Overview

• Willis, now 21, pleaded guilty in August 2025 to second-degree murder for the April 2020 killing of his mother, Sandy K. Willis, in Rocky Top, Tennessee.
• As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors dropped first-degree murder charges and secured a 30-year prison term that they say he will serve in full.
• Court records show the then-16-year-old took his mother’s pistol downstairs to muffle the sound of loading before returning upstairs to fire two close-range shots while she slept.
• Investigators reported that Willis initially gave conflicting accounts to police—claiming he found her dead—before confessing when officers confronted him.
• During sentencing, family members delivered victim impact statements describing the profound emotional toll of Sandy Willis’s death on her husband and children.