personal information from the state registry.
Vigilante couple Jeremy Lee Moody and his wife, Christine, were charged with two counts each of murder over the deaths of Charles Marvin Parker and his wife, Gretchen Dawn. Mr Parker was a sex offender convicted of third-degree criminal sexual conduct that happened some 10 years earlier.
Asked why he targeted sex offenders and if he had a previous run-in with them, Mr Moody did not provide detailed answers. There are just people "I hate."
But Mr Moody did confess to investigators that he got Mr Parker's information from the state's registry, and that he randomly attacks sex offenders.
On Sunday, Mr Moody, who lived in Lockhart, went to the Jonesville home of Mr Parker and made a fake concern over his car just so he can be invited into the couple's house. Mr Parker was a mechanic.
"You think I'm here to rob you. I'm not here to rob you. I'm here to kill you because you are a child molester," Sheriff David Taylor quoted Mr Woody's narration during initial investigation talks.
He then allegedly shot and stabbed the couple. Mrs Parker, who was found to be an accomplice of her husband's sex offense against a mentally challenged woman in 2003, was killed because she just happened to be there at that time.
Mr Taylor said Mr Woody had originally planned to kill Mr Parker in 2012.
At the time he was arrested on Wednesday, Mr Woody was set to kill another sex offender.
"He planned to kill another sex offender on the register today," the sheriff said. by Esther Tanquintic-Misa
Double Murder Seen as Part of Man’s Quest to Kill Sex Offenders
When Charles Parker registered as a sex offender in the small upstate town of Jonesville, S.C., he became a prospect on another man’s kill list, the authorities say.
Mr. Parker, 59, died this week at his home, shot in the neck and chest and then stabbed. His wife was also shot and stabbed.
Sheriff’s officials believe that the double murder in Jonesville, a one-square-mile town of about 900 residents, was not the byproduct of a botched drug deal or a home invasion. Rather, they suspect that Mr. Parker’s death was intended as the opening phase of a man’s quest to purge sex offenders from Union County.
“He went through our sex offender registry,” said Sheriff David H. Taylor, “and individually picked out targets.”
Note: Union County uses Watch Systems to handle their registry needs. Scroll down this Watch Systems client list till you come to Union County.After the suspect, Jeremy Moody, 30, was arrested on Wednesday, he acknowledged to the authorities that he had planned to kill again on Thursday. And he said that he had explained to Mr. Parker why he had been targeted.
“I’m not here to rob you,” investigators say Mr. Moody told Mr. Parker. “I’m here to kill you because you’re a child molester.”
Mr. Parker had been convicted of sex offenses, but not child molesting.
Mr. Moody, a resident of nearby Lockhart, had long been a subject of monitoring by law enforcement officials, who followed his postings on social media Web sites before losing track of his online presence about a year ago.
Sheriff Taylor declined to elaborate on what specifically prompted his agency’s concerns about Mr. Moody, who has a criminal record and the word “skinhead” tattooed across his neck.
“We’ve never thought of him as possibly being a serial killer, but he is someone who we have been watching for the last several years,” Sheriff Taylor said. “We’re in the South, and it isn’t often you see people running around here with ‘skinhead’ tattooed under their neck.”
Whether Mr. Moody has formal ties to white supremacist groups remains a focus of the investigation. Both the Parkers were white.
The authorities have not ruled out the possibility that Mr. Moody played a role in other crimes, and investigators have asked officials in neighboring counties to review whether their files contain any unsolved murders in which the victims were sex offenders.
Mr. Moody and his wife, Christine, have both been charged with two counts of murder in connection with the Jonesville killings, although her role appears to have been limited.
“I don’t know if she originally knew that was what they were going there for, but she went in the house behind him while he had a gun in his hand,” Sheriff Taylor said. “She knew they weren’t there for lunch.”
The murders have shaken Union County, the site of the well-known 1994 killings of two children by their mother, Susan Smith. It is otherwise a place largely without serious crime.
“You hate hearing anything like that,” said Grady Carson, an employee at a hardware store where the Parkers shopped. “We’ve all done something in our past, and nobody wants someone to show up with a gun and play God.”
Jack Levin, a criminologist who is co-director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University, said it was likely that Mr. Moody possessed a common trait among killers.
“Serial killers often attempt to justify their killing sprees, and they usually do it by dehumanizing their victims,” Dr. Levin said.
But the case in South Carolina is otherwise odd, he said.
“It’s very unusual that someone would set out to kill large numbers of sex offenders.”
Mr. Moody is not the first person accused of targeting sex offenders. As recently as last month, a California jury convicted a 36-year-old man of killing a neighbor who was a sex offender, and a Washington State man was sentenced in 2012 to life in prison for a pair of similar killings. ..Source.. by ALAN BLINDER
Couple Arrested for Sex Offender Killing Spree Only Created More Victims
7-30-2013 South Carolina:
Nobody likes sex offenders. It's a simple truth. But a South Carolina husband and wife team charged with killing a sex offender and the criminal's wife aren't exactly heroes either.
Cops say Jeremy Moody and his wife, Christine, shot and stabbed Charles Parker and his wife, Gretchen, simply because Parker was on the state's sex offender registry. Scarier, still? Moody allegedly planned to go on a spree, killing every sex offender he could find.
I know, it's tempting to do the same. As I mentioned before, no one likes a sex offender, least of all me.
But if you can't see what's wrong with killing Charles Parker, a man who technically was free to go about his life and who wasn't actually doing anything wrong when he was murdered, at least you can see the problem with killing Gretchen Parker. She wasn't a sex offender. She hadn't hurt anyone.
All she did was end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Cops say she was killed only because she was in the house.
Now just imagine the Moodys hadn't been caught, if they'd been able to continue with their alleged plans to travel the state taking out sex offenders, one by one. If they cared so little for Gretchen Parker's life, just imagine how many other innocent victims would have been left in their wake? People who don't carry the stain of having done something horrible to other people.
Vigilante justice sounds like it's heroic. It's been romanticized by countless books and movies.
But the sad truth is, there's nothing heroic about taking lives. At the end of the day, it's still a crime, and it still hurts countless people. ..Source.. by Jeanne Sager
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Union slaying suspect on sex-offender victim: "He was a demon"
7-30-2013 South Carolina:
UNION, SC — Two suspects charged in the deaths of a registered sex offender and his wife had something to say to reporters Monday as they faced a judge on additional charges.
Jeremy Lee Moody, 30, and his wife, Christine Moody, 36, both of 213 S. 1st St., Lockhart, were charged Monday by the Union County Sheriff's Office with first-degree burglary and two counts each of kidnapping and possession of a firearm during the commission of a violent crime, Sheriff David Taylor said.
The Moodys were charged last week with two counts each of murder in the deaths of Charles Marvin Parker, 59, and his wife, Gretchen Dawn Parker, 51, at their home at 2809 Furman Fendley Highway, Jonesville. Both Parkers were shot and stabbed, investigators said.
Authorities say Charles Parker was targeted because he was a registered sex offender, and that Jeremy Moody has admitted planning to kill another registered sex offender, had he not been arrested.
As Christine Moody was being led in to her bond hearing Monday before Judge Arthur T. Sprouse, she said of the victims: "These were pedophiles." When asked whether the killings were connected to the white supremacy group Crew 41, she replied: "I'm a supporting member of Crew 41. This had nothing to do with Crew 41."
Sprouse explained the additional charges to Christine Moody at the hearing. She admitted that the chance of receiving bond was pretty slim. "God is good all the time, but he's not that good, your honor, she said. "You're going to PR (personal recognizance) me, aren't you?" she added with a laugh. "Because we go way back."
Near the end of the brief hearing, Moody asked Sprouse whether she would go to court on Oct. 8 with her husband.
"I'd like to see my husband again," she said. "I love him very much."
As she walked out of the hearing, a reporter asked whether she felt Charles Parker deserved to be killed.
Christine Moody stopped, looked straight into a TV camera and said, "He was a demon."
Jeremy Moody was less talkative with Sprouse. But as he came out of the hearing, he gave reporters a thumbs up.
A reporter told Jeremy Moody that his wife had called Charles Parker a pedophile and a demon.
"He's all of those things," Jeremy Moody said. "He deserved what he got."
Jeremy and Christine Moody are being represented by public defender Eric Delaney. Delaney has met with the couple since their arrests last week, but did not appear with them in court Monday.
Taylor said the Moodys had cooperated with investigators in giving statements and other information about the killings, so the additional charges were delayed.
Taylor said he has learned that white supremacists sometimes target sex offenders, even if they're not of a different race. He wouldn't comment on whether the killings would be classified as a hate crime.
"We're still working with the FBI," Taylor said. "We're still working this case. I see no timeline on when it may be over."
The FBI defines a hate crime as a "traditional offense like murder, arson or vandalism with an added element of bias," according to the agency's website. In order to collect statistics, Congress defines such crimes as "a criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation."
In 2011, according to the most recent FBI figures, 1,944 law enforcement agencies reported 6,222 hate crime incidents to the agency, involving 7,254 offenses.
Jeremy Moody has a prominent "skinhead" tattoo across his throat, along with the words "white power" tattooed on the top of his bald head. He also has an eagle and swastika, "Made in America" and other tattooed symbols associated with skinheads.
On their Facebook pages, Christine and Jeremy Moody use the last name Mengele, the last name of German physician Josef Mengele, who was known for his inhumane medical experiments on twins and other prisoners at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. Christine Moody's page contained posts last week in which she appeared to be trying to recruit new members for Crew 41 and used racial slurs, but those posts had been removed by Monday.
Taylor said investigators are still gathering intelligence on Crew 41, a white supremacy group that according to Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil-rights group, is less than a year old and claims to have chapters in Nebraska, Utah and South Carolina.
According to Southern Poverty Law Center statistics, there are 1,007 known hate groups in the U.S., including neo-Nazis, Klansmen, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads and black separatists. That number includes 21 documented groups in South Carolina. Of those 21, five are based in the Upstate, including an anti-gay group and a white nationalist group in Spartanburg County.
Despite the Moodys' apparent ties to white supremacy and Crew 41, Taylor said investigators think they were acting independently of the group. Last week was a learning process for the sheriff and local investigators, who have rarely dealt with hate and white supremacy groups, Taylor said.
"I learned a lot, more than I knew last week," the sheriff said.
The Moodys are scheduled for their initial appearances in general sessions court Oct. 8. ..Source.. by JENNY ARNOLD
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