The brutal murder of Genore Guillory

Charges Dropped

The lab results were disappointing. There were no identifiable fingerprints at the crime scene.

The MacGregor baseball bat McKey found at Phillip Skipper's trailer had been outside for a year. The rain had long since washed away any DNA evidence that might have been on it.

The gun used to shoot Genore had been a revolver. There were no shell casings from the crime scene to compare to those found dumped in Phillip Skipper's yard.

According to Baillio, the gun itself had been broken into pieces and tossed into the Amite River.

The bloody clothes and hi-top sneakers had been burned.

Hoyt, Phillip, and Lisa refused to talk.

The life insurance policy, which did pay out $25,000 to Phillip and Amy Skipper three months after the murder, was circumstantial evidence at best.

The second and third hand accounts from people who came forward and said they heard Phillip and the others admit to killing Genore Guillory were just hearsay.

"The only thing we had was John Baillio's statement," Don McKey said.

The cops still wanted to take the case to trial.

District Attorney Charles Shropshire didn't, not with just the unsupported confession of a teenage drug addict, grave robber, and murderer.

In January 2002, four months after their arrests, Shropshire dropped all charges against Hoyt, Phillip, and Lisa. Because Baillio had confessed to the murder, the D.A. left him in jail.

Later that year, voters in East Feliciana voted Shropshire out of office and put in a young, aggressive new district attorney named Sam D'Aquilla.