Staged Death at the Cove

Juan Contreras, Sr.'s grave marker - Pleasant Union Baptist Cemetery, Waleska

This is the tragic story of the Contreras family of Cherokee County, Georgia. In 1976, two teenagers killed their father and tried to make it look like an accident. For whatever reason, they decided the fictional site of the murder would be at the S-Curves below Cove Mountain, across the road from the entrance to the Perseverence Quarry.

In early 1976, Juan Contreras, Sr., and his wife Peggy divorced and she and her daughter Vicki moved to Florida. When Peggy moved to Florida, her eldest daughter moved away from home, leaving behind three younger siblings, two boys, and a girl. Then in April of 1976, Peggy, committed suicide by shooting herself in the face with a shotgun. After her mom’s death, Vicki quickly moved back to North Georgia.

On August 6, 1976, Juan and his sister Vicki planned to kill their father. When he arrived home from work, they bludgeoned him to death with a hammer. Panicked, they drove away in their father’s red station wagon. While leaving they spotted the younger daughter’s boyfriend, George Patterson. They stopped to talk, and the three of them left to dispose of the murder weapon. That night, Juan and Vicki stayed over at Patterson’s. The following day, Vicki cashed her father’s final payroll check. Later that night they went to a party and schemed of a way to cover up the murder.

21-year-old George Patterson of Ball Ground convinced 18-year-old, Ronnie Lamar Moss from Jasper to help them dispose of the body. They drove Mr. Contreras’ station wagon (with his lifeless body in the back seat) to the Cove located near the Perseverance Quarry two miles east of Jasper, siphoned gas from the tank, lit it on fire, and pushed it 200 feet down an embankment.

Ronnie Moss drove all of them back to the Contreras home where they gathered a bloody mattress, bedsprings, and rug, placed them in Moss’s truck, and left to go burn the evidence. Subsequently, they cleaned the porch of the home and scrubbed the interior floors and walls down with ammonia.

Vicki Contreras 1976

They believed it would look like an accident. but made several mistakes. Their biggest blunder was leaving the severely burned body of their father in the back seat of the wagon. People don't drive from the backseat. The second was they pushed the vehicle over a cliff, instead of driving it. Under normal circumstances, a vehicle that crashes while traveling at a normal rate of speed will roll when going off an embankment. But the station wagon hadn’t rolled or exploded.

Things seemed suspicious, prompting the investigators to order an autopsy. The autopsy revealed that Juan Contreras, Sr. had died from head trauma caused by three blows to the head by a hammer.

As a result., Juan Jr. and his sister were arrested and charged with murder. Further investigation showed that Vicki, then 18, had cashed her father’s last payroll check from Lockheed and a motive. The teens were hoping to cash in on their father’s $100,000 life insurance policy.

Ronnie Moss was charged with concealing a death and destroying evidence. George Patterson was charged with 3rd-degree arson, concealing a death, and destroying evidence. Juan Jr. and Vicki were charged with first-degree murder.

During the trial of the Contreras siblings, they both were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. George Patterson turned evidence against them.

NOTE: One of the alleged motives from the Defense was that the crime was an act of revenge from Mr. Patterson against Mr. Contreras, Sr., who had a warrant issued for Patterson’s involvement with Contreras’ 14-year-old daughter.

In 1978, the Contreras siblings appealed their case to the Georgia Supreme Court arguing the lower courts had erred in their decision. However, the court denied their appeal.

A little more than a decade later, Juan Contreras, Jr. was paroled in 1988. His sister was paroled a year later. Juan (John) and Vicki Contreras quietly left the area and currently reside in Florida.