LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN, Ga. – After eight years of waiting, Theresa Chrismer Lynch finally got the phone call she longed for.
“I’m going to hold my baby again,” she said through tears. “But this time it will be in an urn.”
On Wednesday morning, near the date in 2002 when she last heard the voice of her 17-year-old son Adam Chrismer, Lynch received word from a Fort Oglethorpe funeral home that his remains would be brought home on Friday.
Chrismer and his 16-year-old bride, Samantha Leming, were killed, dismembered and their bodies stuffed in a Johnson City warehouse in October 2002. Chrismer’s head and hands were found in Boone Lake a few days earlier.
Her son called her Oct. 4, 2002 from Johnson City, Tenn., saying he wanted to come home to Chickamauga, Ga. It was the last time she spoke to him.
Police charged Howard Hawk Willis, who spent time with the couple, with murder. In June in Johnson City, a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and gave him the death penalty.
While Leming’s body was returned to a Fort Oglethorpe funeral home and buried in 2002, authorities would not release Chrismer’s body because it was needed for evidence, Lynch said.
Chrismer’s family made arrangements at Wilson & Sons back in 2002 to have his body cremated, said Eric Huggins, the funeral home director.
On Tuesday, Huggins said, he was able to confirm with the University of Tennessee Medical Center that Chrismer’s remains would be sent home. Family visitation is scheduled for Oct. 1 and a funeral service for Oct. 2.
For eight years, Lynch said, she has made the trip from her home on Lookout Mountain near the Alabama state line to Jonesborough, Tenn., with a flicker of hope that the trial of Willis would begin soon.
But each time, she was disappointed with delays and new motions filed – pushing back the trial and keeping her from burying her son.
Finally, a specially appointed judge from Hamilton County set the trial for June and ordered that Willis represent himself after he fired more than a half dozen appointed lawyers.
But even after Willis was convicted, Lynch said, she had to wait three more months. When she finally got the call, she burst out of the small cabin where she and her husband live, leaping to tell him.
“I was laughing and crying at the same time,” she said.
Lynch posted a note on Facebook, where she has kept in touch with many of her son’s friends, letting them know a celebration would be held at the couple’s home after the funeral.
“Adam’s death cannot be left in vain,” she said.
While Lynch said she must fight through the regret that her son didn’t listen to her and stay away from Willis, she hopes to hold onto the good memories.
“I’ll embrace it and then let it go,” she said. “It just takes a while.”