Grieving mom awaits arrest in son's death

A year after her son was slain, Judy Chipley received a death certificate saying he had been strangled.

Now, two years after his death, the grieving mother doesn't know if Timothy Chipley's killer will ever be arrested. She does believe that if there's no justice in this life, there will be in the next.

"I know this: We've all heard about closure. Ain't no such thing," Chipley, 71, said by phone from her Ocilla, Ga., home. "They can get arrested; they can be put in jail, whatever. It still ain't gonna bring my son back."

Timothy Chipley was last seen Jan. 27, 2008, with friends at O'Brien's Irish Pub on Dale Mabry Highway. The 34-year-old's body was found Feb. 1, 2008, in a pond at the Countrywood Apartment complex, less than a mile from the pub. The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office confirmed that Timothy Chipley was a homicide victim but had not released the cause of death.

Judy Chipley said she still communicates with investigators, who told her the holdup in making an arrest is getting definitive proof.

"They suspect who it is, but proving it is ... What's the point of going to trial if they don't have proof?" she said. "This ain't 'Law & Order.'"

Less than six months after her son died, Judy Chipley's husband died of Alzheimer's disease. The men's remains have been cremated, their ashes scattered in a rose garden across the street from the Ocilla home.

Atop Judy Chipley's entertainment center are pictures of both men. She believes they are in heaven, eating Cuban sandwiches and complaining about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

She has a theory about what happened to her son. She believes the slaying was an act of jealousy.

"Timmy was extremely popular," she said. "He was very charismatic but he was not perfect. He was single, and he liked the ladies. I don't know if it was somebody that was jealous of him or what it was. It was stupid and senseless. Just totally, totally senseless. I could have picked anybody in the world, and he would have been the last person in the world that I think would be murdered."