BLOUNT COUNTY, Tenn. — Thirty-two years ago, Tennessee investigators found the bodies of siblings Tommy Griffin and Connie Branham. They also found a burned-out car and a burned trailer connected to the crimes in Blount and Sevier counties.
Gary Wayne Sutton, and his uncle, James Dellinger, were eventually convicted in their killings.
The men were sent to death row, and Dellinger died on death row in 2023.
Sutton remains on death row, and although executions are on pause in Tennessee, he could be one of the next people executed when they resume.
The group Justice for Gary Wayne Sutton maintains Sutton didn't kill anyone and is holding a press conference in Nashville on Friday in hopes of gaining the attention of Governor Bill Lee.
"Other than the fact I didn't do this, this was my best friend that got killed," Sutton told 10News. "I think that gets lost on people that don't know nothing about this, they don't understand, this was my best friend."
The Tennessee Department of Correction told 10News that at this time there are no official execution dates for anyone who's been sentenced to the death penalty.
Heather Cohen, a private investigator who founded Justice Warriors Investigations in Tennessee, has been hired by Sutton's loved ones to take another look at his case.
She said she's tracked down key witnesses and jurors who don't think there's enough evidence to prove Sutton killed anyone.
"Barbara Gordon was one of the first witnesses I spoke to," Cohen said. "She was a key witness in the case, one of the first things she said to me was she had lost sleep because she was not sure that the white truck she saw that day was James Dellinger's. She felt, more or less, they put words in her mouth."
The clock is ticking for Cohen, Sutton and his loved ones.
She said they want the governor to sit down with them, hear them out and exonerate Gary.
It's not just Cohen, nor Sutton's loved ones, who have questions about the case.
Cohen said several lawmakers, including Tennessee State Senator Page Walley (R-Savannah), are asking Governor Lee to take a look at Sutton's case.
The Tennessee Department of Correction wouldn't let 10News interview Sutton but said if a reporter wrote him a letter, he could choose to call them.
Carolyn Miller is leading the charge for Sutton. She said they were dating when he got arrested, and they were together the night Tommy disappeared.
"We don't know exactly what we can do, what needs to be done," Miller said. "We just know that we need people to listen, we need his story out and we need to show you know we need people to know he is innocent. He did not kill Tommy."
Sutton's road to death row started along The Little River in Walland, where Tommy Griffin's body was found in 1992. The case went through Sevier County, where a jury convicted him of killing Connie Branham. It then went in front of Blount County jurors, who sentenced him to the electric chair in a rare Sunday court session in 1996.
"Like I said, it's been a real nightmare what I went through," Sutton said. "All these years not having any lawyers that really cared enough to do anything."
There's a lot of moving parts in Sutton's case, and he said Sevier County's newspaper, The Mountain Press, covered Branham's trial extensively.
10News went to the newspaper and dug through stacks of old issues to figure out what happened.
According to reporting in The Mountain Press, prosecutors built their case around the theory that James Dellinger, and Sutton, were fighting with Tommy Griffin right before he died. The case moved ahead with that theory.
Prosecutors said that Branham died when she went looking for her brother, and that Sutton and Dellinger were tried together, according to The Mountain Press.
"There was definitely an obvious problem with the trial, starting with the fact that the district attorney had admitted in open court that they had no evidence on Gary," Cohen said. "And if they separated the trial on him and his uncle they’d have to let him walk, because they had nothing tying him to this."
Cohen said she thinks someone else killed Tommy and Connie, a man named Lester Johnson.
She said she's not sure how the pair were tied to Johnson, but they were slated to testify in a trial where Johnson was the defendant but never showed up.
Johnson walked, and his girlfriend told the court what happened next.
"She ended up giving a statement that said that that day she picked him up from jail," Cohen said. "Took him and dropped him off in Sevier County. And this is the day Tommy went missing."
The victims and their families are important in this case, too.
Griffin and Branham's mother, Viola Davis, talked to 10News in 1992.
"I don't know how anybody could be so cruel," Davis said. "And live in our community, in our society out here."
The siblings' brother, James Griffin, said someone fired bullets into his car around the time his siblings were killed.
"The people who go out and kill anybody and burn them up, then shoot anybody in the back of the head, is sort of dangerous, isn’t it," James Griffin said.
Sutton said he's not bitter, but spending his life in a cinderblock cell is a nightmare.
Before hanging up, he said his story serves as a warning and a reminder.
"I just want people to know that you can get here by being innocent," he said.