Staff photo by Tyler Jett // Eric Griffin, 53, holds a photo of his father, Ernest Griffin, who was killed in November 1984. For decades, Eric Griffin believes his father's killer would not be found.ROCKY FACE, Ga. - In October 1984, Eric Griffin rode with his father, Ernest, to the Evans & Black carpet mill before second shift, where Eric drove a forklift and Ernest was a supervisor. Ernest talked about his new woman - and her estranged husband.
Ernest, 44, heard that Jay Burlison was making threats. He allegedly sent the same message through his wife, Mary Burlison, and their 7-year-old daughter: When I see Ernest Griffin, I'm going to kill him.
"Daddy, I wish you would quit seeing her," Eric Griffin recalls saying in the car that day. "I'm worried about Jay."
"Buddy," Ernest Griffin responded, "he ain't gonna do nothin' but run his mouth."
Two weeks later, on Nov. 11, Eric Griffin and his wife drove to his father's Tunnel Hill home for dinner with him and Mary Burlison. Ernest Griffin fried some chicken and baked some more. After they ate, Ernest Griffin said he needed to drive Mary Burlison to the Golden Gallon convenience store on Chattanooga Road, where she worked.
Eric Griffin, then 20, patted his dad on the belly and told him to swing by the house afterward.
"I love you, old man," he said.
Around midnight, according to a Whitfield County Sheriff's Office incident report, Jay Burlison pulled his car behind Ernest Griffin's at the store. He opened fire with a .357. After killing Ernest Griffin in front of the ice box, Jay Burlison turned to his wife and shot her in the chin, left shoulder and lower back.
Mary Burlison ran back into the store, according to the incident report. Her husband followed but did not shoot again. He hit her with the gun, pointed it at the convenience store clerk and drove away.
Nobody in town knew where he was after that. For months, Eric Griffin drove around North Georgia, looking for Jay Burlison's car. He hung around Mary Burlison's house in Rocky Face, wondering if he would show up again. He waited outside the carpet mill where Jay Burlison used to work. After about a year, he said, he gave up.
"I thought nobody cared about my daddy's life but me," he said.
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Nearly 34 years after the shooting, police arrested Jay Burlison in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, on Monday. Conasauga Judicial Circuit District Attorney Bert Poston said his office's chief investigator, Glenn Swinney, held on to a copy of the case file. About three months ago, someone applied for Social Security benefits on behalf of Jay Burlison, and law enforcement officers were notified.
Poston was not clear on the details Tuesday. But Eric Griffin and his mother, Dimple Lewis, said Jay Burlison was caught because he had gone to the hospital. Eric Griffin said Jay Burlison received treatment for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and a hospital administrator tried to apply for government benefits for him. That's when police realized where Jay Burlison was.
Police drove him to the Whitfield County Jail on Monday evening where he faces charges of murder, two counts of aggravated assault and failure to appear. He will go before a Superior Court judge for a bond hearing Friday morning.
Lewis, Ernest Griffin's ex-wife, said she has forgiven Jay Burlison. She never expected to see him in court. When Swinney called her three months ago, she had trouble understanding why a criminal investigator would be on the phone with her.
"For 34 years, we've wondered, 'Where is this man at?'" Lewis said Tuesday. "'Is he in Dalton and we just don't recognize him anymore?'"
The only question she wants to ask him is: Are you saved?
"I don't want anyone to die and go to hell unsaved, you know?" she said. "What he did was a crime. It was bad. It was awful. But I would like to know he has asked for forgiveness."
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Twenty days before the shooting, on Oct. 22, 1984, Mary Burlison filed for divorce from her husband. In the civil complaint, she said they had been married 11 years. They had a daughter together, but the union was "irretrievably broken." Her attorney also requested a restraining order, writing that Jay Burlison "threatens her with physical injury should she file a divorce action." He added that Jay Burlison had left with her 11-year-old daughter from a previous marriage.
Mary Burlison asked for custody of the children. Three days later, in a countersuit, Jay Burlison's lawyer wrote that the marriage "is not irretrievably broken and can be saved." Jay Burlison requested custody of the two girls, including the one from Mary Burlison's previous marriage.
But on Nov. 8, 1984, a judge granted custody of the girls to Mary Burlison. The judge ordered that Jay Burlison could keep their daughter on the weekends, picking her up after school on Thursday and dropping her back off at Mary Burlison's home at 6 p.m. on Saturday. The judge ordered Jay Burlison not to get out of his car when he dropped the girl off. The judge also ordered him to stay away from the Golden Gallon convenience store where Mary Burlison worked.
Meanwhile, Eric Griffin said, his father and Mary Burlison began to hit it off. Lewis had recently left Ernest Griffin, and he frequently stopped by the Golden Gallon after work. Before Eric Griffin knew it, Mary Burlison was hanging around his father after hours.
He said Ernest Griffin was his best friend. When they weren't working together, they painted cars out of his father's garage.
After Ernest Griffin was shot that night, Eric Griffin said his brother, Jeffrey, stopped by the store. Eric Griffin thinks this was a coincidence. (Jeffrey Griffin has since died, too.) But Eric Griffin got a call around midnight, telling him that their father was lying on the ground, blood coming out of his ears. Eric Griffin said he drove to the store, then followed an ambulance to Hamilton Medical Center. There, he remembers a nurse, "I'm sorry; we've done all we can do."
Eric Griffin screamed.
In the 33 years since, the convenience store has become a Kangaroo. But the ice box next to where his father died, Eric Griffin said, is in the same location. For decades, he refused to stop there. He wouldn't even look over at it. But last year, he decided to buy a soda there. Nothing big. But for him, a sign of progress.
Like Lewis, he has forgiven Jay Burlison. He will follow the court proceedings, and he believes Jay Burlison deserves punishment if a jury convicts him. He believes Jay Burlison, now 75, will die in prison. But the sentence is almost beside the point.
He has forgiven Jay Burlison because he believes, had his father survived, Ernest Griffin would have forgiven the shooter. He also thinks about Jay Burlison's life since 1984, how he must have walked in fear. He must have been afraid to get a driver's license, afraid of police roadblocks, afraid of seeing his old friends.
"That's not a life at all," Eric Griffin said Tuesday. "You can't live your life with a murder warrant hanging over you."
Contact staff writer Tyler Jett at 423-757-6476 or tjett @timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @LetsJett.