Guy Heinze Jr. now lives his days and nights behind bars.
The 22-year-old has been in custody at the Glynn County Detention Center since the weekend he said he found his family slaughtered in a mobile home near Brunswick on Aug. 29.
Police say the construction worker bludgeoned his father and eight others before frantically reporting the massacre to 911 operators.
"I just got home and my whole family's dead," Heinze is heard saying in the 911 recording.
Seven people died at the scene, an eighth victim succumbed to his injuries at the hospital and a 3-year-old was critically injured and is still alive.
Police reported the dead as Guy Heinze Sr., 45; Russell D. Toler Sr., 44, the younger Heinze's uncle; cousins, Chrissy Toler, 22, Russell D. Toler Jr., 20, Michael Toler, 19, and Michelle Toler, 15; an aunt, Brenda Gail Falagan, 49; and Chrissy Toler’s boyfriend Joseph L. West, 30.
Chrissy Toler's son, 3-year-old Byron Jimerson Jr., is the only one who survived.
It is not the largest mass family murder in Georgia. That distinction rests with the Woolfolk family of Bibb County.
About 12 miles west of Macon, nine members of that prominent family were hacked to death with an ax 122 years and 23 days before Glynn County's now infamous case in the New Hope trailer park.
The sole survivor at the Woolfolk house that August night, Thomas Woolfolk, told authorities he awoke to sounds of the attack in his father’s bedroom and escaped through the front window and ran down to a servant’s quarters on the property for help.
By the time he returned, Woolfolk’s father, stepsiblings, stepmother and her elderly great aunt were all dead.
Killed in the attack were Richard F. Woolfolk Sr., 54; Mattie Howard Woolfolk, 41; Temperance West, 84; Richard “Dick” Woolfolk Jr.; Pearl Woolfolk, 17; Annie Woolfolk, 10; Rosebud Woolfolk, 7; Charlie Woolfolk, 5; and Mattie Woolfolk, 18 months old.
Thomas Woolfolk was five years older than Heinze but stood at the same height of 5 feet 8 inches tall.
A coroner's inquest pronounced Woolfolk the killer hours after the discovery, but the sheriff had already whisked him off to jail to avoid losing the prisoner to a lynch mob.
Police arrested Heinze shortly after launching their investigation. He was held initially on charges of lying to police, evidence tampering by removing a shotgun from the home and drug possession for a small amount of marijuana and Darvocet, a prescription pain reliever, found in his car.
Heinze had posted bond on those charges and was out for about 90 minutes before he was arrested for the eight murders and taken back to jail.
With only an hour out of his isolation cell each day, Heinze is likely haunted either by his alleged killing spree or a cruel twist of fate that imprisons an innocent man grieving the loss of his family.
Read more at Macon.com