In the early morning hours of June 16, 1987, first responders rushed to a fire at Emmanuel Church of Christ, One-Nus Pentecostal in Nashville, Tennessee.

Detectives were called to the scene pretty quickly. This was clearly a case of arson.

One of those detectives, Robert Moore, talked to a TV show called Grave Secrets

in an episode called Baptism by Fire. He told the TV show that when he got there, the walls

were black and the organ was melted to the floor. This had been a massive fire. When the fireman

came in, there was steam still coming off the pews.

First responders went up to the attic, and they saw something rolled up in a carpet.

It looked like junk, but underneath, they found the charred remains of a man.

They could see the torso, but the body had been decapitated, and the right arm had been sliced

off below the elbow. There were saw marks on the body. There was also an axe lying near the body.

But detectives pretty quickly figured out that everything at this crime scene was not what it

seemed. First of all, they noticed that the skin had been removed from one of the victim's

forearms, and the cut to the head was clean, as if the victim had been beheaded with something

very sharp by someone who knew what they were doing.

The axe was clearly not the murder weapon.

Forensic testing revealed the victim had been beheaded after death.

They believed that they would find the cause of death as some kind of trauma to the victim's

head, which of course was missing. Detective Moore talked to the TV show about the cuts.

He said, quote, they were straight and precise, just as if you were fillet meat, end quote.

The body was wearing a black belt with the initial tea in gold. The belt was recognizable as belonging to the pastor of the church,

Pastor David Terry, who everyone called Brother David. Everyone loved Brother David. So,

police didn't understand why someone would have targeted him in this way.

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