MARYVILLE, Tenn. — It's been almost 40 years since the murder of Billy Wayne Hearon, and his family got to speak to his killer on Wednesday.
Roger Oody, 62, pleaded guilty to killing Hearon and was handed a life sentence by Blount County Judge Tammy Harrington. Blount County District Attorney General Ryan Desmond set the scene for what police said happened overnight from Jan. 3, 1985, to Jan. 4, 1985.
He said that Oody wanted to Hearon's home, the pair had an argument, and Oody stabbed Hearon "dozens" of times.
After that, Oody put Hearon in a separate room. At some point, another person entered Hearon's home, and Oody and that person went through Hearon's things. When Hearon started to yell for help, Oody killed him with a pipe wrench, Desmond said.
"We can never get him back," said Joyce Tipton, Hearon's sister. "And he viciously took him away from us."
Hearon's murder was Maryville's oldest unsolved case, until earlier this month when police arrested Oody. He is already in prison and has been there since 1988, serving time for the 1987 murder of a Monroe County man.
Oody apologized to Hearon's family, but Tipton said she doesn't forgive.
"No, I do not. It's not up to me to forgive him," she said. "His actions spoke a long time ago for what he's done."
Arthur King, a detective with the Maryville Police Department, started looking into Hearon's case a few months ago and 10News aired a story about his efforts in May. Desmond said someone saw the story and called in the tip that led to Oody's arrest a few weeks later.
Hearon had almost a dozen siblings, Tipton said. She also said some of those siblings and both of their parents died before anyone was arrested for his murder. She said she wishes her mother, Lena Hearon, could have been alive to see the sentencing hearing on Wednesday.
"Our mother whispered to us from time to time, 'They killed our son, and we don't know why,'" Tipton said during her victim impact statement.
Hearon's son, Preston Hearon, wasn't at the hearing. Hearon's niece, Kim Tipton, instead read a letter he wrote for his victim impact statement.
"I don't count on him having any shred of remorse," Kim Tipton said. "And if any part of him was human, it died many, many years ago."