Lillie Mae Eubank

A soldier's brutal murder shocks a Georgia military base. We had a deceased service member, and the circumstances around his death were unknown. He'd been so badly beaten that he actually had brain matter exuding from his skull. Witness accounts point to a suspect close to the victim. He wanted to go animal tracking. My uncle and my stepfather both went into the woods. Only one came out. She said he looked crazed in his eyes. But as the investigation unfolds, detectives sort through lies and misdirection to catch a ruthless killer driven by greed. Everything she said was a lie. Every emotion she displayed was fake. He went from fighting a war just to come home and die. Like, that makes absolutely no sense to me. November 30, 2013. It's the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and soldiers at Georgia's Fort Stewart Army Base are enjoying a sunny afternoon with their families. Fort Stewart is quite large. And it's home to about 20,000 soldiers. But around 5:00 PM, a shocking discovery at a park located on Fort Stewart's military base interrupts the community's weekend plans. A 911 call came in to the Fort Stewart 911 dispatch center reporting a body, a male. The man was found just about 10 feet into the wood line. The victim was not conscious but was alive and was struggling to breathe. The gentleman who called reported that he and other military members were rendering aid. There was no identification on this victim. He wasn't wearing any boots on. And so, that led us to the thought that this was possibly a soldier. Police and paramedics arrive on scene and quickly transport the victim to nearby Wynn Army Hospital. The victim did not survive the attack very long. He was pronounced dead. His skull was badly fractured in a number of places. He had a number of lacerations. The injuries were indicative of a homicide, and that's how we treated the case going forward. Because this was very apparently a purposeful assault, first responders notify the Army's Criminal Investigative Division. The CID, the Criminal Investigation Division, are what I would call the FBI of the military. They will investigate anything from felonies to misdemeanors. By the following morning, the entire base is working with investigators to identify the victim found in the woods. Every commander was instructed to perform a full accountability of his or her unit. The only soldier on the base that had not been accounted for was Specialist John Eubank. ♪♪ Soldiers from Specialist Eubank's unit went to Wynn Army Hospital to attempt to identify the victim. ♪♪ I was able to identify John when they kicked the sheet back. His injuries, they were very severe, but I could still tell it was John. ♪♪ The last time I seen this man, he was healthy, full of life, and to be reduced to laying on a steel slab, beat down like that, that's tough to deal with. Like, who would do this to him? ♪♪ John Eubank was born on December 15th, 1983, in the remote Alaskan town of Mountain Village. ♪♪ John's family were Yupik Alaskan natives, and his indigenous heritage was a central part of his identity. John was definitely big on his culture, being a Native American. He was always big on family and taking care of his family and always looking out for them as best he could. John was never scared to show that he loved his family. He would talk about his family and how they would do everything together. ♪♪ Growing up in a town of less than 1,000 people made John eager to see the world. So a few weeks before his 20th birthday, he enlisted in the Army. I served with John for two deployments. He was a goofball, and no matter what kind of mood you were in, he would always put a smile on your face. ♪♪ After basic training, John was deployed to Iraq in 2004, where he served as a heavy vehicle driver. We were part of the same team. We provided transportation security. The thing that set up to me the most about John on deployments, he tried his best to keep it cool and calm. He dealt with pretty much everything that you could imagine being shot at with. Because John was from Alaska, we gave him the nickname of the Alaskan American. He was an Alaskan assassin. ♪♪ Between 2004 and 2008, John served two deployments in Iraq. As much as he loved the service, he began dreaming of having someone to come home to. John was looking for someone that loved him as much as he would love them. ♪♪ After dating, the brave soldier was in unfamiliar territory. He wasn't given really a lot of opportunities to date, and John wasn't the biggest social butterfly. To help overcome his shyness, John tried online dating while deployed. ♪♪ He soon hit it off with 34-year-old single mother, Lily Mae Wells. After a string of bad relationships and moving around, Lily was looking for another chance at love. John explained to me that Lily's background from what she told him was a little rough. I guess she was abused. Lily would do a lot of pet rescue. She would nurse them back to health or get them back up to par and find them good homes. And that was something that she was very passionate about. ♪♪ Over the duration of the deployment, they would write back and forth, talk on the phone together. He couldn't wait to meet her when he got back. ♪♪ In the winter of 2008, John and Lily finally met in person when he returned home to Fort Stewart. ♪♪ She had came from Florida. He had told me that he was extremely happy about it. Lily was just the way that she was online as in person. After months of a long-distance relationship, the couple couldn't wait to spend every moment together. He had moved into on-post housing, and it wasn't long before they got married. It was like it happened overnight. He was telling everybody this was his wife, and, you know, he was ecstatic to have somebody. ♪♪ John was equally excited by the idea of becoming a stepfather to Lily's children. When I first met him, I was not happy about it. I fought with him tooth and nail. But I warmed up to him pretty fast, I think. By the time John came into my life, I was already in my teens. He was about 10 years old. I was 10 years younger than Mom. He was young, and he was still trying to learn what it meant to be a stepdad. I can understand now, when I look back at it, that he was just trying to figure out, you know, where he fit in the puzzle. Even make these really funny faces, and there's no way you can not laugh. ♪♪ Over the next five years, John continued to work his way up the military ranks. But his hopes for the future centered on his life. family. John was hopeful to have his own children, but on the same hand he loved those children like they were his own children. But tragically, that future never came to be. After surviving multiple tours in combat zones, John has met an unimaginable fate near the military base he calls home. So it was our job to figure out how John Eubank was killed. Army CID initially processed the scene. They found some brain matter, they found teeth. It became clear to the investigators that this was the site of the actual assault. The crime scene provides few leads, but when investigators canvass the area, they learn that the killer may have made one costly mistake. One of the persons who was helping the victim told investigators she had seen a white or a gray pickup truck in that area, and that the pickup truck was rolling very slowly. And occasionally stopping, as if it was waiting for something or hesitant to leave. Very shortly before that pickup truck left the area, a man came out from the wood line. She had provided a physical description of a white male with longish, maybe shoulder-length hair, average build, who was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved top. That could be the last person who had seen a pickup truck in that area, and that could be the last person who had seen a long-sleeved top. That could be the last person who had seen a pickup truck in that area, and that could be the last person who had seen a seen him alive and we needed to find out who this person was. Coming up, a grieving widow and her daughter share a disturbing firsthand account. I told them everything that I knew. I didn't hold back anything. And investigators zero in on a person of interest. He had a very extensive criminal history. He threatened to kill her, choked her, and held her against her will. He was a ticking time bomb. The day after finding soldier John Eubanks' body, military police are investigating their first lead after a witness reported seeing suspicious activity momentarily. John Eubanks' body was found. She had actually witnessed a man come out from the wood line, walk around the back of the truck, and get in just before it departed. Unfortunately, the witness did not see a license plate number for the vehicle, so identifying the suspect will take more legwork. At that point, staff sergeants in Specialist John Eubanks' unit decided to call his, dependent spouse, and that was Lily Eubank. Lily answered the phone and told them that she was actually about to call the MPs because she stated her husband, Specialist Eubank, had not come home that night and that she had not seen him since the previous afternoon. The sergeant asked whether she had filed a missing persons report, and she said she had not because she believed she had to wait 24 hours before she could do that. Rather than deliver news of John's death over the phone, military police send a car to bring Lily in. The casualty assistance officer informed Lily that her husband, Specialist John Eubank, was deceased. She simply said over and over again, who would do this to him? Who would do something like this to him? Lily Eubank's response was puzzling and very suspicious. In that she never asked what happened because nobody had informed her of the cause or manner of death. Despite her grief, Lily does her best to answer investigators' questions. Lily Mae Eubank reported that she had last seen her husband on November 30th around 4.30 at the Holbrook Pond Recreation Area. He wanted to go animal tracking, so she and her daughter were able to go animal tracking. She and her daughter, Angel Wells, had dropped him off to go off into the woods. He had told her to just go on and head home, that he would walk home himself. John's body was found at 5 p.m., just 30 minutes later. Lily described her marriage with John as a good marriage. She loved him very much. He provided for their family. And he was the father figure to her two daughters. She was telling me about how she was texting back and forth with John, and he was saying, you know, things like, oh, yeah, we're having a good time, which caused the suspicion of, who's we? She explained that he was referring to him being with the deer. So these messages between her and John really gave me interest in what was on her cell phone. When I asked Lily to be able to search her cell phone, she seemed really open to the idea and not reluctant to share that with me. While CID waits for the analysis, they let Lily go home and continue gathering information from friends and service members. We sent a team over to their neighborhood to canvass their neighbors and ask them what they've seen. and ask them what they've seen. When officers pass the Eubank home, they notice something surprising in their driveway. It was interesting for agents to see a silver pickup truck because eyewitnesses at Holbrook Pond had seen a white or a silver in color pickup truck slowly rolling past the location where John Eubank was found. When speaking with neighbors, they confirm that the truck was found in the area of the Eubank home. They confirm that Lily drives the truck. And also share another piece of information Lily left out of her statement. Some neighbors reported that on the evening of John Eubank's murder, which was November 30th, they saw a person they knew to be Lily Eubank's brother, Carl Swain, departing the residence. In her timeline, she never once mentioned that her brother had been in town visiting. My uncle Carl was a little off the wall. I asked her why my uncle Carl had even came here. And she had told me that my uncle Carl wanted to try to rebuild their relationship. Nobody really had a relationship with him because he's literally been at and out of prison my entire life. When investigators confront Lily, she says that Carl was in town for Thanksgiving, but she took him to the bus station that evening. He didn't live there, and so she took him to the bus station to send him back home. Agent Cicero demands to know why Lily Eubank wouldn't have mentioned that her brother has been in town. Lily responds that she was actually just trying to protect her brother Carl. She had purchased his ticket to travel from Alabama to Savannah and back. And the ex-convict said, The explanation that Lily gave was he had some sort of criminal history that would prevent him from traveling outside of the state. Investigators ask Lily to give her full statement again. When asked to now tell a truthful statement, Lily said that she was not truthful when she said she dropped John Eubank off at Holbrook Pond to go animal tracking by himself. She said that in reality, she and her daughter Angel had driven John Eubank and Carl Swain to Holbrook Pond and had dropped them both off that afternoon to supposedly go animal tracking. That John Eubank had gotten out of the truck and departed with a slingshot and that Carl Swain had a wooden baseball bat. Lily says the men took the weapons to fend off any wild hogs they might run into, so she didn't think anything of it at the time. She and her daughter ran some errands, then returned a few hours later to pick them up. Lily and Angel come back, and as they pull around, they see Carl up in the wood line with the baseball bat, hitting something repeatedly. Shortly thereafter, Carl comes down from the wood line and gets in the vehicle with them. He is exasperated, has blood on him, and the baseball bat had blood on it. Lily inquired to Carl, what happened, and Carl said that they were scared or spooked by a hog, and he was up there beating the hog, and John ran off like a little bitch. Only one came out. She said he looked crazed in his eyes and still a little amped up. Lily claims she took Carl's explanation at face value when it happened. But investigators are quick to challenge her story. As I continue to interview Lily, I kind of lay out all the facts to her of, okay, your husband went missing yesterday. You saw your brother beating, quote-unquote, a pig in the woods. Your husband is deceased. Common sense would tell you that the likelihood that it was Carl who killed your husband is high. And she continued to claim ignorance. She believes that she's simply a sort of victim in all of this and that she never knew that was going to happen. Investigators keep pressing. The agents didn't believe her. They pressed her on that story. And ultimately, Lily admitted, that she had seen Swain was beating something and it wasn't a hog, that it was actually the body of John Eubank. Lily Mae Eubank has just confessed to seeing her brother, Carl Swain, beat her husband to death. We knew she was involved, but we didn't know the extent of how she was involved at this point. We didn't know at that point in the investigation. But now, Lily is willing to work with investigators to help build a case against John's killer. She agreed to make a surreptitious recorded phone call to Carl Swain that CID would listen in on. We asked her to ask Carl about what happened to the bat, to try to get Carl to make his own decision. But he didn't. He didn't want to do it. Six days after John Eubanks' body was discovered bludgeoned to death on Fort Stewart Army Base, investigators have arrested Carl Swain for his murder. But they suspect John's wife, Lily, was involved as well. There were too many red flags, such as Carl not being included in her story from the beginning. And we're starting to believe that Lily is a subject in this case versus a grieving widow. To help investigators prove Lily is responsible, John's friend, Tamisa, records several conversations with her, hoping she'll slip up. I didn't care if I needed to use my cell phone or wear a wire, wear a recording device. I was going to find out what had happened. I wish we knew at that moment what he was doing. Oh, no. So we can stop it. It's not only pure insane. I had to think strategically because I really wanted to make sure that I didn't do anything to alarm her. She tells Tamisa that she and her daughter live in fear of Carl, despite the fact that he's been arrested. He'll come after me and Angel. I know he will. Why would he go after you guys? Because of the witnesses. Because of the witnesses, nobody can testify against him. The tapes are turned over to the FBI, but there's nothing incriminating enough to make an arrest. When agents confront Lily for the third time, she admits there's more to the story, but says it's not what they think. Lily's story is that she was experiencing marriage. She's been in terrible difficulties, claiming that he had physically assaulted her and that he was verbally and emotionally abusive. Lily claims she turned to her brother for help. Lily Eubank told me that she asked her brother Carl to rough up her husband, to scare John into acting appropriately to her. Swain was only supposed to beat John up with his fists, and instead he went wild and out of control and murdered him with his baseball bat. But with all the lies leading up to this, investigators are no longer inclined to believe her. At this point, Lily Eubank has changed her story three times. We couldn't find that there was actually abuse. It's clear Lily isn't going to tell them the truth. And so far, Carl has remained silent as well. But while he's in jail awaiting trial, Carl makes a crucial mistake. He told two detainees in the Chatham County Jail what he had done, that he had beaten John up. He told them that he had beaten John Eubank to death. Swain had confided in them that he had done this at the behest of his sister, Lily Eubank, because she was going to get $500,000 after the murder as the grieving widow, and that he was going to be owed $160,000 for his part in the murder. Service members are covered by something called the Servicemen's Group Life Insurance Policy, SGLI. Lily Eubank was the beneficiary of those life insurance benefits. Every emotion Lily Eubank displayed was fake. Lily Eubank cared about nothing other than Lily Eubank. When investigators receive the analysis for Lily's phone records, they find further evidence of a murder. There's a lot of evidence that shows that Lily Eubank was the perpetrator of the murder. Special Agent Freiman found a string of text messages between Lily Eubank and Carl Swain. From the text messages, investigators were able to discern that Lily Eubank had been planning to and attempting to kill John Eubank for much longer than was initially suspected. Back in April of 2013, she had a conversation with one of her daughters about John wanting a divorce. We can tell you that Lily Eubank was the perpetrator of the murder. We can tell from Lily Eubank's internet search history, that's when she started planning his murder. Lily's content for searches conducted on her phone included how to drown somebody in a bathtub, as well as poisons that will not be identified on an autopsy. In September of 2013, Lily texted, I baked him a strawberry vanilla bean cake. Special Agent Freiman was able to uncover that vanilla bean was actually sort of a code word for a castor bean, which can be used to make ricin poison. She thought that by baking castor beans into a cake, she had created ricin and was going to effectively poison him to death. The attempt to poison John failed, but texts show Lily kept looking for solutions. One of the things that came up in discussion was a trip to Tybee Island. There was mention of John not being a good swimmer, and then so potential attempts at maybe a drowning. That plan didn't work out. The next day was Thanksgiving, and the day after sitting at John Eubank's Thanksgiving table, Carl Swain then invited John Eubank out for that walk. Everyone once probably knew it was coming because he assumed this is something that John and Carl were doing to maybe bond, to like get to know one another. After putting together the text messages, search history, and motive, we were able to have enough to charge Lily in the murder of John Eubank as well. On February 26th, detectives confront Lily with the evidence, and this time, she has a different reaction. She seemed relieved almost that she finally was done with hiding all the facts. Lily Eubank confessed that in reality, she had not asked Carl Swain to beat up John Eubank as retaliation. bank but as prosecutors prepare the case for trial lily tries to lay the blame entirely on carl lily eubank maintained that carl swain had demanded the money from her and essentially had twisted lily's arm to participate in this plan like her other claims the evidence doesn't support it lily told us she purchased a bat a couple weeks prior to the murder with john for protection in their vehicle in the event it broke down investigators went to walmart to pull surveillance footage and sure enough they found footage at the self-checkout where john eubank was actually purchasing the bat that was ultimately used in his murder it just showed how just heartless she was a part of me wants to believe my mom but there's just so much other evidence that says otherwise lily eubank was incredibly cold and calculating throughout this murder plot all the while pretending to be john eubank's loving wife lily manipulated carl swain's impoverished situation to entice him to come to Hinesville and murder her husband. - Carl was homeless and living on the edge. $160,000 would be a great motivator to anyone in his situation. - Not even jail stops Lily from continuing her manipulation tactics. - She didn't like being in the local jail, so she would make herself seriously ill, such that she would have to be transported to a hospital facility. When that behavior stopped working, Lily Eubank pretended to be absolutely catatonic. - The defense attorney for Lily tried to bring a defense of mental capacity. - The ploy gets Lily what she wants, a psychiatric evaluation. But her plan is to kill her husband. The plan backfires. - The court found that she was stable enough to not only be charged, but go to trial if she chose to. She chose not to and took a plea agreement to conspiracy to commit murder. - Lily is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In March, 2015, more than a year after John's murder, Lily was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In March, 2015, more than a year after John's murder, Lily's brother Carl goes on trial. - The evidence was just so overwhelming. I don't think there was much the defense could do here. - Carl was found guilty on all three charges, murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and murder for hire. Each of those charges brings a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison. So Carl received three life sentences, and he will remain there without any opportunity to be released. - I think justice was served, because they would never have the opportunity to be outside those walls again. - Neither one of them deserve to have a life outside of prison. - Carl Swain is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at USP Terre Haute. you