Hi, I'm Holly. And I'm Haley. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries, Tales from Appalachia. So this week we're going to talk about the Lily Lid family murders.
Sounds interesting. Yeah, I want to give a little bit of a trigger warning. This case does involve children and the death of a child. So if that's not your thing, you can move on to next week.
We won't take offense. But definitely move on to next week because that's why I present. OK. So I want to give a huge credit to Matt Leakin, who is the author of an article who I got most of my information from, and he did a story for Knox News, actually for the 20th anniversary of this case.
And that's part of the USA Today network. And it was published April 2, 2017. So if you're interested in learning more about this case, definitely go check out this article. On Sunday, April 6, 1997, three members of the Lid family met a brutal end as they were shot and left for dead in a ditch on the side of the road.
The Dar Lilliland, 34, and his wife Delphina Lilliland, 28, died in the ditch where they were shot. Their daughter Tabitha, who was six, would die later at the hospital after her body was lifted off from mother. Peter, who was two, survived the event, with lasting physical problems related to the two bullets that entered his body. Natasha Cornette was 18, Karen Howell, 17.
Joseph Risner, 20. Jason Bryant, 14. Joseph Mullins, 19. And Crystal Sturgill, 18.
What all later admit to murder and attempted murder. So just kind of keep in mind how young these six are. I mean, four of them are technically adults, but I mean, I'm 23 and I'm not a real adult yet, so. Just kind of keep that in mind as we're going through this case about just really how young these six people were that committed this terrible crime.
But before we dive into the events that actually took place that day, let's learn a little bit more about the Lid family and those that chose to end their lives. The Lid's were traveling home on I-81 South from a Jehovah's Witness convention at Freedom Hall in Johnson City, Tennessee. The family lived in Knoxville, Tennessee. The Dar was originally from Norway and had moved to Miami.
And there he met Delphina, who was originally from New Jersey and was a daughter of Hondorean immigrants. The two married in 1989 and moved to Knoxville after having vacation there and fell in love with the mountains. And being from the mountains, I can definitely see how. They just came here and were like, yep, we're moving.
I'm a little partial. Tabitha was two at the time of the move. The Dar worked as a bellman at a holiday in in West Knoxville. And Delphina was a stay-at-home mom and homeschooled the children, which, during quarantine, those youth kids know is super, super hard.
That's when you have mucho respect for those teachers. Oh, yes. The family was very involved in the Jehovah's Witness faith and made the decision to attend the convention in Johnson City in 1997. And a big part of the Jehovah's Witness faith is bearing witness to friends and strangers.
And keep this in mind as we kind of go through the story because it plays a big part later. I know in the town that I live in, we constantly have people at this faith come and knock on our doors and give us pamphlets, so it's a super common thing. So jumping into our killers, Natasha Cornette, definitely appears to be the ringleader in all the research that I've done on this case. Cornette had a difficult past.
And appears to have had many mental health issues going on. She reportedly had an eating disorder and engaged in self-harming behavior. Cornette reported that she had visions of angels and demons since she was a little good. And Cornette's mother actually tried to have her committed to get psychiatric treatment at the age of 14 after she came into her with a knife.
That'll do it. Yeah, unfortunately though, she was unsuccessful. Cornette had stated that she wanted to live out the movie natural born killers, and I'm gonna date myself here and say that I've never actually seen that movie. The plot of this movie is kind of commit multiple murders and flee to Mexico, normal 18 year old teen stuff.
Oh, every teen's dream. Right? So Cornette wore a lot of black, was into witchcraft called herself Satan's daughter. You know, cool, that's fine, do your thing.
Late 90s. Not judging. So Karen Howell was Cornette's best friend and Cornette called Howell her soulmate, which is kind of cute, best friend stuff. On a demented, you know, sort of evil track, sure.
Right, right, but you know. My evil soulmate. Yeah. Satan's child.
Howell was also into the occult and also reported having visions like Cornette. Howell also reported that she had been a victim of sexual abuse. Joseph Mullins was dating Cornette, and there's not a lot of info on him out there. Joseph Risner had dated Cornette and was now dating Howell.
Crystal Sturjal was kind of a newcomer to the group. She had been kicked out of her home after reporting sexual abuse from her stepfather. So we're kind of seeing the common. Yeah, there's a common denominator here.
Jason Bryant, who was the youngest at 14, was on probation. Bryant was a runaway and was picked up by Cornette actually. And to prove that he was devoted to the group, he let Cornette carve her initials into his arm. This is, you know, clearly, someone whose brain is not developed.
So Cornette really wanted to live out this fantasy of causing chaos and heading to the Mexico border. The group was partying at a hotel room in Pykeville, Kentucky, when Cornette brought up this idea again. Risner was on spring break and he had a car, a blue Chevrolet citation that was registered to his mom, Mary Castle. And just like that, the group decided, let's do it and took off.
Have you seen how ugly those cars are? I have not. They are. Cornette had said they were going to start Armageddon.
And Karen said the end is coming. Cornette's mom responded with a simple, oh, yeah. I mean, not the mom's fault, but when I first saw that, I was like, huh, what a response. I'm sorry.
Oh, my child wants to create Armageddon. Huh. I mean, and maybe these were just, you know, they sound like these were just kind of odd kids. Maybe this was a normal.
Well, and also a lot of these kids came from traumatic backgrounds. Yeah. Either parents were, yeah, had their own issues. That's true.
Well, necessarily that she was supportive of Armageddon. Right, right. We're not like a condoning Armageddon. Yeah.
Hey, go ahead, son. I love you. I'm the time. So the group hit the road.
And while on the road, they stole two guns, a nine millimeter and a 25 caliber pistol and some cash. They then got a speeding ticket about an hour away from the rest area at mile marker 41 on I-81 South. They decided to stop at the rest area to hot wire a car, but there were too many people around. So they just decided to do normal things, get snacks, take a back and break, that sort of thing.
At 7.20 PM, a cream colored 1987 Dodge van pulled into the rest area. When the van pulled into the rest area, the Lillivli family piled out. Peter had an earache, so Vadar took him for a walk while Delphina and Tabitha went to the bathroom. While there they ran into their friend, Karen Sinclair and her daughter, Cara, who had also been at this condition that they had been at in Johnson City.
Cornette and Hal actually passed Delphina and Tabitha as they walked out of the restroom. Vadar approached them with a religious pamphlet because Jehovah's Witness. And asked them if they believed in God, to which Cornette responded with a big ol' nope. That's a bad idea.
Reserve and Bryant then came up to the group and Vadar asked them if they wanted to learn more about God and they said sure. Delphina and Tabitha then came out of the bathroom and joined the group at a picnic table. Their friend Karen saw the group at the picnic table as she drove off and she would actually be the last person to see them alive, which is kind of kind of... That's hard to live with.
While Vadar was talking to the group, Risner got up and went back to the car where Mullins and Sturtill were sitting in the back seat. Risner got the nine millimeter out and told them that they were gonna do something and to get ready. Risner came back with a gun and told the family to be quiet and nothing was gonna happen. They just needed the van.
On the way to the van, Vadar actually tried to give up his keys and wallet in exchange for letting them go. This didn't work and they forced the family into the van. Now at this point, this makes me believe that the motive never was robbery. Clearly not.
I mean, if you have, I don't know, you have the guns. She wanted to be a natural-born killer, not natural-born robber. Yeah, I think it's definitely, you know, if they really wanted to just take the stuff, they would have left the family at the rest area. So, Cornette suggested making Vadar drive the van and as Vadar drove, the kids were clearly confused as to what was happening.
I mean, these random strangers get in your car and are driving you around. The gun to daddy's head? Yeah. So Delphina actually tried to sing to them to calm them down and Bryant told her to shut up.
How smiled at Tabitha, who offered her a Hershey's kids chocolate. Instant tears immediately, I mean. So you know the kindness of this family, like just does not leave you. Just even at this point of how terrified you would be, she offered her chocolate.
Yeah. Vadar was then made to pull the van over on pain Halloween and get out with the rest of the family. And now this is where the stories start to get a little bit murky, not one of the six agree on what exactly happened next. So I'll give you a few different versions and you can draw your own conclusions.
But first, I'd want to lay out how the bodies were found and kind of go through the injuries. And now this part is pretty gruesome. So if it's not your thing, feel free to skip ahead. So after two separate 911 calls came in reporting gun shots on pain Halloween, W.
Jeff Morgan and his supervisor pulled up to the scene around 9 p.m. They were met with headlights shining on their faces. The headlights were from a blue Chevrolet citation. The citation had been abandoned, was stuck on a stump in the mud, was empty and the license plate was missing.
In the ditch, they found four bodies that were full of bullets. Prosecutors state that the bodies were actually posed as an upside down cross. It was clear that Vadar and Delphina were dead. They had been shot multiple times and their legs were crushed.
Tabitha was laying on top of her mother and she was actually moving. She was rushed to the hospital where she would later die from her injuries. When deputies went to move, Peter, that he actually cried out. And Deputy Morgan got down the ditch with Peter and held him until paramedics arrive.
Peter had been shot twice by a small caliber gun, once in the head behind the right ear, that exited out of his right eye and once in the back. Peter actually survived and would require a prosthetic eye and multiple surgeries to correct the spinal damage caused by the bullet to the back. The autopsies on Vadar, Delphina, and Tabitha were completed by Dr. Cleland Blake.
And Dr. Blake determined the family had been lined up and shot, but he was actually unable to tell the parents had been holding the children and he was unable to tell the family had been posed or if they just kind of fell that way. Vadar and shot in the right eye with a 9 millimeter. He had three shots that formed a triangle on the upper right chest, all from the 9 millimeter.
He had one shot from the 25 caliber pistol and one shot from the 9 millimeter to the center of his chest. Delphina had been shot in the left arm and left leg by the 9 millimeter. On her left side, she also had that three shot pattern that formed a triangle. And she was also shot in the abdomen by the 9 millimeter and had two shots from a 25 caliber in her left chest.
And Dr. Blake thinks that she could have lived up to 30 minutes after being shot. So she would have seen her husband and her children shot. Tabitha was shot once in the head by the pistol.
Now each one of the six will tell a slightly different story as to who shot who. Rizner, Cornette, and Howell all claimed that Bryant fired every shot with both guns. Rizner claims that when the group pulled over on Payne-Hollell-Laine, they were arguing about whether to kill the family or let them go. Before they could decide, Bryant took both guns and shot and killed the family.
Rizner claims that it was so awful and he couldn't watch. Now, I can't be honest on that if you ask me. Bryant was the youngest at 14. And it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me that he would have picked up both guns.
It feels very cowboy, you know. Maybe he was in mid-extras, we don't know. Maybe, I mean. But we're also talking about a guy who allowed her to carve her initials in his body.
Yeah, so I mean, maybe it happened that way. And honestly, we'll never know. I mean. And he's also an easy guy to blame because he's the youngest of the group.
Yep. Now Bryant actually claims that Rizner and Mullins did all the shooting and that it was him who thought it was so terrible and couldn't watch. By most accounts of the crime, it appears that Sturgel and possibly Mullins never even got out of the car. So after the murders were committed, however they were committed, the group went to drive away in the citation and the van.
The citation became stuck in the mud on a tree stump and the occupants abandoned the car and jumped in the van. Rizner was behind the wheel of the van and swerved to drive over the Lily Lit family. That's why Delphina and the Dard's legs were crushed because he ran over them. Which to me says, overkill.
Absolutely. You want to ensure that they're dead. Yeah. Now it's actually a good thing that they left the citation behind because the police are able to track the registration back to Kentucky and back to Rizner's mother, Mary Castle.
So you take the license plate, but you don't take the registration? Well, I mean, they were to hurry. Yeah, I don't think we're dealing with like top notch. Cremals.
Right, right. So by the time the police had tracked down Mary Castle and she confirmed that her son and his friends were missing, the group had made it to the Mexico border in Arizona. Now, everything I've read, it sounds like the computer system to run records on the US side was down and they weren't able to actually like run the license plate on the US side. So why they let them go through to Mexico?
I don't understand, I also don't know anything about crossing the border. So. Well, and here's something that doesn't look suspicious. Several teenagers in a family minivan trying to cross the border into Mexico.
That doesn't look suspicious at all. Right. Well, once they passed through with a Mexico checkpoint and the Mexican authorities actually checked and saw that they did not have the correct documentation, it's actually under the country. So Mexico said no and sent them back to the US.
What did they make? Once they got back to the US side, the computer system was apparently magically working again. That's convenient. And they were able to run the license plate.
And once they did, they quickly realized what they were dealing with. A quick search of the van showed the Lilylitz belongings, including car seats and photo albums. And when agents asked Risner who the car belonged to, he claimed, he didn't know. I mean, I don't know, not the guy you just shot in like Left or Dead in the dish.
No, no, it's nobody I know. Not that guy? Yeah. Cool, cool.
The group was arrested and taken to jail in Arizona. And after the group had been searched, they found that Cornette had a wallet with a photo of Tabitha and a piece of a dar's belt. Hal had a Hello Kitty at Diary Lock that actually won the Tabitha. Sergio had a key ring to the Lilylet home.
And the prosecutor would later use this to state that the group had taken trophies from their crime. So again, not your like top of the line, brightest bunch. Hello Kitty, I will take that. Yeah.
So prosecutor Berkeley Bell moved quickly to have this group extradited back to Tennessee to Greene County. And he wanted to pursue the death penalty for the four that were over the age of 18 and life in prison without parole for Brian Howe, who were the younger two. Now there was a huge media coverage for this case. And the media kind of ran with the idea that the six were involved in the occult and were double worshipers.
And Cornette's attorney in an odd way kind of fed this fire, hoping that he could get an insanity plea for Cornette. Spoiler alert, this did not work. The town was shot right. The town was outraged by this crime.
And there were lots of people camped out and would just scream at the defendants as they entered and exited the courthouse. Judge Eddie Baker actually denied the request from the defense attorneys to try the six separately. So they would have one trial where they were all tried together. However, he did agree that the six would never get a fair trial with a jury from Greene County.
So he actually had a jury assembled and bust in from Bradley County, which is about 150 miles south, which is something I've never heard of. I've heard of them moving in case to a different county, but I've never heard of them like assembling a jury and then busting a jury. I never heard of that either. But I guess it's a thing.
Well, and then I even wonder, I mean, even at 150 miles away, wouldn't there still be a bias? I mean, I think you would have heard that a lot. Right, I mean, it's a small town. This is, you know, something that spreads.
And it was getting national attention. I don't know if they would have ever found a jury. Probably not. Yeah.
With that, the trial was set for March of 1998. Now with such a heinous crime that was probably very messy, there was surprisingly little evidence. I'm sure there was evidence, but it was really hard to place the gun in someone's hand and say definitively like this one out of the six did it. So.
Oh, it was they all had different stories. Right, right. So Bell at this point had mostly circumstantial evidence, but he had a key witness who Risner had actually confessed to while being held in jail in Arizona. This guard was sitting with him.
Around the clock as Risner was actually placed on a suicide watch. This guard had stated that Risner had confessed to killing the family. However, it turns out that this witness was ruled as unreliable due to him having an arrest record of his own, which I mean kind of seems odd to me, but I guess the defense attorneys could have probably run with the fact that he had a arrest record, but I would have probably tried to use it, which probably wound up a lawyer. Really?
I knew that. That's weird. So with all this in mind, Bell decided to offer the six of plea deal. And Bell was willing to take the death penalty off the table and in turn offered them life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Now the kicker was that all six had to accept this plea or the deal was off. So the younger two really didn't get a deal. I mean, they were facing this charge anyway. And for the two that maybe never even set out of the car, this doesn't seem like a deal I would want to take.
But they somehow all came to this decision. And on February 20th, 1998, all six stood up in court and confessed to murder and attempted murder. And all six would receive life in prison without the possibility of parole. So to this day, all six remained in jail.
How in storage will actually still communicate with the press occasionally and have released letters claiming that they were not involved in the killing, but apologize for not doing anything to stop the killings, which I don't know, I don't know where I fall on that. You didn't have anything to do with it, but you sat idly by, does that make you just as guilty? Was this mob? Is this a mob?
Is this a mob mentality? Were you scared? I just don't know. So I'm sure do they threaten you?
Right, so I don't know. But regardless, they're in jail. I mean, and that's what they're gonna say. That they should.
Yeah. Bryant and Howl's attorney, which are the younger two that were under 18 when they were convicted, their attorneys have actually applied for numerous appeals to retry those two since they were juveniles at the time of the murders. All these requests have been denied. In 2012, the US Supreme Court ruled that juveniles could not be sentenced to life without the possibility parole.
And in 2016, the court ruled that this could be made retroactive and began reviewing cases of juvenile sentenced to life without parole. In Tennessee, however, juveniles can be sentenced to life without the possibility parole until they have served 51 years of their sentence. So before 1995, a life sentence was 30 years in Tennessee. And in 1995, there was this big crackdown on, you know, were tough on crime, that kind of thing.
And Tennessee actually upped their life sentence to 51 years, which is actually the longest in the US, which I was kind of under the impression that a life sentence meant like your whole natural life. Life seems to too, but it's not. They have to put a page on it, like a number on it. So they put 30 years on it before 2025, but now it's still it's 51 years.
So what all this means is that after serving 51 years, they would be eligible for parole. So Brian Howe could be eligible for parole in the year of 2049, which seems really far away, but that would make Brian 65 and Howe would be 68. So they both could have like a good 20 years or more on the outside if they were actually paroled. As recently as January 2020, Howe has made her class to four clemency.
She made a similar class in 2017 and that was quickly denied. I personally hope they stay in prison for the rest of their lives because this was such a violent and random crime. I mean, they rob these three people the rest of their lives. Why should they get the opportunity?
These people who were so kind to them. Yeah. All they could have said is, oh, no, thank you. I'm going on.
Right, they could have easily just moved on. They could have easily just stolen the van. Yeah, they had a committing a crime was their choice. They could have stolen the van and just let them at the rest stop.
Yeah, they had every opportunity to just commit robbery, which I mean, not great, but better than murder. So and then they wouldn't be facing life sentences. So. Well, and I feel like that also goes to show you to your friends wisely.
Yeah, and peer pressure is such a crazy thing. Absolutely. I mean, this the youngest, I mean, this kid was 14. I mean, his life's over for a decision to get in a car.
I mean, he got in the car with Cornette. You know, this whole like twist of fate kind of thing. They got the rest of the day at the same time. You know, if they had 15 minutes earlier, 15 minutes later, would this have even happened?
Which is what's so scary. Or if they chosen not to stop there in the first place. Yeah. But what if we run by McDonald's?
Yeah. I mean, just on my part, you know, I am very cautious about rest areas. And this is probably not helping. I mean, never again.
And well, I'll pee. Just not at a rest area. Right. I definitely am scared to stop, especially by myself.
Oh, I won't find myself. No, no, no, no. I will McDonald's it up. Yeah.
So this is definitely making it on my list of things not to do. For sure. Yeah. Rest areas are a big no.
Thank you for sharing that story and scaring the hell out of me. You're so welcome. This sounds great. So glad we did this.
Yeah. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed this first episode of Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. And I hope you join us next week where Holly will be taking the lead on case. We'll be talking about a murder that happened on the Appalachian Trail.
Well, all right. If you guys are interested, please check out our Facebook page at Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. You can also check us out on Instagram at mountainmisseries.epalatcha. And send us an email with some of your speaking stories or cases that you might be interested in hearing to mountainmisseries.epalatchin at gmail.com.
Because apparently, mountainmisseries.epalatcha was already taken. So I had to do the whole Appalachian thing. Again, thank you guys so much for listening. And make sure to join us next week.