Investigators close to finding man’s killer

By Marissa Sulek

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    LYNNVILLE, Tennesee (WSMV) — There are still no arrests made after a well-known Giles County man was shot and killed outside him home last spring.

It’s a cold case that investigators revisit every week but say there is one important piece of information that stands in the way of an arrest.

In the countryside of Lynnville, Tennessee, farmland puts neighbors at a distance, which gives people, like Jim and Dawn Grimes their own oasis.

“As soon as we pulled up to the driveway, we both knew this is where we wanted to be,” Dawn Grimes says.

Dawn and Jim, married 15 years, knew the land would be the perfect place to spend retirement. It’s a serene spot with horses, goats, and a pig. A home their blended family of four and their grandchildren could gather for the holidays.

“No better place to be, you now, than beautiful Giles County,” says Dawn. “It truly is a beautiful little community. And unfortunately, bad things happen here too.”

On the night of April 19, 2021, it was Dawn’s turn to feed the animals, but she didn’t feel well.

“I feel a lot of guilt because it was supposed to be me that went out that night … and he said “you’re tired, just go sit down, relax, I’ll go feed”,” Dawn recalls.

A short time later, an explosion like sound sends her walking outside, where she sees Jim’s headlight shining on the ground.

“I yelled for him,” she says. “He never answered.”

Dawn says she ran to Jim and called 9-1-1 but didn’t know her husband was shot until investigators with the Giles County Sherriff’s Department got to the scene – Luke Tyson was one of them.

“They were fairly close,” Tyson, the lead investigator on the case explains. “It would be more than likely that Jim saw the individual who shot him.”

He believes the person who shot Jim knew the lay of the land.

“There are electric fences that cover a large portion of the property,” Tyson says. “The back side of the property is the only thing that didn’t have an electric fence on that night.”

Since that night, Tyson says they’ve done grid searches on the property, used canines, even drained the pond.

After months of weekly investigations, they have a person of interest, but there’s a roadblock.

“We really are looking for any location data on any individual in the area,” Tyson explains.

Tyson says they’ve submitted 90 search warrants to tech companies, like Apple and Google, trying to find cell phone locations the night of April 19, but it is not so easy.

“We know it’s out there, we’re just a smaller department and we just don’t have the means like some of these larger departments to track cell phone, cell phone data, other electronic devices that may have been in that area – we just don’t have that capability.”

And while they wait for information from the tech companies, Dawn continues to make sure this county never forgets her husband’s face.

Drive down Lynnville’s rural roads and signs with Jim’s face and a million-dollar reward lines neighbors’ fences. No matter how much the reward is, Dawn believes the answers lie with the tech companies.

“What you see on TV, in 48 hours this mystery will be solved, it doesn’t work like that,” says Dawn. “There are thousands and thousands of hours of work, day, night that they are working to solve this, and they are so close. I hope this person knows how close they are, because we are going to come, and we are going to get them, and they are going to pay for what they’ve done.”

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