HeathsCase

On the night of Jan. 17, 1997, Heath arrived at his parents' home after having gone out to dinner with his grandparents and out of town relatives. "I was just watching TV and I started thinking about all the trouble my dad and I were having, I started crying and I started getting mad," Heath's police statement says. "I got the .45 my dad kept in his gun cabinet and another clip. I put the clip in my pocket. I carried the gun with me as I went from room to room, messing up the house. After I messed up the house, I tried to kill myself. I put the barrel of the gun in my mouth, but I couldn't pull the trigger. I did this twice."

He was on his knees in the living room with the barrel of the pistol in his mouth when his younger sister, Heather, arrived home at about 10:30 PM. He told her to leave, but she didn't. About two minutes later, their parents, Joe and Barbara, arrived.

"I remember seeing the back of my mom and dad, and as soon as I saw my dad, the gun came out of my mouth and 'pow'. I remember seeing my sister in the kitchen. She had the phone in her hand. I don't remember her pushing any buttons. I remember looking at my sister and I knew she was gone. All of them were lying on the floor," he said in a subsequent interview.

-- Jan. 18,1997: Heath was arrested and charged with three counts of capital murder.

-- Steve Finch, an investigator with the sheriff's office and close friend of Joe Stocks, wrote Heath's statement to police. " We really didn't hear what was on the tape, I want to write another one. I'm about all you've got, you trust me, don't you?", Finch said. Heath signed the statement without reading it.

-- As family members waited to see Heath in jail, Jack Walls insisted he be the first to go in and was. His first comment to Heath was, "I was right, you don't have a conscience. Just keep quiet, I'll take care of everything."

-- Jack Walls stayed at the Stocks' home after the murders to help officials "secure the crime scene" and frequently asked investigators if Heath had implicated anyone else in the murders.

-- Heath said about his psychiatric evaluation, "Whenever I brought up sexual abuse, they put down their pens and went blank. They didn't want to hear nothing about that. Nothing."

-- Heath told his public defender, Edgar Thompson, about the sexual abuse and was told not to mention it; it was irrelevant.

-- Edgar Thompson advised Heath, if he pled guilty, he would receive 7 years on each count and be eligible for parole in 21 years.

In June 1997, protecting Walls and without benefit of trial, Heath pled guilty to three counts of capital murder and received three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. This was one month before the investigation began that would finally expose and capture Jack Walls.