Staff Photo by Angela Lewis/Chattanooga Times Free Press
Jan 7, 2011--Julenne and David Goetcheus talk about the murder of their sons, Sean and Donny, which occurred 13 years ago Sunday.On the 14th anniversary of their sons' brutal slayings, David and Julenne Goetcheus say their lives were divided by the crime.
"My life and our lives are clearly defined to before and after," David said. "It was like the days of innocence and the days of pain."
On Jan. 9, 1997, someone shot Sean and Donny Goetcheus execution-style in their Rosemont Drive home.
Each year, David and Julenne painfully relive the traumas so that perhaps someone, somewhere, will bring new information to police.
"Every year we've done this, and every year you've got to dredge this stuff back up again, and it never gets any easier. It just does not get any easier," Julenne said.
Framed photographs of the boys hang on the living room wall of their parents' Soddy-Daisy home. Taken just a few months before their deaths -- Sean was 25, Donny, 19 -- the pictures are a daily reminder of lives lost, but worth the pain to keep their memory fresh.
At the time of the killings, Assistant Chattanooga Police Chief Tim Carroll was a homicide detective.
Carroll remembered that other officers were at the scene that night. His job was to notify the boys' parents.
He knocked, and Julenne opened the door.
"I said, 'I've got bad news. Sean and Donny have been killed,'" Carroll remembered.
Julenne thought it was joke. Carroll wasn't wearing a uniform, and she didn't see a badge -- this was just the sort of dark-humored prank Sean might pull.
"She started laughing and said, 'Who sent you?'" Carroll recalled.
It took a trip back to his car to retrieve his badge and more talking for the weight of the news to crash into the Goetcheus' lives.
That first visit would be one of dozens over the following years.
David and Julenne said Carroll talked with them nearly every day for the next three months.
Fourteen years after the brothers' deaths, Carroll immediately can perform a mental walk-through of the crime scene and remains convinced that at least one of the brothers knew the killer or killers.
"It wasn't like a home invasion, with the door kicked in or anything," he said.
Police believe whoever killed the brothers shot Sean once in the head as he stood in the kitchen doorway just inside the entrance to the house. The gunman then walked to the bathroom, kicked open the door and shot Donny twice.
Sean was working at Rick Davis' Brainerd Road gold and diamond store and nearly had finished his certification as a gem specialist.
Donny, who lived with his brother, was scheduled to start classes at Chattanooga State the next week. He had a 14-month-old daughter.
It took David and Julenne nearly a year to start speaking publicly about the case. David admits the tragedy strained their marriage, driving him to drink and dark, suicidal thoughts.
"I was angry. I'm still angry," he said. "I lived in hell for years; then I got some help."
But the unrelenting knowledge that someone quite literally has gotten away with murder still eats at David, who lost his only children on that cold January day.
Though Julenne was their stepmother, she reared the boys as her own. When the medical examiner called for someone to identify the bodies, her mind froze on an older memory.
The officials said there would be no need to come in person, that she could describe the brothers over the phone.
She agreed.
"I said, 'Well, Donny's small-framed with blond hair,'" she recounted.
There was silence on the other end of the line, and then the caller asked, "Is there anyone else I can talk to?'"
The description didn't fit.
Julenne's voice cracked and her eyes filled with tears as she explained that long-ago mix-up.
"Well, Donny was 6-foot 2-inches with brown hair ... but the little boy that I got to raise ... was a little blond boy," she said. "So in my mind, that little blond-headed boy was lying there."
Contact staff writer Todd South at tsouth@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6347.