Billy Payne and his fiancée Billie-Jean Hayworth were brutally murdered in 2012. Their baby, who was in his mother’s arms as she was killed, miraculously survived.
Opening the unlocked back door of a house in north-eastern Tennessee, the killers crept into the home of Billy Payne and his fiancée Billie-Jean Hayworth and gunned them down, before slipping away unseen.
A few hours later, a horrified neighbour found the body of Billy, a 36-year-old factory worker, lifeless on his bed, a bullet wound to his face and his throat slashed.
In the nursery next door lay Billie-Jean, 23, shot in the head while cradling their seven-month-old son Tyler.
The baby, still in his mother's arms, was splattered in her blood - but, miraculously, had survived.
"I've tried over 100 jury cases, and 18 first-degree murders, and no other case has been like this one," says assistant district attorney general Dennis Brooks, prosecutor in the subsequent murder trials.
Residents of Mountain City were horrfied by the killings.
With a population of 2,500, it's the kind of place where nothing much ever happens.
The welcome sign proclaims it "a friendly hometown", and there are just three shops - no cinema, no mall and hardly any crime.
"We don't have murders in Johnson County," says Brooks.
"Everyone is friendly, everyone knows everyone - if you pass someone in the street, you stop to talk. Perhaps every few years there would be a domestic incident, but not a home invasion like this. Not an execution."
© ABC newsJenelle led a sheltered, friendless life until Billy took her under his wing and invited her to social gatherings.
But suspicion quickly turned to the Potter family, who lived nearby: father Marvin - known as "Buddy" - then aged 60, mother Barbara, 61, and their daughter Jenelle, 31, who had been embroiled in a very public Facebook feud with the victims.
The Potter family had moved to Mountain City from Philadelphia in 2004, but had never fitted in.
Buddy, a former soldier who had served in Vietnam, raised eyebrows with his not-so-subtle hints that he had been in the CIA, while Barbara always seemed to be involved in one conflict or another with her extended family.
Jenelle, meanwhile, was socially awkward and struggled to make friends.
Almost 6ft tall, with diabetes, mild learning disabilities and a peculiarly childlike voice, she had never had a job or boyfriend, never left home and never got her driving licence.
Her parents were strict and overbearing, so the internet became Jenelle's lifeline.
On her Facebook page, she posted endless pictures of puppies and hearts.
"I'm a very sweet, caring person," her profile read.
"I love life and I love to make other's laugh" [sic].
In 2009, Jenelle finally made friends with a group of locals including Billy Payne, who had a reputation as a nice guy with time for everyone. For the first time in her life, Jenelle must have felt like she belonged.
"That may have been the beginning of her obsession with Billy," says Brooks.
"He included her in social occasions, like going rock climbing or just hanging out. To someone like Jenelle, who led such a boring, sheltered life, that must have seemed like something special."
Billy even set her up with his cousin Jamie Curd, now 43, and the pair embarked on a romance that she kept secret from her parents, introducing Jamie to them as a friend.
But the following year, after Billy got together with Billie-Jean, Jenelle suddenly accused the group of unfriending her on Facebook and cyber-bullying.
She told her parents that they were bombarding her with messages and threats of rape and violence, making crank phone calls and driving past their house to intimidate her.
Their motivation, she claimed, was simply that she was too pretty.
Billy, Billie-Jean and their friends, meanwhile, insisted that Jenelle was the one harassing them.
After the murders, police went to see the Potters.
They denied any knowledge, but Jamie was taken to the station for questioning.
He too claimed to know nothing, but failed a lie detector test.
Then he asked a question that blew the case wide open: "Is the CIA here?"
Smelling a rat, investigators asked why the USA's foreign intelligence agency would be involved in a small-town homicide - and Jamie eventually cracked.
He admitted to shooting Billy and Billie-Jean with Jenelle's father after they were encouraged to do so by a CIA operative called Chris, who said Jenelle's life was in danger.
Just a week after the killings, Buddy and Jamie were charged with first-degree murder - but the investigation was just beginning.
© BWBarbara and Buddy, Jenelle’s parents, believed Jenelle when she told them Billy and Billie-Jean were threatening and intimidating her.
Many had words like "bitch" scrawled across them.
In the back of Buddy's truck, police found a bag of shredded emails, which they painstakingly started taping back together.
They seized the family's computer, and found hundreds more messages between Barbara, Jamie and this shadowy CIA agent.
"Chris" had started emailing them around the time Billy and Billie-Jean got engaged, claiming to be an old school friend of Jenelle's who was watching over her.
He emailed Barbara so often - exchanging photos of himself and sharing details about his life, like the fact he was a widower who, like Jenelle, loved dogs - that she eventually started calling him "son" and signing off "Mom".
As Jenelle's feud with the two victims escalated, Chris claimed to have insider knowledge that Billy and Billie-Jean were evil - he was a drug dealer, she was a whore, they wanted to rape Jenelle because she was a virgin and cut off her head. And they had to be stopped at all costs.
Barbara, Buddy and Jamie agreed to do what was necessary to protect Jenelle.
"We've had enough and we want peace and no one here wants to kill anyone, but we will," Barbara wrote.
Jamie admitted to murdering the couple with Jenelle’s father after the were warned that her life was in danger by a ‘CIA operative’.
"In fact, I began to suspect that he and Jenelle were the same person - he seemed so fixated on her, how sweet and pretty and kind she was. His emails were full of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, the same kind Jenelle herself often made."
Most damning of all, Chris' emails were sent from the same IP address as the Potters' home computer.
Barbara and Jamie had been "catfished" - a term used when someone adopts a fake identity to lure a person into doing something for them.
In this case, Jenelle had pretended to be a CIA agent to incite her boyfriend and family to murder the man she was obsessed with, and the woman she believed had stolen him from her.
In August 2013, police arrested Jenelle and Barbara.
"I'd never encountered anyone like Jenelle before, and I felt ill-prepared to psychoanalyse her," says Brooks.
"Her lawyers claimed her intelligence was the equivalent of a fifth grader [a 10 year old], and to an extent I agree with that - her Facebook page was full of puppy dogs and hearts. But she was also horribly vicious, and knew how to manipulate people."
Brooks continues: "Barbara, Buddy and Jamie are not sophisticated people - they were easily misled by Jenelle, who knew which buttons to press.
"Jamie was lonely and vulnerable to a younger woman stroking his ego. He'd never been out of Mountain City, never been popular.
"Barbara also had some kind of mental disorder in which there always has to be a controversy or conspiracy going on. She was fixated on conflicts.
"Buddy liked to think of himself as a government operative.
"Most people figured Jenelle out, that she was a bit of a fantasist - that's why she struggled to make and keep friends - but not these three. It was the perfect storm."
In October 2013, Buddy, who steadfastly denied any knowledge of the murders, was found guilty and sentenced to two life sentences, while Jamie testified against him and brokered a deal of 25 years in prison.
But successfully convicting Barbara and Jenelle of first-degree murder - when they had not even been present at the crime scene, and were also proclaiming their innocence - would be a whole lot harder.
The state's evidence hinged on all those emails and whether or not Chris really existed - and they hit a home run when the investigation turned up a man called Chris Tjaden, a police officer from Delaware who had gone to school with Jenelle.
One of the more popular kids, he had just vague memories of Jenelle - but she remembered him.
In fact, she'd used him as her inspiration for the fictitious Chris, even stealing his Facebook pictures and sending them to her mother when pretending to be the CIA agent.
Tracing Jenelle's IP address, those investigating the murders had also discovered posts she'd written on forums under pen-names, including one to Billie-Jean saying: "F**k you and Bill and your f**king so-called little baby. F**k them. I hope they die, die, die, and that baby."
It was damning evidence, and after a six-day trial, Jenelle and her mother were found guilty on all counts. In July 2015, they were sentenced to life in prison.
Judge Blackwood said the murders were the most senseless he'd seen during his decades on the bench.
In a TV documentary that aired in October 2015, Jenelle and Barbara continued to proclaim their innocence.
"I went through a lot with [Billy and Billie-Jean] but I never wished them dead. I never wanted them dead," Jenelle insisted, in her high-pitched, little-girl voice.
"I didn't murder anyone."
When pressed by the interviewer about why she'd catfished her parents by pretending to be Chris, she started crying - and refused to answer any more questions.
Meanwhile, baby Tyler is being cared for by his extended family, who are still struggling to come to terms with their loss.
Now three, he will never remember the mother murdered while she held him in her arms.
"Jenelle will be 80 before she is even considered for parole, and Barbara and Buddy will die behind bars," says Brooks.
"Now the people of Mountain City just want to forget. No one wants to talk about these murders any more - but the scars are still there.
"People lock their doors at night now, when they never did before. This was shattering for the community."
I saw this, and had to look to see if it was a New York Times or Washington Post article, haha. Foreign intelligence. That makes it sound like they don't operate within US boarders. And, truth be told, they are prohibited by law to conduct operations within the US. But being as the intelligence trade is built on lies, they lie and say they aren't. But many people know the truth.