Joan Green knows who killed her son.
Years after his death, years after police closed the case and called it a suicide, one determined detective reopened the file and started asking questions.
That's how Ms. Green knows brutal truths about her son's last hours.
That's why every year she runs an "in memory" notice in the obituary pages of the Chattanooga Times Free Press. In the notice photo, her son smiles. He holds a football.
Before that detective called, this is all she knew:
Jody went to a football game in Rossville on the night of Sept. 8, 1979. He was supposed to ride home with his sister, Robin, and brother, Gene. But as teens often do, he changed plans, saying he'd get a ride home with his girlfriend.
Jody AndersonIn MemoryJody Anderson Mar. 21, 1964 -- Sept. 8, 1979"In memory of Jody Anderson who left us 30 years ago today.We know it wasn't your choice but to someone else this was your day.We miss you so, words cannot say. We will never forget that tragic day.God only knows what really took place, and when the end comes they will pay for their foul play."We love you Jody,Moma, Robin and GeneHOW TO HELPAnyone with information related to the death of Jody Anderson is asked to call the Fort Oglethorpe Police Department at 706-866-2512.
The next morning, Ms. Green got a call from a friend -- Jody was dead.
"I was in the backyard; she just came out screaming," said Robin Moran, Jody's sister, who was 19 at the time.
Gene Anderson said he was lying in bed when he heard the news about his younger brother.
"Mom came in and told me Jody was dead," he said. He told his mother that wasn't possible.
He drove to where his brother's body was, a fence across from his girlfriend's house. He ran and pushed away a police officer, getting close enough to see the body.
"It's affected me a lot. I think about it every day," Mr. Anderson said.
At the time, Fort Oglethorpe police told Ms. Green her son's death must have been a suicide.
But the body was found slouching, with the rope that supposedly hanged him dangling loosely around his neck and tied to the fence. And his brother said he saw cigarette burns on the body.
The case file sat nearly empty for more than three years. That's when Detective Jerry Morris reopened the case, convinced it was no suicide.
Over the next nine years, Detective Morris interviewed more than 100 people, exhumed Jody's body to look for additional evidence and scoured the department for any way to push the case forward.
Somebody talked.
A man who said he was there the night Jody died named those involved in his torture and killing, Detective Morris said. The witness described how he and four others picked Jody up at a gas station and took him to a secluded spot on the Chickamauga Battlefield National Military Park, where they beat him, burned him with cigarettes and stomped his fingers when he tried to climb out of a hole.
The group hanged him on the battlefield, then moved his body and staged it near the fence in Fort Oglethorpe.
But the witness who gave Detective Morris a break, who pointed the way toward potential arrests in the cold case, was deemed mentally incapable of standing trial, the detective said.
All of the taped confession, every detail, was inadmissible. None of what the man told Detective Morris could be used, he said.
That's where the case has stalled. Detective Morris left the Fort Oglethorpe Police Department in 1991 and handed over what he could to the next detective.
Fort Oglethorpe Police Chief David Eubanks said he thumbs through the file from time to time. He worked the case as a detective, before making chief.
"Well, it's frustrating, especially for the family," he said. "If nothing else, we'd like to clear it for them. To give them some peace of mind."
The chief has not talked with Ms. Green. He doesn't want to call, stir up emotions and raise her hopes.
Unless someone comes forward, someone with firsthand knowledge, there isn't much progress to be made, he said.
Ms. Green holds hope. She says she understands that real answers or justice is unlikely, but anything will help.
Gene Anderson knows the most about his brother's death among the family.
He saw the lifeless body slouched against the fence. Years later, he rode with Detective Morris one afternoon and learned almost everything the detective knew. He listened to the tapes until he couldn't take it anymore. He stood in the spot where detectives believe his brother was killed.
Ms. Moran misses her brother. She wrote the words to his annual in memory notice. She wants answers and someone to pay for what was done.
"We know there are people that know who did this," she said.