A Family That Murders Together

Father and son both confessed to a murder, with pot getting blamed.

Image from CNN

“Everybody has a dysfunctional family,” Vicki Lawrence said trying to comfort people. Most people have grown up with a family that fights. When there is a funeral or a wedding or even a holiday, the family comes together peacefully. Most of the time.

However, there are some families that are dysfunctional. The Zwicker/Young/Gouker family was one of the most twisted families around. The bonds of dysfunction wound tightly around each person in the clan. Any chance of normalcy was choked off by their dynamics. The infighting between family members was beyond what happens in typical families.

The dysfunction led to a twisted case of murder that is impossible to solve. This despite the fact a Kentucky father AND son have confessed to it.

Born A Crime

Angelina Young had a child with Josh Gouker. That son would share a first name with his father, but given his mother’s last name. There is no official reasoning why Josh Young was not given his father’s last name, the leading theory is that it was to protect him from Gouker’s criminal legacy. Gouker has been in and out of jail like most people stop at Starbucks for a coffee.

Sadly, Young would die on Easter Sunday 2010. That event would lead the Josh Young to be put into Foster Care, as Gouker was once again incarcerated.

When he was released, Gouker fought for custody of his 15-year-old son. A judge ruled in his favor. Father and son were reunited. They lived with Gouker’s cousin, Cassie Gouker. Some say that Cassie and Gouker were on-off lovers.

Gouker also had an on-again-off-again relationship with Amanda Zwicker. The two would reunite and have wild sex, then break up when things got too real.

Married Feud

During one of the off periods, Zwicker married Terrance Zwicker Jr. The couple had a son, Terrance “Trey” Zwicker III. While Trey was growing up, his father disappeared from the scene. That led Zwicker to reunite with Gouker. The drama multiplied when the drugs and a cousin/lover spoiler were thrown in.

After their reunion in December 2010, Zwicker discovered that she was pregnant with Gouker’s baby. A happy occasion turned ugly when Gouker accidentally called his girlfriend while having sex with his cousin. During the intercourse, he called Zwicker “expendable.” After she heard that, Zwicker decided that she wanted to cut ties with her boyfriend. Cutting ties with Gouker meant aborting the baby. The conversation between Zwicker and Gouker was awkward and tinged with anger.

In other words, it did not go well.

Brotherly Rivalry

Here’s where things go from bad to dysfunctional. Josh Young and Trey Zwicker were close in age. Their personalities, however, differed significantly. Like most brothers, they seemed to have a bit of a rivalry with one another. They were also close and looked out for one another.

On May 11, 2011, many were shocked when Trey’s body was discovered by a teacher near Liberty High School in Louisville, Kentucky. Trey’s family was immediately notified. Funeral arrangements were made, and tears flowed freely for the Zwicker family.

Gouker and Young were noticeably not upset about the death of someone that they had allegedly been close with. The father and son would leave Kentucky right after the funeral, a direct violation of Gouker’s probation. As the police investigated, nothing made sense as to why Trey had been killed.

Could it have been a random act of violence? It was what some were thinking before Gouker missed a probation appointment. Authorities realized that he had fled the state with his son.

Looking For The Men

A manhunt commenced. Gouker made it easy to find him by committing a crime. Along with his son, they held a woman at gunpoint and forced her to drive them to Alabama. After the woman informed the police as to what happened, the men were found.

Gouker and Young were arrested. Young was extradited back to Kentucky to face charges. Gouker was charged with kidnapping in Alabama and then was supposed to be sent back to Kentucky. After the revelation that Gouker and the woman had a sexual history, the case fell apart. He was released to terrorize the public once again.

Prosecutors in Kentucky were building a case against Young. They believed he was the one who killed Trey. They felt there was a strong enough case to have the young man as an adult.

Gouker was arrested in Indiana but once again released, instead of being extradited back to Kentucky to face charges with his son. Eventually, the FBI would be brought in to help find him. There was a lot of egg on faces when it turned out that he had been hiding in plain sight for months. The criminal had moved back to the Louisville area. Once he was found, Gouker was arrested and charged with crimes associated with the murder, just not the actual murder.

Will The Real Killer Please Stand Up?

Something happened to Gouker. Some think it might have been fatherly instincts, others think it was good old fashioned guilt. Whatever the case, he confessed to killing Trey. He told investigators he felt it was the right thing to do since Amanda had killed his unborn baby.

Young was acquitted of the murder and Gouker was set to be sentenced for the crime. Everything seemed to be wrapped up in a nice little bow.

The bow wasn’t wound up tight enough. In a stunning turn of events, Young also confessed to the murder of Trey! In a letter he wrote to an unknown person, he said that he and Trey had gone behind the school and smoked some pot. At some point, Trey mouthed off to him, and he beat him with a baseball bat that he brought with him. He had it in case they decided to smash in car windows. Young claimed because he was high, he was not in his right state of mind. He also said if Trey had just been the good little subservient brother, he wouldn’t have been forced to kill him.

Coerced Confession

Why did Young confess? Some theorized that he believed he couldn’t be tried again for the murder of his stepbrother due to double jeopardy. This is not the case, a criminal defense attorney reasoned, “Depending on what charges were brought against him, he could face other charges. It would be up to the prosecutors to level new charges at him.”

Even with the confession bombshell, there is one more twist to this whole situation. Some family members, including Cassie, are saying that they remember Gouker saying that Young had confessed to the murder. But the words never came from Young himself. It was always his father saying the words. Some family members worried that Gouker has found a way to get his son to confess. in order to alleviate his sentence. He was serving life in prison for the murder and an additional 30 some-odd years for other various crimes. He wanted to be free again.

Young, for his part, was in jail serving a sentence of 20 years for an unrelated gun charge. No DNA test needed to know these two are related. The orange suit doesn’t fall far from the prison.

A twisted family saga had a tragic conclusion. Amanda McFarland (nee Zwicker) and Terrance Zwicker Jr. still don’t know who killed their son or why. Was it because she aborted a baby or was it because Trey was too mouthy? In either case, they lost their son to the hands of two men who once had a bright future, but squandered it for lives of crime. A truly dysfunctional family, one that probably should not get together for Thanksgiving dinner.