In the spring of 2015, a quiet evening in Savannah, Georgia, was shattered by an act of violence that would leave a lasting scar on the community. On April 13th, police responded to a call of shots fired at a residence on N.E. 36th Street. Inside, they discovered a grim scene: three men, all victims of fatal gunshot wounds. One of these men was Johnny Green, a 37-year-old male.
The other victims were identified as 52-year-old Anderson Mells and 30-year-old Gary Mells.
The initial stages of the investigation yielded few leads. Two individuals were briefly detained as persons of interest after a traffic stop shortly after the discovery, but they were later released after questioning. With little information to go on, the case eventually went cold, leaving the families of the victims in a painful state of limbo, without answers or justice for their loved ones. For years, the triple homicide remained a somber, unresolved chapter in the city's history.
However, the pursuit of justice did not fade. In the years that followed, the Savannah Police Department's Major Crimes Unit revisited the cold case, breathing new life into the investigation. Their persistent efforts eventually bore fruit, leading to new leads and the identification of multiple suspects. In August of 2021, a breakthrough finally came. A Chatham County grand jury returned indictments against three men, charging them with felony murder and malice murder in connection with the 2015 slayings.
The first suspect, 38-year-old Stanley Hall, was apprehended on August 13th after a standoff with the U.S. Marshal's Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force and Savannah police SWAT, during which he had barricaded himself inside a residence. A week later, on August 20th, the other two suspects, 29-year-old John Baker and 39-year-old Jerrell Williams, were also taken into custody. All three men were subsequently booked into the Chatham County Jail, bringing a long-awaited sense of progress to a case that had remained unsolved for over six years.
