Caveat emptor and caveat venditor, Latin for “buyer beware” and “seller beware” respectively, are popular axioms taught in contract law. Caveat emptor holds that buyers typically have less information than the sellers about the goods or services they are purchasing; the less well-known caveat venditor cautions that the seller is responsible for any problem which may arise with the service or product. The purpose of both principles holds that there is a degree of risk involved in any sale, for both the buyer and seller.

Such warnings are geared toward preventing a party from falling victim to fraud or deceit. Murder is not the crime associated with these Latin phrases, but some people are willing to kill to obtain property.

On October 24, 1992, twenty-two-year-old Jeremy Rolfs and his twenty-two-year-old fiancé Heather Uffelman arrived in Marietta, Georgia, to sell a computer to a man answering an advertisement. The prospective buyer instead became a thief and a murderer; he took the computer and also a life.

Heather was brutally beaten to death and Jeremy was left for dead. The computer was never found, and the killer has not been caught.

Jeremy Rolfs and Heather Uffelman  

The Halsey Company, a music and video business in Nashville, Tennessee, ran two notices in the local Trader’s Post advertising tabloid in September 1992. The ads were for the sale of an Apple Quadra 950 computer and operating system.

On October 7, a man calling himself Tom Johnson answered the ad. He said he was a freelance computer programmer and database consultant.

The Advertisement for the Computer

Several days later, the Halsey Company dispatched Jeremy Rolfs, a part-time videotape editor for the company and a Middle Tennessee State University student majoring in Mass Communications, to meet with Johnson in Nashville for a demonstration of the computer and its operating system. The meeting went well and Johnson was interested.

The men later met several times in Murfreesboro where Jeremy answered Johnson’s questions. Jeremy said the prospective buyer was cordial and articulate in asking detailed questions about the operating system. He was clearly familiar with computers.

A sale for the computer and its operating system was agreed upon at $31,000. Johnson asked that the computer be delivered to his office in Marietta, Georgia. The Halsey Company agreed to the arrangement and assigned Jeremy to do the delivery.

Because of other work projects, Jeremy planned to make the two-hundred-thirty-mile trip from Murfreesboro to Marietta overnight.

Jeremy Is Assigned the Delivery  

As Jeremy was fatigued from his work and studies, Heather accompanied him on the six-hour trip to do the bulk of the driving.

Like Jeremy, she was also a student at Middle Tennessee State, majoring in English.

Heather Accompanies Her Fiancé

The arrangement for the sale was originally made for delivery to Johnson’s office, which he said was in an Industrial Park. He had called Jeremy the day before, saying the address was tricky to find and suggested they instead meet at a Knights Inn Motel off Interstate 75.

Jeremy and Heather left Murfreesboro at 1:30 a.m. on October 24 and arrived in Marietta, at 7:30 a.m. They met in room 332 of the Knights Inn, registered to Tom Johnson. He said his business partner would arrive in thirty-to-forty-five minutes with a certified check for the computer.

Jeremy and Heather went to a nearby Denny’s for breakfast. They returned to the motel after approximately half an hour. The business partner had still not arrived, but Johnson said he was on the way and would be there shortly. In the meantime, at approximately 8:00 a.m., the men loaded the computer into Johnson’s car, a Dodge Dynasty, either black-cherry or dark brown with a red interior and Tennessee license plates.

The three then returned to the motel room and made small talk for approximately twenty minutes, mostly discussing the impact of computers on society and how they were changing the world. Johnson again displayed his knowledge of computers in a warm and friendly manner.

Jeremy and Heather Arrive with the Computer  

When Jeremy said he would have to cancel the sale if Johnson’s partner did not arrive soon, however, Johnson’s demeanor did a one-eighty. He pointed a small caliber handgun at Jeremy and Heather and ordered them to pull the spreads from the beds and to roll themselves in them. After they did so, Johnson forcibly and repeatedly struck each of them several times on the head with a blunt object.

Just before Johnson left the room, Jeremy saw him dust the countertop to remove fingerprints. Once he was sure the attacker was gone, a bloodied Jeremy staggered outside and summoned help. A motel maid called 911.

Jeremy and Heather were rushed to the hospital. Heather was pronounced dead two hours later. Jeremy survived, but suffered vertigo and partial hearing loss resulting from the attack.

Jeremy Survives; Heather Succumbs

Police found the murder weapon, a hammer, still wrapped in plastic on the floor. It was devoid of fingerprints. The card identifying its weight, and its SKU number, the “stock keeping unit” number assigned by retailers to their product, was still attached, but police were unable to identify the store from which it was purchased.

Investigators were struck by the unusual nature of the robbery and murder. The culprit allowed himself to be seen in the parking lot of a busy motel during daylight. He had also displayed a handgun but did not use it as the murder weapon.

The Knights Inn manager told police of an occurrence approximately an hour before the attack. As Jeremy and Heather were having breakfast at the Denny’s, a woman came to the motel desk complaining of excessive noise coming from the room registered to Johnson. The front desk clerk dismissed it as a domestic dispute and did not investigate.

Another motel guest thought he had seen a man and a woman enter room 332 together. Authorities believe the woman may have been Johnson’s accomplice who attempted to sabotage the scheme when she learned of his intention to murder. She was never identified.

One week earlier, a man calling himself Tom Johnson had made a similar arrangement for the purchase of another computer, but, for whatever reason, he never arrived for the appointment.

Investigators believe he may have gotten cold feet, and was working up the nerve to commit murder.

 Composite Sketches of “Tom Johnson”

The stolen computer was an Apple Macintosh Quadra 950 used for desktop publishing and videotape editing. The monitor was twenty-four inches with high sup resolution color display; the CRU’s serial number was # F62164JW671; the monitor’s serial number was #92020501.

In 1992, the Apple Macintosh Quadra was a state-of-the-art computer. Investigators tracked the sales of hundreds of these computers but could not trace any to the killer.

The Model of Computer Stolen

Tom Steeples is a person of interest in the attack on Heather Uffelman and Jeremy Rolfs. He was a married father of two who owned a computer company in Nashville, Tennessee, where the first contacts were made regarding the computer sale.

Steeples bore somewhat of a resemblance to the composite sketch of Tom Johnson as described by Jeremy, and his body structure was also similar. He was, however, born in 1945, making him forty-seven-years-old at the time of the attack, a much older age than the attacker appeared.

In addition to being adept with computers, Steeples was savvy and most sinister as he had a rap sheet of nefarious activity dating back nearly twenty years, having recently culminated in murder.

Tom Steeples

In 1975, Steeples was arrested for attacking a woman in Memphis. The woman said he beat her and her date and raped her in a van. For reasons I could not find, he was prosecuted for assault, not rape, and was sentenced to only one year in jail.

When Steeples’ wife Tillie filed for divorce in 1991, she said her estranged husband had beaten and attempted to rape a young woman in a makeshift teepee behind the couple’s Mount Juliet, Tennessee, home. After Tillie found him in the act, she says he beat her and nearly choked her to death. Tillie did not report the incident, saying she was afraid of her husband. The young woman, apparently, was also fearful as no charges were ever filed for the alleged incident.

Tillie also said Steeples bragged to her about frequently having sex with prostitutes who gave him venereal diseases which he, in turn, transmitted to her.

Tom Terrible

One year after Heather Uffelman’s murder, Tom Steeples was charged with murdering forty-six-year-old Ronnie Bingham, owner of the Corral Club, a Nashville bar. Some articles in The Tennessean state the men had previously been business partners.

At around 5:00 a.m. on October 17, 1993, a driver noticed smoke coming from the bar. When police were summoned, they found Ronnie seated on a chair set on fire. The rest of the bar had not been torched.

An autopsy showed Ronnie had been shot to death prior to being set ablaze. A bullet from a .38 caliber handgun was found lodged in the left side of his neck.

A customer at the bar reported there was only Ronnie and one other person at the establishment when he left at 1:00 a.m. He recalled the patron being called Tom. At the scene, police found the business card of Tom Steeples and determined he was trying to sell computer software to Ronnie.

Police found a man who said he had sold Steeples a .38 caliber gun approximately a month before Ronnie’s murder. This man had previously shot the gun in his backyard and a projectile found in a tree stump was located. Ballistics tests showed it was the same caliber as the one used to kill Ronnie Bingham.

Ronnie Bingham

In May 1994, DNA evidence linked Steeples to a double murder in an Econo Lodge motel in Nashville two months earlier.

On the evening of March 7, it is believed that Steeples struck up a conversation in a Nashville bar with Robb and Kelli Phillips, ages twenty-four and twenty-eight. The newlyweds had recently moved from California to Nashville, where Robb, an aspiring musician, was hoping to establish contacts to help him break into the business.

After singing karaoke at the bar and learning of Robb’s music wishes, Steeples is believed to have used the ruse of being a record producer to lure the couple to the motel room with the offer of helping Robb. When they arrived, Steeples attacked them, beating them both with a blunt object before tying them up. He probably forced Kelli to watch as he bludgeoned Robb to death. Steeples then raped Kelli and beat her to death.

Robb and Kelli Phillips

While in jail on drug charges and awaiting trial on the three murder charges, Tom Steeples died of a cocaine-induced heart attack on August 10, 1994.

His death was found to be an assisted suicide of a unique nature.

Steeples Succumbs in an Assisted Suicide

Authorities determined the lethal dose of cocaine had been supplied to Steeples by his wife Tillie.  She had mailed a package containing the crack concealed in clothing to Michael Evans, another inmate, who provided the drug to Steeples.

Tom and Tillie Steeples were still legally married at the time. Tillie had told acquaintances that her jailed and estranged husband was going to commit suicide and that she would collect his $580,000 life insurance policy. She was sentenced to six years in prison.

Tillie Steeples

No forensic evidence links Tom Steeples to the murder of Heather Uffelman and the attempted murder of Jeremy Rolfs.

Articles in 1994 from The Tennessean state investigators do not consider him a suspect.

Not Linked to the Marietta Murder

Based on Jeremey Rolf’s recollections and sightings of the man by motel personnel and other guests, the man calling himself Tom Johnson appeared to be in his twenties or early thirties, stood approximately six feet tall and weighed about one-hundred-sixty to one-hundred-seventy-five pounds. He had sandy brown hair, and he sometimes wore glasses. He spoke with no southern accent. At the time of the attack, he was wearing an expensive pair of boots, made of either snake or alligator skin.

If you have any information relating to the true identity of “Tom Johnson” please contact the Marietta, Georgia, Police Department at 770-794-5300.

After Heather’s murder, Jeremy and her family created the “Heather Uffelman Memorial Scholarship” in her honor.

The scholarship is awarded to a prospective Middle Tennessee State University student in need of financial aid.

Scholarship in Memory of Heather

Jeremy Rolfs escaped death in the attack that killed his fiance. Five years later, however, he was killed in an accident at age twenty-seven.

After graduating from Middle Tennessee State, Jeremy joined the Peace Corps as a telecommunications adviser to the Ministry of Information for the Kingdom of Lesotho, the small country surrounded by South Africa.

On March 31, 1997, Jeremy was killed in Winburg, South Africa, when he was hit head-on by a driver who had fallen asleep at the wheel. His mother Alma, who was visiting him, was a passenger in the car. She was injured but survived.

Jeremy Is Killed in an Accident Abroad

Jeremy Rolfs and Heather Uffelman met while working at the student television station at Middle Tennessee State.  They soon began dating, fell in love, and became engaged.

They looked forward to a long lifetime together. Instead, both of their lives were taken at a young age in tragic manners.

Two Young Lovers:

Two Tragic Deaths

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/42600028/heather-roxanne-uffelman#

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/163914647/jeremy-andrew-rolfs#

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/32965850/robert-william-phillips# 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/32973508/kelli-jean-phillips

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/148438460/ronald-edward-bingham#

 

SOURCES:

• Atlanta Journal-Constitution
• Chicago Tribune
• Marietta Daily Journal
• The Tenneseean
• Unsolved Mysteries