"JACK'S BACK" PART 22 - They Didn't Steal The Corpse

(09/22/2004)
By Bob Weaver

There was a book written a few years ago about the misfortunes of multi-million dollar lottery winners.

Jack Whittaker's misadventures, single-handedly takes the cake over all those tales. It is likely some fledgling writer will do a book on Jack and his money.

In the news business they say "You couldn't make up this stuff."

Now, comes three nighttime burglars who stole stuff from Whittaker's Putnam County house. It happened before, but this time there is a strange twist.

They had to work the burglary around the dead body of 18-year-old Jesse Tribble, a family friend.

Twenty-five-year-old James Willis of Hurricane is charged with nighttime burglary, grand larceny, conspiracy to commit burglary and conspiracy to commit grand larceny.

Twenty-year-old J. C. Shaver of Winfield is being charged with grand larceny.

Twenty-year-old Jeffrey Campbell of Scott Depot was arrested yesterday on the same charges.

One of the burglars, in fact, reported the presence of the dead body.

Investigators are awaiting a toxicology report to determine how Tribble died, but they do not believe it was a homicide.

Jack wasn't home.