In the autumn of 1979, concern began to mount for Charles Pomeroy Almon III, a 46-year-old White male from Knoxville, Tennessee, after his customary Sunday phone calls to his parents suddenly ceased in September. A land reclamation contractor known for his cool demeanor and love for his Jaguar sports car, Almon's silence was uncharacteristic and alarming to his family.
The discovery of his abandoned Jaguar near Newport, with valuables still inside but no trace of its owner, only deepened the mystery surrounding his disappearance. For months, his family was left with no answers, unaware of the grim fate that had befallen him.
The truth began to unravel in December of that year, through a separate investigation involving an 18-year-old named Nicholas Todd Sutton, who had been employed by Almon for planting work. Sutton reported his own grandmother, Dorothy, missing. However, investigators quickly found signs of foul play at her home and took Sutton into custody. Under questioning, Sutton’s story began to crumble, leading him to confess to a string of violent crimes. He admitted to killing his grandmother and also led authorities to the body of another victim, 19-year-old John Large.
In a twisted attempt to mitigate his own culpability, Sutton concocted a story claiming that Almon had been responsible for his grandmother's death and that he had killed Almon in self-defense. This narrative, however, would be starkly refuted by the evidence. In May 1980, while searching a rock quarry near Newport for an unrelated case, divers made a startling discovery. They found the body of Charles Almon, wrapped and chained to a concrete block, a method chillingly similar to how Sutton had disposed of his grandmother's remains.
An autopsy revealed that Almon had been deceased for several months before Dorothy Sutton's death, completely dismantling Nicholas Sutton's self-defense claim. The jury did not believe his fabricated tale. Sutton was ultimately convicted for the murders of Charles Almon, John Large, and Dorothy Sutton, receiving life sentences for his crimes. His violent path did not end there; in 1985, he murdered a fellow inmate, Carl Estep, which resulted in a death sentence. Nicholas Todd Sutton was executed by electric chair in 2020.
