Pod Insights True Crime All The Time Jermaine Ross About this episode 47-year-old Jermaine L. Ross was a popular barber from Cahokia, Illinois. After missing an appointment, his body was found inside his home. Leading up to his death, Jermaine had alluded to having problems with unspecified people. Authorities worked to narrow down a wide suspect pool and identify the killer.
Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the murder of Jermaine Ross. Police worked through many leads that didn't pan out until they finally hit upon the people involved. As is normally the case, each person had a different story to tell. And it would be up to the authorities to ensure the truth was revealed.
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Transcript 0:39 Speaker 00 Hello everyone and welcome to episode 468 of the True Crime All the Time Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in true crime, Mike Gibson. Gibby, how are you?
0:49 Speaker 01 Hey, I'm doing good, man. How about you?
0:51 Speaker 00 I'm doing amazingly.
0:54 Speaker 01 That's awesome.
0:55 Speaker 00 We talked about it on Patreon, but, and I think I mentioned it on here as well, but I'm in the process of setting up a new studio for video and I've really been kind of sweating the details, you know, what table to buy.
1:12 Speaker 01 It's a big decision.
1:13 Speaker 00 It is a big decision, but I finally settled on one. I'm really excited about it. So we're probably two or three weeks away from the extra episode coming out, but we're getting closer.
1:26 Speaker 01 I'm just glad I get it. My side of the table.
1:28 Speaker 00 Yeah, but like I said on Patreon, with all of that increased room.
1:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:36 Speaker 00 People are going to be expecting big things from you.
1:40 Speaker 01 And like I said, with great power comes great responsibility or something like that.
1:46 Speaker 00 So we will see, we'll see. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout outs. We had Heather Mayhew.
1:52 Speaker 01 What's going on Heather?
1:53 Speaker 00 Isaiah McClinney.
1:54 Speaker 01 Hey Isaiah.
1:55 Speaker 00 Omen.
1:56 Speaker 01 Well, let's, Omen you.
1:59 Speaker 00 Sherry Parkinson.
2:00 Speaker 01 Hey Sherry.
2:01 Speaker 00 Kimberly Carter.
2:02 Speaker 01 Hey Kimberly.
2:03 Speaker 00 Christiane Agent.
2:05 Speaker 01 Well, thanks Agent.
2:07 Speaker 00 Crystal Gilli.
2:09 Speaker 01 Gilly, I was like, wasn't there a Saturday Night Live character named Gilly?
2:13 Speaker 00 Well, there's Gilda Radner.
2:15 Speaker 01 There was actually a character named Gilly, played by Kristen.
2:19 Speaker 00 Wig?
2:20 Speaker 01 Wig.
2:21 Speaker 00 Maybe.
2:21 Speaker 01 I think so.
2:22 Speaker 00 She was great.
2:23 Speaker 01 She was.
2:24 Speaker 00 She was one of my favorites.
2:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:25 Speaker 00 And then last but not least, Chrissy Petron.
2:29 Speaker 01 Well, thanks, Chrissy.
2:31 Speaker 00 Yeah, we appreciate the new support. And then if we go back into the vault. This week, we selected Sherri Velez.
2:39 Speaker 01 Hey, Sherri.
2:40 Speaker 00 Yeah, so appreciate the continued support. We have an episode out right now on True Crime All The Time Unsolved, where we're talking about 52-year-old Lynn Messer, who went missing in 2014. And then two years later, her body was found on her family's farm property in Bloomsdale, Missouri.
3:02 Speaker 01 Raised a few eyebrows there, didn't we?
3:03 Speaker 00 Yeah, this one is a real head scratcher. Two years go by. And, okay, at some point, you know, you expect to find someone's body.
3:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
3:16 Speaker 00 Doesn't always happen.
3:18 Speaker 01 No.
3:18 Speaker 00 I think the location where it was found is what really confounds people. Because, first of all, it implicates family members.
3:29 Speaker 01 It does.
3:31 Speaker 00 And then, secondly, if they didn't know about it, why would a killer dump her body or hide her body on her family's property?
3:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
3:42 Speaker 00 So make sure you check that out. All right, buddy, are you ready to get into this episode of True Crime All The Time?
3:48 Speaker 01 I am ready.
3:49 Speaker 00 We're talking about Jermaine Ross. Forty-seven-year-old Jermaine Ross was a popular barber from Cahokia, Illinois. After missing an appointment, his body was found inside his home. But leading up to his death, Jermaine had alluded to having problems with unspecified people. Authorities worked to narrow down a wide suspect pool and identify the killer. Jermaine Lavelle Ross was born on November 6th, 1970. His passion was barbering. Jermaine's nephew, Metchie Reese, described his shop as vibrant. People came in just to hang out with Jermaine because he was the kind of person others were drawn to.
4:33 Speaker 01 I love a good barber shop.
4:35 Speaker 00 Well, you know, I would too. I'd love to find like a local barber shop, maybe like something from Coming to America. Where people are just sitting around, you know, shooting the bull and talking about sports and, but I don't know if those exist in 2026 in the smallish town I live in.
4:58 Speaker 01 I think they're out there somewhere. You just have to go to the right one, go in there and, you know, I know you don't have a lot of hair left.
5:04 Speaker 00 No.
5:06 Speaker 01 Cause you've mentioned it a lot and it's obvious.
5:08 Speaker 00 You're, you're looking at it right now. I can see you.
5:10 Speaker 01 But you can go in there and they can lather you up a little bit, smack your head around a little bit.
5:15 Speaker 00 Okay.
5:16 Speaker 01 Give you a little rinse, maybe a little buff and shine and get you out the door.
5:19 Speaker 00 Yeah, I, I just think it would be nice to go to a place where people know you.
5:25 Speaker 01 Know your name.
5:26 Speaker 00 As opposed to like the, and I'm not saying anything bad about the, the super cuts or the great clips or, you know, anything like that. But, you know, you don't know who you're going to get and.
5:38 Speaker 01 No, I get it. It's always nice to go somewhere where they always know your name.
5:41 Speaker 00 It is.
5:41 Speaker 01 Yeah. Norm.
5:43 Speaker 00 But here's the other thing, and I, I know for a fact I've never talked about this before, but I always thought that being a barber would be a lot of fun.
5:55 Speaker 01 I think it would be fun.
5:56 Speaker 00 I, I don't know why, but I have no experience with cutting hair whatsoever. I just think it would be very interesting, right? To talk to different people all day. You can really have some conversations while you're doing your work. And let's face it, I do enjoy like taking something and making it smaller, like cutting the grass.
6:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:23 Speaker 00 Or trimming hedges or something like that. That that's always been something that I've enjoyed.
6:29 Speaker 01 Plus you have a lot of power, right? Cause who's gonna piss off their barber? You don't want, don't ever mess with the person that cuts your hair, right? Because.
6:36 Speaker 00 No, you might end up with a reverse mohawk or something you didn't really want. Now, I'm not talking about like, don't mess with the Zohan. Like I, I had this burning desire to be a, you know, to cut hair, but I always thought in the back of my mind, that would be, that would be an interesting job.
6:54 Speaker 01 You make a good barber. I can see it already.
6:57 Speaker 00 If a child's parents didn't have money for their haircut, Jermaine did it for free because he wanted them to look nice for school.
7:05 Speaker 01 Love that.
7:06 Speaker 00 Jermaine's sister, Willow Ross Patterson, said in her interview for the show, Real Murders on Elm Street. He wasn't perfect, but Jermaine was a person that reached out and helped people. He was a community person, you know, he had a heart. And I don't know, Gibbs, if you've watched this, Real Murders on Elm Street. I think it's an ID show. I watch it on HBO.
7:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:31 Speaker 00 Max and it has nothing to do with the movie.
7:35 Speaker 01 Right.
7:36 Speaker 00 But it's just murders that happened to occur on Elm Street.
7:40 Speaker 01 Oh.
7:41 Speaker 00 It's somewhere in, in the country and there are a lot of streets named Elm and cities all over.
7:49 Speaker 01 In its own right, that's fascinating.
7:51 Speaker 00 Yeah. And, and it's a really good show. Metchi Ross also noted, he didn't splurge about his money at all. He didn't have a lot, but you wouldn't think that. He let people stay with him that needed a place to stay, no charge, no rent, no nothing. You know, he'd give his shirt off his back. He was that person. He was a giving person.
8:13 Speaker 01 I wanted to say you guys are kind of similar, but you would charge me rent, but I don't think you'd even let me stay here. I've tried and you say, no.
8:22 Speaker 00 Yes.
8:23 Speaker 01 Now you did give me the shirt off your back once, but it was like it's seen its last day. You know, and you're like, here, you want this shirt, you know, I'm like, well. Hasn't been clean in a while and it's got all these holes in it and stuff.
8:37 Speaker 00 Well, you know, people always say that, right? This person would give you the shirt off their back. I mean, obviously we know what they're talking about. But you know, when you hear about what Jermaine was like. If a kid didn't have money for a haircut, but needed one, he'd do it for free.
8:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
8:56 Speaker 00 He'd let people stay at his place and not charge him a thing. I mean, that's kind of the definition of giving someone the shirt off your back.
9:05 Speaker 01 Absolutely. And to be honest, you know, if I really needed a place to stay, if I really needed something, one thing I know is I could always depend on you.
9:13 Speaker 00 Oh, absolutely. If it was real. Now, if you just said, hey, can I stay here for no reason? Then I would be very suspicious and I would probably turn that down. Jermaine was forced to shut down his barber shop in Cahokia. Due to a fire, he continued running his business from his home and also did house calls for some clients. Now that's what I'd really like to find is someone who would come cut my hair at my house.
9:41 Speaker 01 That'd be convenient.
9:42 Speaker 00 Cause you know, I don't like to leave my house.
9:43 Speaker 01 I know. I remember the days when like my mom would cut her hair, right? She put that kitchen chair right in the middle of the kitchen floor.
9:51 Speaker 00 And then put the bowl on top of your head and then just trim around.
9:55 Speaker 01 Towel around our head, like it's going to stop all the hair from getting on us and yeah, and cut that little bowl cut.
10:00 Speaker 00 In early October, 2018, Jermaine missed a few appointments. On October 3rd, one of his friends brought someone over to his house to get a haircut. When they arrived at Jermaine's house, they noticed an odor and saw that the windows were covered with flies. According to one investigator, there were so many flies, it looked like a black tarp across the window.
10:26 Speaker 01 Makes me a little nauseated thinking about it.
10:28 Speaker 00 Well, that's some real Amityville horror type stuff.
10:31 Speaker 01 There it is. Because you know, if there's flies, there's the babies that aren't flies yet maggots.
10:39 Speaker 00 Most likely pertaining to the odor, and we know what odor they're talking about, right? Anytime you watch a show and there's a law enforcement professional and they talk about the odor of death. They all say the same exact thing. It's unmistakable. Once you smell it, if you smell it again, there's, it's just, there's no doubt about what it is.
11:04 Speaker 01 You know exactly what you're looking at.
11:06 Speaker 00 So, you know, these guys show up to Jermaine's house. They noticed that the door was slightly ajar. So one of the men went inside and found Jermaine's body. He then ran to the home of a nearby officer identified by his last name Greer. Officer Greer recalled, I was working that day and I went home on lunch. And actually I live literally right around the corner. Heard someone knock on the door, knocked on it again. And Willie that works at the convenience store, he was there and he said, Ross is dead. Ross is dead. So I just ran out. I didn't know what kind of situation it was. Went up, the door was cracked.
11:48 Speaker 00 I could see his, the TV on, you know, the stench. I mean, it was bad. I just put my head inside the door. I called the chief like, hey, we got a body over here. And it sounds to me like he didn't even have to go in and see the body. I mean, as soon as that smell hit him.
12:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, he knew.
12:09 Speaker 00 He knew what he was dealing with. Police initially thought Jermaine died of natural causes due to decomposition. He had most likely been in his home for three or four days before he was found. CSI Grant Hens from the Illinois State Police arrived to investigate the house. Hens recalled that an officer essentially told him, he's just dead. It's a natural, don't see any injuries. It really smells in there and I'm gonna wait outside.
12:40 Speaker 01 Okay. I've seen enough. I'm good. I'm going outside. You guys go ahead and take it from here.
12:46 Speaker 00 Hey, you know, I know we're harping on it, but you know, this odor, this smell is not something that everyone can handle.
12:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's, uh, there's a few smells that I have, uh.
12:57 Speaker 00 That you have?
12:58 Speaker 01 That I have smelled.
13:01 Speaker 00 That you have right now that you're emanating at this moment?
13:04 Speaker 01 No, no, no. No, but I mean, uh, I've been out by a mushroom farm once. That was pretty bad. Obviously I've been, you know, there's, there's pig manure, which is not pleasant, but chicken manure from the big chicken farms. That is probably one of the worst smells that I can ever imagine. Not imagine because I've smelled it.
13:28 Speaker 00 Right. Remember maybe?
13:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:30 Speaker 00 Okay.
13:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, the worst smell I can.
13:31 Speaker 00 Yeah, I, I don't know what you're doing at all these places. I'm assuming these are all stories in and of themselves that you will tell at, at a later date. Hens described details of the death scene in his interview for the show, The Real Murders on Elm Street. When he walked in, Jermaine's body was immediately to the right on the couch. He was completely nude. He said Jermaine's home was fairly disorganized, but there didn't appear to be evidence of a struggle. He agreed that based on the level of decomposition, Jermaine had been dead for at least a couple of days. CSI Hens didn't observe any obvious injuries, most likely due to the decomp. However, there was something unusual about
14:16 Speaker 00 the scene. There was a coffee table in front of the couch. On that coffee table was a can of Comet, an abrasive cleaner that is not typically used in the living room. The cleaner was also found on Jermaine's genitals.
14:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's strange. You know, I grew up in a house that either we use Comet or Ajax to clean the bathroom. I mean, to the point, look, it was me and my two brothers and my dad and my mom hate it, cleaning the bathroom after us guys.
14:46 Speaker 00 I'm sure they did.
14:47 Speaker 01 So my mom would go in there on Saturday mornings and take a half a can of Comet and just pour it all over the toilet, the toilet, the floor around the toilet, the sink. Said, when you get this all cleaned up, then you can go enjoy your Saturday. And
15:01 Speaker 00 And you're just, you're just out there scrubbing your
15:04 Speaker 01 Scrubbing away, man.
15:05 Speaker 00 Your pee stains away and stuff like that. So yeah, I mean, obviously there are a lot more cleaners now than there were when we were younger. Comet was one of the big ones. I mean, who didn't have a can of Comet that they used in their bathroom? But it's not something you would use in your living room.
15:24 Speaker 01 No, and it can be pretty abrasive.
15:26 Speaker 00 Yeah, especially on one's genitals, I would imagine.
15:29 Speaker 01 Exactly.
15:30 Speaker 00 So this is a, a, a big mystery.
15:34 Speaker 00 The cleaner also appeared to have been moistened and wiped on the deadbolt and interior doorknob of the house. And so if you're an investigator, Gibbs, and, and you kind of see this detail or you're let in on this detail, what are you thinking?
15:51 Speaker 01 So you're wondering, what are they trying to get rid of? Fingerprints off the door handle, the doorknob and I don't know, can you dust somebody's genitals for fingerprints?
16:00 Speaker 00 I think you can get fingerprints off of a body, but I mean, you're right. That's really the only thing that, that I can think of. Now whether Comet does that or not, I don't know, but the person may not have known that. Jermaine's body was taken to the coroner's office where x-rays showed a bullet that pierced Jermaine's heart. The bullet entered through his buttocks and traveled upwards.
16:26 Speaker 01 Oh, wow. Okay.
16:28 Speaker 00 That's a, that's a strange one. Now we know bullets can travel
16:33 Speaker 01 Sure.
16:33 Speaker 00 through the body, but to be shot in the buttocks, as Forrest would say, and have it travel all the way up to the heart. First of all, I mean, you're at a strange angle.
16:48 Speaker 01 Well, I'm saying there's a certain position someone's going to be in to get that shot off.
16:52 Speaker 00 Yeah, you're either standing and they're like somehow underneath you firing upwards. Or this person is laying down and they're kind of firing from a low position, right, right behind them, right on top of them. It's it's strange. And so you got to figure out what to make of that.
17:13 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:14 Speaker 00 And we already said that he was found nude. So you have to factor that in as well.
17:20 Speaker 01 What kind of activities were going on at that time?
17:23 Speaker 00 Yeah. But I mean, the thing that was evident was that Jermaine's death was not natural. Right? He was obviously murdered. Investigators returned to the house and found a bullet hole in the wood frame of the back of the couch. So the next task was figuring out who wanted Jermaine dead. Authorities called in the major K squad of Greater St. Louis, a multi-jurisdictional task force comprising nearly 600 investigators from 120 local law enforcement agencies in Missouri and Illinois.
17:58 Speaker 01 Now, that's an impressive special force.
18:00 Speaker 00 But it's it's a large task force, right? 600 investigators from 120 different agencies. Officers canvassed Jermaine's neighborhood, asking for information. Cahokia, and I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, is a small community just across the river from St. Louis, Missouri. It's the type of place where people care about each other. The murder was shocking to the residents because Jermaine was so well liked. Jermaine knew a lot of people and had many connections because of his work as a barber, which only widened the suspect's pool.
18:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'm sure it didn't help narrow it down.
18:42 Speaker 00 No, because this is a guy who interacted with a lot of people, right? On a on a daily basis. But you think about this being a relatively small community. And we've touched on this before, right? These types of murders, they really shake.
19:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:02 Speaker 00 Smaller communities. Now, if you've got a larger city that is used to dealing with murders, you see it on the news, okay, you don't know the person, it probably doesn't hit the same. But in a small community, this would hit hard.
19:19 Speaker 01 Well, it would.
19:19 Speaker 00 Especially with Jermaine being a well-known guy.
19:23 Speaker 01 Well, normally after something like this happens, the local barber shop is just buzzing with all kinds of activity.
19:31 Speaker 00 Well, that would be the place probably people would congregate, right? To talk about what's going on, maybe throw around theories about who was responsible. But I don't know if that could happen in this case because Jermaine's the barber and he's the one that's been killed. One neighbor identified as Dionne H. told police she had some information. She recalled in her recorded interview that Sunday night, around between midnight and 1:00, I heard two gunshots go pop, pop. I looked out my back window. It faces Ross's kitchen window. It's dark out, no light on in Ross's house. She explained that she looked out her back window because
20:16 Speaker 00 that was the general area the sound was coming from. The noise occurred in the first hour of September 30th, 2018.
20:25 Speaker 01 All right. So we got a potential timeline or a beginning of one.
20:30 Speaker 00 Yeah. I mean, someone who's, you know, helping to narrow down the timeline. She continued by saying, "I didn't see no movement of nobody, no vehicles, and I went back to bed." And this is something I know you and I have talked about before. You know, you hear noises outside of your residence. You think, well, man, it could be a gunshot. It could be this, could be that. Maybe you go out to investigate, you look out your window, you don't see anything. What else are you gonna do? Are you gonna call the police when you don't really know what's going on? Probably not. Most people wouldn't.
21:11 Speaker 01 I don't think today many people would. Maybe back, you know, 50 years ago, or not even 50, maybe 80 years ago, maybe somebody would have. I don't know. I just don't think people are that interested on what's going on out there, unless they can really see something.
21:31 Speaker 00 Well, my thought is people don't want to be wrong. I think there are a lot of people who think, oh, my gosh, I'm gonna call the police. They're gonna come out. Nothing's going to be wrong and I'm gonna look like a fool.
21:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:44 Speaker 00 So I think that would probably keep quite a few people from calling. Dion revealed that Jermaine was having some problems in the neighborhood. They spoke to each other occasionally because she had lived there for years. Jermaine mentioned that his door was kicked in and people were after him. But she didn't know what was going on. Okay, so we're getting more pieces of the puzzle.
22:08 Speaker 01 I mean, that's pretty serious if someone's kicking in your door.
22:12 Speaker 00 And to say, people are after me. And then to all of a sudden wind up dead, it's, you know, it's something that I'm sure would, at the very least, pique the interest of police. Approximately 11 hours after Jermaine was found, his nephew, Metchy or Michy Ross, I'm not sure exactly how you say it, learned about his death. He was in shock, but he knew something that could be helpful to the investigation. According to him, Jermaine was the kind of person who always spoke his mind. He said that the last time he ever saw his uncle, Jermaine said, I have some problems with some people over here.
22:56 Speaker 01 You know, speaking your mind can be a really good thing, but it also can cause some problems when you speak your mind.
23:05 Speaker 00 Well, it depends on who you're speaking your mind to. Right? Some people will digest what you have to say and okay, maybe agree with you, or even if they don't, they'll disagree with you in a non-combative way.
23:23 Speaker 01 Right.
23:24 Speaker 00 But some people, they don't have that kind of filter, or whatever you want to call it, where to them, any sort of disagreement is like provocation for action.
23:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
23:38 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah.
23:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:40 Speaker 00 Yeah. But here's the second instance, right, of somebody saying that Jermaine had told them he was having problems with some people. Now, Jermaine never said exactly what his problems were. He did mention that he kept a gun on him for protection. Michie told Jermaine that his gun wouldn't matter if someone ran up on him, but Jermaine didn't seem concerned. He said he wasn't afraid to die.
24:10 Speaker 01 Okay, I mean, I guess if you had that attitude, maybe it makes it a lot easier to say what's on your mind.
24:18 Speaker 00 But could that also, you know, just be bravado, something that somebody would say, are you really not afraid to die? Or are you just trying to look tough to someone you're talking to? And this was about two months before he was killed. Michie told The Real Murders on Elm Street, it was almost like he knew something was going to happen, but he just didn't know what. Former State Clare County State's Attorney Brendan Kelly was one of the individuals involved in the investigation. According to Kelly, it was normal in Cahokia for people to be reluctant to talk to police due to distrust or fear
25:00 Speaker 00 for their safety. But in Jermaine's case, several people reached out right away with information. And that might be because of the type of person that Jermaine was, right? We talked about him. He was very well liked.
25:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:17 Speaker 00 I assume that when people heard he had been killed, maybe more so than others in the area that with whom they didn't know as well, they wanted to really help out.
25:29 Speaker 01 And he was also very well connected.
25:31 Speaker 00 Yes. Kendall T., Jermaine's former client, was one of these people. He said in his police interview, Jermaine was a pretty cool dude. He didn't really bother nobody, talked a lot, drunk a lot, but he didn't seem like a troublemaker or nothing like that. Kendall mentioned that he heard a younger man beat Jermaine up four to five months before his death. Okay. So if you're the police, you want to know who this younger man is.
26:00 Speaker 01 Well, sure. And why did he beat him up? Was it over, what? Cause he mouthed off to him? Was it a bad haircut?
26:08 Speaker 00 Money, who, you know?
26:11 Speaker 00 Infidelity on somebody's part? We don't know. But I think when you beat someone up months before that person is killed, okay, police are gonna want to talk to you. You're gonna be on the radar. At the very least, you're gonna have to be ruled out. A man named Willier mentioned that Jermaine always kept a pistol in his barber cart. And I feel like that's something I would do if I was a barber.
26:38 Speaker 01 Just keep it right there in your cart?
26:39 Speaker 00 Out of sight. I mean, I would hope that it, you know, just wouldn't be sitting there where anybody could see it, but you know, there could have been times where he's there alone. He could have been there alone a lot of times.
26:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:53 Speaker 00 And felt as though he needed protection. But it also could have something to do with the fact that he kept telling people that he was having problems with other folks. And so he was a little on edge, maybe. Ronald R. also mentioned the gun and said Jermaine was angry that someone stole it from his barber shop. He knew that Jermaine was having problems, but he didn't know what those problems were.
27:19 Speaker 01 Well, like you've already said, it seems like everybody knows he's got some type of problem going on, but nobody knows with who and what it's about.
27:27 Speaker 00 Ronald also mentioned that Jermaine recently came into some money because of the insurance payout from the fire that destroyed his barber shop. He'd just gotten the payment a couple of weeks before the murder. Jermaine said that people had talked about robbing him. So bit by bit, Gibbs, we're getting, you know, pieces of the puzzle. And I would think to investigators, you know, they're trying to put it all together. Who would want to kill Jermaine? He's having some issues with people. Well, if he came into a bunch of money, that would be a possible motive for murder?
28:08 Speaker 01 Sure. You don't really want to broadcast. You got a lot of money, you know, that just came in. That's not typically a good thing to do.
28:16 Speaker 00 Well, and Ronald even told Jermaine that. He said, you need to keep your mouth shut and stop telling these people that you got money, especially if you're over here by yourself. Then Jermaine pulled out his little gun he had on the side. He said, oh, I got something for their asses.
28:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, but why even cause that to be a reason for people to do something?
28:40 Speaker 00 Yeah, I get what you're saying. I mean, is it natural for some people to want to, I don't know, kind of flaunt when they come into money or that they bought something expensive? Yeah, for some people it is, but it's not always the smartest thing to do. Jermaine didn't say who specifically talked about robbing him and Ronald didn't know who it might be. So, you know, we talk about like these pieces kind of starting to trickle in, but investigators are still, at least with the information they have right now, not really any closer to who the actual culprits might be.
29:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
29:25 Speaker 00 They're starting to get some noise about what the motive might be.
29:31 Speaker 00 Investigators learned that Jermaine got the insurance payout 11 days before his body was found and he spoke about the money with numerous people.
29:41 Speaker 01 Like we said, not a good thing to do.
29:43 Speaker 00 No, but also if it was one or two people, okay, maybe that narrows your suspect pool. But if he's telling everybody that comes into the barber shop or that he knows around town, well, that suspect pool could be pretty deep.
30:02 Speaker 01 Sure. And they go out to lunch with somebody or have breakfast with somebody. Oh, did you hear about such and such got a cash payout of X amount of dollars? He's just waving that money around.
30:14 Speaker 00 Well, and it was said that he showed one of his clients named Willie about $10,000 in cash and Willie told Jermaine he should put it in the bank.
30:24 Speaker 01 Definitely shouldn't be flashing it around. I remember, I don't know, a few months ago at the senior home, somebody in the front row is just flashing all kind of one dollar bills, you know?
30:38 Speaker 00 Fistful of dollars.
30:39 Speaker 01 I was like, man, you shouldn't really, you know, do that. Somebody might want to try to take that away from you besides you giving that to me.
30:46 Speaker 00 I was gonna say, you're gonna end up with all of them eventually. So.
30:49 Speaker 01 I try to, I try to.
30:51 Speaker 00 What's the problem? Providing some context in her interview for the show, Jermaine's sister, Willa Ross Patterson, said that Jermaine had been working since he was young, but he never had a lot of money. Jermaine told her that he received about $25,000 from the insurance company, but she knew that sometimes he said things that weren't accurate. However, in this case, it was true. Now, you could say $25,000 is a lot of money. Some people might not think it's a lot of money, but if you're a person who's never really had money, $25,000 is a ton of money.
31:31 Speaker 01 It is.
31:33 Speaker 00 And if you're a person.
31:36 Speaker 00 Out to get some quick cash, finding out that someone has $25,000 in cash? That that could be a pretty tempting for a criminal.
31:49 Speaker 01 And murder might be the quick and easy way to get it. You know, people murder for less.
31:54 Speaker 00 Oh, no doubt about it. However, much cash Jermaine actually had, it was nowhere to be found. The only cash investigators found were two $100 bills crammed under the mattress. So if they knew that he had or received $25,000, but they can't find it. What are investigators to think?
32:18 Speaker 01 Well, they had to think that somebody murdered him and then took his cash.
32:22 Speaker 00 Yeah, I don't know what else you would think. Investigators were focusing on a new lead centering around a woman named Melinda Graves, who was claiming she had information about Jermaine. She came into the station and told police she and Jermaine lived in the same area, and she knew he was a barber. Melinda seemed scared and nervous and claimed people were accusing her of killing Jermaine and stealing his money. She claimed a man in a black car threatened her and demanded that she give him the money she stole from Jermaine. So this woman was really scared, and she wanted to tell the police what she knew.
33:03 Speaker 00 She admitted she had been at Jermaine's house the night he died. Melinda and her friend Jasmine Madison, who was in a romantic relationship with Jermaine, walked from Jasmine's to Jermaine's house on Saturday, September 29. Jermaine wanted to spend his money and have a good time, so they were partying with him. When they left his house, Jermaine was still alive. Melinda was adamant. She didn't kill Jermaine and that Jasmine was not involved either.
33:36 Speaker 01 So her and her roomie went down and had a little good time, a little party. And she's saying, after all that was done, I went on home and he was alive and fine when we left.
33:50 Speaker 00 But she is putting herself and her friend at the home.
33:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:55 Speaker 00 The night he was murdered. But she also has this story about this mysterious man in the black car.
34:02 Speaker 01 Right.
34:03 Speaker 00 Threatening her, saying, hey, give me the money that you stole from Jermaine. At first, police believed her story because in the majority of cases, the killer is a man. And yeah, I mean, let's be honest, most killers are men.
34:21 Speaker 01 That's true.
34:22 Speaker 00 Women kill. We know that. We've talked about many of them over the years. But statistically, most killers are men. Investigators focused on finding the person allegedly threatening Melinda. They also needed to speak to Jasmine Madison, but she was nowhere to be found. Police were worried. They didn't know if Jasmine had been abducted and murdered, or was she possibly involved in, in hiding? And I'm sure one of the questions they had, Gibbs, was, you know, did Melinda come in and tell this story because she was scared?
35:05 Speaker 00 Or because she knew that she had to put herself at Jermaine's house that night? And she wanted to get ahead of things?
35:16 Speaker 01 I mean, both sound like possibilities.
35:20 Speaker 00 And obviously, one would most likely mean she's innocent and the other one, not so innocent.
35:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
35:27 Speaker 00 On October 4th, investigators re-interviewed Melinda to try to get more information. She was still scared and frantic, but during this interview, her story changed. She recalled, "So we're walking down the street to the dude's house. I sat down on the couch and we're drinking malt liquor and smoking my cigarettes." She claimed that Jermaine went into his bedroom and took some money out to show them. He then took the money back to the bedroom. Melinda got up to use the bathroom. When she returned, Jasmine and Jermaine were having sex. She decided to go into a different area of the house to give them some privacy.
36:09 Speaker 00 She admitted to walking around looking for the money. She checked his bedroom first because that was the most likely place to find it. And like you always say, Gibbs, never a good sign. When someone's story changes, especially a change like this, because it's so dramatically different.
36:31 Speaker 01 How strange would it be to go to this guy's house with your roommate? And when you get there, you go to the bathroom, you come out and she's having sex with this guy.
36:41 Speaker 00 Well, it could be deemed strange. We also have to take it with a grain of salt, right? Cause she's changing up her story, which means she might have a problem with the truth. Now, if you're talking college days, for me, not that strange. There was a lot of weird stuff going on.
37:02 Speaker 01 The old sock around the doorknob.
37:06 Speaker 00 If I was lucky.
37:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
37:09 Speaker 00 Now, Melinda acknowledged that this looked bad for her, but she had a good reason to want the money. She was the guardian for her 12-year-old brother and was in a bad spot financially. Her house burned down and she needed a deposit for a new place for her and her brother. Melinda said she was desperate, but she didn't find the money. So her search was pointless.
37:32 Speaker 01 It just seems so weird that everybody's okay with stealing this money.
37:36 Speaker 00 Well, because she needs it. She's, she has a good reason for stealing the money.
37:42 Speaker 01 You know, a lot of people need money, but it's never okay just to go steal it.
37:46 Speaker 00 Right. It just sounds, it sounds strange, right? To say, well, I had a good reason to steal it. I needed it. Now, this is what I needed it for. According to her, it wasn't for drugs or anything like that. It was because she had to take care of her brother and she needed a place to stay. But to your point. A lot of us have been in financial binds. The answer is never to go steal money from someone else.
38:13 Speaker 01 Right.
38:13 Speaker 00 It's just not. She rejoined Jermaine and Jasmine and Jermaine made a phone call to buy some cocaine. Five to seven minutes later, a man barged into the house without knocking. Melinda didn't know who he was. He demanded to know where the money was and pulled a gun out. He then shot Jermaine. Melinda said she and Jasmine fled. On her way out, she saw a black four door vehicle with a dent in the passenger side. Melinda once again expressed her fear that the man would try to find and kill her. She said she didn't call the police after she ran away because she was scared.
38:55 Speaker 01 Well, that's definitely a change in the story.
38:57 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, it's a, she's keeping some of the things similar, but the changes are massive. Right? I went looking for the money, couldn't find it. Then all of a sudden, a strange man barged in, shot Jermaine. She and Jasmine were somehow able to escape. And you have to ask, okay, how is that?
39:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, why would he let you guys go?
39:28 Speaker 00 If you're willing to shoot Jermaine, are you going to leave two witnesses alive? Maybe, but most likely not.
39:38 Speaker 01 Well, at least with this second story she's telling, she's getting more creative.
39:42 Speaker 00 Well, and you have to ask the question, right? Why is she getting more creative? Why did she have to change her story in the first place? Was it because police presented her with some things that kind of disproved some of the things she had said in her first statement? I don't know that to be a fact. It's what we often see, right? People change their story to fit the, the facts that are presented to them. But it's a big change from when we left, Jermaine was fine to we saw Jermaine shot and killed, but were able to flee unharmed.
40:23 Speaker 00 Police questioned Melinda's story because of the stark differences from her first interview, where she said they partied together and Jermaine was alive and unharmed when she left. Investigators obtained security footage from the neighborhood showing a black vehicle matching Melinda's description. A man identified as Modi drove a similar vehicle. Modi knew Jasmine Madison, so investigators were hopeful there was a connection. Modi came into the station for an interview. He said he knew of Jermaine, but he had never gone to him for a haircut. When Modi was informed that his car was identified
41:05 Speaker 00 on the night of the murder, he replied, "Hell no, that's impossible." He claimed he was at home that night and had people who could verify this. And I'll be honest with you, when I watch any show, true crime show, especially when they have actual interrogation footage, that to me is often the most interesting part of a case. You know, to see someone's reaction, real reaction to questions that are asked, and then for them to, you know, give an explanation or to answer a question,
41:47 Speaker 00 only to have investigators kind of tear a hole right into it with some other evidence. And then for that person to kind of switch up. I mean, that to me is the fascinating part. Now Modi right now is not doing that.
42:03 Speaker 01 No.
42:04 Speaker 00 He's saying, "You're telling me that you saw me and my vehicle there, and I'm telling you that's not possible because I was at home and I have people who can prove that alibi." He said he didn't know where Jasmine Madison lived, but she had been to his house a few times. She was there last on Sunday. Although it seemed like a promising lead, it turned out to be a dead end. Modi was not involved in Jermaine's murder. So he was, you know, right to stick to his story because it was the truth.
42:41 Speaker 00 And the truth is always usually pretty easy to stick to.
42:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, and it will set you free.
42:49 Speaker 00 Sometimes, yeah, sometimes people are convicted even when they tell the truth. But eventually, another anonymous witness came forward and revealed that Jermaine was having a hard time financially before the settlement. He didn't even have running water at his house. At the time of his death, he was trying to get his water turned back on.
43:11 Speaker 01 That's pretty rough.
43:12 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, that's living rough if you have no running water. The major case squad was able to locate Jasmine Madison, who had been afraid to talk to the police and was in hiding due to outstanding warrants. Jasmine insisted she wasn't a murderer, saying, I don't care what Melinda said. I know what happened. Overall, Jasmine's statement lined up with Melinda's, but Jasmine had more details. She said she and Melinda walked over to Jermaine's house on the night of September 29th. Jasmine acknowledged that she and Jermaine had a romantic relationship, and she knew that he had the settlement money.
43:57 Speaker 00 Jermaine brought out money that night. After he put it away, she and Jermaine had sex on the couch. Melinda then appeared with Jermaine's handgun. She demanded the money and shot Jermaine two times. After she shot him, Melinda told Jasmine to pour comment on Jermaine's genitals and his legs. Afterwards, Jasmine was so frightened that she grabbed her clothes and ran home naked. So, yeah, I mentioned, right? The stories are somewhat similar. Some aspects of them are. Jasmine definitely has more details, namely the the comment being poured on Jermaine.
44:43 Speaker 00 But undoubtedly, Gibbs, the big difference here is that it wasn't a strange man who came in and shot Jermaine. It was Melinda. And unlike Melinda, Jasmine's story never changed. She maintained that her version was the truth.
45:00 Speaker 01 Just trying to figure out why put comment on your inner thighs and your junk.
45:07 Speaker 00 Well, I don't know if Melinda thought maybe she was trying to erase evidence that
45:15 Speaker 00 Jermaine and Jasmine had sex, like she didn't want either one of them really to be placed at the home that night.
45:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
45:24 Speaker 00 That's the only thing I can think of. I'm also not sure this is a well thought out plan here. And I don't think this was the Italian job. Where you spend months, you know, kind of mapping out this elaborate plan.
45:38 Speaker 01 Right, yeah. Definitely a spur of the moment kind of thing.
45:41 Speaker 00 Or, or at least a day or two of, hey, we know he's got this money, let's go get it.
45:46 Speaker 01 Right.
45:48 Speaker 00 But this fact that Jasmine's story never changed. If you're investigators and you're looking at the two of them, who looks worse?
45:56 Speaker 01 Melinda does.
45:57 Speaker 00 Yeah. First of all, she's already lied. She's already changed her story and Jasmine's story puts her as the killer. So, no, it doesn't mean it's true, but I would think in the eyes of the authorities, she looks to be in a worse position.
46:16 Speaker 01 Yes.
46:17 Speaker 00 Other sources also told investigators that Melinda had recently been spending money on new clothes for her younger brother.
46:26 Speaker 01 That's a telltale sign.
46:29 Speaker 00 Yeah, it can be. If you remember Goodfellas, after they made that big Lufthansa score, right? The whole thing was, don't be flashy. But what did people do?
46:40 Speaker 01 Oh, bought new Cadillac, came in with a new fur coat on. Yeah, they were flashy all right.
46:47 Speaker 00 And they wound up dead. Police were able to speak to Melinda's brother, who overheard Jasmine and Melinda talking about going to Jermaine's house and taking his money. After the shooting, the women took the metro link to St. Louis. The gun was stored in a lunchbox and it was disposed of somewhere on the Gateway Arch grounds. Seems like a very strange place to get rid of a murder weapon.
47:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.
47:18 Speaker 00 On the grounds of the Gateway Arch, something visited by how many hundreds of thousands of people a year?
47:25 Speaker 01 Yeah. Not a lot of thought was put into that one, I don't think.
47:29 Speaker 00 Doesn't seem like it, you know, a swamp, deep in the woods.
47:35 Speaker 01 Just the exit before would have been a whole lot better.
47:38 Speaker 00 A better place. Police confronted Melinda with this new information and she broke. She asked how long she would be away from her brother and asked what would happen if she got a life sentence? Which seems like a strange question to ask. What would happen if I got a life sentence? You will spend the rest of your life in prison. Now, maybe she was asking, when could I be up for parole? Would I be up for parole? I don't know. Finally, Melinda admitted to shooting Jermaine twice, saying that she panicked after doing so. And again, I don't get the sense that, you know, Melinda is a mastermind criminal.
48:24 Speaker 00 She's not a hitman who's experienced with killing people, I don't believe. I think she learned about this money. She wanted to get her hands on this money. And she was willing to kill to get it.
48:39 Speaker 01 And that's what she did.
48:40 Speaker 00 But like we talked about, right? I don't think there was a ton of planning that went into it. I don't know that the decisions made after it were very good. Investigators never located the money or the murder weapon, but the facts of the case and Melinda's own statement secured charges. And you know, there are a lot of cases where authorities don't have everything, right? They don't have the murder weapon. They don't have, let's say, maybe great forensics. A lot of the evidence is circumstantial, but you know what is really nice to have?
49:22 Speaker 00 The perpetrator's own statement that they committed the crime. That's always nice.
49:26 Speaker 01 Backed up by the other person at the scene.
49:29 Speaker 00 Yeah, her friend.
49:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
49:31 Speaker 00 On October 5th, 2018, Melinda Graves was charged with murder and intent to kill or injure.
49:38 Speaker 00 During a press conference, Police Captain Dennis Plou, stated that robbery was the motive. On November 26, 2019, Melinda pleaded guilty to first degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years to life. The following day, Jasmine Madison was charged with obstruction of justice for using Comet to try to remove evidence from the body. The St. Clair County State Attorney's Office had taken Jasmine's case under advisement, but did not charge her until Melinda's proceedings were finished. Jasmine pled guilty to obstruction of justice and evidence tampering.
50:19 Speaker 01 That was probably pretty minimal.
50:21 Speaker 00 Yeah, I actually didn't see where it said what she got as far as time, if any. I mean, it could have been a suspended sentence. I didn't actually see. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, she poured some Comet, but it was on a person who had just been murdered.
50:38 Speaker 01 That's true.
50:39 Speaker 00 So you can look at it as, okay, all she did was sprinkle some Comet to, in a way, she participated in the murder, at the very least in the aftermath.
50:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, the cover up.
50:56 Speaker 00 Of the murder. Melinda's projected parole date is October 2043. She'll only be 55 years old, Gibbs, if she gets out at that time.
51:08 Speaker 01 It's a big if.
51:09 Speaker 00 It is, it is an if, but not to say that, okay, she wouldn't have spent, you know, 25 years or close to it in prison. But at 55, presumably she would still have a lot of life to live.
51:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
51:31 Speaker 00 Whereas that didn't happen for Jermaine Ross. And that's always tough, not just for the victim's families and friends, but I think it's tough for anyone because it's very easy to put yourself in their shoes. How fair is it that this person at some point gets to go free, live their life, they're free to marry, they're free to travel and we'll never see our loved one again.
52:05 Speaker 01 Well, exactly. You know, I mean, you robbed him for what some rent, some clothes. You're saying it's okay to murder somebody for petty things like that?
52:17 Speaker 00 Well, we know what the motive was. The motive was money. It was financial. I think what's hard for people to square is ending someone's life for materialistic gain. I mean, there's very few instances where you could make the argument that ending someone's life was good. Now there's self-defense and there's things like that. Obviously, we're not talking about that here. This was just straight up greed.
52:48 Speaker 01 Sure was.
52:49 Speaker 00 She was in financial straits. She needed money. She knew that Jermaine Ross had come into this amount of money and she was willing to kill him to get her hands on it.
53:03 Speaker 01 And what a weird way that she did that. Decided to shoot him from the buttocks up.
53:10 Speaker 00 Well, and there really wasn't anything in the research that kind of laid out the positioning.
53:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
53:20 Speaker 00 So that's, there's, there's a lot of different ways this could have gone down, but my thought is he was either laying on his stomach and she came up behind him and shot him in the rear end.
53:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
53:37 Speaker 00 Which seems like a strange place to shoot someone if you're, you're trying, but maybe she wasn't trying to kill him. I don't know. I can't imagine that she would shoot him while he and Jasmine were in the throes of sex.
53:55 Speaker 00 That would be pretty dangerous.
53:57 Speaker 01 Jasmine would be like, what the heck, man? What are you doing? That could have went into me.
54:01 Speaker 00 But I don't know, there just really wasn't that much out there about it.
54:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, strange.
54:07 Speaker 00 In her interview, Jermaine's sister asked Melinda why she killed Jermaine, but she couldn't give an answer. If Melinda was telling the truth, she most likely did it because she was financially desperate and thought she could easily get away with taking Jermaine's money.
54:25 Speaker 01 Seems the most plausible reason.
54:27 Speaker 00 It does. With everything we know, that does seem to be the most likely reason.
54:33 Speaker 01 I mean, I feel bad for Jermaine's sister, family, you know, friends, customers, you know, didn't need to happen to what happened to them. It's a shame, unfortunate.
54:45 Speaker 00 And totally senseless, right?
54:48 Speaker 01 And Melinda gets every year she's in prison. She deserves it.
54:51 Speaker 00 Yeah, absolutely. And I think some would argue that 25 is not enough, but I don't know that it's a guarantee, right? That she'll get paroled. Depends on what she's doing in prison. Is she remorseful? Who knows? But that's it for our episode on Jermaine Ross. We got a voicemail, Gibbs. You want to check that out?
55:15 Speaker 01 Let's hear it.
55:16 Speaker 02 Hey, good morning, Mike and Gibby. This is David Taylor calling out of El Paso, Texas. And I have a couple of things. I've been saving one, my call in from your Carla Faye Tucker episode and not having anything to do with Carla Faye Tucker. I wanted to hear a little bit more about the good times you had at OU. I spent a lot of time at OU on the weekends and did the Court Street Shuffle a few times. And was just wondering if anybody over that way made the trip as well because you and I are about the same age. And then on the other one was, I just listened to that Ed Gein, episode one, and you were talking about sewing. And as it would be, I am a sewer, so I sew everything by hand.
55:59 Speaker 02 And I was sitting here sewing on a jacket when I was listening to good old Ed Gein sewing up a bodysuit, but just had to get a chuckle out of both of those. So, yep, as everybody said, keep your own time ticking. I don't have any recommendations, so there's enough love mouth there to go around. I just sit here and listen. Thanks and have a great day.
56:19 Speaker 00 All right. Thanks for the voicemail. Yeah, unfortunately, I did the Court Street Shuffle way too many times. It was the cause of me only lasting two years there and being forced to come back home and take a different route. But I mean, that place is fun. There's nothing to do there but party.
56:42 Speaker 01 That's why it used to be the number one partying university, you know, always made that top.
56:47 Speaker 00 It did. Yeah, it was number one a lot of the years, just because it's in the middle of nowhere, kinda, and there's nothing else to do.
56:53 Speaker 01 Exactly. You know, he says he's from El Paso. I was just trying to remember that show we watched with that map of Texas.
57:02 Speaker 00 Oh, you're talking about the funeral director who killed the elderly lady?
57:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. Jack Black.
57:12 Speaker 00 Yeah, but that guy didn't talk about El Paso, did he?
57:16 Speaker 01 I don't know. He just did the, was it Jack Black or somebody else?
57:18 Speaker 00 No, Jack Black played it.
57:20 Speaker 01 But they did that map of all the different, like, what different areas were. And I'm just trying to think, where was El Paso on that map?
57:28 Speaker 00 Oh, I don't remember. I don't know if he talked about El Paso specifically. The only part I really remember was Austin. That's the one that everybody got a kick out of. But, but we appreciate the voicemail very much.
57:41 Speaker 01 We do. Thank you.
57:41 Speaker 00 All right, buddy. That is it for another episode of True Crime All the Time. So for Mike.
57:46 Speaker 01 And Gibby.
57:47 Speaker 00 Stay safe and keep your own time ticking.
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