Jeffrey Mundt and Joseph Banis: The Fourth Street House of Horrors

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So here's what happened in Louisville back in December 2009.

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A hairstylist goes to a party at a Victorian mansion and never comes home.

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His family spends about six months wondering where he is.

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Meanwhile, two guys are living in that house, going on about their lives,

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walking over his body every single day.

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And when the truth finally comes out, it involves counterfeit money,

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federal grants, and two trials where each killer points at the other and says he did it.

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[Music]

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Old Louisville is one of those neighborhoods that looks like it fell out of a history book.

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Victorian mansions, stained glass windows, the kind of place where people care about historic

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preservation and property values. It's beautiful. It's also where in the summer of 2010,

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police dug up a basement floor and found Jamie Carroll's body stuffed into a plastic storage bin.

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Jamie was 37 when he died. He grew up in eastern Kentucky, went to beauty school in

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paint sville and became a master hairstylest. People loved him. His former classmates remember

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this guy who would walk around the salon yelling, "Roll that hair girl to pump everyone up during

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practice sessions." He eventually owned his own salon. He had clients who adored him,

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friends who described him as "magnetic and charming." One ex-boyfriend remembered him as someone

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who was full of life, always in a good mood, always trying to be positive.

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Jamie also struggled with addiction, and that struggle eventually led him to Jeffrey

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Munt and Joseph Bannis. These two men met on an adult hookup sites in the fall of 2009.

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Munt was the guy who looked good on paper. He'd worked on a major IT project at Northwestern

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University near Chicago before moving to Louisville. He dressed in suits, had no criminal record.

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His parents showed up to court with him. He was the kind of person juries want to believe.

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Bannis was the opposite. He had a criminal record involving drugs and theft. He'd been labeled

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a persistent felony offender in Kentucky, which is a legal classification that basically follows

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you around forever and makes everything worse when you get in trouble again. He'd just gotten out of

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prison when he met Munt online. And here's where things get kind of complicated. Bannis had also met

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Jamie Carroll online around the same time, right after getting out of prison. According to what

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came out later, Bannis was in a relationship with Jamie while also starting one with Munt. Munt

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knew about Jamie. And according to Bannis, Munt didn't like the situation at all.

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In mid-December 2009, the three of them got together at Munt's house on 4th Street. It was supposed

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to be a party. Drugs, sex, the kind of night that probably seemed fine in the moment. What happened

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next depends entirely on who you believe. Munt's version goes like this. He and Jamie were in bed

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together when Bannis suddenly attacked. Munt says Bannis/Jaymey's throat with a knife

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while Jamie's screened Bannis's name over and over. Then Bannis shot him twice with a 38-calibre revolver.

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Munt claims that he was so freaked out that Bannis gave him a date-rape drug to calm him down.

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Then threatened to kill him if he didn't help dispose of the body.

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Bannis, however, tells a completely different story. He says at one point during the night,

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Jamie left the bedroom to get more meth for them. Then Munt asked him a question.

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"Do you think anyone would miss Jamie? We could take his drugs." Bannis says he didn't understand

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what Munt meant at the time. According to Bannis, when Jamie came back, Munt pulled out a knife and

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stabbed him. Jamie yelled, "Joey, Joey, help me." Then Munt grabbed a 38-smith and

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wesson and shot him. Bannis claims it was all over in about a minute and he was too disturbed to say

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anything. Both versions agree on one thing. Jamie Carroll was stabbed and shot. He died in that

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bedroom. Then these two men, whatever combination of willingness and coercion was involved,

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worked together to make his body disappear. Then here's where the case gets really dark,

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because what they did next required planning and effort and a level of detachment that's

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hard for an ordinary person to process. They needed to fit Jamie's body into a 50-gallon rubber-made

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container. He was 5'7", 128 pounds. Kind of small, but still getting a human body into that space

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isn't easy. So according to testimony from both men, one of them held the body while the other

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used a sledgehammer to break Jamie's kneecaps. They folded his body into a position that would fit.

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They poured lime over him to mask the smell and slow decomposition. They sealed the container with

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spray foam around the edges and strapped it down with duct tape. Then they dug a hole in the basement

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floor, five feet deep into the dirt floor. They buried the container, smoothed everything over,

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and went back to their lives. For six months, they lived in that house, walked across that basement floor.

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They had people over at times. Nobody knew. Jamie's family was desperately trying to find him. His

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mother and brother spent half a year in agony, not knowing if he was alive or dead. When they

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finally found out the truth, the family could hardly talk to each other without crying.

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In April 2010, things took a strange turn. Months and banners went to Chicago and stayed at the

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Hyatt Regency. When they asked the doorman to change a $100 bill, their lives started to unravel.

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The bill was counterfeit. Police searched them and their vehicle. They found $55,000 in counterfeit

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currency. They also found date rape drugs, handguns, fake IDs, handcuffs, and meth pipes.

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The federal government got involved. The secret service showed up, which makes sense because

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counterfeiting is their jurisdiction. The CIA also got involved for some reason, which doesn't make

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sense because this is a domestic murder case. Federal agents seized their laptops and hard drives,

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nearly a million files. To this day, we don't know what was on those computers.

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Bannis's lawyer tried to get access to the digital evidence, arguing that there might be

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communications proving who was really in charge. The CIA and the secret service held onto it.

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That's strange. That racist questions nobody has ever answered.

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What were these guys into that required CIA involvement?

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On June 17, 2010, the cover-up fell apart. Months and banners got into a fight, a serious one.

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Month locked himself in a bedroom and called 911. You can hear the terror in his voice on the recording.

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Quote, "My boyfriend is attacking me. He's trying to get into the room where I'm hiding.

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Please, he's breaking down the door." Police showed up and arrested Bannis for domestic violence.

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They put him in the back of the squad car. That's when Bannis made a choice. He knew that if

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month got to tell his version first, Bannis would take the fall for everything. So Bannis told

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Detective John Lesher something that shocked him. He said that he had information about a murder

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that police didn't even know happened. Lesher didn't believe him at first. He thought Bannis was

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making it up. The story was too gruesome. A body buried in the basement for six months? Come on.

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But Bannis gave them the location, the basement, the container. They gave them Jamie Carroll's name.

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He named "Month" as the killer. The next day, June 18, 2010, detectives excavated the basement floor

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at the fourth streethouse. They found exactly what Bannis said they would find. Jamie Carroll's body

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six months after he disappeared, finally discovered. The prosecution decided to try them separately.

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That meant each could testify against the other. Each one became the star witness in the other's trial.

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Bannis went first in early 2013. Month testified that Bannis was a monster who acted alone.

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The jury convicted Bannis of complicity to murder and gave him life in prison with the

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possibility of parole after 20 years. Then Bannis cut a deal. He agreed to not appeal his conviction

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in exchange for parole eligibility. He also agreed to testify against "Month". So in May 2013,

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Bannis showed up at Month's trial in an orange-jumped suit and handcuffs and told the jury that "Month"

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was the real killer. He testified that "Month told him, quote, "No one would ever believe you.

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I'm the golden child on paper. They don't know about my secret fetishes or anything.

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You're a convicted felon, Joey." Months defense lawyer absolutely destroyed Bannis on the stand.

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Points it out that his criminal history, his past lies, the fact that he'd already been convicted

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of murder. The jury didn't buy Bannis's version. They found Month not guilty of murder. He was only

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convicted of tampering with evidence and facilitation to robbery. Eight-year sentence. By August 2014,

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Month was out. He already served enough time between jail and home incarceration. He walked free.

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Bannis is still in prison. His first shot at parole is in June 2030.

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So who actually killed Jamie Carroll? Legally, Bannis is the murderer. That's what the convictions say.

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The juries heard the same evidence and came to opposite conclusions about who did what.

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The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. They were both there. They both participated in hiding

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the body, whether one held the knife while the other watched, or they took turns, or whether one

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was truly forced at gunpoint. We'll never really know. What we do know is that Jamie Carroll died

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violently in that house. His family spent six months not knowing where he was. And two men, who blame

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the other, walked around for half a year with his body buried under their feet. The federal evidence

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is still out there somewhere. Those million files. Whatever was on those hard drives that made the

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CIA take an interest. Maybe someday that information will come out and will understand more about what

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was really happening on fourth street. For now, we're left with a case where justice feels incomplete.

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One man serves life, the other walked free, and a talented hairstylist from Eastern Kentucky,

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a guy who people described as always trying to be positive is reduced to being the victim in a

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basement nobody wanted to talk about.

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[Music]

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Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder, bingeable true crime stories. I'm Joe,

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I'm the host, and here's an email subject, recording mindset. Hi, Joe. When you sit down to

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record, are you in "performance mode" or does it feel more like you're just talking to one person?

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I've always wondered what headspace is like for podcasters. Lena and Portsmouth knew ham sure.

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And Lena, I tell you, I think you hit the nail on the head with that one. It's, by the way,

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I'm never in performance mode. I never feel like, oh, I'm on today. Never. I never feel like that.

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So the way I approach it is, I pretend that you, you listening to me right now, are sitting right

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in front of me, or beside me, somewhere, and we're just having a conversation about this story.

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I have all the information and you want to hear about this story, so I'm telling you all the things

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that happened in this story. That's the way I approach it. One singular person sitting right in

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front of me are beside me, and I'm talking about this story. Because if I imagine the tens or

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hundreds of thousands, even honestly millions that download this podcast every year,

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that would freak me out. If I thought about it that way, millions of people are hearing me tell

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this story. That is weird. But one person, I can talk to one person, so that's what I do.

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