Back in 1982, two men were brutally murdered right here on this property in the home that they built with their own bare hands. After the murders took place, stories started coming out and rumors started swirling about devil worshiping and some other really crazy things that happened out here. This site has a reputation for being haunted and they have come and filmed paranormal TV shows and documentaries out here on this property which has led a lot of people to come out here just to see if anything strange happens to them. Now I am curious to see if something strange happens. I am really here to tell the story about what happened to the two men because it's fascinating all on its own. There has been some uh bad storms in the area, tornadoes, there's a lot of trees down. It's been raining all day and I'm kind of right in the middle of a pocket uh when I'm out here, which is probably crazy, but it's the only time I had while I was in the area. So, I'm here today to tell the story of the murders at Corpsewood Manor. [Music] Corpsewood Manor. The the remains of it where we're going is kind of back here. I'm parked right here next to these rocks that are marked CW to let people know they're in the right place. But this wasn't it's not easy terrain to get up here. I mean, it's like what seemed like several miles up the side of a mountain and it's all rock and you can see where they've cut rock to make the roadway. It's It's kind of wild getting up here. And even once we get to this point, we have to walk for what seems like another mile back through the woods just to get to the home. The road here that we're walking up, it also has a unique name because as the victims of today's story came here to the property to build their dream home, the day that they got here, a massive freak blizzard hit the area, and they actually had to set up camp on the road back here and wait for it to pass. So several days later when the blizzard stopped, they come out of their camper only to find that a horse had died like right here blocking their path which led them to name this road Dead Horse Lane. Man, while you're out here, you just feel off. It's really hard to describe. It's like there's a there's a heaviness feeling out here even though there's clearly no one around. I'm out in the middle of the woods. I feel it right now and I'm just leaving my car just getting started. It's kind of hard to explain. Dr. Scutter, one of the men that we're going to talk about today, after he got out here to the property, he frequently talked about having a demon that followed him around. And I wonder if he came here to the property and felt the heaviness and the uneasiness that is out here. And maybe that's why he chose to build his home here. I mean, it's it's just a creepy feeling that you can't explain. I'm actually going to run uh Ghost Tube app. People say that they don't work, but I've seen some other paranormal investigators use them frequently on investigations. We're in the middle of the day right now, so it's doubtful that anything will pop up, but I'm going to run it this time that we're here today. In 1959, Dr. Charles Scutter, who was living in a huge house in Chicago, he hired a man named Joseph Odum to be his personal assistant. Joseph Odum would watch Dr. Scutter's children and he kept up with Dr. Scutter's schedule. He picked up his dry cleaning and even cooked his meals. He did whatever Dr. Scutter asked him to do. At the time, Dr. Scutter was uh well, he was a professional harp player. He played the harp for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and he was a professor at Lyola University in Chicago specializing in pharmarmacology and therapeutics. He was also the associate director for the institute for mind drugs and behavior. Dr. Scutter was raised in a Christian home to a normal family, but he was thought to be a weird person. At one time in his life, he carried around a pet monkey and he was always dying his hair like weird crazy bright colors that attracted a lot of attention. What really threw people off about Dr. Scutter though was that he frequently talks about the occult and the supernatural. You can tell the storms have been through. There's trees down and massive puddles to go around. Very shortly after the two men met, Dr. Scutter invited his new personal assistant to come and move in to his house. And although Dr. Scutter had a few previous marriages to women that resulted in having several children. I think he had like four kids. But very quickly after they moved in with each other, Dr. Scutter and Joseph Odum developed feelings for each other and they began a secret love affair. In the late 50s and early 60s, being gay just wasn't as widely accepted as it is today. So they hid their affair from the people in Chicago and only a few close friends knew exactly what was going on. Between 1959 when Joseph moved into the house and the 1970s, the two men lived together as a couple and very few people even knew it. During that 10 plus years that they were together, the couple tried to find their place in the world and they just never really found it up there in Chicago. As you may know, gay couples really weren't accepted into Christian churches. So, Dr. Scutter wasn't welcome in the churches that he had grown up in. And this led to both of the men growing a fascination with Satan and the occult. They began reading books and joining in on rituals. And they even collected artifacts that was said to have been haunted or uh that had some sort of connection to Satan. This new found dark religion became a huge part of their lives. And they sought out others who thought like they did and they began to hold satanic rituals of their own. Sad. Well, it just said sad. That's one of the things people claim they feel when they come out here is the overwhelming amount of sadness. In the early 1970s, Dr. Scutter just become tired of teaching and he became tired of the politics that had taken over most of the universities across the country by this point. At this time, all four of his children were grown and they were pretty much out on their own. And he and Joseph started thinking about making a change in their life. It was at this same time Dr. Scutter's mother passed away and she left them a little bit of a money. And it was here that both men decided that they were going to use this money to get away from Chicago in the big city life and that they were going to buy a piece of land somewhere where they could be openly gay and they can openly practice their uh satanic worship. So, the two men spent the next few months looking for properties that were for sale across the eastern United States that was uh they wanted somewhere that was cut off really from society. And that's when they stumbled across this 40 acre lot here in the mountains in North Georgia. On Dr. Scutter's 50th birthday. He walked in and resigned from his position at the university. He sold off all of his furniture and gave away all of his electronics like his toaster and the TVs. And he sold his car and his big house. And then him and Joseph Odum, they bought a Jeep and a small pullbehind camper. And the two men loaded up all of their prized possessions and their two bull mastiffs that were named Lucifer and Beelzeub. And they left Chicago, headed south down here to Georgia. I'm not sure when it happened, but a storm at some point has dropped a ton of trees on this pathway here. But all these trees are down. Hopefully it hadn't destroyed it too much. Somebody's come through here and cut some of them. But there is a lot of trees down here. There's some more uh bad storms coming in. In fact, I uh beat it here. I I recorded some of it as I was driving. You are annoying. It says I'm annoying. Some funky noise there. In an unfortunate turn of events, as I talked about at the beginning, big tree in my way. Bunch of big trees in my way actually. But just as they got here to their newly purchased property, a freak blizzard hit and uh they had to wait it out back there by the road. And that's when they came out and found the dead horse and they decided that they would name the driveway, the road leading into their home, Dead Horse Lane. It has just started raining again on me as I'm having to navigate through all the down trees here. A massive tree just fell somewhere behind me. It was kind of crazy to hear. Oh gosh. It's a mess out here. Over the next three years, from the time they got here, Dr. Scutter and Joseph Odum lived in their camper while they painstakingly built their dream home. They laid over 45,000 bricks by hand, one by one. They dug trenches and laid pipes for their outdoor bathroom. They built a uh a well and a pump room for what little bit of water they did have. And then they built other buildings around the property like a barn and a massive three-story chicken coop. The first floor of the chicken coupe was where they kept their chickens. On the second floor, they kept all of their uh canned goods and non-p perishable food items. And on the third floor, there was a ladder, and you had to climb up the ladder and go through the hatching to get to the third floor. But up there, it's what they called their pink room. And as you can imagine, it was basically one giant pink bedroom. There was a bed in the middle of it, and it was all covered with pink linen. All right. And this is where the two men would throw parties or anytime they had someone come to stay over, that's where they stayed. It was built specifically to entertain guests and to hold parties. Dr. Scutter and Joseph Odum had their shared bedroom in the manor, but anytime other people were involved, they used the pink room. Now, after they got here, they did make some friends here in uh the area, and Dr. Scutter even frequently invited some of their old friends to come down from Chicago to hang out from time to time. At one point, Dr. Scoter even openly discussed the idea of opening a satanic temple here in the area for like-minded people to come and congregate inside of Corpsewood Manor. Both of the men filled it up with all the occult objects that they had collected over the years during this time while they were decorating the home. Dr. Scutter had gotten into making satanic art. And one night while he was in this art phase, he had a dream or a premonition about his own death, which led Dr. Scutter to paint a portrait of himself with his mouth gagged and uh he was suffering from five bullet wounds to the head, which is clearly really spooky based on uh the events that happened later. Dr. Scutter also had the idea and he painted a pentagram on the side of the jeep that the two men shared and they drove to town when they needed to, which only drew more attention to them and the strange things that happened up the mountain up here. To make things more spooky inside of the manor, they had no electricity. And they lit it using candles and lanterns, which meant it was either very dimly lit all the time or there was no light. It was dark. And they used a wood burning stove to cook and to heat the house. So, not only was it dark all the time, but it was also cold all the time. Now, we are talking about the 80s here. Video games were even a thing at this point. So, it's not like they were just in a time when they didn't have these luxuries. They just chose to when they built their home here to not include any of these things. Now, because of its location up here in the mountains, in fact, we are walking up on it right now. But because of its location up here in the mountains, the two men frequently had hunters stumble across the property and they would wander up to the house to see the uniqueness of it. And Dr. Scutter and Joseph Odum never turned anyone away. And they usually offered food and water to the hunters who were passing by. shotgun shields. Holy cow. Now, unfortunately, it is really grown up in here now. I have been here before many years ago now, and there was It wasn't this bad. This was the pump house here. And this was their outdoor bathroom over there. And this would have been the back wall of their home here include and this was their spiral staircase right there. This was the bottom of it. Many people think that there was a basement that went below this, but there wasn't. This was it. This is where it started. And it went all on up into a second floor. It's crazy to think that uh Dr. scutter and just vote them laid all these bricks one by one by [Music] hand. Back when they lived here, most of this these trees and stuff wasn't here. It was a lot more open than it is now. You can see the front gazebo here. The tree has taken it out. There used to be a giant gargle that sat right there on the front of it that would greet people as they would come on to the property. is the first thing you saw along with the massive gazebo. And they had a giant walkway that uh extended from their bedroom up on the second floor where they could walk out onto the top of this gazebo right here. They even built a giant pond out here in front of their home that they frequently swam in and they held skinny dipping parties and uh they even hosted nudist colonies several times. This was it. It's no longer filled with water. I hear water running up there, but it was right out front of their house, which is right up there. You can't see it. It's so grown up. People kill me. They come out here drinking and then just throw their trash down. Like I I mean, I know that this is someone's property. I'm not sure who owns it, but someone owns it. Someone bought it and allows people to come do paranormal investigations and stuff here. But all this, you know, at one time was Dr. Scooter and Joseph Odum's property. They laid all of this by hand. And sure, the environment is taking over the house and it's barely hanging on, but you don't got to come and spray paint on it and leave your trash behind and throw beer cans out and any of that stuff. It's absolutely ridiculous. [Music] [Music] Just bricks after brick after brick just everywhere. All the bricks that they laid by hand just scattered. If you're standing here looking at the back of the property, right up above us here, a little bit to the left, there was a stained glass window that had a skull printed on it. And then they had several other ones like it around the house. Uh, one of them I know had like a bull and a pentagram and there was one that had death flies on it. But just to give you a little idea uh as you this was the back door right here. This was their kitchen door like you can see in the photos. And uh if you walked in through the back door, this whole side of the house was their kitchen. They had a big uh table that would have been positioned right over here. The refrigerator was all the way over there on that wall. And then they had a stove back here. The wood burner stove was back here on this back wall. And then right here in the middle, uh it was kind of like a hallway almost. They had another table like right here in the center. And then in the back was the spiral staircase that led up to the bedroom. And there was a wall that ran almost the length of the house over here. And then this whole side of the house on this side, it was their study or their library. Dr. Scutter had a giant desk that set up next to the wall that you can see there. Uh, and it was that room, the study or the library, that's where they kept most of their crazy artifacts. In fact, Dr. Scutter kept a real human skull sitting on the desk. And there were skulls and horned devils all over the place, as well as X's and pentagrams that were carved on the furniture. And then up in their bedroom on the mantle at the end of their bed, they kept a jar that was supposedly full of blood. Obviously, we can't get upstairs because the building has fallen and there is no more upstairs, but uh the whole top floor was their bedroom. They had a huge bed and then uh right next to the bed, Dr. Scutter kept his massive uh golden harp that he brought with him from Chicago. The chicken coupe set just off the back of the house over here. Uh if you're looking at the house, it would have been behind it to the right, right back down in here. You can see the remnants of it right here. This was part of the uh chicken coop here was three stories tall and the pink room was at the very top. In late 1982, one of the hunters that I was talking about who stumbled onto the property, his name was Kenneth Avery Brock, and he walked up to the home and saw it and was in amazement. And he came across Dr. Scooter and Joseph Odum and they offered him some of their homemade wine and they sat down and talked for a while. During this conversation, Dr. Scutter and Joseph ODM discussed their lifestyle with Brock and although Brock didn't really make a scene in the moment, he completely rejected it and he very quickly made up a reason to leave and then he went home. Now, Kenneth Brock lived down the mountain a little bit in a trailer with another man named Samuel Tony West. So Brock immediately went home and he told his friend Tony about the two gay Satanists he met that he believed were millionaires that were living up the mountain off the grid when in fact Dr. Scutter and Joseph Odum had spent all of their money buying the Jeep and the camper, traveling down here to Georgia from Chicago and then buying all of the materials and building Corpsewood Manor and the chicken coupe and everything out here. And they were actually living off just $200 a month. That was it. Which even in the 80s wasn't a lot of money. Kenneth Brock told Tony West about the the gay devil worshippers that lived up the mountain and that he believed they were loaded. And it was right there in that moment that they started hatching their plan to rob Dr. Scutter and Joseph Odum. On the night of December the 12th of 1982, Kenneth Brock and Tony West were hanging out with Tony West cousin Joey Wills. And then he was on a first date with a girl named Terresa Hudgens. So Brock West, Joey Wills, and Terresa Hudgens. They were all sitting around together huffing paint thinner and smoking pot. And Kenneth Brock and Tony West, they convince everyone to go for a ride. So all four of them got into their pickup truck and they drove up the mountain right here to Corpsewood. The four of them, they pulled up right in front of Corpsewood and they were greeted by Dr. Scutter and Joseph Odum. And because Dr. Scutter and Joseph ODM liked having company, they immediately invited everyone to go up to the pink room and hang out and get high. Joseph Odum instead of going to the pink room, he came inside of the home and started whipping up some dinner for all of them. At some point, as the whole group was up in the pink room talking, Kenneth Avery Brock said that he was going to go out to his truck and get some more drugs, but really he went down front and he grabbed a 22 rifle that he had borrowed from his aunt and then he made his way back up to the pink room. By the time Brock returned to the pink room, Dr. Scutter was wasted from getting high and drunk and he sees that Brock has a gun in his hand and he jokingly puts his hand up in the like gun posture and just goes bang bang. Well, Brock laughs for a moment, but he immediately starts ripping up sheets off of the bed, the pink sheets that they had on the bed. He starts ripping them up into little pieces, and he uses those to tie Dr. Dr. Scutter to the chair. Kenneth Brock demands that Dr. Scutter tell him where they kept their money. And Dr. Scutter tells Brock that they don't have any money. And you know, obviously Brock didn't believe him. So he rips up another piece of sheet and he gags Dr. Scutter so that he can't scream. Kenneth Brock tells Tony West to keep an eye on everyone and he leaves the chicken coupe headed over here to the main house to confront Joseph Odum. At this point, Tony West cousin uh Joey Wells and his date Teresa, they had no clue that this was going to happen. And they were terrified that they were going to get killed as well because they were here and they were witnessing this. At one point, Teresa asked Tony West if Brock was going to kill her, too. And Wes just told her to do whatever he said to do and to make sure she didn't go to the cops and she would be fine. Kenneth Brock walked over from the chicken coupe and he walked right here to the kitchen door of the manor and uh he was actually able to catch Joseph Odum off guard. But without even saying a word, Brock just pulls the trigger, shooting Joseph Odum four times, killing him instantly. Now they found uh the police. They found uh the four shell casings laying right here, right outside the back door, which means Brock never even entered the house. he was able to to come here to the back door and just open it and then he saw Joseph over there um near the refrigerator which is on was right over here on that wall and he just opened fire because of the noise the gunshots it attracted the attention of the two men's bull mastiffs Lucifer and Belzeub they were upstairs in the couple's head uh sleeping. And so the bull mastiffs come running down the spiral staircase here. And as they come out from around the spiral staircase, uh Brock sees them and he just shoots both of them, killing them instantly. Brock then exited the house again. He went back over to the chicken coop. He grabbed Dr. Scutter and he dragged him over here to the main house. and they forced Dr. Scooter to sit in a couch that was positioned right over by the front door over here. And uh he was forced to sit there and and look at what Kenneth Brock had done to his partner. Teresa Hudgens later said that uh during this time Dr. Scooter was very distraught and he was crying and he was speaking in some sort of satanic language that she didn't understand. Brock pulled down Dr. Scutter's gag while they were in here and he told Dr. Scutter that he would let him live if he just told him where the money was. And instead of telling Brock again, "Hey, I don't have any money. We spent it all." Dr. Scutter just replied with, "I asked for this." And then he kind of stood up from the couch and when he did, Kenneth Brock fired two shots into Dr. Scutter's stomach, which caused Dr. Scutter to fall over onto a bookcase that was sitting directly inside of the front door right there up against the wall. Dr. Scutter fell over into that bookcase and then Brock pulled the trigger three more times, shooting Dr. Scutter in the head. Now, do you remember earlier when I was talking about Dr. Scutter's dream and uh the painting of himself that he did with the five gunshot wounds to the head? Uh I don't know how he did it, but he really could have got any closer to being right. I mean, he even had the number of shots correctly. It just was that two of them were in the stomach, not all in the head. is it's really crazy that uh he pictured that, you know, with the gag on and everything. That's wild. After they knew that uh both of the men were dead, Brock and Wes went through the uh study or the library, the office, whatever you want to call it. They went through it and they went up to the bedroom and ransacked the bedroom looking for some kind of treasure. And by the time they were done, they had completely destroyed this house. It was also at this time they were going through the house destroying everything. And Kenneth Brock came down the spiral staircase. Teresa was sitting on the couch alone. And Kenneth Brock walked over to Teresa and he forced his tongue down her throat and then he tried to force himself on her on the couch before her date. Joey walked back through the front door and stepped up and stopped him from assaulting her. After Brock and Wes had completely ransacked the house, they only walked away with a few rare coins and a few trinkets like a gold-plated pocketk knife. They really didn't get much at all. They also took Dr. Scutter and Joseph Odum's large collection of porn with them. Once they realized that there was no treasure here and that they were pretty much done, Joey Wills and Terresa Hudgins got into the pickup truck that they came in on and they fled. And Kenneth Brock and Tony West got in Dr. Scutter's Jeep that had the pentagram painted on it and they fled from the area. According to the police report, as we come into Corpsewood through the front door, which was right here, the front door would have set right here. Joseph Odum was found laying deceased right here, right inside of the front door. And then just to the right of him, which would have be right over here, is where they found Dr. Scutter. He was laying there with his hand still tied behind his back. And then back here next to the stairwell, there was a wall right here. The bull mastiffs were found laying right here just to the right of the stairwell. If there was one laying that way on the back wall and then one laying this way next to the stairs. So, uh, this is the exact spot where I'm standing right now. Right here. This is the exact spot where Joseph Odum was murdered. And right here was the exact spot Dr. Scutter was murdered. Wow. It's really hard to get any good pictures or any good shots of what's remaining of the house because of everything's all grown up here. The bodies of Dr. Scutter and Joseph Odum weren't found for two whole days. And it wasn't until one of their friends hadn't heard from him in a couple of days. So, he drove here to Corpsewood when he noticed bullet holes in the kitchen door, which was standing right there. and he very quickly rode back down the mountain and called the sheriff's office. That very same day uh that he called the sheriff's office and it it got reported on the news. Terresa Hudgens went to law enforcement and told them everything that happened that she saw that night. Unfortunately for a Corpsewood Manor here, the chicken coupe suffered a fire on January the 5th of 1983. And it wasn't long after that that the house itself actually caught fire. Like I said in the uh beginning, you know, people say that this land here that I'm on is very haunted. I know that they have done paranormal documentaries here. People claim that, you know, when they come here, they automatically feel sadness and they can hear gunshots and barking dogs. And sometimes people have reported even seeing like glowing eyes off in the distance when they were here at night. All of these things may be true, but in reality, this is the site where two innocent men were brutally murdered for their sexual orientation and their religious beliefs. Sounds like something moving over here in the trees. While investigating the murder scene here at Corpsewood Manor, law enforcement officials found two real human skulls, three vials that were allegedly filled with LSD, numerous occult tools, a small occult library, and as I talked about before, a large collection of homosexual pornography. what was left of it anyway that wasn't taken by Brock and West. Detectives also removed a birthday card that was sitting on Dr. Scutter's desk that was sent to him from the West Coast Church of Satan out of California. Now, Brock and West, uh, they decided to ditch their getaway vehicle, the Jeep with the, uh, pentagram spray painted on the side of it. They wanted something less conspicuous, so they made it all the way to Beneva, Mississippi. They kidnapped a Navy lieutenant named Kirby Phillips, who was just traveling from his base to see his mother in Oklahoma City for Christmas. and he got sleepy and he stopped at a rest area right outside of Vixsburg, which just so happened to be the same rest area where Kenneth Avery Brock and Tony West stopped to rest and they needed money so they woke up and they jumped Kirby Phelps and they intended to just tie him to a tree and take his vehicle. But while Brock was unloading the Jeep, all of a sudden, West shot Phelps twice. Law enforcement later found Kirby Phelps little Toyota car abandoned in Louisiana, and it was clear to them that the two men were headed to Texas. While the two men were in Austin, Texas, they argued about their plan and they eventually split up going their separate ways. Brock voluntarily surrendered himself to police in Marietta, Georgia on December the 20th and West was arrested in Chattanooga, Tennessee on Christmas Day. During the investigation, it was actually uncovered that the local sheriff here actually tried to bring charges to charge Dr. Scutter and Joseph Odum um for what? I don't know, for being gay, I guess. But he tried to charge them for to and have them arrested. Ultimately, he didn't get away with it because they have a first amendment right to talk about devil worshiping or being gay, whatever they want. Um, and so he he couldn't do anything about it, but he tried. A couple of years after the murders, a trial finally got underway for Kenneth Avery Brock and Tony West. During the trial, both uh Dr. Scutter and Joseph Odum were labeled as homosexual devil worshippers by the media and the general public. During the trial, the two men's defense claimed that Dr. Scutter spiked the drinks that they were having that night with LSD in order to try to rape the two men. The bottle of wine they were drinking out of was tested and it tested negative for LSD. Plus, the prosecutors actually pointed out the fact that when Brock was arrested, he actually confessed that they had planned these murders a few days prior. So, the whole uh Dr. Scooter and Joseph vote him drugging them went out the window. At that point, West told investigators that Brock had told him that he came here wanting to kill Dr. Scutter and Joseph Odum because he had recently let Dr. Scutter perform fellacio on him and he was scared that Dr. Scutter was going to tell someone. So he came here and killed them both to make sure that no one else would ever find out he let another man do that to him. In the court of public opinion, they crucified Dr. Scutter and Joseph Odum for their beliefs. And in most people's eyes, the murders were actually deemed justifiable. It was a completely different time back then. Kenneth Avery Brock ultimately plead guilty and and he received three consecutive life sentences. Tony West was convicted of double homicide and he was sentenced to death. Later on though, he actually wound up receiving a retrial and he was found guilty again a second time, but his sentence was commuted to life in prison. A small private funeral was actually held right here at Corpsewood Manor where Joseph Odum's ashes were scattered around the Rose Garden and then Dr. Scutter's ashes were taken back to Wisconsin by his sister and they were buried there at a family plot. So, uh, not only with everything else that's happening here around this, uh, old home, but Joseph Odum, his ashes were actually scattered here and are here now part of the earth around his dream home where he was murdered today. Dr. Scutter's uh death portrait or his self-portrait and his massive golden harp. They were both purchased by a private collector in North Alabama who has them both displayed together, which is uh kind of interesting. I haven't seen any down trees yet. So, I heard it coming in. It was so loud and scary. Purgatory. Purgatory. Huh. There was a sign nailed to one of the trees here along Dead Horse Lane that said, "Beware of the thing." which was supposedly referring to the bull mastiffs, the dogs that they had, Lucifer and Bezob. As I've now made it back to my mode of transportation, that is going to do it for this video today from Somerville, Georgia, and the murderers at Corpsewood Manor. Thank you all so much for watching. I really appreciate it. I will see you again in the next one. Please all of you stay safe and stay healthy. Much love to you all. In an unrelated topic to uh the story today, uh going to and coming back from uh Corpsewood Manor, I passed by a little area in Talladega, Alabama that recently got struck by tornadoes. You can see trees down and uh but one of the things that it tore up was this school here which really stinks. This was obviously their gymnasium, their basketball courts. Tornado just came right through and ripped it all up. This is awful. Absolutely awful. Hopefully no one was in the school building when it happened. The bleachers are all still there and everything. That's rough. Absolutely rough. There just would no saving this gymnasium.