Teens Charged In Double Slaying

WHITE BLUFF, Tenn. -- A local prosecutor said Wednesday he would try to prosecute two teenagers as adults with first-degree murder in the fatal shootings of their foster mother and her mother-in-law.

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Foster mother Mary Clark, 39, and Gail Clark, her 66-year-old mother-in-law visiting from Orange, Mass., were found Tuesday morning shot to death in separate rooms of Mary Clark's home in rural White Bluff, about 25 miles west of Nashville.

Jeffery Byrd Johnson Jr., 15, and James Earl Garrett, 17, were being held in a juvenile facility Wednesday and scheduled to appear in court Friday, local authorities and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced.

District Attorney General Dan Alsobrooks said his office would file a petition to try the teenagers as adults.

"The law allows us to do that, and this is as serious as it gets," he said.

Alsobrooks said attorneys J. Rease Holley and Jarred Creasy were representing the teenagers. A message left at Holley's office was not immediately returned. A listing for Creasy could not be found Wednesday afternoon.

Dickson County Sheriff's Lt. Andy Davis said one of the women may have been shot while she slept. There were no signs of forced entry to the home or a struggle.

Investigators believe there was a motive in the slayings, but Davis would not give details.

Mary Clark shared the home with her husband, William Clark, and an unnamed daughter, but police said they were in Maine at the time of the slayings.

Clark said he suspected Garrett and Johnson immediately.

“It was disbelief, but I knew who it was right off the bat,” he said.

Clark said a combination of things convinced him. He said $250 went missing from his mother's purse on New Year's Eve and that the family’s dogs would have given warning at the sight of strangers.

“Her favorite dogs sleep with her in her bed. If (it) was an outside job, those dogs would have been going off, so there's no doubt in my mind that it was one of them two,” he said.

Clark said that on Dec. 27, Garrett told DCS that he wanted to be moved. Clark blamed the system for not moving the 17-year-old immediately.

“Right, and if they had honored that request or even took him and put him in respite, where they take the kid and put him in another foster home for three or four days, my mother and wife would still be here,” he said.

The DCS has an internal investigation under way. Phoenix Homes, who helps place the teens for DCS, released a statement saying that they are fully cooperating with authorities in their investigation.

Clark said no matter what, the justice system’s punishment won’t be enough.

“No law is going to satisfy me. Give me the two boys. Give them to me and I'll show you what's going to happen to them,” he said.

Both foster parents had been working as contractors since last year with an agency called Phoenix, which works with the state to place foster children in homes, said Rob Johnson, a spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Children Services. He said Clark has cared for five children during that time, but was only in custody of the two teenagers at the time of the shooting.

The Clarks were operating a level-2 facility, which provides therapeutic care suited for children with behavior or emotional history. Records do not indicate anything in the teenagers' history that could have triggered the alleged shooting, Johnson said.

Due to child confidentiality laws, Johnson said DCS is restricted from releasing anything more about the teenagers' history.

The teenagers were being held in the Williamson County Juvenile Detention Facility because Dickson County lacks a juvenile facility. They were scheduled to appear in juvenile court in Charlotte at 10 a.m. Friday.