Crashed Car Leads Troopers to Dead Couple

The deaths and the jail docket are not the same case. Theft of the Prius and the assaults inside the jail do not accuse him of the stabbings. Until a homicide charge is filed, the jail file does not answer who stabbed Willis and Mary Libbey.

Willis Libbey, 74, and his wife, Mary Libbey, 72, were found dead with multiple stab wounds inside their home on County Road 654 in Athens, Tennessee, on Sunday, Nov. 8.

Troopers had gone to the house to tell Willis about a crash. Just before 12:30 p.m. that day, his son Timothy Libbey, 36, was driving a 2018 Toyota Prius registered to his father when it wrecked in Jefferson County. He would not give his name or any information about the car. Investigators put the car's value between $14,000 and $16,000 and charged him that day with theft of property over $10,000.

Timothy Libbey had walked out of a Tennessee prison on Nov. 7, the day before the crash, after serving a sentence for aggravated assault. That case began with a December 2022 attack on an employee at a Hampton Inn in Johnson City.

In the McMinn County Jail he picked up more charges. An affidavit says that on Nov. 9 he rushed an officer who was bringing him a glass of water and hit the officer in the face, after threatening that officer before. Further affidavits describe him kicking, charging at, and spitting on officers on Nov. 10. He is held on a $60,000 bond. His next court date is Dec. 3.

He is not charged in his parents' deaths. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is investigating those deaths at the request of 10th Judicial District Attorney General Stephen Hatchett.

All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.