James Hawkins Jr. was convicted in the 2008 dismemberment and strangulation of his longtime girlfriend, Charlene Gaither. He forced their 12-year-old daughter to help him dismember her mother’s body with an electric circular saw.
Charlene was a Tennessee native and mother of three. In 2007, she resided in Covington, Tennessee with her husband of four years, Melvin Gaither. She worked full time at the Tipton County Adult Developmental Center, where she earned a reputation as an extraordinary person who was inspiring to other people. It was also said she was a wonderful, wonderful co-worker and employee.
Her children’s father, James Hawkins, Jr. had been absent from Charlene and the children’s lives from 1999 or 2000 until September 2007, when he and Charlene began talking again by telephone. Then on October 18, 2007, Charlene and her children abruptly moved from their Covington home into an apartment in Memphis with James. Charlene eventually stopped showing up for work and she never went back.
Charlene and her children spent Thanksgiving 2007 at her aunt’s home and saw her father there. According to her father, Mr. Irvin, James and his granddaughter stayed off to themselves and did not “mingle” with the rest of the family. Charlene was bothered by the attention James paid their 12-year-old daughter. She asked her dad, “Should a child be so drawn to her father?” He told Charlene that his granddaughter was merely responding to her father returning to her life after a long absence.
Mr. Irvin didn’t have much contact with his daughter after Thanksgiving. However, Charlene’s concerns regarding James’ relationship with their daughter quickly escalated as her relationship with him deteriorated.
Charlene contacted her ex-husband, Melvin Gaither, on Christmas Day 2007, and met him for a movie and dinner. She told him that James had been threatening her life, and Melvin encouraged her to get away from James.
Records from Methodist LeBonheur Children’s Hospital showed that her daughter was treated on December 26 and 27, 2007. Charlene’s daughter had suffered a miscarriage. Her daughter, who was ten weeks pregnant at the time of the miscarriage, reported to medical staff that she was pregnant by a classmate. But, she refused to talk about the pregnancy further or provide additional details.
On January 5, 2008, Charlene contacted Melvin again, telling him that she believed James wanted to kill her. However, he only encouraged her for the second time to get away from James.
On January 12, 2008, Officer Nancy Trentham of the Memphis Police Department (MPD) responded to a call at the apartment Charlene shared with James. Charlene was standing outside the apartment with her two sons when told Officer Trentham that she and her sons were leaving and that she wanted her daughter to leave with them. She told Officer Trentham that she believed “something inappropriate was going on” between her daughter and James. Officer Trentham and another officer spoke with James, who they described as “very cooperative, polite, and calm.” Officer Trentham also talked privately with their daughter in another room of the apartment. She described the 12-year-old girl as “very quiet” and “very soft spoken.”
After speaking to everyone, Officer Trentham advised Charlene that the police could not remove the girl from James’ custody against her will. The officer said that no custody arrangement existed. Charlene became very upset and repeated her belief that something inappropriate was occurring between the two. Although Officer Trentham completed a memorandum to the Child Advocacy Center, she did not refer Charlene for an order of protection, because she did not observe any signs of abuse.
After speaking with police, Charlene and her two sons met Milton Harris at Pizza Hut. Milton was her ex-husband; she was married from 1998 until 2002. Milton said Charlene was hysterical and very upset because she had to leave her daughter with James. However, when Milton spoke with Charlene on the phone the next day, she had her daughter with her. Several days later, Charlene and her three children showed up at FedEx where Milton worked. Charlene told him she was really terrified and wanted to leave Jame. Milton gave her the keys to an apartment he had in Memphis. He also gave her money to get a restraining order against James.
On January 15, 2008, Charlene went to Citizens Dispute, a Shelby County government agency that assists citizens with the application process for orders of protection, and obtained assistance completing an application for an order of protection against James. In describing the basis of her request for an order of protection, she reported that James had become violent on January 12, 2008. Charlene said he had pulled her hair when she told him that she and the children were leaving. She also expressed concern that James had been sleeping in the same bed with their daughter, but she said that they both had denied that any sexual abuse was happening. Charlene stated that she wanted James to “just stay away.” An ex parte order of protection was issued that same day, but it was never served to James, and the case was dismissed before the end of the month.
On January 16, 2008, right after getting the order of protection, Charlene met with Melvin again and told him that James was threatening her and that the children would not leave with her. Melvin did not hear from nor meet with Charlene again.
On February 12, 2008, James reported Charlene as a missing person.
As a result of the report, MPD was dispatched to the apartment Charlene got from her ex-husband to interview James. Officers noticed James using the truck Charlene drove, although it was registered to Melvin Gaither. After confirming that James had called in the report, officers suggested they talk inside. As they walked upstairs to James’s apartment, they noticed mothballs scattered near the entrance. James told them the mothballs were to keep away neighborhood cats. Noticing the door to an adjacent apartment open, one officer asked if anyone lived there, and James said the apartment was vacant.
Entering James’s apartment, the officers noticed a strong smell of bleach and a mixture of ammonia. They said it was so strong that their eyes had started to water up.
Regarding the missing person report, James said that Charlene had left around 9:00 a.m. about three days earlier on Saturday, February 9, 2008, after they had gotten into a fight. James said that he and Charlene argued all the time and explained that it was not unusual for her to leave after an argument and later return. He said he had become concerned on this occasion because she had failed to return home or to answer phone calls, so he decided to report her missing.
James couldn’t describe what Charlene had been wearing when she left, so he asked his daughter if she remembered what her mother had been wearing. Neither the girl or her brothers were able to describe Charlene’s clothing, so, the officers failed to obtain a description of Charlene’s clothing because, “one thought she had on one color, one thought ․ another color, so they didn’t know.”
After interviewing James, Officer Houston “put out a broadcast” consisting of Charlene’s name, age, height, weight, and the date she had last been seen. She also prepared a written missing person report, which was not the standard policy. In fact, Officer Houston’s supervisor reprimanded her for filing this written report and asked her why she had done so. Officer Houston told her supervisor that “everything on that scene ․ that day just had not seemed right․”
On Valentine’s Day 2008, Lance McCallum, an employee with the Mississippi Department of Transportation, discovered a body with the hands cut off above the wrist, both feet cut off above the ankles, and the head and neck removed. Mr. McCallum, who was repairing holes on the Coldwater River Bridge on Highway 78 West in Mississippi, saw the body on an embankment below the bridge. He could tell from his vantage point on the bridge that the body was a female, because the body was nude and facing upward. Mr. McCallum and his coworkers immediately called 9-1-1 and waited on the bridge for law enforcement authorities, who arrived just minutes later.
One of the officers who responded to the 9-1-1 call, Detective Mike Pate of the DeSoto County Mississippi Sheriff’s Department, described the body as having three very deep cuts “to the bone” on the thigh, knee, and mid-shin of the right leg but no stab or gunshot wounds. Based on dirt in the wounds, Detective Pate concluded that the dismembered body had been dropped from the top of the hill and had rolled down the embankment. Mississippi authorities extensively searched the areas in the vicinity of the body but never located any of the severed body parts. The condition of the body prevented Mississippi authorities from initially identifying Charlene.
On the evening of February 14, 2008, Lieutenant Toney Armstrong of MPD received a telephone call from a friend, who was Charlene’s brother-in-law, alerting him that a female body had been discovered in Mississippi and asking him for advice. Lieutenant Armstrong instructed his friend to contact the Mississippi authorities and agreed to start looking into the case himself the next morning. As promised, on the morning of February 15, 2008, Lieutenant Armstrong met with Mississippi law enforcement authorities concerning the discovery of the body, learned of James’s missing person report concerning Charlene, and learned that the body matched Charlene’s description. Mississippi authorities thereafter collected a buccal swab from Charlene’s mother for purposes of DNA testing and, through this testing, eventually identified the body as that of Charlene Gaither.
After a through investigation, James had quickly became the number one suspect in Charlene’s murder.
Police went back to the apartment to interview James again. James gave a statement around 9:04 p.m. on February 15th, which was largely consistent with the statement he had given Officer Houston. James said that he and Charlene had argued on the morning of Saturday, February 9, 2008, because she had suspected him of “cheating,” and Charlene left after the argument, sometime between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m., and he had no knowledge of her whereabouts thereafter. James told officers that his 9-year-old son had seen Charlene get into a dark colored car “with a light skinned woman and some dude.” Consistent with his initial statement to Officer Houston, James stated that he had spoken with Charlene by telephone the afternoon of the day she left, but he added that Charlene had told him to raise the children. James said Charlene contacted him again on Sunday, February 10th, and reiterated that he should raise the children. He then consented to provide a DNA sample via a buccal swab. Afterwards, he told Sergeant Mullins and Lieutenant Mason that he had told them everything he could tell them about Charlene’s disappearance and was ready to go home. He denied having anything to do with her disappearance and indicated he did not want to talk anymore. The investigators told him they still had more questions and needed clarification and continued to question him, although Sergeant Mullins indicated that they would have taken James home had he adamantly made the request, having had no reason to arrest him.
However, the police also interviewed the kids as well without him knowing. Other family members of the children were present during these interviews. Officers noted several discrepancies between the children’s and James’s statements, and as a result, at 3:00 a.m. on February 16, 2008, they obtained an order from a judicial commissioner granting a “48 Hour Detention For Probable Cause.” Sergeant Mullins described this “48 hour hold” as an option officers use when they “believe they have probable cause that they could charge somebody with a crime but they are not prepared to do so” and need additional time to “confirm or deny” information obtained in the investigation, which was, in this case, the inconsistencies between James’s and the children’s statements. James was then booked into the jail on a first degree murder 48-hour hold.
That same day, MPD officers searched James’s apartment a second time. Using a “blue light” capable of detecting evidence not visible to the human eye, officers discovered evidence of heavy cleaning in the hallway bathroom, which had a bathtub. On the floor of the master bedroom officers found a pair of child’s panties on top of dark blue adult pajama bottoms. In the kitchen, officers noticed indentations in the linoleum flooring consistent with marks made from a heavy kitchen appliance once resting there. Officers documented scrape marks across the kitchen floor consistent with a large appliance having been moved through the kitchen. Officers also searched an unlocked vacant apartment adjacent to James’s apartment and discovered an unplugged “extremely clean” upright freezer with a “very strong odor of bleach.” All of the shelving in the freezer had been pushed to the top.
The children told officers that James had purchased and later returned a saw from a nearby Kmart on the day Charlene went missing. Officers were able to locate at that same Kmart Craftsman saws like the one James had purchased and returned, and all three had been purchased and returned. Although the officers were unable to determine which, if any, of the three was the saw James had purchased and returned, they retained one of the saws as evidence to illustrate the type of saw. MPD officers also retrieved video surveillance footage from Kmart showing James and the children at the store on February 9, 2008, the day Charlene had gone missing.
Having failed to obtain an incriminating statement, the officers decided to return James to the jail. As they were walking through a public area on the first floor of the building, James remarked to Sergeant Mason, “I didn’t do it. ․ I didn’t do it, but I may have covered it up.” The officers returned him to the homicide office on an upper floor of the building. He declined to speak with them in an interview room, so they took him to Lieutenant Mason’s office and again administered Miranda warnings. James again refused to sign the rights waiver form, but this time, he asked for assurances that he would not be charged with first degree murder. The MPD officers declined to provide these assurances, explaining that the district attorney general would decide on the appropriate charges. James then gave a statement implicating his twelve-year-old daughter in Charlene’s murder.
According to James, he and the children went to a movie on Friday, February 8, 2008, while Charlene remained at home. When they returned from the movie, the boys went to bed, but he and the girl remained in the living room, watching television. At some point, Charlene awoke and “fussed” at him for keeping their daughter up late. Charlene and the girl eventually went to bed, but James slept in the living room. He said when he awoke on Saturday morning, he heard his daughter and Charlene arguing in the master bedroom. Entering the master bedroom, he said he saw the girl holding a knife. James says he approached his daughter to stop her, but she stabbed Charlene in the neck before he reached her. He said he held Charlene for one or two hours until she died. His daughter then told him, “Daddy, you have got to help me cover this up, I don’t want to go to prison for the rest of my life.” James said he decided to protect his daughter by dismembering Charlene’s body and disposing of it in Mississippi. He said that he and the girl moved Charlene to the hallway bathtub and cut off her hands, head, and feet. He and the girl later drove to Mississippi and disposed of Charlene’s body and her severed head, hands, and feet. He also agreed to guide the MPD officers to the locations in Mississippi where he had disposed of Charlene’s dismembered remains.
Officers searched the areas to which James directed them but were unable to locate Charlene’s severed body parts. The search was called off in the early morning hours of February 17, 2008, due to heavy rain, cold, and darkness. James was checked back into the jail around 10:20 a.m. on February 17, 2008. Searches conducted over the next two days were also unsuccessful, and the rest of Charlene’s dismembered remains were never recovered.
Later on February 17, 2008, around 3:22 p.m., Sergeant Mason interviewed the 12-year-old a second time. She had been interviewed on the evening of February 15th but had not been forthcoming with officers at that time. She spoke openly with investigators during her February 17th interview, but she became visibly nervous when James called her cell phone multiple times from jail during the interview. Sergeant Murray, who was interviewing her, eventually answered the cellphone and asked who was calling. The male caller responded, “James Hawkins,” and he stated, “Bitch, don’t talk to my daughter,” then ended the call. Sergeant Mason recalled that, although the girl had seemed nervous when James began calling her from jail, she seemed reassured after learning that he was still in jail. James remained in jail after she gave her February 17th statement, and he was later formally charged with Charlene’s murder.
She and her brothers testified for the prosecution at trial and were cross-examined about inconsistencies between their testimony and the statements they had given the police prior to trial. The boys were 11 and 9 years old when their mother went missing. Both recalled moving to Memphis and living for a short time with their mother, sister, and their father. The 11-year-old boy said that everything was simple and quiet at first, and the 9-year-old agreed that it was nice.
One of Charlene’s sons said after two or three weeks, their parents began arguing a lot about James paying more attention to their sister than to them. According to him, their parents fought violently at times. Both boys remembered James breaking Charlene’s cell phone on one of these occasions, after she threatened to call the police. He said that during another argument, Charlene woke them up and left the apartment with them. He also said he remembered leaving the apartment with his mother after another argument, driving to the FedEx parking lot. They waited for Milton Harris, who brought Charlene keys to the apartment they were in.
Her son said there was another argument that happened at the apartment. His parents were in the master bedroom with the door closed, and he heard a noise that sounded like a slap coming from the master bedroom. Immediately thereafter, Charlene walked out of the master bedroom, her face red as if it had been slapped. The youngest son said that he, too, had heard a noise during an argument that sounded like James slapping Charlene.
One of her sons also described how his sister’s personality changed after their father began living with them. They said that she became routinely disobedient of Charlene but would “get beat” for disobeying James. He said his dad told his sister not to talk to her mother, and he had seen his dad “tongue kissing” his 12-year-old sister, although he had not told anyone what he had seen because he was scared.
He also testified about his dad’s relationship with his sister. The oldest boy recalled that, around Christmas 2007, James told him and his brother to stay in the living room while he and his sister went to another room. However, he left the living room to look for batteries, and as he walked down the hall, he saw “out of the corner of [his] eye” James “on top of [his] sister” on the floor of her bedroom. James saw him and yelled at him for leaving the living room. He had never discussed what he had seen with anyone until after his mother’s murder.
The next morning, the day Charlene went missing, both boys recalled their sister coming into their bedroom, turning up the volume on their television “as loud as it [could] go,” and telling them to stay in the bedroom. They stayed in the room as instructed, but they heard Charlene yelling and heard the yelling stop abruptly, followed by silence. Looking out the window about that same time, the boys saw a car with dark-tinted windows leaving the parking lot and believed their mother had left in the car because the yelling had stopped. On cross-examination, the younger son agreed that he had originally told an MPD officer that he saw Charlene leaving in the car, but he clarified that he had not actually seen Charlene leave in that car and only thought she had left in it because the arguing and yelling stopped about the same time the car left the parking lot.
Both boys recalled their sister later returning to their bedroom and turning down the volume of the television, and both recalled James telling them Charlene “was gone” and saying she had left during the night. Hearing this, the oldest son thought “something wasn’t right because she wouldn’t just up and leave like that.” The youngest son recalled James telling him to go back to bed and remain there.
In the afternoon of the day Charlene went missing, James and the children went to a discount store. He purchased cleaning supplies. At Kmart, he purchased a saw that he returned later the same day. At trial, the oldest boy identified surveillance video from Kmart that officers had retrieved, which showed James purchasing and subsequently returning the saw.
When they returned to the apartment after purchasing the saw, James told the boys to sit in the car. He said that he had to prepare a surprise for them inside. The boys waited in the car for approximately three hours. One child went inside the apartment once during this time to use the bathroom. James directed him past the hall bathroom to the master bathroom. As he passed the partially open door of the hall bathroom, however, he saw a tennis shoe, but someone was inside. He assumed it was his sister and quickly shut the door before he could see anything more. After using the bathroom, he left the apartment, with James locking the door behind him, and returned to the car to wait with his brother.
Eventually, James and his sister came back to the car where the boys were waiting, and they all “drove around to different dumpsters throwing away big black garbage bags.” When they returned to the apartment, the children helped James clean the apartment. James and their sister cleaned the hall bathroom, and the boys cleaned the rest of the apartment. James had the boys throw the mattress from the master bedroom into the dumpster, saying it had a hole in it. When they entered the master bedroom, one of the boys noticed that the carpeting had been cut and recalled that it had not been cut before that day.
At some point after Charlene went missing, although the exact time is not clear from his testimony, the younger son saw a red liquid dripping from an upright freezer in the kitchen of the apartment. Believing it was Hawaiian Punch, he asked James if he could have some of it. His dad told him it was not Hawaiian Punch and told him not to open the freezer. James later told the boys to move the freezer to the back patio, explaining it no longer worked. They remembered the freezer went missing from the apartment and recalled James telling him he had thrown it out because it was broken.
Their daughter, twelve years old when Charlene was murdered, testified that James was absent from her life for a long time before returning in the fall of 2007. She first saw him after his long absence during a visit to her paternal aunt’s home. She had spent the night and was asleep in her cousin’s room, when James came in and told her to come into the living room and watch television with him. She agreed but fell asleep on the couch. She was awakened by her dad touching her vagina. When she told him to stop, he refused, put his hand over her mouth, told her to be quiet, and continued touching her, putting his fingers in her vagina. She again told him to stop, but he refused. Later, he threatened to hurt her if she told anyone.
She said that, after she and her family moved with James to Memphis, he “constantly” touched her vagina, breasts, and buttocks and also asked her to touch his penis with her hand or mouth. She said this touching occurred “[a]bout every other day,” and when she protested or fought back, he forced her to comply by hitting her, punching her in the stomach, putting a knife to her throat, or threatening to kill her.
The girl recalled going to the hospital by ambulance after suffering a miscarriage around Christmas 2007. James rode in the ambulance with her, and he and her mother were present when the doctors told her she had miscarried. She did not tell anyone at the time of the miscarriage about James sexually abusing her because she was scared. At trial, however, she denied having sex with anyone at school and said the pregnancy and miscarriage resulted from James sexually abusing her. She admitted she had not disclosed the sexual abuse during an interview at the Child Advocacy Center after the miscarriage, explaining that James had driven her to the interview and that she had known she would be going home with him afterwards because he still lived with her family.
According to the daughter, James had asked her a few days before the murder to help him kill her mother. When she refused, James grabbed her shirt, held a knife to her, and threatened to kill her. On the night of February 8, 2008, James and Charlene argued about her staying up late watching television with him. When she woke up the next morning, they were still arguing. She walked to the hall bathroom and saw James coming from the kitchen with a knife and walking toward the master bedroom, hiding the knife. As he entered the room, Charlene was still arguing and threatening to call the police. James told Charlene, “You’re not going to call the police, not going to call anybody.” Charlene, her back to James, stated, “Whatever, James,” and lay down on the bed on her side. James stabbed Charlene in the neck and choked her. When he released Charlene, her body rolled from the bed onto the floor. The girl said could not move and just “stood in shock.”
James told her to help him, but she remained standing where she was, not knowing what to do. She said he came over to her with the knife, placed it under her cheekbone, and told her he would kill her, too, so she helped him. She told her to go to her brothers’ room, turn up the volume on the television, and shut the door. She did what he said and then returned to the master bedroom and helped him place her mother’s body in the freezer that was then located in the kitchen. They carried her body, with James holding Charlene’s feet and the girl holding the arms. After placing Charlene’s body in the freezer, they “put a cord around it so it’ll hold shut so her body wouldn’t fall out.” They then cleaned the master bedroom, cutting bloodstained areas from the bed and carpeting. Later, they all went to a Family Dollar store, where James purchased cleaning supplies, including bleach. Next they went to Kmart, where he purchased a saw and threw the kitchen knife he had used to kill Charlene in the garbage can outside the store.
When they arrived back at the apartment complex, he told his sons to wait in the car. He and his daughter went inside and moved Charlene’s body from the freezer to the bathtub in the hall bathroom because the master bathroom did not have a bathtub. James continued threatening his daughter during this time, telling her to help him or he would kill her.
Having witnessed her dad kill her mother, she “believed him when he said it.” She said James taped her hands behind her back and ordered her to turn away as he sawed off Charlene’s hands, feet, and head with the saw purchased at Kmart. But he forced her to hold her mother’s severed head, wrap her mother’s body parts in plastic garbage bags, and place them back in the freezer. He also forced her to help him place the rest of Charlene’s body back in the freezer. Afterwards, her and James cleaned the bathroom, and her brothers were allowed back inside the apartment. When they came inside, one of her brothers commented, “it stinks in here,” so James instructed the children to help him clean the apartment. When they finished cleaning, they all went back to Kmart, where he returned the saw.
During the night, James woke her up and forced her to help him place Charlene’s remains in the trunk of the car. Then they both then went “for a long drive” to Mississippi and eventually stopped on a bridge. James popped the hood and told her to stand at the front of the car with a cellphone to her ear. She did so until he called for her to help him remove the body from the trunk and put it in the ditch. They had returned to the car and were about to leave when he decided to return to Charlene’s body and “wipe it down.” When he came back, they drove back to the apartment. She recalled James disposing of Charlene’s head, hands, and feet “somewhere else” during this drive, but she could not remember where. She said she had not called the police at any point during the murder or afterwards because she was scared of her dad.
Charlene’s head, feet, and hands were never found.
James Hawkins was sentenced to death. In 2015 he lost an appeal on the verdict after the Tennessee Criminal Court of Appeals stated that he failed to prove the court had erred in his case.
In August 2011, James was given an additional 18 years in prison. James, who has 19 prior felony convictions, was sentenced to the maximum 12 years for filing a false missing person report and six years for abuse of a corpse.
In 2018 he was due for execution, but received a stay of execution as he goes through the appeal process.
He is currently incarcerated in Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
Ironically, James Hawkins Sr. was sentenced to 50 years in 2014 for raping his two young daughters which are James Jr.’s sisters.
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