On the afternoon of August 23, 2003, 82-year-old Clarence James and his 67-year-old wife, Lillian, were found murdered in their Bartlett, Tennessee, home. Lillian’s daughter made the discovery. Both victims had been strangled and suffered slashed throats inside their Bartlett Boulevard residence.

Police identified Henry Lee Jones, who had once lived near Bartlett, as the primary suspect and arrested him in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, about three weeks after the killings. An accomplice, Tevarus Young, later testified that he was present during the murders and pleaded guilty to two counts of facilitation of first-degree murder.

Jones was indicted by a Shelby County grand jury on October 7, 2003, on two counts of first-degree premeditated murder and two counts of first-degree felony murder. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 2009, that conviction was overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court in 2014, and a retrial in May 2015 again produced convictions and a death sentence. The appeals that followed affirmed the sufficiency of the evidence and the appropriateness of the sentences.

Did anyone in Bartlett in 2003 notice suspicious activity near the James residence in the days before August 23?