In the winter of 1986 a quiet apartment complex in Talladega, Alabama, became the scene of a multiple homicide. Four-year-old Joseph Weathers, a white male, was found dead in the family’s apartment on February 24, 1986, alongside his five-year-old brother Chad and their 24-year-old mother, Sherri Weathers. Concern was raised when Sherri, a hearing-impaired student at the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind, missed several days of classes and a social worker checked the apartment. Autopsies found all three had been strangled; Joseph and Chad died of ligature strangulation.

Investigators focused on Daniel Lee Siebert, who had recently begun a relationship with Sherri and was working as a set designer for the institute’s theater program. Siebert had entered the Weathers’ apartment on the evening of February 19, 1986, and is reported to have killed Sherri, then woken and strangled each boy. He also murdered neighbor Linda Jarman that same night. Siebert fled, was arrested in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, on September 5, 1986, and was found in possession of Joseph’s Social Security card. He later confessed and was convicted of capital murder in the deaths of Sherri, Chad and Joseph Weathers.