April 26, 2022 • 21 mins
On July 3rd of last year, Gene Siller went to work at the Pinetree Country Club to help staff set up for Independence Day celebrations. Unfortunately, he never made it back home, leaving his wife without a husband and his kids without a father. The story made headlines at the time, but none have gone as deep as a new piece from Sports Illustrated contributing writer Brian Burnsed.
Article, He Followed His Golf Dream. In the End, It Was a Nightmare.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, I'm John Gonzalez, host of Sports Illustrated Weekly.
We're gonna try something just a little bit different this
week with a special audio version of Brian byrd sayds
s I dot com Daily cover. Please enjoy this standalone
bonus show, Murder at Pine Tree Country Club. The reality
(00:22):
of it sets in when I'm at home. I had
to give the boys bath and then we'll by the way,
my best friend not here and their daddy's not here.
It was like daddy went to work and there was
a bad man at daddy's work, and that batman had
a gun. Last summer, a forty six year old golf
(00:50):
pro was murdered under mysterious circumstances. Gene Siller was shot
on the tenth whole of the Pine Tree Country Club
in Georgia. We had to turn Jean over to start
CPR on him. It was a horrible, horrible thing to
come up to. The depth of your love determines the
(01:12):
depth of your grief. The depth of my loved rand
was so deep that I don't think I'll ever recover.
The story made headlines at the time, but no story
has gone as deep as a new piece written by
(01:34):
Brian Byrne, said, a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated. In it,
he digs into hugiene, what's the random and unlikely set
of events that nevertheless led to him being murdered in
broad daylight? And the family Siller sadly left behind? All Right, Brian,
(01:58):
before we get into how and why Jeane Siller was murdered,
tell us about who he was. He was someone who
devoted his life to his family and to the sport
that he loved. He grew up in northwest Cincinnati. He
had two sisters, loved out the outdoors, loved playing golf.
Once he was certified to be a head pro, he
(02:20):
spent some time in Atlanta. He moved south. There's more
courses you can play and work year round. He stopped
at a couple of courses for more than a decade
as an assistant pro. He had a brief head pro
job that was just a real grind and didn't love
it and wound up leaving that job when that club
got sold. No respect for him, no respect for his family.
I mean he was in at sixth and digged home
(02:42):
to like eight. I mean they were It was like
borderline of emotion. All abuse by that point, he was
already married to his wife, Ashley, and they had two boys,
and he was kind of a stay at home dad
for a time, and Ashley was supporting them and they
were in a really happy spot because he didn't have
those eight hour work weeks anymore. But she to tell
there was a void in him, something was missing, and
(03:03):
he was fortunate enough to get a call from the
general manager at Pine Tree Country Club, which is in
northwest Atlanta, a little town called Kennesaw on the suburbs,
uh someone who had interviewed him for a previous job.
Brad Nikam called and said, Hey, we need a head
golf pro. Would you be interested. He had a good reputation,
it was smart, and it was a family man. I
just knew he was confident. He couldn't resist. He needed
(03:26):
to go back out and be outdoors, working with the
sport he loved and applying an engineer's mind to improving
the club for its members. And in your piece the
way you write about it, and having talked to Ashley,
it seemed like Jean really loved this job right. It
wasn't like some of the other ones that you said
previously that he wasn't crazy about this one. He was
really into that's right. He he finally had found a
(03:50):
place where he could scratch his professional itch and do
what he loved. But it wasn't that long slog. It
was good for their marriage. He was my amazing, big hearted,
hard working husband. Again. They gave him two days off
a week, even in the high season. He got Sundays
and Mondays off, so he was able to play grounds
of golf with the boys on the weekends, work around
(04:11):
the house, keep the yard in shape for Ashley while
she was at work on Monday's, really devote himself to
his family and to his job simultaneously. We were so
grateful to be together as a family. Our marriage just
like flourished the last two years. It was just it
wasn't perfect, but it was pretty damn clothes. So things
(04:33):
are going well at home, they're going well at work.
But then we go back to last summer. Tell us, Brian,
about what happened on July three. I'll take you back
one day before that, July two, Gene and Ashley and
the boys were driving back from a beach vacation they'd
had with Jean's family, his parents, his sisters, their spouses,
(04:53):
and kids, big happy family gathering. They've done one every year,
but COVID had delayed it for a couple of years,
so this was their first one in a while, and
it was just a really happy week, all of them reunited.
Everyone was happy. I specifically remember saying, like, God, life
so good. We're like, life is so what. Our kids
(05:14):
are healthy, Like, we're doing all this cool stuff to
our house or were plans to Ginea and Ashley were
talking about July the third. Jeans still had off after
that vacation, but it was a big day at the club.
July three was that Saturday, so they were going to
have their July four celebration there and the fireworks and
the cook out and all that, and Jean had a
(05:36):
handful of younger staffers. He knew that would be there
that day and knew it would be busy, and felt
kind of guilty. You know, I've been gone. I want
to go there and help him and be there for him.
That was just who he was. He's like, are you
are you cool with that? I said, yeah, just we're
going to the fireworks. Please be home by six thirty.
He said, of course, of course, that's what I'll do.
So he got up that morning and was dressed up,
(05:57):
dressed to the nines as always in his golf attire,
had on red pants and an American flag shirt. And
Nashley told me over and over how handsome she thought
he looked that day. I remember making making breakfast for
the boys and they're up and they're in their p
days and he comes down and he's like these right
red pants on. We called him Mr Fancy Pants. I
look you was your fancy pist And off the work
(06:24):
he went, strolled in at nine and uh, seemed to
be having just a normal day. And then a white
pickup truck showed up on the tenth tenth green that day.
So why was there a white pickup truck on the green?
(06:45):
And what happened afterwards? The court cases ongoing, but in
general terms is that two men are alleged to have
abducted two others that were in the back of that truck.
They were bound with duct tape and zip ties. It's
alleged by some people that we spoke with to have
have been tied to the drug trade. A few of
the people that are said to be involved have had
(07:07):
criminal histories in the drug trade. They have these men
tied up in the back of the truck. They drive
somewhere around forty miles from where they are alleged to
have kidnapped them, and they wind up on a street.
It's a dead end street that is bisected by the
cart path that runs from Pine Trees Tenth Green too.
It's eleventh t and you can easily jump onto the
(07:28):
course from that street. When you're looking down, all you
really see is a lake. So it appeared again this
is all alleged that the men were looking to murder
these two men in the back and disposed of the
bodies in the lake. So they were alleged to have
killed the two men in the back. Paul Pierson and
Henry Valdez shot them there at the site and then
(07:51):
tried to It appeared at least one of the men
had pulled the trigger, had tried to maroon the truck hide.
The Oven said, that's at least what it appeared was happening.
But there's two bunkers that guard the right side of
the green, and one of that front bunker caught the truck.
The front wheels came up, couldn't go anywhere, and so
now you look out and there's a truck stuck out
on that tenth green in the middle of the day,
(08:12):
two pm on a Saturday, July three, at a busy
golf course. So Jeane looks out the middle of the day,
busy golf course, sees this truck. What happens. One of
his assistant pros, Harris and Bryant, was in the pro
shop that day, and it's got a big expansive view
(08:33):
out to the driving range and the tenth green is
visible from the clubhouse, and he saw it. He couldn't
tell what was going on, answered the call, and then
saw it really actually out on the course from where
it had been, and then told Jean about it, and
Jean said, okay, I'll go investigate. Oftentimes, a lot of
people I talked to at the club they said, you
know that happens in golf, will you'll have you know,
maybe there's kids out there in the course, or you know,
(08:55):
teenagers up to no good. My other thought was somebody
had seizure, hardtack, or somebody got super drunk early on
the points in July weekend. You don't assume it's something
to furious, but you got to go talk to him,
get him out, even off for help. They thought, in
this case, someone must have had a car accident broken down,
or that's the logical explanation in a scenario like that.
(09:17):
So Jean hops in a golf cart, drives up the
cart path that straddles the left side of the tenth fairway,
and then gets to the green, and that's where the
alleged shooter, Brian Roden, is alleged to have shot him
twice and killed him instantly. So Jean wasn't even supposed
(09:41):
to be there that day. He goes in to do
a good deed to help his younger staffers, he sees
the truck, he's murdered. What happens to the assailants? One
was only alleged to be involved in the kidnappings Justin Pruett.
The other, who's the alleged murderer, Brian Roden, was twenty
three at the time, of former Metro Atlanta high school
football player who had quite a few run ins with
(10:03):
the law drug related defenses. He's alleged to have darted
off into the woods. A few of the members saw
the perpetrator runaway, leaving the truck literally idling on the
green with Geane up there. People on the range heard
the gunshots. People are scrambling and then when the members
comes running in and tells me, I need called man
(10:25):
and one of the shots were fired and they thought
Jean was hurt. A few other members, one of whom
was a nurse, popping golf carts to drive up to
try to help Jean because they can see he's lying prone.
People in the driving range said he's been shot, He's hurt.
They went up there to try to help him to
administer CPR. We found him on the ground and then
(10:47):
we rolled him over and started CPR until the police
got there. Through her training in her years, she knew
that that the gene was gone, but she still tried
in vain to save him. Brian, before we continue on
to get to Jean and his family in the aftermath,
I'm curious about what happened to Roden. Was he caught
and then also what happened to his accomplice. It's quite
(11:08):
a winding story. He was actually much later that night
he was arrested for d u I. He had not
yet been tied to the murders. He was arrested, booked,
held for a day or two, eventually let go and
they confiscated in that arrest. They pulled him over because
he had broken tail light, He had a bunch of
fake ideas on him. He had a backpack full of cash.
(11:29):
They confiscated the cash, and then once authorities had tied
him to the murders, they lured him back to the
police station to arrest him for the murders under the
guise of returning the cash they had confiscated in the
d U I And what is his current situation, I mean,
is the trial upcoming? How much time is he looking at?
The trial is ongoing, It's in Cobb County. Jury trial
(11:50):
is scheduled for the coming months. Prosecutors investigators have been
exceedingly tight lipped about the particulars of the case, about
the broader ties to any drug involvement of the drug trade.
I couldn't get a peep out of him and trying
to piece together what had happened at the scene beyond
eyewitness accounts and police documents. So a lot more is
going to come out of the trial itself here in
the coming months. So this is a tragic case of
(12:15):
wrong place and wrong time for Geane Siller. And while
it has all of these spectacular very difficult to believe
crime elements. It's not really a crime story that you
wrote about. It's much more about Gene and his family
and who he left behind. That was important to us,
and trying to tell that family story in the human story,
because we know things like this can get sensationalized a lot.
(12:36):
People love a crime drama, but there's always a severe,
raw human impact, and something like this, particularly when there's
this sort of suddenness and this sort of violence, it
was devastating. I've reported on quite a bit of tragic
circumstances people who have passed away, but I have to
(12:58):
say that this one seemed more raw than pretty much
anything I've reported on before because of the violent nature
of it, and the family is still reeling. Ashley, we
stayed in contact in the many months since I started
reporting this, and she puts on a brave face. She's
a corporate sales rep for a T and T, so
she's good at putting the facade up. But she said
she's just quietly devastated. Every day it's just her and
(13:19):
the boys. It's almost like the reality of it sets in.
When I'm at home. I need to give the boys baths,
and I need to put them to bed, and I
need to pack their backpacks, and they need to clean
up the house, and then I need to do this
and this and this and then and then I'll buy
the way. My best fast not here, and their daddy's
not here. She does have a massive support at home
(13:48):
from her her extended family. They're all live around the
Atlanta metro area and they're there for her. For her.
Mom has been someone to lean on. But just the
little moments along the way of what we wanted to
capture that are just so brutal. How do you break
the news of the two little boys the next day?
You cannot lie to them. Kids need answers. They have
to trust you, which means you have to tell them.
(14:08):
It was like Daddy went to work and there was
a bad man at daddy's work and that batman had
a gun and that bad man shot Daddy with his gun,
and Daddy died and we're not going to see him again.
But don't worry, because that bad guy is going to
(14:30):
jail forever. Their faces were like, oh, I would have
done anything to take the being away from them. It
was banks. It's just confused, like, but what daddy and
the bow just I mean, he was devastated. So to
(14:51):
watch them and their pain was just like it was
like and then you have Jean's parents in Ohio. That's
(15:16):
one of the hardest phone calls I've ever done. And
I've done thousands of interviews, and that was one of
the hardest, if not the hardest, because they were there
in their mid seventies. I fell on the living room
floor and start praying our father. So with a mother,
(15:38):
you know, you want to tell me you love them,
and they'll make kiss them, you know, but we didn't
have that privileged at all. The sentiments they expressed were
We've been lucky to have this life that we've had
to raise successful children. They're all happy, they're all healthy.
(16:00):
They just said they just don't know if they'll ever
look at the world the same. They don't know if
they'll ever recover. I don't think I could even get
out of it. And I just, you know, it's just
was well they say that you know, the depth of
your love determines the depth of your grief. There's just
(16:29):
the depth of my love for him was so deep
that I don't think I'll ever recover. I can guess
at the answer here. But what does Ashley have to
(16:52):
say about Brian Roden. She doesn't let it dwell, she
tries not to let it fester, but it's inevitable. I mean,
can you imagine if you were in that spot, what
you'd feel towards the from who's accused of doing that
to your life and to your boys. I think he's
a terrible, disgusting excuse for a human. I don't hate anybody,
and I loathe him with every ounce of my soul.
(17:16):
A month after Jean was murdered, Pine Tree held a
memorial tournament in Jean's honor, and there are a lot
of golf luminaries who were involved tell us about that event.
It was called the Gene Siller Red Pants Memorial Tournament
because he was wearing those red pants that day and
was known for addressing flashily and stocking the pro shop
with flashy clothes. So they tried to honor that, and
it was a fundraiser. People paid the donations to the
(17:36):
Gene Siller Memorial Grant, which Actuley has started to honor
Jeane and help young junior golfers in the state of Georgia.
That's going to be his lasting legacy. And something they're
trying to help perpetuate his memory. And quite a few
p GA players professionals donated signed items, signed bags. We
had Hideki matsu Yama donating things. There were items from
Tiger Woods, Jack Nicholas, Justin, Thomas Bryson, dam Oh. There
(18:00):
were a ton that heard about this. That day alone,
they raised more than two h thousand dollars and the
foundation donations have far eclipse that in the months since.
But it was it was a chance for Ashley to
address the club and the crowd. A lot of local
p G a head pros, not guys you see on tour,
but guys like Jean who are head pro at club.
They all came. He has lots of friends, very very
(18:22):
close friends who came and played. One of his close
friends played with his clubs that day and really struggled
on the tenth hole to get on the tenth hole,
and I can't even pull it back. I can't play
the holes. So before the funeral, which was about a
week or so after the murder, Ashley and her closest
friends they went out to the Tenth Green so a
(18:43):
makeshift memorial had popped up. Either people that knew him
our club members are complete. Strangers had come and left
flowers and cards, and at the spot just in front
of the tenth Green where Jeane had been killed, it
was like flowers and golf balls and you know, we
are I p Mr Jean, like just the most beautiful,
thoughtful memorial. And Ashley went and brought a pair of
(19:04):
drawings that Bowen Banks had drawn the day after Jean's death,
and she laid them out on the memorial. Bows drawing
is it's particularly heartbreaking. It's of Jeane in red pants
fighting off the assailant and it says Daddy my hero
at the top and shows him standing up triumphantly, and
the the assailant felled on the ground, and actually they
(19:30):
placed them on the ground. They sat and they cried,
and then and then a dragonfly came and it lands
right and out of all the golf balls, the state
the memorials, like by the size of this whole lands
on the red pants and we're like, everyone's like quiet,
I'm like then hopped over to banks Is drawing, and
then came back and nestled on the red pants for
a bit. And this happens a lot in grief, where
(19:52):
you probe for signs and signals. Dragonflies are. One of
her friends mentioned these are a symbol of rebirth and
the Christian faith and in many other faiths, and actually
clung to that, and many people that knew Gene and
loved Gene and were scarred by this have clung to
that notion. And now they look for dragonflies everywhere they go,
and dragonflies are drawn to color. So maybe that's why
I landed on the red pants, or maybe it was Gene.
(20:13):
To them, it doesn't matter because they needed that and
it means a lot to them. It's been weirdly healing
and powerful. One story that Ashley's mom told me was
that the boys went out to play nine holes one
day at Ryan Joyce's club and a dragon They noticed
a dragonfly kind of hovering around him for nine holes
that day and uh Banks came back and said, Nana
(20:36):
Daddy watched me play and that just ripped my heart
out as a writer, just and as a person, you know,
just hearing that. And that's the goal with everyone in
their circles. Let's let these boys grow up seeing dragonflies
clearly a metaphor for remembering their father. Let's do all
we can to preserve the memory of their dad, for
these boys going forward, and more broadly, for people he knew,
and for young golfers around, young golfers around the state
(21:00):
of the Foundation. You did a really good job with
some very difficult subject matter. You can read his excellent,
heartbreaking piece about Jean Seller's murder on SI dot com.
Brian Bird said, as always, thank you for this, Thanks
so much. The special edition of Sports Illustrated Weekly was
(21:23):
produced by Cooper McKim Our sound engineer was Isaac Lee.
Our senior producer is Dan Bloom. Our executive producers are
Scott Brody and me John Gonzalez.
Hey everyone, I'm John Gonzalez, host of Sports Illustrated Weekly.
We're gonna try something just a little bit different this
week with a special audio version of Brian byrd sayds
s I dot com Daily cover. Please enjoy this standalone
bonus show, Murder at Pine Tree Country Club. The reality
(00:22):
of it sets in when I'm at home. I had
to give the boys bath and then we'll by the way,
my best friend not here and their daddy's not here.
It was like daddy went to work and there was
a bad man at daddy's work, and that batman had
a gun. Last summer, a forty six year old golf
(00:50):
pro was murdered under mysterious circumstances. Gene Siller was shot
on the tenth whole of the Pine Tree Country Club
in Georgia. We had to turn Jean over to start
CPR on him. It was a horrible, horrible thing to
come up to. The depth of your love determines the
(01:12):
depth of your grief. The depth of my loved rand
was so deep that I don't think I'll ever recover.
The story made headlines at the time, but no story
has gone as deep as a new piece written by
(01:34):
Brian Byrne, said, a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated. In it,
he digs into hugiene, what's the random and unlikely set
of events that nevertheless led to him being murdered in
broad daylight? And the family Siller sadly left behind? All Right, Brian,
(01:58):
before we get into how and why Jeane Siller was murdered,
tell us about who he was. He was someone who
devoted his life to his family and to the sport
that he loved. He grew up in northwest Cincinnati. He
had two sisters, loved out the outdoors, loved playing golf.
Once he was certified to be a head pro, he
(02:20):
spent some time in Atlanta. He moved south. There's more
courses you can play and work year round. He stopped
at a couple of courses for more than a decade
as an assistant pro. He had a brief head pro
job that was just a real grind and didn't love
it and wound up leaving that job when that club
got sold. No respect for him, no respect for his family.
I mean he was in at sixth and digged home
(02:42):
to like eight. I mean they were It was like
borderline of emotion. All abuse by that point, he was
already married to his wife, Ashley, and they had two boys,
and he was kind of a stay at home dad
for a time, and Ashley was supporting them and they
were in a really happy spot because he didn't have
those eight hour work weeks anymore. But she to tell
there was a void in him, something was missing, and
(03:03):
he was fortunate enough to get a call from the
general manager at Pine Tree Country Club, which is in
northwest Atlanta, a little town called Kennesaw on the suburbs,
uh someone who had interviewed him for a previous job.
Brad Nikam called and said, Hey, we need a head
golf pro. Would you be interested. He had a good reputation,
it was smart, and it was a family man. I
just knew he was confident. He couldn't resist. He needed
(03:26):
to go back out and be outdoors, working with the
sport he loved and applying an engineer's mind to improving
the club for its members. And in your piece the
way you write about it, and having talked to Ashley,
it seemed like Jean really loved this job right. It
wasn't like some of the other ones that you said
previously that he wasn't crazy about this one. He was
really into that's right. He he finally had found a
(03:50):
place where he could scratch his professional itch and do
what he loved. But it wasn't that long slog. It
was good for their marriage. He was my amazing, big hearted,
hard working husband. Again. They gave him two days off
a week, even in the high season. He got Sundays
and Mondays off, so he was able to play grounds
of golf with the boys on the weekends, work around
(04:11):
the house, keep the yard in shape for Ashley while
she was at work on Monday's, really devote himself to
his family and to his job simultaneously. We were so
grateful to be together as a family. Our marriage just
like flourished the last two years. It was just it
wasn't perfect, but it was pretty damn clothes. So things
(04:33):
are going well at home, they're going well at work.
But then we go back to last summer. Tell us, Brian,
about what happened on July three. I'll take you back
one day before that, July two, Gene and Ashley and
the boys were driving back from a beach vacation they'd
had with Jean's family, his parents, his sisters, their spouses,
(04:53):
and kids, big happy family gathering. They've done one every year,
but COVID had delayed it for a couple of years,
so this was their first one in a while, and
it was just a really happy week, all of them reunited.
Everyone was happy. I specifically remember saying, like, God, life
so good. We're like, life is so what. Our kids
(05:14):
are healthy, Like, we're doing all this cool stuff to
our house or were plans to Ginea and Ashley were
talking about July the third. Jeans still had off after
that vacation, but it was a big day at the club.
July three was that Saturday, so they were going to
have their July four celebration there and the fireworks and
the cook out and all that, and Jean had a
(05:36):
handful of younger staffers. He knew that would be there
that day and knew it would be busy, and felt
kind of guilty. You know, I've been gone. I want
to go there and help him and be there for him.
That was just who he was. He's like, are you
are you cool with that? I said, yeah, just we're
going to the fireworks. Please be home by six thirty.
He said, of course, of course, that's what I'll do.
So he got up that morning and was dressed up,
(05:57):
dressed to the nines as always in his golf attire,
had on red pants and an American flag shirt. And
Nashley told me over and over how handsome she thought
he looked that day. I remember making making breakfast for
the boys and they're up and they're in their p
days and he comes down and he's like these right
red pants on. We called him Mr Fancy Pants. I
look you was your fancy pist And off the work
(06:24):
he went, strolled in at nine and uh, seemed to
be having just a normal day. And then a white
pickup truck showed up on the tenth tenth green that day.
So why was there a white pickup truck on the green?
(06:45):
And what happened afterwards? The court cases ongoing, but in
general terms is that two men are alleged to have
abducted two others that were in the back of that truck.
They were bound with duct tape and zip ties. It's
alleged by some people that we spoke with to have
have been tied to the drug trade. A few of
the people that are said to be involved have had
(07:07):
criminal histories in the drug trade. They have these men
tied up in the back of the truck. They drive
somewhere around forty miles from where they are alleged to
have kidnapped them, and they wind up on a street.
It's a dead end street that is bisected by the
cart path that runs from Pine Trees Tenth Green too.
It's eleventh t and you can easily jump onto the
(07:28):
course from that street. When you're looking down, all you
really see is a lake. So it appeared again this
is all alleged that the men were looking to murder
these two men in the back and disposed of the
bodies in the lake. So they were alleged to have
killed the two men in the back. Paul Pierson and
Henry Valdez shot them there at the site and then
(07:51):
tried to It appeared at least one of the men
had pulled the trigger, had tried to maroon the truck hide.
The Oven said, that's at least what it appeared was happening.
But there's two bunkers that guard the right side of
the green, and one of that front bunker caught the truck.
The front wheels came up, couldn't go anywhere, and so
now you look out and there's a truck stuck out
on that tenth green in the middle of the day,
(08:12):
two pm on a Saturday, July three, at a busy
golf course. So Jeane looks out the middle of the day,
busy golf course, sees this truck. What happens. One of
his assistant pros, Harris and Bryant, was in the pro
shop that day, and it's got a big expansive view
(08:33):
out to the driving range and the tenth green is
visible from the clubhouse, and he saw it. He couldn't
tell what was going on, answered the call, and then
saw it really actually out on the course from where
it had been, and then told Jean about it, and
Jean said, okay, I'll go investigate. Oftentimes, a lot of
people I talked to at the club they said, you
know that happens in golf, will you'll have you know,
maybe there's kids out there in the course, or you know,
(08:55):
teenagers up to no good. My other thought was somebody
had seizure, hardtack, or somebody got super drunk early on
the points in July weekend. You don't assume it's something
to furious, but you got to go talk to him,
get him out, even off for help. They thought, in
this case, someone must have had a car accident broken down,
or that's the logical explanation in a scenario like that.
(09:17):
So Jean hops in a golf cart, drives up the
cart path that straddles the left side of the tenth fairway,
and then gets to the green, and that's where the
alleged shooter, Brian Roden, is alleged to have shot him
twice and killed him instantly. So Jean wasn't even supposed
(09:41):
to be there that day. He goes in to do
a good deed to help his younger staffers, he sees
the truck, he's murdered. What happens to the assailants? One
was only alleged to be involved in the kidnappings Justin Pruett.
The other, who's the alleged murderer, Brian Roden, was twenty
three at the time, of former Metro Atlanta high school
football player who had quite a few run ins with
(10:03):
the law drug related defenses. He's alleged to have darted
off into the woods. A few of the members saw
the perpetrator runaway, leaving the truck literally idling on the
green with Geane up there. People on the range heard
the gunshots. People are scrambling and then when the members
comes running in and tells me, I need called man
(10:25):
and one of the shots were fired and they thought
Jean was hurt. A few other members, one of whom
was a nurse, popping golf carts to drive up to
try to help Jean because they can see he's lying prone.
People in the driving range said he's been shot, He's hurt.
They went up there to try to help him to
administer CPR. We found him on the ground and then
(10:47):
we rolled him over and started CPR until the police
got there. Through her training in her years, she knew
that that the gene was gone, but she still tried
in vain to save him. Brian, before we continue on
to get to Jean and his family in the aftermath,
I'm curious about what happened to Roden. Was he caught
and then also what happened to his accomplice. It's quite
(11:08):
a winding story. He was actually much later that night
he was arrested for d u I. He had not
yet been tied to the murders. He was arrested, booked,
held for a day or two, eventually let go and
they confiscated in that arrest. They pulled him over because
he had broken tail light, He had a bunch of
fake ideas on him. He had a backpack full of cash.
(11:29):
They confiscated the cash, and then once authorities had tied
him to the murders, they lured him back to the
police station to arrest him for the murders under the
guise of returning the cash they had confiscated in the
d U I And what is his current situation, I mean,
is the trial upcoming? How much time is he looking at?
The trial is ongoing, It's in Cobb County. Jury trial
(11:50):
is scheduled for the coming months. Prosecutors investigators have been
exceedingly tight lipped about the particulars of the case, about
the broader ties to any drug involvement of the drug trade.
I couldn't get a peep out of him and trying
to piece together what had happened at the scene beyond
eyewitness accounts and police documents. So a lot more is
going to come out of the trial itself here in
the coming months. So this is a tragic case of
(12:15):
wrong place and wrong time for Geane Siller. And while
it has all of these spectacular very difficult to believe
crime elements. It's not really a crime story that you
wrote about. It's much more about Gene and his family
and who he left behind. That was important to us,
and trying to tell that family story in the human story,
because we know things like this can get sensationalized a lot.
(12:36):
People love a crime drama, but there's always a severe,
raw human impact, and something like this, particularly when there's
this sort of suddenness and this sort of violence, it
was devastating. I've reported on quite a bit of tragic
circumstances people who have passed away, but I have to
(12:58):
say that this one seemed more raw than pretty much
anything I've reported on before because of the violent nature
of it, and the family is still reeling. Ashley, we
stayed in contact in the many months since I started
reporting this, and she puts on a brave face. She's
a corporate sales rep for a T and T, so
she's good at putting the facade up. But she said
she's just quietly devastated. Every day it's just her and
(13:19):
the boys. It's almost like the reality of it sets in.
When I'm at home. I need to give the boys baths,
and I need to put them to bed, and I
need to pack their backpacks, and they need to clean
up the house, and then I need to do this
and this and this and then and then I'll buy
the way. My best fast not here, and their daddy's
not here. She does have a massive support at home
(13:48):
from her her extended family. They're all live around the
Atlanta metro area and they're there for her. For her.
Mom has been someone to lean on. But just the
little moments along the way of what we wanted to
capture that are just so brutal. How do you break
the news of the two little boys the next day?
You cannot lie to them. Kids need answers. They have
to trust you, which means you have to tell them.
(14:08):
It was like Daddy went to work and there was
a bad man at daddy's work and that batman had
a gun and that bad man shot Daddy with his gun,
and Daddy died and we're not going to see him again.
But don't worry, because that bad guy is going to
(14:30):
jail forever. Their faces were like, oh, I would have
done anything to take the being away from them. It
was banks. It's just confused, like, but what daddy and
the bow just I mean, he was devastated. So to
(14:51):
watch them and their pain was just like it was
like and then you have Jean's parents in Ohio. That's
(15:16):
one of the hardest phone calls I've ever done. And
I've done thousands of interviews, and that was one of
the hardest, if not the hardest, because they were there
in their mid seventies. I fell on the living room
floor and start praying our father. So with a mother,
(15:38):
you know, you want to tell me you love them,
and they'll make kiss them, you know, but we didn't
have that privileged at all. The sentiments they expressed were
We've been lucky to have this life that we've had
to raise successful children. They're all happy, they're all healthy.
(16:00):
They just said they just don't know if they'll ever
look at the world the same. They don't know if
they'll ever recover. I don't think I could even get
out of it. And I just, you know, it's just
was well they say that you know, the depth of
your love determines the depth of your grief. There's just
(16:29):
the depth of my love for him was so deep
that I don't think I'll ever recover. I can guess
at the answer here. But what does Ashley have to
(16:52):
say about Brian Roden. She doesn't let it dwell, she
tries not to let it fester, but it's inevitable. I mean,
can you imagine if you were in that spot, what
you'd feel towards the from who's accused of doing that
to your life and to your boys. I think he's
a terrible, disgusting excuse for a human. I don't hate anybody,
and I loathe him with every ounce of my soul.
(17:16):
A month after Jean was murdered, Pine Tree held a
memorial tournament in Jean's honor, and there are a lot
of golf luminaries who were involved tell us about that event.
It was called the Gene Siller Red Pants Memorial Tournament
because he was wearing those red pants that day and
was known for addressing flashily and stocking the pro shop
with flashy clothes. So they tried to honor that, and
it was a fundraiser. People paid the donations to the
(17:36):
Gene Siller Memorial Grant, which Actuley has started to honor
Jeane and help young junior golfers in the state of Georgia.
That's going to be his lasting legacy. And something they're
trying to help perpetuate his memory. And quite a few
p GA players professionals donated signed items, signed bags. We
had Hideki matsu Yama donating things. There were items from
Tiger Woods, Jack Nicholas, Justin, Thomas Bryson, dam Oh. There
(18:00):
were a ton that heard about this. That day alone,
they raised more than two h thousand dollars and the
foundation donations have far eclipse that in the months since.
But it was it was a chance for Ashley to
address the club and the crowd. A lot of local
p G a head pros, not guys you see on tour,
but guys like Jean who are head pro at club.
They all came. He has lots of friends, very very
(18:22):
close friends who came and played. One of his close
friends played with his clubs that day and really struggled
on the tenth hole to get on the tenth hole,
and I can't even pull it back. I can't play
the holes. So before the funeral, which was about a
week or so after the murder, Ashley and her closest
friends they went out to the Tenth Green so a
(18:43):
makeshift memorial had popped up. Either people that knew him
our club members are complete. Strangers had come and left
flowers and cards, and at the spot just in front
of the tenth Green where Jeane had been killed, it
was like flowers and golf balls and you know, we
are I p Mr Jean, like just the most beautiful,
thoughtful memorial. And Ashley went and brought a pair of
(19:04):
drawings that Bowen Banks had drawn the day after Jean's death,
and she laid them out on the memorial. Bows drawing
is it's particularly heartbreaking. It's of Jeane in red pants
fighting off the assailant and it says Daddy my hero
at the top and shows him standing up triumphantly, and
the the assailant felled on the ground, and actually they
(19:30):
placed them on the ground. They sat and they cried,
and then and then a dragonfly came and it lands
right and out of all the golf balls, the state
the memorials, like by the size of this whole lands
on the red pants and we're like, everyone's like quiet,
I'm like then hopped over to banks Is drawing, and
then came back and nestled on the red pants for
a bit. And this happens a lot in grief, where
(19:52):
you probe for signs and signals. Dragonflies are. One of
her friends mentioned these are a symbol of rebirth and
the Christian faith and in many other faiths, and actually
clung to that, and many people that knew Gene and
loved Gene and were scarred by this have clung to
that notion. And now they look for dragonflies everywhere they go,
and dragonflies are drawn to color. So maybe that's why
I landed on the red pants, or maybe it was Gene.
(20:13):
To them, it doesn't matter because they needed that and
it means a lot to them. It's been weirdly healing
and powerful. One story that Ashley's mom told me was
that the boys went out to play nine holes one
day at Ryan Joyce's club and a dragon They noticed
a dragonfly kind of hovering around him for nine holes
that day and uh Banks came back and said, Nana
(20:36):
Daddy watched me play and that just ripped my heart
out as a writer, just and as a person, you know,
just hearing that. And that's the goal with everyone in
their circles. Let's let these boys grow up seeing dragonflies
clearly a metaphor for remembering their father. Let's do all
we can to preserve the memory of their dad, for
these boys going forward, and more broadly, for people he knew,
and for young golfers around, young golfers around the state
(21:00):
of the Foundation. You did a really good job with
some very difficult subject matter. You can read his excellent,
heartbreaking piece about Jean Seller's murder on SI dot com.
Brian Bird said, as always, thank you for this, Thanks
so much. The special edition of Sports Illustrated Weekly was
(21:23):
produced by Cooper McKim Our sound engineer was Isaac Lee.
Our senior producer is Dan Bloom. Our executive producers are
Scott Brody and me John Gonzalez.
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