Murder in the Heartland is in rural DeKalb County, Tennessee, to investigate the death of a farmhand called Daniel Mayo, who was shot dead by his coworker and roommate Timmie Lee Bain.
Mayo and Bain were both living in an apartment that was adjoined to the hog barn where they worked when the 45-year-old Mayo disappeared and has not been seen alive since.
The authorities have not yet located a body, but they believe that Bain killed his coworker during a drunken argument and then disposed of the body on the hog farm. The police believe that the 45-year-old Mayo was shot in the face with a shotgun.
Eyewitness claimed she’d seen Timmie Bain shoot Daniel Mayo
The prosecution’s case rested heavily on Marie Parsley’s testimony, who in 2015 told the police that she had witnessed the killing two years earlier.
Parsley told the investigators that she’d arrived at Bain and Mayo’s apartment to find the two men arguing. She said they were drunkenly yelling at each other and that Bain had been holding a shotgun.
She said she had advised Mayo to run but that he remained just outside the residence and had taunted Bain. According to Parsley, Bain then shot his victim in the face.
Parsley also claimed that there had been four other people at the scene besides Bain and Mayo, and she stated that they had cleaned up the crime scene and disposed of Mayo’s remains. She said one of them threatened to kill her if she went to the police.
Watch the Latest on our YouTube ChannelShe eventually told her sister, who failed to believe her claim and had her committed to a psychiatric hospital. Parsley was treated for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, which Bain’s lawyers would later use to discredit her as an unreliable witness.
In 2017, two men pleaded guilty to helping dispose of Mayo’s remains. Dustin Ray McKillip pleaded guilty to the charge of abuse of a corpse and was sentenced to 5 years in prison. And Gary Lee Lankford Jr. pleaded guilty to the charge of being an accessory after the fact and was sentenced to one year in jail.
In 2018, Timmie Lee Bain was finally convicted of voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
More from Murder in the Heartland
Follow the links to read about more murders committed in the American heartland.
Delores “Dianne” Watts and her daughter, Jessica Watts, and Jessica’s friend, Chelsie Smith, were brutally murdered in their McMinnville, Tennessee home. The killer was Dianne’s boyfriend, Raymond “Doug” Myers, and he had the help of his friend Johnny Lewis and his mother and brother.
Dennis Woodward and his girlfriend Elisabeth Gunter broke into the rural Missouri home of Joy Dishneau, intent on robbing the local businesswoman. However, Woodward stabbed the 63-year-old woman to death.
Murder in the Heartland airs at 10/9c on Investigation Discovery.