What to Know
John Gaither’s brother contacted the Gulfport Police Department in December 2023 to file a missing person’s report. He claimed he hadn’t heard from the 42-year-old in more than a week, and something didn’t feel right. At the time, he’d been staying with his mother, Jerri Roby.
She reportedly told police her son left her Mississippi home in an Uber to travel to Louisiana to purchase a car. Investigators quickly determined that was a lie and Gaither’s whereabouts remained a mystery. When family members began to receive correspondence from Gaither that seemed suspicious, they went back to police. Investigators obtained a search warrant and found Gaither deceased inside his mother’s home. Roby, now 69, will spend the life in prison for her son’s murder.
Roby apparently had a sordid past.
According to court documents obtained by WTNM, police found no history of Gaither taking an Uber ride during the timeline provided by his mother. His stepmother told police she received a strange letter from Gaither claiming he was going to the Philippines to meet a woman. Police began investigating the inconsistencies in Roby’s story and found she’d used multiple aliases in the past and had a 1995 murder conviction.
A search warrant unearthed strange evidence.
According to WLOX, when police went to Roby’s property, they reportedly found a Home Depot receipt dated the week before her son’s disappearance. It showed she’d purchased15 bags of sand, two rolls of patch-and-seal tape, straw, and a dumpster bag. On a subsequent shopping trip, she reportedly purchased more plastic sheeting, soil, and tape.
Additional strange phone calls, text messages, and a letter prompted Gaither’s stepmother and brother to contact police again in January 2024. This time, investigators obtained a search warrant for Roby’s home. Inside, they made a horrific discovery.
Police found Gaither hidden behind a false wall.
While searching Roby’s residence, the woman reportedly took a large number of pills, and emergency responders transported her to a nearby hospital. Inside her home, they found her son’s body hidden in a box behind a false wall. Inside the container were many of the items listed on her Home Depot receipts. An autopsy revealed Gaither died from a gunshot wound to the back of the head.
As far as the phone calls, texts, and letters, Roby admitted that she and her boyfriend attempted to make Gaither’s family believe they were talking to him.
“During her interview, Roby admitted that she had forged the letters that were sent to family members that were purportedly from Gaither, sent the text messages to family acting as if she was Gaither, convinced her boyfriend to call family members acting as if he was Gaither, and took Gaither’s cell phone to Florida to call family members so the phone would utilize cellular phone towers there. However, Roby told Investigators that Gaither shot himself in the back of the head, fell into the box, where she then covered him with the sand, dirt, and straw she purchased from Home Depot,” Assistant District Attorney Matthew D. Burrell said per WLOX.
Roby pleaded guilty in court and said she killed Gaither in the “spur of the moment” to put him “out of his misery” caused by depression.
She’ll spend the rest of her life in prison.
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