Dameon woke in the middle of the night and saw a ‘green monster’ standing in his doorway (Image: Unseen/Youtube)
A young lad who awoke during the night to discover a « green monster » looming over his bed was left horrified when he entered his great-grandparents’ bedroom the following morning. Dameon Huffman, who resided with his great-grandparents Jack and Linda Myers, informed a teacher how he’d witnessed their faces « melting » into their pillows.
The four-year-old had run a mile in bloodstained pyjamas to his nursery school to relay the horrific experience to teacher Marlene Harris. Upon noticing the blood on his nightclothes, she immediately contacted the police.
Officers swiftly descended upon the remote farmhouse in Drake County, Ohio, discovering the couple’s bodies. 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. Jack and Linda, both still in their fifties, operated several small businesses.
Jack and Linda Myers were found with ‘melting’ faces (Image: Unseen/Youtube)
Jack, 51, repaired and sold vehicles, and was actually about to repossess one car because a customer had fallen behind with their payments. He also let out a number of properties.
Meanwhile, 55-year-old Linda operated a pizza parlour, and had brought the shop’s takings home with her on that fateful March day. Yet the cash, along with numerous other valuables, had been left untouched: police realised that they were dealing with much more than just a simple robbery.
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 about the murders, podcaster Mr Ballen describes the scene: « 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 wet, indicating that they had not been deceased for long.
Jack and Linda had been caring for their granddaughter’s child because she had still been at school when she gave birth (Image: Handout)
« 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 property, there was no requirement to fashion a silencer unless the perpetrator knew that someone else was in the house – suggesting that they must have been someone familiar with the family who knew Dameon was sleeping upstairs. It appeared that Dameon’s glimpse of the « green monster » was far more than simply a nightmare, and that whoever had murdered Jack and Linda had peered in on the drowsy youngster after carrying out the appalling crime.
Detective Mike Burns interviewed Dameon, who informed him that Jack and Linda had been in bed when he woke up. He had initially assumed they were still sleeping, but when he attempted to rouse them, they wouldn’t respond.
Spotting the blood on their faces, the four-year-old had tried to wipe it away with tissues but quickly realised there was far too much to clear up.
The killer had peered into Dameon’s room to check that he was asleep (Image: Unseen/Youtube)
« He thought that their faces were melting, » says Mr Ballen, « And so to save his great-grandparents, he had run the full mile down the road to his preschool to get help. »
That accounted for the blood on Dameon’s pyjamas, but there were additional traces of blood in the boy’s bedroom. After Burns confirmed that the frightened youngster had departed for pre-school immediately after discovering Jack and Linda’s bodies, he was baffled by that.
It seemed that the « green monster » had been covered in his victims’ blood when he glanced in on the little lad.
Utilising a dolls’ house to recreate the crime scene, Burns handed Dameon three small toys and asked the boy to use them to show where everyone in the household had been on the previous night. Dameon placed the toy symbolising himself in « his » bed, followed by Jack and Linda in theirs.
Jack and Linda had been married for six years (Image: Handout)
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 that 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 inquired where he could purchase a gun to shoot his father.
Myers, who was known to be in significant financial difficulties, conceded that he was aware he stood to inherit Jack and Linda’s valuable farm upon their demise. However, he maintained that he hadn’t murdered them.
Darke County detective Rodney Baker managed to pinpoint a local branch of Walmart where Myers had purchased shotgun ammunition two days prior to the murders. Further searches uncovered a Winchester shotgun in the nearby Stillwater River.
Despite an attempt to erase the serial number, forensic experts were able to identify the firearm.
Its registered owner confirmed that he had sold the weapon to Myers.
Myers initially denied killing his father and stepmother, despite overwhelming evidence (Image: Unseen/Youtube)
Additional searches of the river uncovered a plastic bag containing latex gloves, a green tracksuit, and several 12-gauge sabot slugs. There was also a pair of size 7 1⁄2 tennis shoes – explaining why footprints discovered near the smashed basement window had not matched Myers’s actual shoe size.
The tracksuit, investigators said, explained the « green dragon » Dameon described. Gregg Myers’s trial commenced in April 2004.
On 27 April, after deliberating over the substantial evidence for eight hours, the jury returned a guilty verdict. Two days later, he was sentenced to two life terms in prison without the chance of parole.
Despite an appeal, claiming childhood abuse and unfair jury selection, Gregg remains in Ohio’s notoriously overcrowded Marion Correctional Institution.
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