It’s been over 27 years since DeKalb County discovered the grisly details of arguably the most notorious murder case in the county. Two men were held captive and tortured before being murdered with their bodies dumped in Center Hill Lake.

Nine men were charged in connection with the murders of John Allen Harry and Roger Dale Zammit, with the ringleader, James Christopher Tatrow, the only defendant going to trial. A jury in Cumberland County Criminal Court convicted Tatrow of two counts of felony murder and two counts of especially aggravated kidnapping. He would end up being sentenced to 50 years in prison. The jury declined to impose the death penalty, or life without parole, and sentenced the defendant to serve life sentences with the possibility of parole.

Tatrow, now 54, will be up for parole next month, his second appearance before the Tennessee Board of Parole. He is imprisoned at Northwest Correctional Complex (NWCX) in Lake County at Tiptonville, TN, where he has spent half of his life behind bars.

“At Tatrow’s initial parole hearing on Oct. 3, 2019, the Board voted to decline parole at the time and recommended a review hearing to be scheduled in April 2022. In Mr. Tatrow’s particular case, there needs to be four concurring votes by the Board members to reach a final decision,” said Dustin Krugel, Communications Director for the Tennessee Board of Parole.

Other co-conspirators pleaded guilty to various charges in the case, including Michael Redmon, Phillip Lawrence, Jeffery Lynn Sanders, J.J. Hendrixson, Bruce Rochefort, Greg Neal, Jimmie Anthony Tony Davis and Kenny Mason. Mason was a key state witness during the Tatrow trial.

Tatrow was described as the leader of the group, and was angry with Harry and Zammit because of a burglary at his trailer home, where rodeo trophies, guns, a coin collection, and personal items had been stolen. He accused the victims of being involved in the burglary.

According to the court case, Tatrow had been a rodeo star before an injury led to drugs and eventually a methamphetamine addiction. His trailer home in Belk would eventually become a hangout for his coconspirators, and he turned to providing drugs to others in order to support his habit.

About two weeks before the killings, while Tatrow was in Texas, someone broke into his trailer. When he returned, he found a number of items missing including nearly one hundred prize belt buckles that he had won in rodeo events, a Navajo blanket that belonged to a close friend who had been killed, an antique knife collection, his great-grandfather's coin purse, a tool box, and several guns.

He reported the burglary and later heard that several people including Roger Zammit and John Harry were responsible for the burglary. Later, in another incident, several shots were fired into Tatrow's home while he was present. One of the shots killed his German Shepherd dog.

Tatrow was obsessed with recovering his belongings and after taking Zammit back to Tatrow’s trailer, at one point, he aimed an empty revolver at Zammit's head and clicked the trigger several times. Zammit was forced to stand with his arms in the air while Rochefort hit him in the ribs and face. At other times, Tatrow slapped and kicked Zammit. He was kicked in the face, chunks were cut out of his hair, and he received small incisions to his scalp, his shoulder, and his arms. An ear lobe was torn when an earring was forcibly removed.

Later, Tatrow and three others left and brought Johnny Harry to the trailer where they tied him `spreadeagle' in a chair in the laundry room. Tatrow repeatedly threw a knife at the portion of the chair seat that was exposed between Harry's legs. Later Tatrow told a woman who stopped by the trailer for a few minutes that he had tied Harry to a telephone pole and whipped him with a belt. She saw the welt on Harry's back. Later, Tatrow kicked Harry in the chest or chin, and Harry banged his nose on a vanity. Blood spilled onto the carpet. Witnesses noted that Harry had a bad gash on his leg which Tatrow bandaged.

Tatrow later went into the trailer, grabbed Harry who was lying on the pallet, and started gouging him in the face with a styrofoam bat. Jeff Sanders kicked Harry in the face and hit him with his fists. Because Harry was bleeding badly, Tatrow ordered them to put him in the bathtub.

At Tatrow's direction, Mason applied duct tape to Harry's and Zammit's hands and mouths. He put tape across Zammit's eyes. Zammit was forced to kneel in the tub facing the faucets, and Harry was crowded in behind him. Several people including Redmon, Hendrixson, and Sanders were in the bathroom. According to Mason, he stepped out for a moment, and when he returned, Zammit had a plastic bag over his head and a cord around his neck. Tatrow's knee was in Zammit's back, and he was pulling hard on the cord.

Tatrow asked for a heavy flashlight which Mason provided. Tatrow backhanded Zammit three times on the back of the head, and Zammit wilted. Tatrow then walked out of the bathroom, but when someone said that Zammit wasn't dead, Tatrow returned and told Harry, who was still sitting in the tub, to pull on the cord. Harry pulled for a few seconds while Tatrow laughed. Everyone went into the kitchen leaving Harry sitting in the tub with Zammit's lifeless body.

Tatrow then told Mason and two others to help him get Harry out of the house. He told them to walk him out of the front door and into a nearby field. Harry walked in front of them, but when they went through the gate into the field, he broke away and ran. After about 30 yards, he stumbled and fell. Tatrow caught up to him, dragged him to his feet, and told him to keep walking. After Harry had taken a couple of steps, Tatrow kicked him in the leg and as he fell, fired one shot with the .22 rifle into the side of John Harry's head.

Over the next several hours, the men cleaned the trailer thoroughly and attempted to dispose of the evidence. They removed the bloody portions of carpet. Both bodies were wrapped first in woven wire fencing and then in carpeting. Tatrow, Redmon, and Hendrixson left in the truck to dispose of the bodies. Mason hid the revolver across the road in the brush and some dynamite in a nearby culvert, and then he and the others took the bloody towels, rags and clothes to Goose Creek where they burned them.

During the early morning hours of January 15, 1995, Dondie Billings reported to the DeKalb County Sheriff's Department that Roger Zammit and John Harry were missing. Days passed and neither Zammit nor Harry returned to their homes. Steve Johnson, the chief deputy, spoke with Kenny Mason who had lived at the Tatrow trailer for several weeks, and Mason gave a statement incriminating himself, Tatrow and several other young men. The police recovered the .357 magnum revolver hidden across the road from Tatrow's trailer.

On January 24, 1995, TBI agents James Moore and Mark Gwyn arrested Tatrow and took him to the DeKalb County Jail. From there, he was transferred almost immediately to Putnam County. When a team from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation pulled the bodies of the two young men from Center Hill Lake on January 27, Tatrow was in a holding cell in the Putnam County Jail.

Upon a review of the record and the law, The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals in 1998 affirmed Tatrow’s convictions, but vacated the order to run the two life sentences consecutively. He is up for parole in April.