Summer was over in the hills of northern Georgia and southern Tennessee and the first taste of fall was on the wind. Soon, it would be winter, the hills would be covered in a mantle of snow, and Willis would be expected back in Judge Go’s courtroom for sentencing. The feds had kept their word. They weren’t looking for a life sentence. But Willis wasn’t going to be free either. He was going to spend years in a federal prison, if the prosecutors had their way.

Watching the leaves on the trees on Lookout Mountain change from a sleepy green to red, Willis knew that time was running out.

A life on the outside – even a life on the run – was far better than having years of his life frozen in the icy desolation of some federal prison.

But a life on the run costs money, and since his arrest two years earlier, times had been tough for Willis. He had never had much money and between the federal court case and the breakup of his second marriage, he was now flat broke.

What’s more, he was a federal convict and that meant that it would be impossible for him to leave the country under his own name. He couldn’t turn to his family for help. His mother, his aunt and uncle had put up their houses and everything they had as collateral so he could make bail.

Sam Thomas, victim

Nor could he turn to his stepfather, Sam Thomas. Thomas had a few credit cards but he wasn’t about to let Willis use them to run away from justice. And he certainly wasn’t going to let him borrow his identity.

If Willis wanted to use Thomas’ name and his money to make his escape, he’d have to take drastic steps to get it from the old man.

Sometime early in the first week of September when the leaves on the mountain were just beginning their rage of color, Willis took the most drastic step of all, investigators say.

Even now, months later, the details remain hazy.

Authorities in Bradley County, Tenn. – a rural mountain region where old Sam Thomas lived – are still combing through the evidence that was left behind at Thomas’ house on Old Lead Mine Valley Road. A few bloodstains on a stairwell and on the floor, visible only under a fluoroscopic light. A few footprints, some fingerprints.

Taken together, the clues provide the outline of a carefully planned and brutal murder, authorities say. The way police read the clues, the 73-year-old man was ambushed, in all probability inside his home. His attacker shot and killed him and then, with an axe and a hacksaw, dismembered the body. The old man’s hands were hacked off and so was his head. It wasn’t an act of uncontrolled fury, authorities say. It was a cold and calculated move designed to make it that much more difficult for the body to be identified in the unlikely event that it was found.

Then, authorities believe, the killer threw the old man’s bloody torso into the back of a car and drove south to Walker County, to Lookout Mountain and dumped the body in a remote and desolate spot.

People in the mountains often lead isolated lives. Sam Thomas certainly did. As a result, it would be another month before anyone realized that Thomas was missing.

Police investigate area (WJHL- TV with permission)

It was October 7 when a family member finally called police to file a missing person’s report; it would be another week before hunters searching the remote corners of the mountain wilderness happened across Thomas’ torso.

By that point, Willis was already spending the dead man’s money and using his name in what was later described in a federal complaint as part of an attempt “to acquire a false identification form so he may leave the United States.”

That is borne out, investigators say by surveillance tapes from a Wal-Mart in nearby Chattanooga, taken on September 5 and again on September 7, that clearly show Willis making purchases – more than $1,000 worth – on Sam Thomas’ credit cards.

The tapes also show that Willis was not alone. In both of the tapes, authorities say, Adam Chrismer is at Willis’ side.

Authorities are still continuing their probe into Thomas’ death. And there remain a number of unanswered questions. But in the next few weeks, authorities in Bradley County say, they’ll present what they have to a grand jury. They’re confident that the grand jury will indict Willis for the old man’s murder.  As for Chrismer and his wife, their case is being handled by the authorities in Washington County.

They are not considered suspects in a murder case, but instead are officially considered to be two more victims of Willis’ alleged murderous lust for freedom.