1886
In 1886 James Madison Hatton, son of Wiggins Hatton, homesteaded 160 acres in north central Harrison County.
about 0:04:35The story
Wiggins, Mississippi, is a small town of 4,282 people in Stone County, in the southern part of the state between Mobile and New Orleans. His parents never married and he carried his mother's name. Sherry Johnson was born in 1967 into a close-knit family whose houses stand along Johnson Road; she was a guidance counsellor at Hattiesburg High School, having worked in the Harrison County school district from 2007 to 2014 and at North Gulfport Middle School from 2010 to 2014.
Johnson served in the US Army and attended community college for a while, then drifted through temporary labouring and landscaping jobs. The army recorded that he had received substantial psychiatric and psychological treatment, and he carried diagnoses of a psychotic disorder on the schizophrenia spectrum and a chronic delusional disorder. He was hospitalised more than once, had violent disputes with family members and strangers, and was not receptive to treatment.
In May his mother called the deputies when he would not calm down and he was tasered four or five times in her living room. Four days later he picked her up and threw her seven or eight feet out of the back door into the yard, injuring her right arm; when deputies arrived he fought them, was tasered four more times and was beaten with a baton. Soon afterwards he drove away from a petrol station without paying, led deputies on a chase to a house in the county, and cut and stabbed himself during a standoff before surrendering so that he could be treated.
Stubbs had told him a couple of weeks earlier not to take food from other inmates' plates. Johnson attacked several inmates and tore off Stubbs's nose and lips with his teeth; the nose was taken to hospital in a cup of ice. He sought a million dollars and $400,000 in compensatory damages.
His probation officer repeatedly asked for him to be imprisoned and the state declined.
On Sunday 3 June 2018 Sherry Johnson went to church and made plans to meet a friend later to discuss the Bible. He then used a butter knife, his hands and his teeth to take off her head, dragged her body into the backyard and left it by a tree, and threw her head over a fence 12 to 15 feet away. He locked her bedroom door and told relatives who called that she had gone on a cruise.
On 6 June her brother called the Stone County Sheriff's Department for a welfare check after Johnson refused to let him into the house. Captain Ray Boggs, a cousin of the family, arrived with deputies. Johnson let them in and said his mother had gone on a last-minute cruise. The bedroom was locked; when Boggs opened it he found blood on the walls, bed, floor and ceiling and a bloody butter knife. Johnson then said she was in the backyard, where they found her headless body. The autopsy found she died of blunt force trauma and had signs of numerous previous assaults.
His attorney, Jim Davis, said his client had a long history of mental illness and that the decapitation had a reason behind it, and indicated an insanity defence. Prosecutors said he was under the influence of drugs and knew what he was doing. In 2019 the psychiatrist Sarah Deland of New Orleans reported that he was not competent to proceed and recommended inpatient competency restoration.