Mamaw's House: The Sherry Cole and Jessie Allen Murders

0:00 There's a hammer sitting in an evidence bag in Green County, Tennessee, and a jury had to pass it hand-to-hand to hold it. It came out from under the bed sheets of a 16-year-old boy in a little house where his grandmother was raising him and his seven-year-old brother. This was in April of 2022. It took four years to get a verdict, and in that time, the boy told four different versions of that night. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] Up in the northeast corner of Tennessee in Green County, there's a country road called Old Snaps Ferry Road, and a little house on it that can't settle on what town it's in, depending on the news story that houses in limestone or chucky or greenville.

1:16 And if you live out there, you quit correcting people a long time ago. The woman who kept that house running was Sherry Cole. She was 59. Her daughter, Crystal, told a reporter that she couldn't remember ever seeing her mom get mad. Sherry raised three daughters, and Crystal said whenever any of them hit their lowest point in their life, whether it was a divorce or losing a husband, she found her way back to that house, and Sherry took her in. Sherry believed God made everybody with a good heart. Her husband is Bill, and you'll get to know him. Living with them are two of their grandsons. A little guy was Jesse, and he was seven. He was in the first grade at Fall Branch Elementary, and his family said that he was so proud of that school, and had more friends than he could even name.

2:01 He loved writing along to work with his pop-all at Eminem Farm Supply. And if you've ever watched a seven-year-old who's been told he's helping at a real job, you know that that kid walked down those feed aisles like he was the manager of the place. Jesse's big brother was Jordan, and Jordan was 16. When he testified, his lawyer walked the jury through exactly how he got to that house, and it was rough, because he grew up in an abusive home. His dad had abandoned him, and then his mom went to jail, and the boys landed with their mom-aw and pop-all. That's a lot of road for a kid to travel before he's even old enough to drive. Somewhere along the way, Jordan started running off. He left his grandparents' house four different times with nobody keeping an eye on him, and he was missing school, and that's when the Department of Children's Services got involved.

2:49 From September 2, December of 2021, a worker came to the house and worked with Jordan on coping skills and ways to de-escalate, which is a fancy way of saying they were just trying to work on ways to help him calm down when he would get angry. And they rode out an actual safety plan for the family. Years later, a case worker told the jury, "Jordan improved." DCS closed the case on him on March 31, 2022, which was 24 days before the worst night of that family's life. It's a Sunday night, in late April of 2022, and Rick Williams is getting ready for bed. Rick is Sherry's brother, and longtime Green County deputy, and his phone rings.

3:31 And it's his mom. She tells him that Bill can't find Sherry or the boys. Rick told the jury that his first thought was a car wreck, and that's where all of us usually go, because your mom doesn't text you back for 45 minutes, and in your head she's already upside down in a ditch and you're out the door in your house shoes. Rick rushed out there to help Bill look for them. Sherry and Jesse were outside the house. They were face down, side by side. Rick told the jury, "I know death when I see it." The 911 call went out around 1145 that night, and in all the chaos on that line, people blamed Bill, and they blamed Jordan. And nobody knew where Jordan was.

4:14 Investigators talked to Jordan three separate times that Monday when they were able to track him down, and his story kept changing shape. He said he was inside watching TV, and he heard a scream. Ran out, saw his brother and his grandmother, and then he took a truck to a friend's house, and then he picked up a pizza, bought himself a pair of headphones. The whole time, investigators kept telling him the DNA would show what happened, which is the cop version of your mom saying she already knows what you did so you might as well tell her. Then the story moved, and now Jordan is saying that he helped his grandfather move the bodies, and his grandfather told him to keep quiet. In the third interview, Jordan told TBI agents that he did it himself.

4:54 The state said he told those agents he'd planned it hours ahead of time. He also told them that they'd probably find a hammer in his bedroom. They did. It was tucked into his bed under the sheets, with a trail of blood drops running from the kitchen all the way back to that room, and a pair of bloody boots in there with it. Three stories in a single day from one teenager. He was charged as a juvenile that same Monday. Because Jordan was 16, the state had to ask a juvenile court to let them try him as an adult, and that fall, a judge said yes. A grand jury indicted him that January on two counts of first degree murder, and then the waiting started, and the trial got pushed back four separate times.

5:36 By the time anybody sat in a jury box, the case said more than 490 exhibits. Jury selection started in May of 2026. Jordan walked in 20 years old, and a blue shirt, and the local paper said that he barely showed any emotion at all. Rick took the stand and had to stop over and over, pulling his glasses off and wiping his eyes. And if you'd been on that jury, you would have had to hold the hammer in your very own hands. Jordan's public defender told the jury his client was a traumatized kid who got manipulated into confessing to the investigators. And he brought a psychologist in who testified that people do confess to crimes they didn't commit, which really does happen, especially with scared teenagers.

6:21 And then Jordan took the stand. He said that it was easier to lie back then because he thought that lying would get him home. It didn't. He told the jury, quote, "I've learned not to be scared of the truth." And the truth, he said, was that Bill cold did it. And he'd been afraid Bill was going to kill him too. He said that he'd only been guessing about the hammer and never planned on anything that day. And if you're keeping count at home, that's version number four of Jordan's story. The prosecutor asked why, if he'd watched his grandfather do something that horrible, he went to little Caesars and then to Walmart for headphones and never told a single person. Jordan said that he was in shock and it was his own way of coping.

7:04 That answer did not help him. In Why Wood, a 16-year-old do any of this? Nobody knows. The closest anybody came in that courtroom was a question about whether having no freedom made him hate, cherry, or Bill. Then there's Bill, the pop-all, from the farm supply store sitting in a witness chair while his grandson's defense tells a room full of strangers that he killed his wife and his grandbaby. Bill looked at a photo and called him Little Jesse. He called Cherry his sweetie and he said, "I didn't do it. Why would I? I had nothing to gain." He told them he sits in that little old house now as a lonely old man who's lost his whole family.

7:45 In closing, the prosecutor reminded the jury that Bill and his wife had been married 44 years and he said justice would have been Jesse riding his four-wheeler and tromping through the creek in his muck boots and getting to grow up. The jury went out that Friday a little after nine in the morning and they came back and under three hours, finding Jordan guilty on both counts of first-degree murder. It was unanimous. That afternoon Rick read a statement to the jury and he told them that he'll carry the images from that night for the rest of his life and he asked them for the maximum. They gave Jordan two life sentences without parole. The prosecutor said there were no winners.

8:25 Everybody loses. So far in this case I haven't seen an appeal reported. And if you drive out, old snaps ferry road, whatever you call that town, you'll pass the little house where Bill told the jury he still lives by himself. Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder, bingeable true crime stories. Hi there. I'm Joe. I'm the host. Subject from a guy who doesn't email people. Joe, I've never written an email to a podcast before and I'm not entirely sure why I'm doing it now. I think it's because I've been listening for two years and you feel like somebody I know and then I remember you have no idea that I exist and that's a strange thing about all of this.

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