WARNING, GRAPHIC CONTENT: Four-year-old Dameon Huffman woke in the night to see a “green monster” standing over his bed before running a mile down the street covered in blood to his nursery school
Jack and Linda had been caring for their granddaughter’s child because she had still been at school when she gave birth(Image: Handout)
A little lad who awoke during the night to discover a “green monster” looming over his bed was left deeply shaken when he entered his great-grandparents’ bedroom the following morning. Dameon Huffman, who lived with his great-grandparents Jack and Linda Myers, told a teacher how he’d witnessed their faces “melting” into their pillows.
Four-year-old Dameon had run a mile in bloodstained pyjamas to his nursery school to inform teacher Marlene Harris about his horrific experience. When Marlene noticed the blood on his nightwear, she instantly contacted the police.
Officers swiftly raced to the remote farmhouse in Drake County, Ohio, and discovered the bodies of the elderly pair. They had been shot at point-blank range with a 12-gauge shotgun.
“It was one of the more graphic scenes I’ve ever experienced,” one of the first responders told Oxygen’s In Ice Cold Blood.
There was no shortage of suspects becauseJack and Linda, both still in their fifties, operated several small businesses.
Jack, 51, fixed and sold cars, and was actually preparing to reclaim one vehicle because a customer had defaulted on their payments. He also rented out several properties.
Meanwhile, 55-year-old Linda operated a pizza shop, and had carried the establishment’s earnings home with her on that tragic March day. But the money, alongside countless other valuables, had been left undisturbed: police recognised that they were confronting far more than merely a straightforward burglary.
When police sergeant Mark Whittaker reached the property, he discovered that a basement window had been taken out and the telephone line had been severed.
In a new video covering the murders, podcaster Mr Ballen painted the scene. He explained: “Jack was lying on his stomach, and [Sgt Whittaker] could tell right away there was a big bullet wound on the back of Jack’s neck. As for Linda, she was on her back and she had gunshot wounds to her face and her hand as if she had raised her hand to defend herself before she was shot.”
Whittaker observed that the victims’ blood remained warm and moist, indicating they hadn’t been deceased for an extended period.
“Then,” Mr Ballen continued, “Whittaker’s partner called his attention to a weird plasticky bundle that was lying on a pillow near Jack’s head. Whittaker picked it up and he saw it was a piece of quilting fabric that was balled up and covered in masking tape.
“His best guess was that it was a homemade gun silencer. The killer likely taped it to the end of their gun to muffle the sound of the blast, and it must have blown off at some point when they actually began shooting.”
However, in such a remote location, there was no requirement to fashion a silencer unless the perpetrator was aware that someone else was present in the dwelling – suggesting they must have been someone familiar with the family who knew Dameon was asleep upstairs.
It appeared that Dameon’s encounter with the “green monster” was more than a mere dream, suggesting that the perpetrator who had murdered Jack and Linda had checked in on the semi-conscious child after executing the dreadful act.
Detective Mike Burns interviewed Dameon, who informed him that Jack and Linda were in bed when he woke up. Initially, he assumed they were still sleeping, but when he attempted to rouse them, they remained motionless.
Upon noticing the blood on their faces, the four-year-old tried to wipe it away with tissues, but quickly realised the extent of the mess was too great.
“He thought that their faces were melting,” Mr Ballen recounts. “And so to save his great-grandparents, he had run the full mile down the road to his preschool to get help.”
This accounted for the blood on Dameon’s pyjamas, yet there were additional traces of blood in the boy’s bedroom. After Burns confirmed that the frightened child had headed straight to pre-school upon discovering Jack and Linda’s bodies, he was perplexed by this.
It seemed as though the “green monster” had been covered in his victims’ blood when he paid a visit to the young boy.
Utilising a dolls’ house to depict the crime scene, Burns gave Dameon three small toys and asked the boy to use them to illustrate where everyone in the household had been the previous night.
Dameon placed the toy symbolising himself in “his” bed, followed by Jack and Linda in theirs. However, he informed Burns that something peculiar had occurred afterwards.
Mr Ballen recounted: “Later in the middle of the night, he heard his bedroom door open and he said somebody came inside.”
He characterised this enigmatic figure as “The Green Monster,” stating it had opened the door and aimed a gun at him. The petrified four year old had feigned sleep until the intruder departed.
It was at this juncture in the investigation, Mark Whittaker revealed, that a witness “dropped a bombshell on us.”
Jon Helmandollar, a neighbour of Jack’s son Gregg Myers, alleged that the 25 year old had openly enquired where he could purchase a gun to shoot his father.
Myers, known to be grappling with severe financial difficulties, conceded that he was aware he stood to inherit Jack and Linda’s valuable farm upon their demise. However, he staunchly denied having murdered them.
Rodney Baker, a detective from Darke County, succeeded in pinpointing a local branch of Walmart where Myers had procured shotgun ammunition two days prior to the murders. Further searches unearthed a Winchester shotgun in the nearby Stillwater River.
Despite an attempt to erase the serial number, forensic experts managed to identify the firearm.
Its registered owner confirmed that he had sold the weapon to Myers.
Further exploration of the river revealed a plastic bag containing latex gloves, a green tracksuit, and several 12-gauge sabot slugs. Additionally, a pair of size 7 1⁄2 tennis shoes were found – providing an explanation for why footprints discovered near the shattered basement window didn’t match Myers’s actual shoe size.
The tracksuit, investigators suggested, accounted for the “green dragon” Dameon had described. Gregg Myers’s trial commenced in April 2004.
On 27th April, after deliberating over the substantial evidence for eight hours, the jury delivered a guilty verdict. Two days later, he was handed two life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Despite lodging an appeal, citing childhood abuse and biased jury selection, Gregg remains incarcerated in Ohio’s notoriously overcrowded Marion Correctional Institution.
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