Billy Joe Harris, a 29-year-old Black man, was found murdered in Shreveport, Louisiana, on the morning of July 19, 1985, inside the Cedar Grove home he shared with Vivian Chaney. When a relative arrived early to surprise the family, the house didn’t answer back—only the sound of a stereo playing somewhere inside. She walked around to the rear, found the back door giving way, and stepped into a silence that turned monstrous as she discovered two young girls alive but shaken, and then the
bodies in separate rooms.
Investigators would later describe the attack as a single intruder’s brutal, controlled sweep through the residence during the overnight hours. Harris was in the front bedroom. He was shot twice in the left side of the head through a pillow, then shot twice in the chest. Even after that, he was still alive—his throat was cut, and he bled out. His hands were tied behind his back with shoelaces in a distinctive “handcuff” style ligature, his ankles were bound, and a telephone cord was used to cinch his hands to his ankles. He was left fully clothed on the bed, as if the killer had taken time not only to end a life, but to stage control over it.
The other victims in the home—Vivian Chaney, her brother Jerry Culbert, and her teenage daughter Carlitha Culbert—were also killed in a pattern of gunfire, bindings, cutting, and drowning/strangulation that suggested escalation and a signature. Evidence gathered at the scene included latent palm prints on the bathtub where Vivian Chaney was found; those prints were later matched to Nathaniel Robert Code Jr. Witness testimony and physical findings added to the portrait: a neighbor later reported seeing Code near the home before the bodies were discovered, and an acquaintance testified he encountered Code in the area that night and again shortly after—this time covered in blood and carrying items he tried to sell, including a knife, a handgun, and food stamps.
For a time, the murders stood as a terrifying question mark over Shreveport. Then, in August 1987, police arrested Code after events surrounding another set of killings drew attention back to him; authorities reported physical evidence linking him to the 1985 quadruple homicide. The case against him hardened into formal charges: a Caddo Parish grand jury indicted him for first-degree murder in connection with the July 19, 1985 deaths of Harris, Chaney, Culbert, and Carlitha Culbert.
Code was tried for the 1985 quadruple murder and was found guilty, receiving a death sentence. On appeal, the Louisiana Supreme Court’s decision recounts the evidence tying him to the scene and the sequence of the killings, concluding the proof supported the verdicts for the four murders, including Harris’s death by gunshots and throat-slashing.
