CHAPTER 43

Once again, Terry Durham patiently explained how he came to contact the investigators for the first time after his sister-in-law told him about the murders and said that he needed to get in touch with them. His sister-in-law was at his house, he said, and they were talking about the issue of sin.

“She asked me if I thought you could be forgiven for sin if you went out and killed somebody, and I said, ‘No.’ I said I didn’t think that if you went out and killed somebody in cold blood, that you’d be forgiven for it. So, then she had said something about a murder at Ider.”

When his sister-in-law mentioned Headrick’s name, Durham said that at first he didn’t know the person she was talking about.

“I didn’t know him as Headrick, I knew him as Randy, because I never knew his last name. I started telling what I knew about it; you know, I told her, ‘Well, yeah, he done this, he done that,’ and she said, ‘You need to go talk to Jimmy.’ So, I volunteered to come talk with y’all.”

“And now we’re back up here in Chattanooga talking to you again,” Phillips said, “and you intentionally left some details out for a reason.”

“I left some of it out,” Durham said, “because I’m getting to the point where I’m not trusting people. I trust y’all, but I’m at the point to where I know too much, and don’t want to know this much.”

“From my understanding, by talking to you,” Jackson said, “you said that people are harassing you at work about different things and that sort of thing, right?”

“Yeah,” Durham said. “They won’t leave me alone about wanting to know what I said to y’all, and some of them, you know, just kinda joke around about it. It don’t bother me, but people keep going, ‘What have you said to them? What have you said to them?’ And, you know, I don’t like it. It’s come to the point to where the man over where I work, he’s going to get rid of me.”

Jackson mentioned to Durham that he had told her before the interview began that there was more to his conversation about the .22 pistol than he had told the officers to start with.

“He asked me if I wanted to buy a twenty-two pistol. I told him I didn’t have no use for a twenty-two pistol, and he said it was unmarked or unregistered, no serial numbers on it. And I told him I didn’t have no use for it, and he said he could sell it to me cheap, and I told him again that I didn’t need it.”

This, he said, had taken place prior to their conversation about the murders.

“Did he say anything about where that pistol was, or where he had it, or anything?” Jackson asked.

“Not that I can remember. The only thing he ever told me he had at his store was Tasers and stuff like that, you know.”

“Did he tell you he dealt in guns at the store?” Phillips asked.

“He told me he could; if I wanted one, he could get one. He gave me a book that morning, a surplus book; anything in it, he said he could get, that I wanted. He said he could get me police issues, Tasers and all kinds of stuff.”

“Let’s go back to what he told you about the actual murders,” Jackson said. “He told you that his brother, Shane, helped him, and that Shane was the one who killed his wife?”

“That’s what he told me,” Durham said. “She was in the bedroom cleaning, and she ran to the bathroom, and she was killed in the bathroom. I believe she’s the one that was . . . ah . . . stuck to the floor or the wall, one of the two.”

“Did he tell you who they killed first?” Phillips asked.

“The only thing he ever said was the lady at the table was sitting; if you walked into the room, she was sitting with her back kinda toward you, and he said he speared the lady at the table and the lady in the bathroom.”

“And he told you he did that,” Jackson said.

“Yes, that he speared them.”

Phillips spoke up and asked Durham why, if Headrick thought he had committed the perfect murder, would he have told someone whom he didn’t know all that well about it?

“I don’t know,” Durham said. “I honestly think he’s crazy. I mean, he’s always had one of those strange looks on his face.”

“The reason why I asked that,” Phillips said, “is because a guy that’s committed two murders; you know, it just doesn’t make any sense for him to go out and just pick somebody to tell about these murders.”

Durham thought for a moment. “The best thing I can figure out is that he knew what I did at work, he knew I let people slide with stuff; he probably thought I wouldn’t say nothing. I just came off, I guess, as a person at work where—”

“Don’t screw me and I won’t screw you?” said Phillips.

“Yeah, yeah.”

The investigators asked Durham if there was anything else he had left out about Headrick, and he told them he didn’t think he’d left anything else out, but said he’d like to think about it and write everything down so he could keep up with what he had said. He also told them again that he’d been having problems at work and at his home because of his involvement.

“It’s just right now I’ve got so many people at work bothering me that I’m getting to the point to where I don’t want to say nothing to nobody. I try to keep my mouth shut; I’m in it too deep and I want out of it.”

“Do you feel like you’re in danger by talking to us?” Jackson asked.

“Yeah,” Durham said. “There’s people already where I work; they don’t know that I’ve come and give statements and stuff, but they know I’m the one that’s talking.”

Phillips asked if Durham had been threatened at work in any manner.

“Physical threats, no. But as far as people calling just wanting to know if I’m at work, what time I’m getting off, hanging up, coming to the house beating on the door and leaving, and people hanging around the house.”

Phillips asked if those incidents had just started since the time Durham had given his first statement, up until that day.

“Well, the phone calls came about a week before I talked to y’all. It’s getting to the point to where I can’t get no sleep at the house. I’m having to stay up two or three hours a night just to watch for people. My landlords know some strange things are going on at my house.”

“Let me ask you one more thing,” Jackson said. “Let’s go back to what Randy told you about Shane helping him, and you said that his wife ran to the bathroom. Did he say why she ran to the bathroom?”

“No, I don’t know,” Durham said. “I’d run to the bathroom too, I guess. I’d be scared or something, but all I know is that she run to the bathroom to hide. That’s all he said, was she run to the bathroom to hide.”

“And then he told you Shane went in and killed her and then he came in and speared her.”

Durham said yes, that was what he had been told.

The investigators asked again if there was anything else Durham could think of that he also might have left out of his initial statement, and he promised to be in touch if he remembered any more details of what he had been told. The interview ended, but before it could be transcribed and copied, news came into the sheriff’s office that a barn located behind Dora Ann Dalton’s house had burned.