Third homicide suspect captured
The third suspect sought in the 2018 slaying of an Apison resident was captured Wednesday evening, shortly after Willie Jay Boyd, 39, was added to the TBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted List.
The development came hours after investigators announced that the prosecution in the homicide investigation will shift from Polk County, Tennessee, to Hamilton County.
Boyd was captured Wednesday evening in Rossville, Georgia, by the Walker County (Georgia) Sheriff’s Department with assistance from the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office, according to a 9:23 p.m. tweet from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
He had been the subject of a $2,500 reward for information after being placed on the TBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list. He was sought on charges of murder, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated assault, aggravated robbery, false imprisonment and interference with a 911 call in the 2018 slaying of 26-yearold Jacob Dakota Moore, according to a Wednesday TBI news release.
Moore’s body was found in late October by bear hunters near Reliance, Tennessee.
Polk County Sheriff Steve Ross said Wednesday that two of his officers, Capt. Brian Fields and Detective Kevin Cole, worked with TBI agents and fellow agencies to determine that the killing actually took place in Hamilton County, where prosecution of the case will be moved. The TBI and Hamilton County authorities declined Wednesday to discuss further case details, although the TBI’s Top 10 post on Boyd stated that he was being sought “in response to an October 2018 incident that occurred in Hamilton County, Tennessee.”
Boyd’s arrest came after the arrests over the past week of two other men in the ongoing investigation.
Askia Witherow, 39, of Ooltewah, was arrested Jan. 17 in Catoosa County, Georgia, and James David Robinson, 42, was charged Sunday in Hamilton County after he was found at a relative’s home, the TBI said in a news release.
Witherow is charged with one count of first-degree murder, one count of especially aggravated burglary, four counts of especially aggravated robbery, one count of kidnapping, four counts of false imprisonment and four counts of interference with an emergency call.
Robinson is charged with one count of first-degree murder, one count of especially aggravated kidnapping, four counts of especially aggravated robbery, four counts of false imprisonment, one count of criminal conspiracy and four counts of interference with an emergency call. Witherow is held pending extradition to Tennessee and Robinson is being held at the Hamilton County Jail on a $930,000 bond, according to the TBI.
The probe began after bear hunters found skeletal remains Oct. 29 on Benton Mountain in the south central part of Polk County, officials said at the beginning of the investigation. A forensic team from the University of Tennessee Anthropology Center in Knoxville worked jointly with investigators to recover the body. The remains were later identified as those of Moore.
On Wednesday, Ross said the area where the shallow grave was hidden was behind a hunting cabin off of Oswald Road near the Greasy Creek community. The spot where the body was buried was located by the bear hunters’ dogs, the sheriff said.
“They went up the driveway past the cabin and dug the grave,” Ross said. “It was quite a ways past the cabin.”
The cabin and grave site were on land that belongs to the Polk County school system, he said. The land was given to county schools years ago and is completely surrounded by the Cherokee National Forest.
Ross said the land is sometimes leased to hunters and he described the land as “very, very remote.”