Inset: Zachary Hayes (Blount County Sheriff”s Office). Background: The area near where Hayes killed his own mother in Louisville, Tenn. (Google Maps).
A Tennessee man will spend several decades behind bars for the fatal stabbing of his own mother and her pet cat, authorities in the Volunteer State announced this week.
On Friday morning, Zachary Justin Hayes, 27, pleaded guilty to one count each of murder in the second degree, abuse of a corpse, aggravated cruelty to animals and intentional killing of an animal, according to the Blount County District Attorney’s Office.
In short order, the defendant was sentenced to 37 years in prison by 5th Circuit Court Judge Tammy M. Harrington over the parricidal violence that took the life of 63-year-old Kimberly Hayes.
The underlying incident occurred in September 2023 at a home on Samples Road in Louisville. There, sheriff’s deputies found the woman suffering from multiple stab wounds. The woman’s cat had also been stabbed to death, according to the Blount County Sheriff’s Office.
Investigators discovered several bloody knives strewn about the residence – including one that had snapped in half.
Soon, authorities classified the crime as an aggravated burglary and homicide, and looked to the since-condemned man as their suspect.
Hayes was arrested at his own residence in Knoxville by members of the U.S. Marshals Service Smoky Mountain Fugitive Task Force the day after his mother’s body was found, according to a report by Knoxville-based ABC affiliate WATE.
The defendant would later admit to killing his mother without any clear motivation.
“I was not looking forward to it, planning it,” Hayes said in a video of his initial custody interrogation played during a hearing, according to a courtroom report by The Daily Times.
Over the course of a multiple-hour interview, the defendant said he stabbed his mother while she was watching TV in her living room, had a drink, then finished watching a show before going to bed.
Neighbors would recall seeing a red Mercedes that the woman’s son often used parked outside her residence the day before the grim discovery. Then, after she failed to show up for work the next day, the car was gone. A coworker stopped by and found the worst.
The local medical examiner determined the victim had died from a combination of stab wounds to her neck and head. The woman’s time of death was placed late Sept. 7, 2023, or early the next day.
After law enforcement got involved, family noticed the Mercedes parked outside of the son’s home in Knoxville – but at first he was not there. Family members were inside when Hayes finally arrived back home on the night of Sept. 9, 2023, leading to an arrest without incident.
During an earlier hearing in his case, the defendant reportedly cried after seeing photographs of his mother’s dead body, telling the court he was scared on the night of her murder.
The defendant received several days of credit already served in pretrial detention.
