On August 31, 1974, 29-year-old Juanita Akins and her husband of twenty days, 38-year-old Joseph Ronald Akins, were ambushed and shot at close range in their car in a secluded, developing subdivision in Bibb County, Georgia. The couple had been lured to the location under the pretense of installing a television antenna and both were killed by a shotgun blast.

Investigators tied the killings to a plot to collect on Ronald Akins’s $53,000 life insurance policy that named his ex-wife Rebecca Turpin and her children as beneficiaries. Authorities charged Turpin, her new husband John Eldon Smith, and an associate, John Maree. Maree later testified that he and Smith had driven from Miami to Macon to carry out the attack; he said the original plan was to poison Ronald but that Juanita’s unexpected presence led them to use a shotgun instead, while Turpin remained in Miami.

Smith and Turpin were convicted on two counts of murder and received death sentences; Maree, who cooperated, was given life imprisonment. Smith’s appeals were exhausted and he was executed by electrocution on December 15, 1983. Anyone with memories of the Akinses or information about the case is asked to come forward.