Investigators connected construction and landscaping purchases to a concealed room before Jerri Roby ultimately admitted killing her son, John Allen Gaither.
GULFPORT, Miss. — A receipt for sand, tape, straw and a disposal bag became an early physical clue in a missing-person investigation that eventually led police through a false wall, to a concealed wooden box and to the body of 42-year-old John Allen Gaither.
More than two years later, Gaither’s mother, Jerri Roby, 69, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced July 22 to life in prison. The final courtroom outcome closed a case built not around one discovery but around layers of evidence that detectives assembled after Gaither vanished in December 2023. Store records, surveillance footage, ride-sharing data, bank activity, phone use, family communications and changes inside Roby’s Gulfport home were compared against her explanations of where Gaither had supposedly gone. Prosecutors said those records increasingly contradicted her accounts.
The receipt surfaced during an early stage of the investigation, before officers had located Gaither. Court testimony reported by the Biloxi Sun Herald said police looked in outdoor garbage at Roby’s property and found documentation from Home Depot. Later reporting identified purchases including 15 bags of sand, two rolls of patch-and-seal tape, straw and a dumpster bag. Investigators also located evidence of an earlier shopping trip involving plastic sheeting, soil and additional tape. The purchases had been made around the period surrounding Gaither’s disappearance, giving detectives a dated record that could be compared with other events.
Investigators did not rely on the receipt in isolation. They obtained or reviewed store records and surveillance connected with the purchases, while also reconstructing Gaither’s movements. Local court reporting said surveillance and transaction information placed Gaither at locations including a storage unit where he worked on cars and an Ollie’s store on Dec. 10, 2023. His vehicle remained at the house he shared with Roby. Those ordinary records gave detectives fixed points in time as they evaluated claims that he had suddenly left Gulfport for another state or another country.
Roby’s explanations created another testable evidence trail. Police said she first claimed Gaither had traveled to Louisiana in connection with a vehicle and later said he had taken an Uber. Investigators checked his account and found no ride-sharing activity supporting the story. Other explanations suggested international or cross-border travel, while relatives received communications that appeared to come from Gaither. Each claim produced questions that could be compared against electronic records, physical evidence or Gaither’s established pattern of contact with family members.
The family’s own observations helped focus the inquiry. Gaither’s relatives said he normally stayed in regular contact, making his sudden silence unusual. They reported him missing in late December 2023 and became increasingly suspicious when letters, text messages and a phone call appeared to suggest he was alive but did not convince them. In early January, his brother and stepmother separately contacted law enforcement again. Their doubts gave police reason to examine not just where Gaither might have traveled, but whether someone else was controlling the information supposedly coming from him.
The physical evidence and the communication evidence converged at Roby’s home. Gulfport police obtained a warrant and searched the property Jan. 18, 2024. Investigators found a false or makeshift wall in the front area of the residence. Behind it sat a large wooden box containing Gaither’s body. Authorities said materials covering or surrounding the box were similar to products traced through the Home Depot purchases. The room had also been altered in ways described in court reporting, including a boarded door and sealed window. The search gave police their first definitive answer to Gaither’s location.
An autopsy determined that Gaither had been killed by a gunshot wound to the back of the head. The finding shifted attention from the mechanics of the search to who was responsible for his death and the concealment that followed. Police later recovered a .380-caliber semiautomatic handgun that Roby provided during the investigation, according to testimony described in early court coverage. Investigators also examined the timing of purchases and the construction of the concealed area when assessing whether events before Gaither’s disappearance were consistent with Roby’s later explanations.
Financial records supplied another line of inquiry. At a February 2024 preliminary hearing, Detective Justin Clifton testified that investigators reviewed activity in Gaither’s bank accounts and found withdrawals after he disappeared. Roby had authorization to use the accounts, the detective said, so the transactions were not presented simply as unauthorized theft. Instead, their timing became part of the chronology police were building around Gaither’s final known activity, his abrupt loss of contact and Roby’s conduct while relatives believed he might still be alive.
The phone and letter evidence became more direct after Roby was interviewed. Prosecutors said she admitted forging written communications presented as Gaither’s, sending texts while pretending to be him and convincing her boyfriend to make a call to relatives while posing as Gaither. Roby also acknowledged taking Gaither’s cellphone to Florida so calls using the device would connect through cellular towers there. Those admissions supplied explanations for communications that Gaither’s family had already told police they considered suspicious.
Earlier reporting identified Roby’s boyfriend as Robert Wayne Tannehill and said he was arrested on a hindering-prosecution charge during the investigation. The sources reviewed for this report do not establish a final disposition of that charge, so no later outcome is stated here. His reported involvement was significant to the murder investigation because prosecutors said Roby enlisted him in one of the attempts to create the impression that Gaither remained alive. Roby, however, was the person charged with and later convicted through her plea of murdering Gaither.
Roby’s prior criminal history also influenced the investigation and court proceedings. Authorities learned she had previously served prison time after a 1993 Florida killing. Local reporting described similarities in the concealment of the victim in that older case, though the Mississippi prosecution rested on evidence concerning Gaither’s death. Prosecutors also pointed to Roby’s history of fleeing after posting bail in Florida when arguing that she should remain jailed without bond. A Mississippi judge agreed during the early phase of the case.
A Harrison County grand jury indicted Roby in 2025 on first-degree murder and possession of a firearm by a felon. By then, the case had moved well beyond the first missing-person call. Investigators had a body, an autopsy finding, purchase records, surveillance information, inconsistencies in travel stories, communications sent in Gaither’s name and Roby’s own statements. The indictment positioned the case for prosecution in Circuit Court, but the evidence was never tested before a trial jury because Roby later chose to admit the murder.
At her July 2026 plea hearing, Roby said she shot Gaither in what she characterized as a spur-of-the-moment act connected to his depression. Judge Randi P. Mueller did not accept that characterization, citing evidence of preparations before the killing and Roby’s conduct afterward. Mueller sentenced her to life in state custody. District Attorney Crosby Parker said investigators had remained focused despite extensive efforts to mislead them, a description that reflected how a case that began with uncertain stories was narrowed by records that could be independently checked.
Roby’s guilty plea leaves the murder conviction resolved and the life sentence in place. The evidence trail remains notable for its accumulation of small, verifiable details: a store receipt, a parked car, unused ride-sharing records, dated purchases, unusual messages and family members who continued questioning what they were being told. Together, those details led police back to the house where Gaither had lived and where investigators found him in January 2024.
Author note: Last updated Aug. 26, 2026.