On January 3, 1980, 79-year-old James Columbus Lum Roberts was found shot to death in the Mars Hill, Alabama farmhouse he shared with siblings. Two sisters, Floy and Mae Bell Roberts, were also found dead from shotgun and .38 pistol wounds; brother Mack Roberts survived initially but died a few days later. The murders were discovered by their sister Verlin Roberts; James and Floy were bed-ridden with illness at the time.

Early investigators thought robbery might be the motive after a trunk said to contain cash went missing; hunters later found the trunk with only the brothers’ suits inside. Over the next decade several violent, possibly related deaths occurred: Carlton DeMoss died by suicide in 1984 after confessing to his wife that he had done something terrible, and Roy Harris was found dead with a gunshot wound the same year.

In 1986 a sawed-off shotgun and a .38 pistol were recovered and ballistics tied them to the killings. Charles Hiett’s brother turned over the shotgun; Charles’s nephew Jerry Hiett was later arrested with the .38 and convicted on two counts of first-degree perjury for lying to a grand jury about the murders; Anthony Bell was also indicted on perjury. No one has been charged with the killings themselves.

Did anyone in Mars Hill at the time know the victims’ routines, finances, or visitors that winter day?