Publisher’s Note: This four-part series originally ran in Oct. 28 to Nov. 10, 2020, and was removed from our website (along with all other content at that time) in 2022 when our previous owner switched our platform. Twenty-six years years since murder and nearly five years the stories originally ran, we are reuploading all four parts of the series on this page. – Kyle Troutman

Stories By Jordan Troutman cassvilledemocrat@outlook.com 

Killer still on the loose after murder two decades cold

The body of a 14-year-old boy was found on the train tracks in Seligman on the cool, crisp fall morning of Oct. 9, 1999.

The body belonged to Justin Hocutt, a Southwest student, and resident of Seligman.

Justin’s paternal aunts, Paula Roney and Tammy Tolbert, said they have been in search of justice for Justin for 21 years.

At the time of Justin’s murder, his mother lived in Nebraska and his father was living in his grandparent’s house.

Although it is still unknown exactly how Justin’s story ended, it began on Aug. 16, 1985, when he was born to Bonnie and Tim Hocutt in Arkansas.

Unfortunately, at about 4 years old, Justin’s parents moved the family to Nebraska, where he would witness years of fighting and arguing between his parents, which at times became physical.

Justin’s aunt described the couple’s relationship as, his parents loved to hate each other.

Eventually, the couple divorced when Justin was about 10 years old, and while his mother stayed in Nebraska, his father moved in with his sister in Pea Ridge, Ark.

Tammy Tolbert said Justin came to spend the summer with his father, who was living with her at the time, and as his mother was dealing with her own addiction to drugs. Justin officially moved in with her after that summer.

In the short 14 years of Justin’s life, those few years living with his aunt were some of the safest and peaceful he would have.

For three years, he thrived in school, played with his cousin and became a permanent member of the household.

According to Tolbert, Justin collected baseball cards for years, rode his bike in the neighborhood and had the life she felt a child should have.

Tim Hocutt had moved to Seligman to live in a camper trailer during those years before moving in with his parents, an already too crowded home.

According to his aunt, Justin loved his nanny and papa and wanted to be near his dad, so after three years of stability, the 13-year-old also moved in with his grandparents.

Unfortunately, the events following this move would lead to his death just a few short months later — Justin had just turned 14 years old when he was murdered.

The aunts remembered an incident from just before when Hocutt moved in with his father and grandparents when his father showed the dark side to his addictions.

According to Tolbert, at a family gathering, Tim Hocutt had an alcohol-induced argument with his son that, in her mind, went too far.

Tolbert said that in Tim Hocutt’s eyes, he was the right person to raise Justin, but watching Justin get sucked into Tim’s lifestyle was difficult. Unfortunately, Justin never complained to his aunts about it. 

Tim had a girlfriend who had a son Justin’s age, and they hung out a lot. Additionally, Justin had found himself a girlfriend who lived next door.

Unfortunately, the girl-next-door would be one of the last people to see 14-year-old Justin alive.

Tolbert’s phone rang at 5 a.m. on the morning of Oct.9, 1999. Her sister was on the line and told Tolbert to go and pick up their father and asked for her husband to go pick up their mother from her shift at the hospital.

According to Tolbert, when she asked her sister what was going on, she responded that she didn’t want to tell her.

Tolbert said she needed to explain to her parents as to why they were being picked up and taken back to their home.

“She said, ‘Please don’t tell mom and dad, but Justin was hit by a train,” Tolbert said. “When I told dad, all he could say was, ‘Oh my god, oh my god.’”

Initially, the family thought that Justin had committed suicide.

When the family first heard the word murder, they began building their theories on who could have killed 14-year-old Justin Hocutt.

“Maybe a couple of months before [Justin’s murder], Tim had gotten beaten real bad and thrown into mom and dad’s yard,” Tolbert said. “This was a warning [from drug dealers], and that is why I have always thought it was drug-related.”

According to the aunts, Tim had a bad drug deal between himself and the neighbors, and later in the evening of the beating, the police showed up and arrested Tim.

The aunts said that Justin was never involved in drugs, and if it was related to Justin’s death, he was completely innocent in the situation.

According to the Cassville Democrat’s Oct. 13, 1999, issue, Justin was last seen alive by his girlfriend and her father, Harold Lee Johnson, 39, Justin’s next door neighbors, at 3:30 a.m. on Oct. 8, 1999, when he was being chased out of his girlfriend’s home — a full day before his body would be found ravaged by a train.

It is still unknown why Justin didn’t simply go back home after the incident, as the families were neighbors, and to answer the question as to why he was not reported missing, it was simply not uncommon for him to be gone for a day or two. He had in fact been previously reported as a runaway.

“You know how you watch Forensic Files or something and however many years cold the case is they can solve it,” Tolbert said. “[We want it solved,] even if [the killers] are 90 years old now or dead.”

The aunts agree that even that would offer some satisfaction.

To live every day wondering and never having justice is excruciating pain. 

Throughout the investigation, the family had received tips as to what happened to Justin.

“I had a text from a girl, I don’t remember her name, but she had text me and said, ‘I know some stuff about Justin,’” Tolbert said. “[She said], he was put in a dryer.”

Roney said she had heard information that Justin was beaten unconscious to the point the murderers thought he was dead.

According to Roney and the information she received, the murderers put Justin’s body in a dryer, and Justin had bled out before he was put on the tracks.

“We don’t know how true that is,” Roney said.

However, truth in the rumor he had bled out before he was placed on the tracks can be confirmed in the fact that the first sign of blood was found under the third engine of the train.

The train had a total of six engines and 39 cars, and was traveling at 45 miles per hour.

The boyfriend of one of Justin’s aunts is the person who identified his body.

“He was a drug addict, and when he saw Justin, his life changed,” Tolbert said. “He doesn’t do drugs and is now clean. He had nightmares.”

The aunts agree that Justin’s body was torn apart by the train, but the train did not kill him.

At this time in the investigation, tips were coming in, but the aunts said the police weren’t talking to them. They did speak with Justin’s grandparents a few times, and without knowing exactly what was said, they do know that Tim was a suspect in Justin’s murder for a time.

However, the aunts agree that most of the interviews with police were targeted toward the Johnsons and Scotts, who lived next door.

There was a time when a pair of work boots were turned in as evidence in the investigation.

“There was blood in the boots, or blood on the boots,” Tolbert said. “We thought, they’ve got something. But, then they lost the evidence. We just don’t know what to believe,” she said.

Shortly after the murder of Justin Hocutt, the grandparents whom Justin was living with were dealing with some harassment issues.

The Johnsons and Scotts were still living next door to them.

“They were shooting guns at my mom and dad’s house,” Roney said. “One night, I happened to be there while they were doing that, of course we called the cops, but they wouldn’t do anything about the Johnsons.” 

According to the aunts, the Johnsons and Scotts would yell over the fence that separated the properties, “Come here and we will show you what we did to Justin.”

“They made these comments all the time,” Roney said.

In the early morning hours of Oct. 8, 1999, when Justin was being chased out of the Johnsons’ home, it was because the girlfriend’s father, Harold, found them sleeping together on the floor, fully clothed.

There were older boys in the home, the sons of Harold’s live-in girlfriend, Brenda Scott.

“We had heard that they are the ones who murdered Justin,” Roney said.

The aunts said the Scott boys were in their twenties at the time.

Another twist in the investigation came when three residents were arrested and freed on a $15,000 bond after pleading not guilty to hindering the investigation.

Harold Lee Johnson, 39, Floyd Eugene Johnson, 60, and Brenda Scott, 42, were accused of keeping law officers away from Justin Hocutt’s girlfriend, Harold Lee Johnson’s daughter.

The aunts agree that Harold Lee Johnson’s daughter knows what happened to Justin.

“We would hope that [the justice system] would make [the murderers] accountable,” Roney said. “But, if our justice system doesn’t do that, they will answer one day to a Higher Power.

“They will pay for it one day.”

Roney said she believes if Harold Johnson’s daughter and others with information would speak up about the experiences they have had, the murderers would be brought to justice.

The aunts think that the reason people haven’t come forward yet is because they are afraid of retaliation from the murderers for speaking up.

“Maybe living with this all this time, [the murderers] will come forward,” Roney said. 

The last time an officer spoke to the family about Justin’s murder, was when an officer spoke to Justin’s grandmother nearly 16 years ago.

“The week before his death I took my dad to the doctor and Justin had come with us,” Tolbert said. “I remembered noticing the shirt that he was wearing that day. It had skulls and knives on it, and it to me seemed very aggressive. I asked him why he was wearing that shirt and he said because he liked that kind of stuff. 

“I told him that he had never worn that style of clothes before. We had an argument about it because I told him that is how people perceived him. Not a week later and he was dead. I never got to say, ‘Justin, I am so sorry’. It has always bothered me.”

Justin’s body was cremated, and his family still holds hope that one day there will be Justice for Justin.

Justin’s mother took his ashes back to Nebraska with her, and his father was sentenced to prison for 13 years, which is where he died in September 2020 from a heart attack.

Can an investigation turned cold be solved?

Justin Hocutt’s cold body was found torn apart on the train tracks in Seligman on Oct. 9, 1999 — 21 years ago. 

The early morning hours on those tracks were chilly, foggy and would soon be the site of a horrendous scene — the mangled body of 14-year-old Justin Hocutt.

Hocutt was last seen before his murder running from his neighbor’s home at 3:30 a.m. on Oct. 8, 1999 — a full day before his body would be found.

Justin was being chased out of the home of his girlfriend by her father Harold Lee Johnson, 39.

Although Justin lived just next door, he never arrived to the safety of his own home.

The next sighting of Hocutt could have been made of nightmares. His body was ravaged by a train headed southbound through Seligman. The train made contact with Hocutt’s body sometime between 4-6 a.m. on Oct. 9, 1999.

When his body was found 229 yards from the point of impact, he was a mere 100 yards from his own home, and 300 feet from the Johnson’s home, where he was last seen.

The train that dismembered his body was carrying a load of 3,500 tons. It had six engines and 39 total cars traveling at 45 miles per hour.

In 1998, there were 536 railroad trespasser fatalities, 19 of which were in Missouri.

Why was Justin Hocutt on those tracks that night?

Did he commit suicide? Was he intoxicated?

These were some of the first thoughts going through his family’s minds, as well as police investigators.

According to Cassville Democrat articles between Oct. 13 and Oct. 27, 1999, the toxicology reports showed no alcohol or drugs in his system.

Additionally, the first sign of blood was found under the third engine.

With this information, former Barry County Coroner Skip White recorded the death as a homicide.

Now, the questions shift to who killed Justin Hocutt, and why?

White said the first thing to remember is that it doesn’t matter what kind of child Justin Hocutt was — he was a child.

“I have worked several train wrecks in my career,” he said. “It destroys whatever evidence would have been there, other than blood.

“This young man, from what I can gather from that day, was found in an apartment [on the morning of Oct. 8, 1999]. I believe, the father of [Hocutt’s girlfriend] had his sons take [Hocutt] somewhere, and I believe they beat on him.”

White said whether they intended to kill Justin Hocutt over the incident or not is still a mystery.

The father of the girlfriend was Harold Lee Johnson, who had a live-in girlfriend at the time of the incident, Brenda Scott. Johnson didn’t have sons of his own living in the home, White is referring to the sons of Scott.

“I do know he was killed, or died, somewhere other than on the train tracks,” White said. “Then, I feel they got nervous and took [Hocutt’s body] up and put him on the train tracks to they to cover up what they had done.”

White said he felt like the crime was never investigated rightfully so.

“We found him on the tracks that morning, before daylight,” he said. “We also had a good investigator with the railroad, [Ron Sparks].

“Ron was pretty sharp. Once we took the body and the investigation was going nowhere, I called this organization in Virginia.”

The Virginia organization was the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which sent down four investigators from all over the United States to look into Hocutt’s murder.

“[This was about a month after the murder] when I realized the investigation wasn’t going anywhere,” White said. “They stayed for a week. At the time, I had a hard time even getting them an office to meet at from law enforcement.”

White said the four investigators came to the same conclusion that he came to about what happened to Justin.

“When they left, they asked law enforcement if we could put two detectives on this to follow up on a couple of things,” he said. “Something was wrong [with this investigation], and I don’t know exactly what it was.”

White said to his knowledge Brenda Scott’s sons may have been brought in, but he thought they weren’t interrogated like they should have been.

“I do know there was a pair of boots one of those boys was wearing,” White said. “He took them to a friend’s trailer and told him to discard these boots, then he went to work that morning barefooted.”

White said he feels very strongly that Justin Hocutt was forgotten about.

“For charges to be brought, the Sheriff, and or the prosecutor, has to bring those charges,” he said. “There were never any charges brought up, but there sure could have been.”

Dave Bowman was one of the investigators on the case.

White said he was always very good at his job, but feels in this specific case he wasn’t given the leeway he needed to work the case properly.

“When Ralph Hendrix was sheriff, he had a pretty good lid on Seligman and the problems that it had,” he said. “Once Ralph quit being sheriff, Seligman started again to be problematic. I never felt like the sheriff had a hand on what was going on down there.”

White speaks to the issues of drug use.

“I think this father [Harold Johnson] woke up and went into the room where these two kids were,” White said. “They were either doing something they shouldn’t have been or he [Justin Hocutt] was just there and the old man didn’t like it. So, [Harold] called the boys [Scott’s sons] out from their room and they took him out and worked on him.”

White said all the train accidents he has seen absolutely have blood.

“[In the Hocutt case] there was just not enough blood left,” he said. “He bled out somewhere else. I do not know where that was.”

The Johnsons and Scotts lived in a duplex apartment, and the apartment attached to theirs was vacant at the time of the murder.

“We went in there and they luminoled the apartment, there was enough [blood] in there [to explain what was missing from Justin’s body],” White said. “I don’t believe [Justin] had been dead for 24 hours. He did not have rigor mortis. Of course, after 24 hours rigor mortis would have been out of his body, because it comes in at about 10-12 hours and leaves at about 20 hours.”

This information is relevant to the fact that Justin Hocutt was last seen nearly 24 hours before his body was found.

“I do think those boys [Scott’s sons] were checked out, and they were at work that day [Oct. 8, 1999],” White said. “In extreme deaths, rigor mortis can come and go pretty quick, so I wouldn’t rule out [Justin was murdered in the early morning of Oct. 8].”

According to White, from the investigation, there wasn’t enough coming up to say exactly what had happened.

“I know who killed him — I know who killed this boy,” White said. “So does everyone else who was in the investigation. I think the girl, [Johnson’s daughter] knows exactly what happened.”

White said he believes there is still a chance to solve this murder.

“I think if I were the sheriff and could talk to the prosecuting attorney and give it to a couple of investigators for two or three weeks, I think there is a very good chance this could be solved,” White said. “I always have. I think a jury in Barry County, if they listened to everything and had all the facts, there would be someone charged.”

When looking at this case versus other train wrecks, the biggest sign of foul play was the lack of blood.

“I think they laid his head to where it would do the most damage,” White said. “Let’s say he was knocked out and put on there, he would have bled so much. It is unbelievable how much blood is in a human being — and it just wasn’t there.”

White said he wants this case solved.

“I have for years tried to get people interested in this case,” he said. “When I became coroner, it took me a long time to prove to law enforcement that I was not just a body pick up agency.

“I go to investigate the death.”

White said he thinks about Justin Hocutt’s death all the time. 

“It bothers me,” he said. “There has to be an answer, and somebody has to answer for this. We can’t have 14-year-old children being murdered in Barry County.”

White said he believes the murder was a beating that went too far, and the murderers thought they could get away with it.

“I know what happened, and I know who is responsible,” White said. “It can still be solved.”

White said it is important for people who have information in the Justin Hocutt case to come forward — it is critical to solving this case.

Evidence needed to charge suspected murderers is still in play

On Oct. 9, 1999, when the mangled body of 14-year-old Justin Hocutt was found along the train tracks in Seligman, it was clear this case would be a murder investigation. 

While the murderers may have thought the end of the story was disposing of Justin’s body on the train tracks to cover up their crime — it was only the beginning.

Mick Epperly, former Barry County Sheriff, said he investigated the murder, and what the killers don’t know is there is still evidence at the ready to be used to charge them — even 21 years after the murder occurred.

“From the very beginning on Oct. 9, we went to the crime scene,” he said. “What we found was Justin’s body on the railroad tracks. The scene was terrible, especially with it being a young boy.”

Epperly said while canvasing the scene, they went to a spot on the west end of the tracks in the grassy area that looked like someone had been there hanging out by the railroad tracks.

“That was also the same area as the point of impact,” he said. “There was a little blood at the impact, where the train hit him.”

However, it was very obvious to those investigating that there wasn’t as much blood at the point of impact as there should have been.

“We did determine that [Justin] wasn’t killed by this train,” Epperly said. “There was an old laundromat next to Brenda and Harold’s apartment.”

The last sighting of Justin Hocutt alive was by Harold Johnson, the father of Justin’s girlfriend, nearly 24 hours before Justin’s body would be found ravaged on the train tracks.

Brenda Scott, Harold Johnson’s live-in girlfriend, along with her sons, Johnson and his daughter all lived together in a duplex, which was located right next door to Justin’s home.

Hocutt’s body was found just 300 feet from the Scott and Johnson home — the last place he was seen alive.

“The old laundromat wasn’t functioning at the time,” Epperly said. “We believe [the murderers] put the boy in there.”

Investigators tested the laundromat with luminol and found evidence of blood. However, there wasn’t enough blood to run tests on.

“We believe [Brenda Scott’s sons] took [Hocutt] into the laundromat,” Epperly said. “You know, this whole family is involved.”

Epperly said Hocutt’s girlfriend, Harold Lee Johnson’s daughter, was found in bed with Justin in the early morning hours of Oct. 8, 1999.

“We got a witness statement from [Harold’s daughter] from that,” he said. “She wouldn’t talk for awhile. She went though all this trauma and was worried [the Scott sons] may do something to her [for talking].”

However, Epperly said she did eventually talk, and there was an affidavit sent to the prosecuting attorney’s office, but they never filed charges on it. 

At the time of this submitted affidavit, the girl had had problems with drug use, and the prosecuting attorney didn’t believe she would have made a reliable witness. 

“But, with cases we get like this, we don’t get the most upstanding people sometimes, and while she did have drug problems, she was still an eye witness,” Epperly said.

Epperly said he believes the entire motive behind the brutal murder of Hocutt was the fact he was caught in bed with Johnson’s daughter.

Physical evidence on Hocutt’s body was hard to find, because according to Epperly, his lifeless body was hit not just once, but twice, by passing trains.

“One went down that morning headed south,” Epperly said, “And, before they ever knew what happened, he was hit again by a northbound train.

“That was a gruesome sight. It was clear to me that it was a homicide.”

Epperly said due to the fact that while looking at the point of impact there was very little blood, he could instantly determine that Hocutt’s body was placed on the tracks after he was already dead. 

“If he would have been hit [while alive], there would have been blood splatter everywhere,” he said. “There is no way I would think he was walking the track and just got hit by a train, especially because we know that there was an argument and a fight inside the Johnson’s house.” 

Hocutt was last seen alive by Harold Johnson while being chased out of the house at approximately 3 a.m. on Oct. 8, 1999, this leaves a 24-hour gap of time between the argument and Hocutt’s body being found.

“I knew there had to be a fight inside the [Johnson’s] residence,” Epperly said. “They were upset by finding him in bed with [Johnson’s daughter]. All things went to heck right then.”

At this point, Epperly believes the murderers began to panic.

“Now, we got to do something with the body,” Epperly believes the murders thought. “That is where we are pretty certain they took the body over to the laundromat and placed him inside. Then, they came up with the idea, ‘Well, why don’t we just put him up by the railroad and that way it will look like he was hit by a train, and well, end of story.’ But that wasn’t even near the end of the story.”

Investigators followed thousands of leads on the Hocutt case, according to Epperly.

“Everybody called in about this or that person who knew him,” he said. “A lot of it was done in Arkansas. We spent a lot of time down there rounding up people to talk to. There was just a lot of interviews.”

Epperly said this is one of those cases where there is a body, but there are no concrete leads.

“I believe pretty strongly you have to prove these cases,” he said. “Someone has to come forward.”

The prosecutor’s office and the sheriff’s office have an eye witness account to what happened on the night of Hocutt’s murder.

“Would [Johnson’s daughter] make a good witness on the stand?” Epperly said. “She is pretty shaky and she has been messed up in drugs. But, she was willing to sign an affidavit on it. She is the witness.”

The Scott and Johnson families have been in a lot of trouble since 1999 — including Johnson’s daughter.

“We have done so many interviews with people, and while a lot of them had their theories, there wasn’t much  more than that,” he said. “Yes, the boots came up, and we even seized those boots. But, there was very little [blood], and of course DNA could be placed that way.”

One of the Scott sons was headed out to work in the poultry houses barefoot.

“We had asked him about that, and he said, ‘Oh, a lot of times I go without my shoes or boots,’” Epperly said. “Well, I can’t imagine him doing that.”

Epperly said he believes the Scott boys, as well as Brenda Scott herself, were responsible for the murder of Hocutt.

“[Brenda Scott, Harold Johnson and Eugene Johnson] were all involved in hindering the prosecution,” Epperly said. “We brought them in the next day or so.

“As we were locking them down in the jail, I plainly remember, it has always been stuck in my head, Brenda Scott hollered at the others, ‘Don’t say nothin.’ I think that is a pretty good clue that this happened in their house.”

Epperly has had quite a few cases in the 20 years he was sheriff.

“We solved just about all of them,” he said. “We do still have some that aren’t closed. 

“We have one case that we know who done it, but the prosecutor won’t do anything about it because they do not have a body.”

However, in the case of Hocutt, there was a body and there was a lot of circumstantial evidence.

“As of today, I think the Johnsons and the Scotts are responsible for this,” Epperly said. “[Justin] was laying in bed with [Johnson’s daughter] and it made them mad. I don’t know, but more than likely, they didn’t mean to kill [Justin]. They were trying to teach him a lesson, a fight took off, and afterward, they panicked and had to figure out how to get rid of the body.”

Epperly said it was strange because on that dark early morning, while investigators were on the train track — Hocutt’s house was directly across from where he was found.

“The ambulance is out there and the sirens are going off, and Tim, [Justin’s father], doesn’t come out,” he said. “That was odd. I mean, he knew he was missing. The first thing I would do would be go out and see what’s going on.”

Epperly said Tim Hocutt was a person of interest due to the way he behaved.

“But, then he got locked up in Arkansas,” he said. “We went there and questioned him some more, but didn’t get anywhere.

“We tried to follow up on all the leads that came in at that time. We would have liked to get it solved, as well, we wanted justice for Justin too.”

The key to solving this case is to use the affidavit and statement from Johnson’s daughter. 

“I know she has a terrible background, but you still can’t rule her out,” he said. “[Additionally], people talk, they talk to each other and they think it is in confidence. This case is going to need someone to come forward or we have to use this affidavit.”

Epperly said he doesn’t think Justin Hocutt ever made it out of the Johnson and Scott house alive.

“I think he was killed in that house,” he said. 

According to Epperly, the reason this is still an unsolved case is due to the prosecutor never bringing up charges based on the affidavit.

“I can’t answer for [Amy Boxx], but I think she would tell me that [Johnson’s daughter] is a weak witness,” he said. “But I think she has to testify in court. She is the witness.”

Epperly did say that if charges were filed and she was put on the stand to testify and she changed her story, that would be a major issue.

Johnson’s daughter still lives in the area.

“As far as the Scott boys, I think they are still in the area because I have seen them on the inmate roster,” Epperly said. “[Justin Hocutt] was just trying to survive in the area. It’s a bad situation, and we would like to get it solved.

“It is easy to sit back and Monday morning quarterback. A lot of the public don’t know all of the people we followed up leads with.”

Epperly said in order to get justice for Hocutt, someone needs to come forward.

“After all this time, I just know there is someone out there who has heard the story of that night,” he said. “I think it can still be solved. The sheriff’s office would have to go to the prosecutor’s office and say we need to use her [Johnson’s daughter] as a witness and let’s go to court.”

14-year-old’s death one of 6 cold cases in county still open

After 21 years cold, what would it take to solve the murder of 14-year-old Justin Hocutt?

Hocutt’s mangled body was found on the train tracks in Seligman on the morning of Oct. 9, 1999, however, he was last seen alive 24 hours prior to the discovery of his body, by his girlfriend’s father.

Harold Johnson, the next door neighbor to Justin and his family, was also the father of Justin’s girlfriend. Allegedly, Johnson was the last person to see Justin alive as he chased him out of his home after seeing Justin and his daughter laying together at about 3 a.m. on Oct. 8.

Somehow, Justin never made it to his home, which was right next door. 

According to Justin’s aunts, a bad drug deal between Justin’s father and the Johnsons may have been the motive behind his murder. 

Just weeks before he was killed, the Johnson and Scott family that lived together next door, had beaten Justin’s father, Tim Hocutt, over a drug related dispute.

Justin’s death was initially ruled as a homicide by former Barry County Coroner Skip White.

According to White, the main reason he ruled it as a homicide was because of the lack of blood on the scene.

As White has worked many train accidents over his career, he was able to determine that Justin was in fact dead before the train hit him.

This indicates the train tracks were used by the killers in an attempt to cover up their crime — the murder of a 14-year-old boy.

Due to the condition of the body when it was found, it was nearly impossible to confirm if Justin’s body had undergone any previous injuries unrelated to the train. 

Additionally, White had difficulty determining how long Justin had been dead before the train hit him because of the rigor mortis timeline. White said it is possible that Justin had been dead for 24 hours, making his time of death around the last time he was seen alive, which was allegedly when he was being chased out of the Johnson home.

Mick Epperly, former Barry County sheriff, said he doesn’t believe Justin ever made it out of the Johnson home alive.

However, rather than the motive for murder being drug related as his family believes, he believes the motive is related to Justin’s relationship with the daughter of Harold Johnson.

Epperly said it is more likely that when Johnson found Justin in his home with his daughter, he called on his girlfriend’s sons to teach Justin a lesson. 

Brenda Scott was the live-in girlfriend of Harold Johnson, and her sons lived in the apartment complex as well.

While Epperly also said he isn’t sure if the intention was to kill Justin, a beating took place, which unfortunately went too far, resulting in Justin’s murder.

Epperly believes at that point, the Scott sons, as well as Brenda Scott, Harold Johnson and Harold’s brother Eugene Johnson, began to panic and come up with a plan to cover up the crime.

The key to solving this case, according to Epperly, is the eye witness account of the events as told by Harold Johnson’s daughter.

A signed affidavit, producing the timeline and eyewitness account of the murder, was submitted to the prosecutor’s office, but due to the drug use and history of Harold Johnson’s daughter, it was deemed unreliable and never used to bring up charges.

Following the murder, information about the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, as well as a deck of 52 playing cards, may shed some light on the original investigation.

Additionally, Sheriff-Elect Danny Boyd has said how this investigation will be solved into in the future, and current Sheriff Gary Davis is overseeing the current case files and evidence on the Hocutt case, which may in fact uncover the truth and bring charges to those responsible for the murder.

Brian Martin, former deputy with the Barry County Sheriff’s Office now with the Southwest Missouri Cyber Crimes Task Force, said after about a month from the discovery of Justin’s body on the tracks, White called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to help investigate the murder.

“There were investigators from around the country who are retired law enforcement officers and work on these cases,” he said. “Usually, they investigate cases of missing children, but they felt they could investigate Justin’s case.

“There was a retired homicide investigator with the Kansas City Police Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officer and a retired LAPD homicide investigator.”

Martin said he worked alongside them the whole time they were in Barry County investigating Justin’s murder.

“We went over the weak and poor points of the initial investigation,” he said. “The main problem was that you only have one chance to work a crime scene, and when the body was discovered, people thought he had just been hit by the train, so it wasn’t processed as it should have been.

“The biggest issue with that was at the time, camera equipment and quality were not what it is today, and the photos taken of the crime scene didn’t turn out well. But, we didn’t know that until after they had been developed.”

According to Martin, the investigators also thought people should have been interviewed sooner than they were.

“And sadly, because the body had been so damaged and left exposed for a time, there were missing pieces which had been drug out by animals,” he said. “The main point in all of this was the failure to recognize it for what it was — a murder.”

Martin said in the days and weeks following the murder, the investigators, including himself, were becoming suspicious of the Johnsons and Scotts.

“[The crime scene was directly across from their apartment building,], and they were watching us on the tracks investigating, and they were nervous,” Martin said. “We searched the vacant apartment in the complex and we got a lot of reactions to the luminal, and it smelled strongly of bleach. However, bleach also reacts to luminal.”

Martin believes that the apartment had been cleaned only to cover up the murder, because it wasn’t a vacant apartment that was regularly cleaned or maintained.

“I have worked a lot of homicides, and I could tell from the get-go this was a crime of passion,” he said. “We know what happened, because over the years, Harold Johnson’s daughter has told us. 

“The paradox is, big trauma messes people up, and for years after they do stupid stuff as a result of that dramatic experience.”

Martin said that can make a witness impeachable.

“To prosecute this case, we would need people to talk,” he said. “Over 21 years, evidence has been lost. There is a time frame to do certain things, and we have exceeded that by a lot.

“Over the years, we have arrested the Scott boys for other things, which has cemented in my mind their guilt.”

So, what does a deck of 52 playing cards have to do with an unsolved murder?

According to Martin, in the early 2000s, one of the people with the missing persons bureau with the Missouri Highway Patrol went to a conference.

“There, he saw other agencies who took unsolved serious crimes and put a photo of the victim and a brief description about what happened and printed them onto a card,” he said. “Then, they printed thousands of these decks of cards and gave them to inmates in prison.”

The purpose was to get the inmates talking, and maybe someone could come forward with information about an unsolved crime.

“A lot of these cards were focused on crimes involving children,” he said. “Even hard criminals won’t put up with crimes against children.

“Through that, we did end up with a couple of leads in Justin’s case, but those leads just confirmed a lot of stuff we already knew.”

Sheriff-Elect Danny Boyd, who will be taking office in January, said while he intends to move forward on this case and reopening the investigation, there is a problem in the fact that it is 21 years cold.

“I’ll have to look back and reinvestigate reports and evidence,” he said. “Cold cases take awhile to get going. People may be gone or even deceased.”

It will look like a new investigation in the sense that everything will have to be redone.

“It will take the community coming forward,” Boyd said. “Witnesses will have to be reinterviewed. I want to come in and open this case back up.”

With technology where it is today, it may be possible to use physical evidence, if it exists to solve this case. 

“It would be tremendous to this case,” he said. “Hopefully there are video or audio recording of previous interviews. That would help.

“Personally, I believe this is solvable. If you saw something, please come forward and talk to me in confidence. I want Justin and his family to have closure — he deserves that.”

Boyd said every lead will be followed.

Gary Davis, Barry County sheriff, said in reference to case files and evidence in the Hocutt case, there have been no leads while he has been in office.

“I have not reviewed this file,” he said. “We do have the boots [mentioned in the previous Hocutt stories]. As of Jan. 24, they were relocated in the evidence room and moved to a new location due to organizing and consolidating. Remember back in 1999, DNA technology wasn’t anything like it is now, so we wouldn’t have had the ability back then to run tests on them.”

Davis said a lot of the files and documents have been computerized over the years.

“I am looking at 79 documents right now, all over the Hocutt case,” he said. “We have a majority of interviews, but there are polygraphs, toxicology reports, autopsy reports, crime scene sign-in logs, phone conversations, updated reports, press conferences and even information on the individuals arrested for hindering the investigation.”

According to Davis, these documents start in 1999, and the most recent document is an interview from 2011.

“I think Epperly summed it up pretty good,” Davis said. “It is going to take someone with intimate knowledge of what happened to come forward.

“The best thing for the public to know is that this has been continuously worked on. There wasn’t much added between 2005 and 2009, but in 2009, 2010 and 2011, there were interviews. When people brings stuff up, it is followed up on.”

Barry County currently has six unsolved cold cases that remain open, including two murders, one of which is the murder of Hocutt, two gunshot wound deaths and two sets of remains found in the county.