A Mississippi woman was charged with murder on Saturday after her son's body was found hidden behind a false wall in her home.
Jerri Lynn Isreal, 66, was arrested and charged with one count of first-degree murder, the Gulfport Police Department wrote in a news release that was posted to its Facebook page on Saturday evening.
Officers had been called to her residence in the 2200 block of 16th Avenue on December 22, 2023, to carry out a welfare check on a possible missing person, the police department said. Isreal was questioned at the time, but police said when detectives followed up with her five days later, they began noticing discrepancies.
"Throughout the course of the investigation, Isreal became increasingly uncooperative and changed her statements multiple times," the police department wrote in its press release.
Investigators then learned that Isreal was convicted of murder in Florida almost 30 years ago.
Isreal had "made several attempts to dump the deceased subject at different locations throughout Florida" in that case, police said.
Armed with this additional information, detectives obtained a search warrant for the residence. Police, along with crime scene technicians, searched the home on January 18 and found a wooden box hidden behind a false wall. Inside, they found the body of a man later identified as John Allen Gaither. Gaither, 42, was Isreal's son, Sergeant Jason DuCré told Newsweek.
Authorities described the box Gaither was found in as a "military locker-style container," according to local news station WLOX.
At the time that officers searched her home, Isreal was transported to a local hospital for medical treatment, police said, with WLOX reporting that the 66-year-old had consumed an unsafe amount of pills.
Isreal was later transported to the Harrison County Adult Detention Center to be held in lieu of her bond.
Anyone with information about the case is urged to contact the Gulfport Police Department at 228-868-5959 or Mississippi Coast Crime Stoppers at 877-787-5898.
Isreal, previously known as Jerri Gaither, shot Christina Racey in the head in July 1993, then drove around with her body in her trunk for several days before dumping it along a remote road in Indian River County, The Palm Beach Post reported in 1995. She was arrested in December of that year after deputies found her walking along an interstate with a pistol in her hand threatening to take her own life.
Isreal had blamed Racey's murder on her boyfriend, saying he killed the woman over a dispute about drugs and ordered her to dispose of the body. Police arrested him, but later dropped the charges. A grand jury later indicted Isreal for murder, but she fled after being released on a $100,000 bond.
She remained on the run until a Florida Highway Patrol trooper pulled her vehicle over near Orlando in June 1995, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported at the time.
She was sentenced to 17 years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder later in 1995, according to Law&Crime, and was released in 2003.
Update 1/22/24, 9:58 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from the Gulfport Police Department.
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