The ex-wife of Billy Hawk said she was with Hawk when he put a metal barrel in the Chickamauga Lake in 1981. She said she believed he was involved in the slaying of Johnny Mack Salyer.
She gave an emotional testimony in Judge Don Poole’s courtroom concerning her relationship with Hawk and his participation in the cold case murder for which he is standing trial.
She began by detailing the May 8, 1981 drug bust where she, Hawk and Salyer were arrested. At the time, she was 18 years old and had been dating Hawk, nine years her elder, for a month. Prosecution said undercover TBI agents made an arrangement to buy two ounces of cocaine from Hawk and Salyer, and after the drug bust found additional drugs and pills in Hawk’s grandparents home.
After getting out of jail, she said she lived in Ringgold with Hawk, her friend, and eventually Salyer. She said she allowed Salyer to borrow her car to visit his wife and daughter in Indiana, who prosecution said had left after arguments about drugs and Salyer’s lifestyle’s effect on their family.
She said though Hawk purchased Salyer a ticket to fly back to home, she never saw the victim again. She then described going out on the lake with Hawk and seeing a barrel in the boat.
“When I first got in the boat and I saw the barrel, Bill saw me looking at it. He said, ‘This is junk and I’m gonna throw it away,’” she said.
When she tried to help him pull the barrel out of the boat, the witness said Hawk screamed at her to sit down.
It wasn’t until later that she said she saw on the news that someone had been found on the lake floating in a barrel. When the identity of the victim was revealed, she said she was terrified and stunned, but that Hawk denied any involvement. She said when she asked him multiple times, he pointed at her and with “cold, dead eyes” said to her, “Don’t you ever ask me that again.”
She said about four year later, when she was married to Hawk and living in Murfreesboro, Tn, her husband came home while she was watching TV and told her to go fix him something to eat. She said he was agitated because she had the dog in the house and he pulled on her arm, which caused the dog to growl at him.
With the jury out of the room, she included details about Hawk picking the dog up by the collar and throwing it outside, where she feared it might have hit a tree.
The witness began to sob as she explained what happened next.
“He was in a rage, and he grabbed me by the throat, and he was squeezing me by the throat, and I was screaming, and he put his hand over my mouth, and he said, ‘B****, I will stuff you in a barrel,’” she said.
She said this was the last straw in a series of abuses that led her to end the marriage.
“I had to cover up bruises on my neck so that I could go to work and we could pay the bills. He had to go out and buy me a scarf to wrap around my neck,” she said.
Defense attorney Bill Speek said though the ex-wife has communicated with the district attorney, she has been unwilling to speak with defense. He also said she has given multiple statements to police since first being questioned in February of 1982, and that the statements do no match.
He read transcripts of interviews dating all the way up to Sept. 1, 2015, where she never mentioned going on a boat with Hawk and denied ever being threatened or abused by him or believing he was involved in the murder of Salyer. He said from 1982 all the way up to early September of 2015, she continued to tell the same story, changing it for the first time during an interview on Sept. 28, 2015.
“Police are asking you questions and you’re lying like crazy,” said attorney Speek.
She said it was time for her “to stand up and do the right thing.”
“I was trying to protect myself, and I was trying to protect my family from Bill Hawk,” she said.
Attorney Speek also questioned her memory in regard to the time the boat ride took place, since the witness's speculation about the outing’s date was based primarily on what she could recall about the temperature of the water.
Attorney Speek said, “What is paramount in this case is the thing you’ve been running from for 35 years—honesty.”
The jury also heard a number of audio recordings from around the time of the 1981 drug bust involving Hawk, Salyer and the ex-wife. Witness Lance Saylor, who was assigned to the narcotics unit of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation at the time, said Salyer was “a middle man.”
He said an informant for TBI and undercover agents set up a drug transaction with Hawk and Salyer on East Brainerd Road on May 8, 1981. He said after the arrest Hawk “seemed to be in a jovial state” and said he “would never do a day in jail.”
During questioning by attorney Speek, recordings and documents repeatedly helped the witness recall details of events from 35 years ago. They agreed that such evidence was better than memory.
Harry Stone, who had been employed by the Soddy-Daisy ambulance service at the time Salyer’s body was recovered, said he responded to a call about “a dead body on the river” near Rocky Point Road. He said on the scene was a black 55-gallon drum with a white or beige top. Mr. Stone said there was a deceased white male inside the barrel.
“He was pushed into the barrel in the fetal position, and when he came out he still remained in that position,” he said. “There was quite a bit of decomposition at that point.”
Mr. Stone said the odor was so overpowering that he and his partner had to ride with their heads outside the ambulance windows while transporting the body to Erlanger. They were not allowed to go through the normal entrance once they arrived.
“The smell of human decomposition is like no other. It’s like a sweet sickening smell,” he said.
Mr. Stone also recalled discovering what appeared to be a small caliber bullet hole in the victim’s chest and a tattoo on his abdomen which helped to identify him as Salyer. He told defense attorney Jonathan Turner he did not recall seeing stippling around the wound.
Witness David Hamby, who worked for the Hamilton County Sheriff's Department in 1981, described pulling the barrel out of the mud and up onto the shore, a task that took four men. He said there were seven holes in the metal which looked as if they had been burnt in with a cutting torch.
He told attorney Turner he would not have been able to recall some of the facts for his testimony without having recently reviewed his report from the day of the incident 35 years ago. He also said the barrel stayed at the crime scene till it was taken into custody by the major crimes unit.
“Time is a powerful thing,” said prosecutor Lance Pope during opening statements earlier that morning. “With time, details begin to fill in about what was going on.”
Attorney Speek said that same time had given the state the opportunity to “negligently, intentionally, or recklessly lose key pieces of evidence,” including the barrel in which the victim was found. He said the people who took the stand “all swam in the sewer.”
“Everybody was involved, including officers,” he said.
Attorney Speek encouraged the jury not to make up their minds until the defense had the opportunity to make its case.
Picture taken in 1981 of the barrel Johnny Mack Salyer was found in