Make Something of Yourself: The Murder of Randy Voigt

JoJo Voigt says his dad Randy had been riding him for a while, about all the video games and about getting a job. JoJo was 23, with a gun arrest from the year before and a battery charge he was out on bond for. That bond was less than a week old when every police agency around Polk County, Florida started looking for his car.

Randy Voigt and the Family House in Bartow, Florida

Marvin Voigt Jr. went by Randy. Law&Crime did a documentary on this case, and from what they dug up, Randy was born and raised in Bartow, Florida, and went to Bartow High, so this was his town.

Bartow sits right in the middle of the state, between Tampa and Orlando. It’s the county seat for Polk County, which means if you’ve got court in Polk County, you’re driving to Bartow. Back in the early 1900s it was a big phosphate town, and phosphate is the stuff they mine out of the ground for fertilizer.

Randy married a woman named Susan, and she was about 5 years younger than him. Her first name and her age are about all that’s out there on Susan, and I looked. The documentary says Randy and Susan bought a house in Bartow in 2006. Their son Joseph was 5 at the time, and that’s the house he grew up in. The family called him JoJo.

And then JoJo drops off the map for a while. Where he went to school or whether he ever had a job, any of that, I couldn’t find it anywhere, and the next time his name pops up, he’s a grown man and he’s getting arrested.

Joseph Voigt’s 2023 Arrest for Firing a Gun at His Parents’ House

Police arrested JoJo in October 2023 for firing a gun in a residential area.

I went and pulled up the law on this. The part that sounds closest to what he got charged with covers somebody who recreationally shoots a gun outside in a mostly residential area, and the example the law gives is target shooting. If you want to know what counts as residential, Florida put a number on it. It’s at least 1 home per acre.

Anyway, the details on what JoJo did come from WFLA, the Tampa TV station, because they went back through the court records, and they say he fired 15 shots into the ground at his parents’ house. Into the ground, at the house he grew up in, with his mom and dad living there.

When police asked him why, WFLA says he told them he was bored.

I went looking for anything else about his life that fall, like a job or a fight at home or whatever, and WFLA’s report is as far as it goes. Nobody’s said whose gun it was either.

Joseph Voigt’s Battery Arrest and Release on Bond

Then about a year later he got arrested again, and this time it was battery, which in Florida is touching or hitting somebody against their will, and the news coverage stops right there at the word battery, so I can’t tell you who the other person was.

The Fox station in Tampa says he walked out of jail on Sunday, December 1, 2024. WFLA says he was out on bond.

That’s 2 arrests in a little over a year for the guy who said he was bored. He was 23.

Out on bond means you get to go home while your case is still hanging out there, usually with some money put up and a list of rules to follow. I’d want to know what was on JoJo’s list, like whether a judge told him to stay away from guns, and that paperwork never made the news.

The Shooting at the Voigt Home in Bartow, Florida

Joseph was at his parents’ house in Bartow that next Saturday night, December 7.

He shot both of his parents.

Then he left.

Susan was still alive. She’d been shot in the head. At about 11:20 that night, she got police on the phone. She told them her son Joseph shot her and her husband, and that he took off.

Bartow officers found Randy in the driveway. He was already gone. He was 63.

Chief Stephen Walker said Susan was inside, sitting on a couch, with 1 gunshot wound to her head. Medics worked on her at the house, and she made it to the hospital in critical but stable condition.

Chief Walker called it senseless. He also said that from everything they’d heard, Randy and Susan were really good people, and if you’re looking for who these two were, that line from the chief is about the most anybody official has said out loud.

The BOLO and the Arrest on International Drive in Orlando

Bartow police brought the sheriff’s office in to help. They put out what cops call a BOLO, Be On the Look Out, on the car Joseph was driving, and it went to every agency in Polk County and the counties around it. It got out fast because Susan had already given police his name before anybody even made it to the house.

Less than 3 hours after Susan’s call, Orlando police spotted the car. It was around 2 in the morning, on International Drive. If you’ve ever done the theme park trip, you’ve been on International Drive, it’s that big tourist strip with all the hotels and attractions, and there’s Joseph’s car. Nobody knows why he went to Orlando.

Orlando officers did a felony traffic stop, which is the version where police treat the driver like he could be dangerous, and they took him into custody with no gunfire reported, and he got booked into the Orange County Jail on first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder. Local TV put out the body cam video later, so you can go watch that stop yourself.

Then you read the sheriff’s press release. The sheriff calls Joseph violent and dangerous, and Chief Walker thanks everybody for how fast it all came together. Near the end, they list his criminal history, with the gun charge and the battery.

What Joseph Voigt Told Polk County Deputies

Polk County deputies talked to Joseph, and they said he admitted to shooting both of his parents. Then he told them why, or at least his version of why. He said his dad was upset that he spent most of his time playing video games. He also said his dad had been on him about making something of himself and getting a job. You can read his actual words in quotes in the press release, cuss word and all.

When police asked JoJo about the gun back in 2023, he said he was bored. Now he’s telling deputies about his dad wanting him to go get a job.

And all of that comes from Joseph, through deputies, because the rest of his interview hasn’t come out and no doctor or expert has said a word publicly about a gaming addiction or anything like it.

The story blew up fast. Fox 13 in Tampa did the local story. Their headline ran about 20 words, Bartow man kills father, injures mom because dad wanted him to stop playing video games and get a job. Fox stations all over the country picked it up, so if you were scrolling the news that week, you probably saw it. One of them was the Fox 13 in Seattle, which is a whole different Fox 13, running the exact same story word for word. A news site over in the Czech Republic ran it too, under a headline saying his parents scolded him for only playing games.

Joseph saw a judge in Orange County that Monday, since Orlando’s where they caught him, and the judge held him with no bond until Polk County could come take him back.

Joseph Voigt’s Plea Deal and 40-Year Sentence

The state charged him with first-degree murder and attempted murder, and if you’re convicted of first-degree murder in Florida, you’re looking at life in prison or the death penalty. He took a plea deal in April 2025. He was 24 by then.

The murder charge came down to second-degree, and he pleaded guilty to that and to attempted murder for shooting his mom, which took life and the death penalty off the table. PEOPLE got hold of the court documents, and they say the state also let go of a separate charge for shooting into a building. The Ledger, the Lakeland paper, says the deal came with 40 years in state prison.

Because it was a plea, the case ended with no trial, and the version of that Saturday night you can actually read comes from police statements and court paperwork, plus that one summary of what he told deputies about his dad.

Florida’s prison system took him in on May 12, 2025, and last time the website updated, he was at Zephyrhills Correctional Institution, up in Pasco County. If you look him up, he’s DC number F32717. They’ve got him in close custody with his visitation marked suspended. The website lists his crime in this all-caps shorthand, and the state posts a warning on the page that those abbreviations might not match exactly what he was convicted of. His release date says November 28, 2064, and the state says that could change. If it holds, JoJo walks out at 63, which is how old his dad was. Susan survived, and the last thing anybody official said about her is still Chief Walker, saying she lost her husband, and in a way, her son too.