Meth Fueled Orgy Murder Leads to Surprising Acquittal
Louisville, Kentucky sits on the Ohio River, and for most of its history, it has been the kind of city where communities learn to find each other quietly. But there’s also a darker history to it that not many locals like to talk about. One of the most prominent landmarks is a Victorian mansion at 1435 South 4th Street, and it has a history of its residents dying under mysterious circumstances.
During the 1920s and 1930s, the property was reportedly used as a sanatorium where a doctor was said to conduct bizarre experiments on patients in the basement. After the sanatorium closed, the house sat empty for years. And during that time, a satanic cult reportedly carried out dark rituals in the cellar.
In 1961, a local nurse named Pauline Borne moved in with her daughter and opened it as a boarding house. She lived there for 30 years until one day one of her tenants beat her to death with a hammer. After that, the house sat empty again. Some felt the house had a curse on it, and to them it was no surprise that it would soon become the scene of one of the most controversial and disgusting murders in Louisville history.
James Daniel Carroll was born on August 25th, 1972 in Mcdow, Kentucky to parents Watt Carroll and Ellen Johnson Carroll. He spent most of his early years just outside of Martin, a small coal town in the mountains of eastern Kentucky. Money was always tight and Jaime’s home life was a violent one, especially after he came out.
At one point, his father beat him so badly that Jaime ended up in the hospital. He often ran away from home and was living inside of the local school after hours. A childhood friend, Renise Reed, described him as a confident and sweet young man who hung out with a popular group of people and had snappy comebacks. Another friend, Jodie Richie, said Jaime reminded her of a young male Berishnikov, who was arguably the most famous male ballerina of all time.
Jaime was a free spirit and he didn’t care what anyone thought of him. He would often show up to the grocery store in high heels and attend drag shows with his friends. Jaime graduated from Allen Central High School and went on to study cosmetology at Carl Perkins Beauty School in Paysville. His instructor, Diana Scaggs, said he had a natural talent for cutting hair.
She said that he had the gift of gab. He can talk to anybody. She also remembered the day she took him to a state board exam. He turned to her beforehand and announced that he was having a Bahama mama. Diana had no idea what that was, told him not to, and then watched him finish it anyway and order another one.
That’s just who Jaime was. Jaime later moved to Louisville and opened his own salon, which he called Illusions, on the corner of Jefferson Avenue in Broadway. His friend Michelle Schiffer described the place saying it was nice. He always had it all decked out, the hair salon, the nails, the pedicures, tanning bed.
He usually had the whole works. It was his illusion, I guess. His friend Nick Bryant put it another way saying it was perfect. It was nothing out of place. Marilyn Monroe posters and this was his illusion of a happy life where everybody accepted him like it was and he was just happy.
That was his center where family came to. His friends came to kids come in and get free haircuts before school. It was everything to him. Jaime also built a name for himself in the local nightlife scene under the drag persona Ronica Reed. He modeled the character after his childhood friend, Reise, who was flattered when she found out about it.
His other friend, Erica Hart, described watching him perform, saying, “To watch her perform was breathtaking. It was phenomenal to watch her do it because I’ve never seen somebody move like Jaime did. She would do back flips, handstands, hair tossing, and didn’t care if the hair fell off while she was on stage. It didn’t matter.” >> In 2009, Jaime became acquainted with Joseph Bayis.
Joseph or Joey, as we’re going to call him, had just gotten out of prison, wanted drugs, and found Jaime online. Jaime had turned to drugs early on, and he sold on the side. They spent the night together with 15 ounces of crystal. Joey later described it as a blast. Joey had grown up in Falls Church, Virginia.
He lived in Hawaii and California before landing in Louisville, where he had built a reputation as a bad boy from a wealthy family. People who knew him described him as a punk, edgy, club kid kind of guy. His longest serious relationship before all of this was with a man named Kevin Asher. When they moved in together, things started out well enough, but Joey introduced Kevin to drugs.
One night, while they were both on LSD, Joey started a fight, grabbed a piece of glass, and stabbed Kevin in the arm and shouted, “You see what you made me do?” Kevin walked out with a bleeding arm, knocked on a neighbor’s door, and called the police. Joey was forced to leave, but subsequently moved in next door. Joey later got a job bartending at a club called Starbase Q.
Co-orker said he was a compulsive cleaner who would scrub the place down for hours after closing. That same co-orker eventually figured out the cleaning was driven by his crystal use. Joey also had a habit of overcharging customers. A regular named Skippy once spent $60 at the bar, closed out his tab, and woke up the next morning to find $300 charged to his card.
When he called to complain, Joey told him that it was his own fault. One night after the bar closed, a drag performer watched Joey loading boxes of liquor into his car. When asked what he was doing, Joey said he was going to his other job. Later, the bar’s owner and staff discovered that bottles from the upper shelves were missing along with several speakers, and both the safe and the ATM had been emptied.
It was alleged that Joey had taken all of it to open his own bar, which he called Glow. Reportedly opened on New Year’s Eve of 2006, and the staff from his old job later recognized the speakers and photos. As a convicted felon, Joey wouldn’t have been eligible for a liquor license. Former bar owner filed a complaint with the police and was told to wait because Joey was already under investigation.
Daniel Sisle, who worked at Glow, said the management style was chaotic. Joey would demand the walls be repainted almost every day, then disappear. Payroll was unreliable, and he carried a suitcase full of different drugs and offered them to people for free. The bar was eventually sold to someone else and rebranded as Fusion.
>> In October of 2009, Joey met Jeffrey Munt. Jeff had just moved back to Louisville after working in Chicago. Between 2006 and 2008, he worked at Northwestern University’s Office of Change Management as director of finance, making around a4 million a year. He drove to work every day in a BMW carrying a bottle of Voss water that his co-workers like to make jokes about.
He was particular. Reports were only accepted in 14point Garamond font. On bad days, he blasted metal in his office. He also spoke in a British accent at work. When his c-orker, Beck Shaw, asked if he’d been raised in the UK, he explained that a foreign accent earned him more respect. According to Beck, Jeff really believed that he was the smarter person in the room and that he was able to outstrategize anyone in it.
There were other things about Jeff that didn’t quite add up. One night, Beck couldn’t get her laptop off a desk because a security cable had jammed. Jeff got excited, drove her to the hardware store, and bought bolt cutters, and explained cheerfully that he had used the same method to steal bikes in college. He then asked Beck to hide the cost of the bolt cutters in an expense report.
When she asked if he was really asking her to falsify it, he said, “I would never say that.” In 2008, Jeff had purchased the Victorian mansion located at 1435 South Fourth Street. Like many people in the community, he was drawn to Old Louisville and talked about restoring the house to its original condition. Around May of 2009, he started working at the University of Louisville’s IT department.
A few months later, Jeff found Joey on a dating site called Adam for Adam and invited him over. After a few days together, Joey moved in. Nobody could quite figure out what drew someone like Jeff to someone like Joey. Jeff later said, “Joey had that bad boy look, you know, dyed hair, tattoo, jewelry, and all of that.
” And it was very attractive. I was going through a particularly difficult time personally. You know, it was one of the reasons I was attracted to Joey, who kind of had a different image from my normal boyfriend. Joey said Jeff, whom he often referred to as Jace, was the most articulate person he had ever met and that he was a sucker for someone like that.
>> In mid December of 2009, Joey and Jeff called Jaime over to the house for a bit of pee and pee or party and play as they called it. ChemX was another term they used. This is when two or more people engage in activities whilst under the influence of drugs. It wasn’t the first time they had had this kind of arrangement.
After a long night together, Jaime left to go get more drugs. What happened next from here is unclear, as you’ll soon find out. There are multiple versions of this story. What isn’t up for debate is that when Jaime came back, he was stabbed multiple times and shot to death. Joey would later describe that moment, saying, “And you know, I really thought he was joking or pushing my buttons.
Jaime came back to the house at probably I assume it was at least 5 or 6:00 in the morning. [music] Jaime came back with drugs and God knows how much money he had on him and we started to get high. Jaime and Jace were in the bed naked and there was porn on the TV. Before I knew it, Jace stabbed Jaime. Jaime jumped up.
There was blood flying. There was a lot of yelling. But now they had a body. Jaime’s body. They dragged him to the cellar and started digging. It took them almost 3 days to dig a hole deep enough. In between, they made a trip to a hardware store and bought a 5-ft Rubbermaid container, duct tape, and foam.
They scrubbed Jaime<unk>’s body down with mineral spirits to destroy DNA evidence, and then covered him in lime. Jaime couldn’t fit in the container, so they broke his legs with a sledgehammer and folded him in. They sealed the container with foam and duct tape, pushed it into the hole, covered it with dirt, and went back to their lives.
They even brought a contractor in to discuss pouring concrete over the cellar floor. The contractor would later tell investigators that both men seemed visibly anxious down there, especially in the area where Jaime was buried. >> By the end of February, Jeff had lost his job at the University of Louisville due to his drug use and poor performance.
Things had also begun to turn sour between the couple and many of their fights were captured on audio recording. >> What? I’m not getting into the anchor. I have a cigarette in my hand. >> I DON’T CARE. >> I DON’T want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you. >> HERE, YOU UNDERSTAND? GODDAMN. QUIT. >> I’M QUITTING. I quit. >> It’s over. Fine.
>> Oh, great. Now it’s over again. >> Well, you [ __ ] You just said quit. What do you want ME TO QUIT? >> QUIT. YOU’RE GODDAMN PUSHING. ALL I WANT IS FOR US TO MOVE FORWARD. >> GREAT. Then move forward. Stop [ __ ] making me your problem. Where did you take it? Chase. Jace. Chase. Chase. What is wrong? What did you take? Or what did I do? Chase because of the bullet.
I got a card of SL. It’s Number four. >> The next line is I feel fine and I didn’t know that you were evening awake. >> Jeff had also started making counterfeit money. Colleagues at his work noticed burn marks on his hands, which were later believed to be from his attempts at bleaching smaller notes and reprinting them as hundreds.
They took the fake bills to Chicago in April, 4 months after the murder, and stayed at the Hyatt Regency, where Jeff tried to exchange a fake hundred with a door man. The doorman was a 9-year veteran of the hotel, and he said the bill was as green as a tulip leaf and wet. He called the police and when the investigators searched the room, they found nearly $55,000 in fake bills, a loaded Glock handgun, two other unspecified firearms, and two bottles of GHB.
Hyatt General Manager Patrick Donnelly said, “You have to wonder, what kind of weekend were they planning?” Both Joey and Jeff were arrested. They were each carrying a Washington DC driver’s license with their photo and a fake name. Jeff was held on a $50,000 bail and Joey with multiple drugrelated convictions across New Jersey, Ohio, and Kentucky, was held on $200,000 bail.
Joey took the fall for the hotel room. He told police Jeff knew nothing about the drugs, the guns, or the counterfeit money. He said he figured that since he already had the record, it made more sense for him to take the hit. His bail was then reduced to $20,000. Jeff came and got him out, and they drove back to Louisville. Almost two months later, on June 17th, 2010, at around 9:30 p.m.
, Jeff called 911 and said Joey was trying to kill him. >> Please. 1435 South Fourth Street. My ex-boyfriend is attacking me in my house. Please come immediately. >> What’s the address? >> 1435 South Fourth, please. >> What’s your name? >> Jeffrey Mont. >> Okay. Who is attacking your door? >> Joey Bis. This next boyfriend. >> He’s in the house. High five safe.
He’s in the house trying to break down the door to the bedroom. Stay on the phone floor. Please, please hurry. >> Stay on the phone with me. See a white male. Black male. >> Please hurry. >> Stay on the phone with me. I’m giving the police this information. They’re driving. >> Please. >> They’re coming. Is the door locked to the bedroom? >> The door is locked.
I can hear the wood breaking on the door. >> Okay. I can’t get rid of him. >> Jeff didn’t unlock the door or come out until Joey was in handcuffs. Joey told the arresting officer that Jeff had killed someone and that there was a body buried in the cellar of the mansion. He said he had been asleep in the bedroom when Jeff took his wallet, phone, and keys, and locked himself in the guest room and staged the whole call, including hitting the door himself with a hammer to make it look like an attack.
>> My boyfriend had lied somehow and gotten police there and had me arrested for something that I didn’t do. >> What’s What’s your motivation today to come to come forward and tell us about this? I wasn’t able to tell anybody in the beginning because one I was scared for myself, scared for my family and I was also in love with this guy.
But over the past seven or eight months, one, I no longer love him. And two, somebody’s just got to know the truth. Joey also told investigators that Jeff had worked for the NSA and carried out more than 35 secret assassinations. In his words, he said, “He’s told me in the past he has supposedly done for the US government, and I do not know the specifics on very many of them.
I’ve seen news stories on bombings, but I don’t know what’s true and not true half the time with what he’s told me. All I know is he scares the hell out of me.” He told me he had a hat, a baseball cap that he and I guess somebody who he used to work with in the past used to put little gold stars on like good job.
Each star was for people, a person who had died. Jeff later denied all of that. Detectives asked him about the alleged body in the cellar. Jeff said, “I tried to break up with him and he threatened to kill me, threatened to frame me for murder.” Detective Colin King wasn’t convinced and he brought Jeff to the station for a formal interview.
While Detective King was talking with Jeff, the rest of the team was searching the house. They found blood in the bathtub drain and what appeared to be a bullet hole in one of the walls. Joey had also given them a handdrawn map marking exactly where the body was buried. Detective Leer later said, “When you’ve been in homicide for a little while, you know the smell of death.
” And at that time, we smelled death. After hours of digging, investigators pulled out a large sealed container, which they sent over to the medical examiner’s office. >> One step at a time. >> This is going to be taken to the medical examiner’s office where the seal will be broken, the lid will come off, and we will then at that time find out what is actually inside.
The body was identified as Jamie Carroll, who had been missing for over 6 months. When detectives reached out to his mother, she told them she assumed he had turned himself in on his court case and was already in prison. The autopsy documented three downward stab wounds that damaged the brachiolic vein and caused hemorrhage.
Toxicology showed high levels of methampetamine and alcohol. There was a gunshot wound to the neck as well, and his kneecaps had been crushed. Among the personal items recovered from his body were a fossil watch, a metal bracelet, two rings, and a silver cross pendant. Jaime’s friends were heartbroken. His childhood friend Renise broke down in tears, saying, “And right away, I knew people would focus only on the gay thing and that the drugs would take center stage, making everybody forget about Jaime, the person, the sweet boy who had friends
and family.” Police went back to interview both men separately. Joey said he wanted a lawyer and stopped talking altogether. Jeff kept going, acting as if none of this was connected to him. >> Take your time. Can you tell me whether there’s somebody buried in my house? >> There is. >> Oh my god. >> Do you know who it is? >> Uh, we have an idea who it is.
[snorts] >> Oh my god. Joey, how did he do something like this? >> Just can’t imagine. >> Well, we’re we’re going to get to the bottom of this. >> Killed in my basement. >> We want to clear your name is what we want to do. Would you be willing to take a take a polygraph from one of our polygraph? Uh, >> yeah.
I mean, I’m I mean, I don’t have anything to hide. >> Jeff even agreed to take a polygraph test. Police cameras caught Jeff walking towards the room with a smirk. Then, at the last moment, he backed out, saying he’d have to disclose information about the case, and the test would come back positive. Both men were arrested and charged with first-degree murder, robbery, and tampering with evidence.
The case was presided over by Jefferson Circuit Court Judge Mitch Perry and prosecuted by Assistant Commonwealth Attorney Ryan Conroy and Assistant County Attorney Josh Schneider. Prosecutors could have sought the death penalty. Instead, they worked out an arrangement where each man would testify against the other and the cases would be tried separately.
Jeff’s pre-trial situation was almost absurd compared to Joey’s. Joey sat in jail. Jeff, who had a clean record and presented himself as a respectable professional, was placed under house arrest and granted exceptions for dentist appointments. Joey’s trial came first in February of 2013. His attorney, Justin Brown, opened with an unusual admission, and I quote, “I’m here to tell you that Joey is guilty.
[music] He is guilty of tampering with evidence. He assisted in moving Jaime’s body and yes he helped Munt to bury Jaime’s body and those actions they do haunt him every day. He will also testify however about what he is absolutely not guilty of and that is assisting in any way or carrying out on his own the brutal and senseless stabbing and shooting of James Carol.
The defense pointed to the physical evidence. The Glock used to kill Jaime and the other firearms seized from the Chicago hotel room were all registered in Jeff’s name. A fellow inmate named James Jenkins testified that Jeff had confided in him about the murder. According to the inmate, Jeff admitted to being aroused from the killing.
[music] He called it the ultimate high. >> Jeff was the star witness for the prosecution. During his testimony, he blamed everything on Joey. He described the night of the murder, the drugs, the setup, and Joey stabbing Jaime. Series of text messages sent after the murder were also shared with the jury.
Neither man appeared to be living in fear. This trial was also noteworthy due to Jeff getting combative with Joey’s attorney while on the stand and attempting to control his cross-examination. It didn’t make him look good, but he was not the one who was on trial. Isn’t it true that you led Mr.
Bannis to believe we’re an agent of the of a foreign government or >> That was part of a sex scene, sir. >> Okay. So, you would admit to me or admit to this jury that you did tell him that you had, in fact, a bullet in your head from some work that you did in a foreign country? >> I don’t recall saying that. >> You don’t recall saying that? You don’t recall saying to him that you had a bullet in your head from Bratlavia? >> I’m sorry, where? >> Bratlavia.
That sounds >> Brlava. >> Yeah. Thank you. You know where it is then? >> Yes, I’m familiar with Eastern Europe. >> We’re going to be using the term lie a lot today. I want you to define for this jury what a lie is to Jeffrey Munt. >> A false statement. >> You lied. Isn’t that right? You did, right? >> Yes, sir.
I lied at the house and I lied downtown as well. Quite frankly, I was freaked out by the fact that there were TV cameras all over the place videotaping this thing. And that was really not exactly what I had in my mind is telling the police what had happened. >> Okay. All right. Now, you know, let’s talk about this. There were the television cameras that were up in the corner.
>> In the first 48 hours, they were the ones sitting right outside the door >> of the interrogation room. >> I don’t remember where they were sitting. >> You don’t remember that? >> I do remember there were cameras there. I can’t speak to where they were. >> Okay. Do you remember having conversations? literally having conversations with the first 48 hour crew.
>> No. >> Are you from Louisville? If I’m not supposed to talk to you, I’m sorry. I was just >> You don’t remember that? You don’t remember asking him whether or not you should not be talking to him? >> You don’t remember that? >> I don’t remember any of that. No, >> you don’t remember that. Okay. >> Unlike Mr.
Bayis, I don’t have a long history of interrogation to fall back on, so I don’t know how I was. >> Wait, what did you just say? What did you just say to this jury? Did I ask you a question about that? >> I’m sorry. All right. I thought it was relevant. I apologize. >> You thought it was relevant. You know what? When something’s relevant, I will ask you a question.
>> After 219 pieces of evidence and more than 18 witnesses, the jury found Joey guilty. Multiple jury members have given statements after the fact saying that had Jeff been on trial the same time as Joey, they would have found them both guilty. Joey waved the sentencing phase and reached an agreement with the Commonwealth, pleading guilty to being a persistent felony offender and agreeing to testify at Jeff’s trial.
In return, they took the death penalty off the table. June 12th, 2013, Joey Bayis was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He embraced his parents one last time before being taken back into custody. Jeff’s trial began in May of 2013. His team of four attorneys with winning records spent two weeks dismantling the prosecution’s version of events.
His lead attorney, Steve Rominus, opened by contrasting the two men. Jeff was a 38-year-old IT director making around a4 million a year. Joey was a drug dealer with more than six felony convictions. The attorney argued that a man like Jeff had no reason to kill Jaime Carol over $700. He had only known Joey for three weeks when the murder happened.
According to the defense, whatever happened that night, it was all Joey’s doing. Joey had agreed to testify against Jeff as part of his plea deal. But before the trial started, Joey’s attorneys filed the motion to back out, arguing that Joey’s conviction had been obtained improperly. Judge Perry denied the motion and Joey took the stand.
He testified that Jeff was the one who stabbed Jaime, that Jeff had been the aggressor throughout their relationship, that Jeff had planned the whole thing. Prosecution also played a tape Joey had recorded of him admitting to the murder while holding Jeff at gunpoint. This was played during Joey’s trial, but this time during Jeff’s trial, they showed additional parts of the video.
In these, it showed Jeff seemingly not in any distress whatsoever for somebody being held at gunpoint. He actually directed the proceedings from off camera and then it showed him editing the video on the laptop afterwards, saying that he got exactly what he needed from Joey. They implied that Jeff had orchestrated the whole video and convinced Joey to admit to the murder.
The trial also experienced controversy when one of the prosecutors, Ryan Conroy, sought permission to play a homemade adult video of the former couple. The defense objected, arguing that the prosecution, and I quote, only wanted to inflame the straight men on the jury. The judge allowed it, and the jury had to watch a tape of Joey and Jeff going at it. And it wasn’t tame.
This was an uncensored 12inute video recorded by Joey and Jeff after the murder. Both men spoke pretty vulgar to each other and it seemed as if both were high on drugs. In a later interview with the prosecutors, they said they felt the video was relevant for the jury to view. Prosecutor Conroy herself argued the tape showed a man who was anything but afraid.
She also said they stopped the video just before Jeff said the n-word, feeling that that was drawing the line of what was inappropriate for the jury to see and hear. Jeff’s defense team in a later interview disagreed with the prosecution’s approach. They felt the prosecution was trying to say that they felt a top in a gay relationship is incapable of being a victim in a DV situation.
The defense countered by calling in a DV expert to testify that Jeff showed signs of battered spouse syndrome. The prosecution objected to this, but the judge allowed it. After a turbulent two weeks, Jeff was ultimately found not guilty of murder, facilitation of murder, and robbery. [music] He was, however, convicted of tampering with evidence, and facilitation of robbery.
Juror Stacy Huber from Joey’s original trial heard the verdict and said, “I was just dumbruck. Like, how in the hell did a jury find him not guilty of murder? They beat him with a sledgehammer. They stuff him in a Rubbermaid in their basement and for 6 months they live happily ever after. I still can’t believe that he’s not guilty.
The autopsy findings are worth noting here. Joey had claimed that Jeff stabbed Jaime. The report documented three downward stab wounds to the neck. Jeff had insisted that Joey slashed Jaime’s throat, not stabbed, in which person’s testimony was more in line with the autopsy report. June 6, 2013, Judge Perry sentenced Jeff to three years for facilitation of robbery and five years for tampering with evidence.
He received credit for time served under home incarceration. He was released on parole in 2014. The only person who visited Jeff in jail was a friend named Linda Kra. Jeff promised her he’d tell her the whole story once he was out. She picked him up, brought him back to Louisville, and took him to dinner at Red Lobster with his family.
After that, he pulled away and went no contact with everyone. He never told Linda what happened. Linda looks back on her friendship with Jeff while he was behind bars and felt completely duped, wishing in hindsight she had nothing to do with him. Jeff moved to Baltimore where he started working at a movie theater. There’s been no public reports on his whereabouts since.
The documentary Murder in Glitterball City highlights several people claiming to have no idea where Jeff is currently. It is possible that he is currently living under another name. >> In 2022, Joey was asked from prison whether he was surprised that Jeff had disappeared. >> Uh, [music] no. Doesn’t surprise me that he could stay off the grid.
Um, build up a new identity, any of [music] those things. He told me that he did that type of stuff. Obviously, I was disappointed because I’m in prison for something somebody else did. As for the mansion at 1435 South 4th Street, residents have described it as eerie ever since. One neighbor, Angelique Stacy, claimed to have seen Jaime’s ghost near the property and created a sketch.
The self-described medium said she sensed a disturbing energy in that house before she ever learned of what happened inside of it. Jaime’s story reached a wider audience when David Domin wrote about the case in his book, A Dark Room in Glitterball City. David attended the court proceedings and sought out people who had known Jaime personally.
In 2026, HBO released a documentary on the case called Murder in Glitterball City. We highly suggest checking it out. Jaime Carroll was buried at Halbert Cemetery in Printer, Kentucky. His friends and family gathered for a memorial at Hall Funeral Home Chapel in Martin on June 27th, 2010. Those who loved him remembered him as someone whose energy left a mark on everyone he met.
