Colt Gray Pleads Guilty to All 55 Counts in the Apalachee High School Shooting, a Mother Who Hid Her Son Behind a Wall Gets Life, and a Didd

0:03 Kalaroga Shark Media. Good morning, you're listening to Daily Crime and Justice. I'm Garrett Fisher and it is Monday, July twenty seventh, twenty twenty six. We are back for the last week. We ran a special series, Summer of Fear, five days in New York City in nineteen seventy seven, and if you missed it, go back and listen because it holds up. But the regular docket did not take a vacation while we were gone, So today we are back to the present and back to the people who do these things to each other. A word before we start today. We are going to talk about a school shooting and about the impact statements from the people who survived it. And we are going to talk about a man murdered by his own mother. None of it is gratuitous.

0:53 But if you need to sit this one out, that is fine, and I will have resources for you at the end. Look, I'm going to be honest with you. We started this show a little over a year ago with one name, and it was Sean Combs, and we are going to end today with him. Because there is a small and stupid update and it belongs at the back of the line. I am telling you that upfront, so you know the order of things. Because the front of the line today belongs to four people in Georgia who cannot speak for themselves, and to the survivors who spoke for them this morning. Because in winder Georgia, today, the young man who walked into Appalachi High School and killed two of his teachers and two of his classmates stopped pretending he was going to fight it. He pleaded guilty.

1:40 All fifty five counts, no deal, and then the people he shot got to stand up, one after another and tell him exactly what he took. Then we are going to Mississippi to a story so cold it is almost hard to believe a person did it. A mother shot her adult son in the back of the head, and then she built a wall in her house to hide his body, and then for weeks she pretended to be him, texted his family, wrote them letters, got her boyfriend to call them, doing an impression of a dead man. And this was not her first time. Two of those cases are about accountability landing. One of them is about a fistfight in a low security prison. Let's go in that order.

2:21 Here is where things stand in Wyinder, Georgia, Sixteen year old Colt Gray pleaded guilty to all fifty five charges against him, including four counts of malice murder, for the September twenty twenty four shooting at Appalachi High School that killed two teachers and two fourteen year old students and injured nine other people. His plea was non negotiated, meaning there is no agreement on sentence. He faces a minimum of life in prison. Judge Nicholas prim Alone will decide whether he is ever eligible for parole and that sentencing hearing began today and is set to resume Monday. In Gulfport, Mississippi, sixty nine year old Jerry Roby was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to first degree murder in the death of her forty two year old son, John Gaither.

3:08 And Sean Combs, whose federal case this show launched with, was reportedly placed in solitary confinement at Fort Dix in New Jersey after a fight with another inmate. The Bureau of Prisons has declined to confirm the details. If you have been with this show since the winter, you know this case because we spent three weeks on it. Earlier this year, not on the shooter on his father, Colin Gray, who bought his fourteen year old the assault style rifle for Christmas after the FBI had already come to the door about school shooting threats. Who knew about the shrine to the Parkland killer in the boy's bedroom, and who was convicted in March of second degree murder for it. We covered every day of that trial. So today the other half of it closed, and I want to do it right, which means I am going to spend very little time on him and most of it on them.

3:58 But here's the news cleanly. On September fourth, twenty twenty four, Colt Gray was fourteen years old, and it was his fifth day at Appalachi High School. He carried a rifle onto the bus, wrapped in posterboard with the barrel sticking out. He sat through part of his first two classes. Then he told a teacher he was going to see a crisis counselor, and instead he went into a bathroom stall and he sat there and got ready, and then he came out and he opened fire. Today, at sixteen, he pleaded guilty to all fifty five counts. There was no deal he is looking at a minimum of life and the only open question is whether he ever gets a parole hearing, and that is on the judge. The state walked through what he did, and I'm going to tell you the part that matters because it settles something. When investigators interviewed him after the shooting, Colt Gray told them it was spontaneous, that he had walked into school that morning, heard voices and just decided to do it on the way to get help. That was the story. It was not true, and his own notebook proved it. Investigators found a binder he had been writing in for months. One page had a map of his second period classroom. Another page had him doing arithmetic on how many people he thought he could kill in the hallway versus the classroom, injured versus dead, like a person planning a shopping trip, and another page was a checklist. Set the bag down, open it, put on the vest, take a moment to stay calm and really think about whether he wanted to

5:31 do this. Take the poster off the rifle, prop it against the stall. Take a moment to stay calm and really think about whether he wanted to do this. He wrote that down in advance and then he did it. That is not voices in the moment, That is not spontaneous. That is a plan he rehearsed on paper and then followed step by step. That is a choice. It was always a choice. But I do not want the notebook to be the thing you carry out of this segment. I want you to carry them because after the plea, the people he shot and the families of the people he killed got to stand in that courtroom and speak, and they are the reason we do this show at all.

6:13 Mason Shermerhorn was fourteen years old. His mother, Bryanna Shermerhorn, stood up and said something I have not been able to put down. She said Mason made people who were usually invisible feel seen, that he befriended kids who had started out as his bullies, and that she had no doubt none that if Colt Gray had actually come to school like he was supposed to, Mason would have befriended him too. She told the court she has lived six hundred and eighty eight days so far of a sentence with no parole, and that is what he should get too. She also said she does not forgive him, and that two things can be true at once. The adults in his life failed him, and the choices were still his, and her son is still gone. She is right on both counts, and she should not have had to be the one to say it. Christian Angelo was fourteen. His family called the time since his murder a nightmare, and his brother said, the thing that cuts straight to the bone.

7:14 The defendant's family still gets to see their son, still gets to talk to him, still gets to know he is breathing. Christian's parents do not get that the only way to visit Christian now is to stand over his grave. He called his brother a beautiful, innocent soul, and he asked the judge for life without parole. Richard Aspinwall was thirty nine, a teacher. His widow, Shana Aspinwall, told the court that no sentence can bring her husband back, that what is left is a life sentence of grief for the people who survived, and she asked the judge specifically not to give Colt Gray a shot at parole, because parole hearings over and over for the rest of her life would be continued torture. That is what a parole hearing is for a victim's family. It is not a formality.

8:01 It is being called back into the worst day of your life on somebody else's schedule, again and again. Christina Erami was fifty three, also a teacher, killed in the same minutes as the rest of them, and she deserves her name, said out loud, just the same. And then there were the survivors. A teenager who was shot told him, I hate everything about you, and then said the thing that I think is the truest sentence anybody said all day. I'm mad at you because you had options. You had other options besides going in and killing a bunch of innocent people that did absolutely nothing to you. Another survivor, Taylor Jones, was life flighted to a hospital in critical condition, spent more than three months in and out of treatment, and it took her a year to learn to walk again and two years of physical therapy to get there.

8:47 She was a kid doing her schoolwork, and now her body keeps score of a day she did nothing to cause. Here is where I land on this one. Colt Gray was fourteen, and I am not going to pretend the adults around heim did their jobs, because we spent three weeks proving they did not. His father is already convicted, but Brianna Shermerhorn said it better than I can, so I'm just going to agree with her. Two things are true. He was failed and it was still his choice planned in a notebook, rehearsed executed both. The judge decides Monday whether this boy ever sees a parole board. The families have asked him not to allow it. I understand exactly why.

9:44 John Allan Gaither was forty two years old. He lived in Gulfport, Mississippi, with his mother, and in December of twenty twenty three, she shot him in the back of the head, and then she spent the next several weeks doing something that is genuinely hard to describe. She pretended to be him. Let me lay it out because the sequence is the whole story. Around December tenth, twenty twenty three, is the last time anyone in the family heard from John. His brother got worried, called Gulfport police and reported him missing, and his mother, Jerry Robi, sixty nine years old, told police her son had taken an Uber to Louisiana to go buy a car, except police checked there was no Uber activity on his account. None. Then the messages started.

10:31 John's stepmother out in California, got a letter she believed was from him, saying he had gone to the Philippines to meet a woman. The family started getting texts from his number, phone calls, and here's the detail that tells you what kind of person we are dealing with, Prosecutors say. Roby admitted she forged the letters. She admitted she sent the text pretending to be her dead son, and she convinced her boyfriend to call the family and do an impression of John so it would sound like he was still alive. She built a chorus to seeing that a man she had killed was fine, But the family did not buy it. They could tell the calls and the texts were not really him, and they went back to police, and on January eighteenth, twenty twenty four, officers came with a search warrant. As they took Roby out of the house, she swallowed a large number of pills and had to be hospitalized. And inside the home, in the front part of the house, they found a wall, a fake wall she had built, and behind it a box, and inside the box was John Gaither, dead of a gunshot wound to the back of the head. Now in court this week, Robi had a story for why she did it. She told the courtroom she shot her son in the spur of the moment, that she was putting him out of his misery because he was depressed. I want to be very careful and very clear here because that is a claim and it was hers, and the judge did not believe a word of it. Judge Randy Mueller pointed at the evidence, and the evidence is a home depot receipt.

12:03 About a week before the family even filed the missing person report, Jerry Roby went to home depot and bought fifteen bags of sand, two rolls of patch and seal tape, straw, and a dumpster bag. An investigator say she had made an earlier trip too for plastic sheeting, soil and tape. You do not buy fifteen bags of sand and a dumpster bag in the spur of the moment. You buy that when you have already decided there is going to be a body, and you have already decided you are going to hide it. The purchases came first, The concealment was planned before the killing. That is not mercy. That is a project, and it was not her first one. When investigators ran her background, they found that Jerry Roby, who has used several aliases over the years, including the name Israel, had a prior murder conviction out of Florida from the nineteen nineties. Reporting on that old case says she killed a man, put his body in the trunk of her car, and when police event nually caught up with her, she posted bond and left town before she was finally arrested and convicted of second degree murder. So this is a woman who had already done a version of this once killed someone, hid the body, ran, and decades later she did it again to her own child in her own house. On Thursday, she pleaded guilty to first degree murder, and she was sentenced to life in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. The district attorney, Crosby Parker, said he hoped the plea gave the family a measure of justice and closure and credited the investigators who refused to let the story about Louisiana and the

13:35 Philippine stand. They did not. They kept pulling the thread until the wall came down. Here is what I keep coming back to. John Geither was somebody's son, and the person who was supposed to love him most in the world killed him and then wore his identity like a costume to buy herself time. She made his own family grieve on a delay, chasing texts and calls from a man who was already behind a wall in her life living room. That is a specific kind of cruelty. And the word depression in her mouth is not an explanation. It is a shield she reached for after the sand and the tape and the dumpster bag were already bought and paid for. John Allan Gaither, forty two years old.

14:17 Say his name, because for weeks the only person saying it was the woman impersonating him. We started this show with this man, so we are going to give him thirty seconds, which is about what this is worth. Shawn Combs is at Fort Dix, the low security federal prison in New Jersey, serving out the sentence he got after being convicted of two counts under the Man Act, transportation to engage in prostitution, and acquitted of the bigger charges, the racketeering and the sex traffic. We covered all of it, and this week, according to reporting from TMZ, that other outlets have picked up. He got into a fight with another inmate. The story, and I want to stress this is a story from anonymous sources, not a confirmed record, is that the other inmate insulted him, they started shoving, punches were thrown, and guards broke it up. TMZ's sources say he held his own and then they say he got sent to solitary. The Bureau of Prisons will not confirm any of it, they said, as they always do that they do not discuss the conditions of confinement for any inmate. So what we actually know for certain is very little. What we are told is that the man who was once one of the most powerful people in the music industry got in a schoolyard scuffle in a

15:48 federal prison and got sent to the hole for it. There is one real consequence hiding inside the gossip. Combs has a projected release date. His good behavior credits are part of how he gets there. A disciplinary write up for fighting can chip at those credits, which means a fight in a cell block could in theory push his release date back. I will note there is some disagreement in the reporting about exactly what that date is, so I am not going to give you a number I would have to walk back. Look, I'm not going to moralize about a prison fight. People in prison get in fights. What I will say is this, This is the whole arc of a certain kind of power compressed into one week.

16:29 The parties, the empire, the acquittal on the worst of it, and then a low security bunk in New Jersey and a shoving match with a guy who dissed you, and then the whole accountability doesn't have a legal department, and it turns out it doesn't have a VIP section either. That's the update. It's not much. It wasn't supposed to be. That is Daily Crime and Justice for Friday, July twenty fourth, twenty twenty six, and it is good to be back. Bolt Gray pleaded guilty in winder Georgia to all fifty five counts for the Appalachi High School shooting. He faces a minimum of life. On Monday, a judge decides whether he ever gets a parole hearing, and the families have begged him not to allow it. Jerry Roby got life in Gulfport, Mississippi, for murdering her son and hiding him behind a wall she built after buying the sand and the tape before she ever pulled the trigger. Her second body, her first that we know of, was decades ago, and Sean Combs is reportedly in solitary at Fort Dix after a fight, which is exactly as small as it sounds next to everything else in today's show. But we do not end on him. We end where we should. Mason Shermerhorn was fourteen and he made invisible kids feel seen.

17:46 Christian Angelo was fourteen and his brother has to visit him at a grave. Richard Aspinwall was thirty nine a teacher and his wife is serving a life sentence of grief. Christina Eremi was fifty three, a teacher killed in the same handful of minutes. And John Geither was forty two and for weeks the only voice saying his name was the woman pretending to be him. Somebody has to say it for real, So there it is. If today's episode hits something in you, if you are caring grief or a loss that does not have anywhere to go, please talk to a real person about it, a doctor, a counselor someone who will pick up the phone. In the United States, you can call or text nine eight eight any time and reach a trained human being. You do not have to sit in it alone. If this one meant something to you, share it, send it to one person who would want to hear it. That is honestly how this show finds new listeners. One person handing it to one person. And if you're listening on Spotify, drop a comment and tell me where you land on Monday.

18:50 Colt Gray was fourteen when he did this, and he planned it in a notebook, Life with a Chance at parole someday or life without ever. The families have made their case. I want to hear yours YouTube same thing. The comments are open. Do better. I'm Garrett Fisher. This is Daily Crime and Justice. Disclaimer. Daily Crime and Justice is produced by Calarroga Shark Media for informational and entertainment purposes and is not legal advice. In the Appalachi case, Colt Gray pleaded guilty on July twenty fourth, twenty twenty six. Sentencing is not complete. The hearing resumes Monday, and Judge Nicholas prim alone will decide parole eligibility, so no sentence is stated here as final content characterizing the defendant's demeanor in court varies by outlet, and we have not asserted any particular reaction. Colin Gray's sentencing date has been reported variously as July twenty eighth through twenty ninth, and as July thirtieth. We have described it only as next week.

19:52 The victim's surname appears in sources as both Eremi and Ermi and Brianna. Shermerhorn's first name also appears as Brianna and Brie across outlets. In the Gulf Court case, Jerry Roby's account that the killing was a spur of the moment mercy killing is her own claim, which the sentencing judge rejected her prior Florida conviction. Aliases, including is real and the circumstances of that earlier case, are drawn from law enforcement statements and contemporaneous reporting, and involve a killing in the early to mid nineteen nineties. In the Combs matter, the reported prison fight and placement in solitary confinement originate from anonymous sources cited by TMZ and repeated by other outlets.

20:34 The Bureau of Prisons has declined to confirm any details, and reporting differs on Combs's projected release date, which is why no date is stated. Garrett's commentary is opinion and is directed at conduct and choices established in the record, not at unproven allegations. If you are struggling, you can call or text the nine eight to eight Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. In the US for families affect by child harm, the child Help National Child Abuse Hotline is one eight hundred and for a child. Research for this episode was assisted by AI tools