Russell Tillis - Charged with Murder and Dismemberment of Joni Gunter - Police Interrogation

The investigation began in 2015 when Tillis was first arrested on charges of aggravated assault and battery on officers after they chased him into his yard, booby-trapped with razor blades and half-buried boards studded with nails, police said.

On Dec. 8, 2016, Tillis was arrested on new charges of murder and kidnapping while in jail, based on the conversations he had with inmate Sammy Evans, prosecutors said. Evans told detectives Tillis had talked about killing and dismembering a woman and burying her on his property.

Police got a search warrant and went through his ramshackle house and fenced backyard for three days, finding four holes with the buried human remains of Gunter, believed to be 30 at the time of her death.

Tillis testified Thursday, stating the confession is bogus and that he wanted the death penalty at the time because he was depressed. He said he attempted suicide around the same time by swallowing pills "purchased" from inmates in exchange for meals.

“I was in the hospital for three days," he told jurors of the overdose. "I should have never left. Should have ended up in the morgue.”

Tills said around then he conspired with Evans to create the elaborate confession, deliberately making it as shocking as possible to create the aggravating circumstances to ensure he got the death penalty. That included telling Evans that he kept women chained up and allowed others to have sex with them for money.

In the confession, Tillis is heard telling Evans that his brother Claude Tillis came to his house one day to have sex with a woman, but she recognized him, and he said "you gotta kill that b----.” He said his brother talked him into killing the woman, "but you cut her up,” Tillis is heard saying.

When he spoke to jurors Thursday, the defendant then said his brother showed up at his house with Gunter's body in his trunk.

"Joni Gunter arrived at my residence in the trunk of my brother's car, and she was deceased. How she met her death, I had no clue," Tillis said, refusing to discuss anything more, First Coast News reported.

The jail recording also has Tillis saying they hung Gunter's body from chains in the garage, and his brother cut off her head with a Sawzall. His brother got “squeamish,” leaving Tillis to dismember the body.


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