GUILTY TN - Kenneth Koster, 45, murdered, Caryville, 8 Sept 2014

The body of Kenneth G. Koster, 45, of Knoxville, was found early Monday morning near a home on Enix Lane. The Campbell County Sheriff's Department said Wednesday that Foster was murdered.

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Officers discovered Kenneth Koster's body outside a home in Claryville earlier this week. Now they're trying to track down two people to get some answers as to what happened.

James Bradley Phillips and Monica Leigh-Ann Briggs are wanted for questioning and both considered armed and dangerous...

Raulston says his father left freely with these two people Phillips and Briggs Sunday evening and that his father knew Briggs.

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According to a report by TBI, Briggs admitted that she assisted in planning and carrying out the murder. She described placing a gun into Koster's left ear and pulling the trigger. The report also shows Briggs admitted to purchasing the ammunition and, following the death, she took his wallet and money.

Due to the nature of the crime and the reason to believe Briggs would run to avoid prosecution, her bail was set at $750,000.

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Koster's body was found wrapped in plastic and a handgun, cleaning supplies, and a rifle were found nearby. His bloody clothes, wallet, and Briggs' wallet were later found in the pickup truck in which Briggs fled the scene.

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His family says Kenneth and Monica worked together. "He would help anybody and he helped the wrong person this time," says Rawls.

Details of what led up to his death have not been released, but his sister believes Ken was doing a favor and lending out his car.

"If they wanted the car, they already had it. So, I'm not sure if allegedly they came back to kill him because they wanted the car or if they wanted his money. My goodness they didn't have to kill them," Rawls says.

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“(Phillips) said that we could... shoot (Koster) with his own gun to make it look like a suicide,” Briggs said in the statement... But things quickly went awry. Phillips kept losing his nerve, so he hyped himself up on methamphetamine — over and over again, Briggs said. His bravado finally shored up, Phillips temporarily forgot the suicide cover story and shot Koster in the back of the head. He tried to correct the mistake with a second shot, the muzzle placed against the side of Koster’s head but, Briggs told the agent, Phillips knew he couldn’t sell suicide anymore...

The more the couple “tweaked” on meth, according to the statement, the more Phillips grew convinced dumping Koster’s body “in the mountains” would be easier. It wasn’t. Unable to lift Koster’s body or roll him into the truck bed, Phillips put the body on a piece of plywood, tied a rope around the body and tried to drag it. “By the time he drug Ken’s body up and down the hill, there was blood on the grass everywhere,” she said. “Brad had blood all over his chest.”

So, Briggs said, they simply left the body at the bottom of the hill, cleaned up the bloody shed as best they could and stashed a mattress covered in Koster’s blood in the back of Phillips’ truck. The pair apparently had engine trouble as they made their getaway and wound up abandoning the bloodstained truck with the bloody mattress — and Koster’s wallet — in the back in nearby Anderson County, according to the statement. Authorities found the evidence before they even knew Koster was dead, testimony showed.

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A Knoxville woman was found guilty Thursday of premeditated first degree murder after a trial lasting more than three days.

Monica Leigh-Ann Briggs was also convicted of second degree murder in the death of Kenneth Koster.

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Criminal Judge Shayne Sexton sentenced Briggs to serve 18 years for the second-degree murder conviction. That will be served concurrently with her state-mandated life imprisonment for the first-degree murder conviction.

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Mary Jane Koster described her son as a “fun-loving, honest and hardworking man.”

She said he had served in the Marines and had fallen on hard times shortly before he met Briggs.

“I know some good Christians would say, ‘I will forgive you,’ and I consider myself a good Christian, but you should know, I will never forgive you,” Koster said to Briggs, who was seated at the defense table.

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Rawls said of her older brother, ”Our hearts remain broken and cannot be mended.”

She said her brother’s death has given her anxiety about something happening to other loved ones.

“Now that we’ve seen evil first-hand, we constantly remind each other to be careful,” she said.

Rawls also addressed Briggs.

“My brother’s life will be honored as you pay for your crimes,” she said.

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Public Defender Jeffers said Briggs was acting under the direction of James Bradley Phillips, a second suspect in Koster’s death.

Phillips was shot and killed by officers in Pigeon Forge attempting to apprehend the couple when officers thought he pulled a weapon.

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