Mississippi jury took 20 minutes to find man guilty of killing mother in gruesome murder case from 2018
Published 4:31 pm Thursday, August 22, 2024
A Mississippi jury took 20 minutes to deliberate before they found a man guilty of killing and decapitating his mother in 2018.
Terelle Johnson, 35, of Wiggins was convicted of first-degree murder by a Stone County jury for the murder of his mother, Sherry Johnson.
Terelle was sentenced to serve life in prison in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Johnson’s attorneys attempted to use an insanity defense and claimed Johnson was not aware of his actions when he killed his mother, Sherry Johnson, in their Wiggins home.
Prosecutors, however, maintain that Johnson knew exactly what he was doing.
Officials say Johnson had confessed the day after his arrest, revealing that he beat and strangled his mother to death following a fight over credit cards, then used his hands and teeth to decapitate her.
When deputies arrived for a welfare check on June 6, 2018, Johnson claimed his mother was on a cruise, but they found her decapitated body in the yard and her head on the other side of a fence.
Blood was smeared across the walls and ceiling of her locked bedroom, where investigators also found two knives. Experts used DNA in the case to connect the knives and other evidence to the victim.