Inset: Zachary Hayes (Blount County Sheriff”s Office). Background: The area near where Hayes killed his own mother in Louisville, Tenn. (Google Maps).
A man from Tennessee has been sentenced to a lengthy prison term for the brutal killing of his mother and her pet cat, officials in the state disclosed this week.
On Friday, 27-year-old Zachary Justin Hayes admitted guilt to charges including second-degree murder, corpse abuse, and aggravated cruelty to animals, the Blount County District Attorney’s Office reported.
Following his plea, 5th Circuit Court Judge Tammy M. Harrington handed Hayes a 37-year prison sentence for the violent acts that claimed the life of 63-year-old Kimberly Hayes.
The tragic event unfolded in September 2023 at a residence on Samples Road in Louisville. Sheriff’s deputies arrived to find Kimberly Hayes suffering from numerous stab wounds. Her cat was also found dead from stabbing, the Blount County Sheriff’s Office stated.
During their investigation, authorities uncovered several bloody knives scattered throughout the home, one of which was broken in half.
Quickly, the crime was categorized as aggravated burglary and homicide, with Hayes emerging as the prime suspect in the case.
Hayes was arrested at his own residence in Knoxville by members of the U.S. Marshals Service Smoky Mountain Fugitive Task Force the day after his mother’s body was found, according to a report by Knoxville-based ABC affiliate WATE.
The defendant would later admit to killing his mother without any clear motivation.
“I was not looking forward to it, planning it,” Hayes said in a video of his initial custody interrogation played during a hearing, according to a courtroom report by The Daily Times.
Over the course of a multiple-hour interview, the defendant said he stabbed his mother while she was watching TV in her living room, had a drink, then finished watching a show before going to bed.
Neighbors would recall seeing a red Mercedes that the woman’s son often used parked outside her residence the day before the grim discovery. Then, after she failed to show up for work the next day, the car was gone. A coworker stopped by and found the worst.
The local medical examiner determined the victim had died from a combination of stab wounds to her neck and head. The woman’s time of death was placed late Sept. 7, 2023, or early the next day.
After law enforcement got involved, family noticed the Mercedes parked outside of the son’s home in Knoxville – but at first he was not there. Family members were inside when Hayes finally arrived back home on the night of Sept. 9, 2023, leading to an arrest without incident.
During an earlier hearing in his case, the defendant reportedly cried after seeing photographs of his mother’s dead body, telling the court he was scared on the night of her murder.
The defendant received several days of credit already served in pretrial detention.
