The Brutal Murder of Genore Guillory
Time to Kill
When John Baillio was 13, his mother put him into the custody of Phillip Skipper. Baillio had just finished a stint in a juvenile prison for burglary and his mother found him uncontrollable.
The sexual abuse and beatings at the hands of Phillip Skipper started almost immediately.
Skipper burned Baillio with cigarettes and hot nails; he often held a knife to Baillio's throat or a gun to his head and forced the teenager to perform oral sex.
"He's a crazy, psycho son of a bitch," Baillio said.
The weekend of Genore Gulliory's murder, Phillip and Baillio drove Phillip's pickup truck to the town of Holden, about 40 miles southeast of Clinton, to pick up Johnny Hoyt and his wife, Lisa Skipper Hoyt. Lisa was also Phillip's sister.
On the trip back to Clinton, Hoyt and Baillio rode in the back of the truck. Everyone was throwing down shots of booze and popping Valium, Baillio said.
Johnny Hoyt started firing a .22-caliber revolver into the air. He looked at Baillio and said, "Would you like to kill a nigger?"
When they reached the Skippers' trailer, Baillio tumbled out of the back of the truck. He threw up and then passed out on the Skippers' sofa.
"I was drunk as a motherf-," he said.
Somewhere around one o'clock in the morning, Johnny Hoyt woke Baillio up and handed him a rope. "It's time for you to earn that tattoo on your back," Hoyt said. "Take your shoes off so you don't leave no footprints and let's go."
Hoyt carried the .22-caliber revolver he'd been firing from the back of Phillip's truck. Lisa sat across the room rolling a blunt. Phillip strolled in carrying an aluminum MacGregor baseball bat.
Hoyt was the only one wearing shoes. He'd slipped on a pair of white hi-top sneakers that belonged to Phillip and Lisa's mom.
The four of them left the Skippers' trailer and crept across the gravel road to Genore Guillory's house. It was time to commit a murder.