Wise Up Productions

12/26/2025

1998 ~ Back when Celebrations first lit up with that legendary light-up dance floor, DJ Ryan didn’t stop there, he went full next-level and built a custom DJ booth to match the energy. 🔥 Vinyl spinning, crowds moving, and DJ Ryan straight Rippin’ Up Wax like only the era could deliver. Pure magic. Pure nostalgia. Raise your hand if you were there🙋🏻‍♂️ (“and wave them like you just don’t care”) 

12/26/2025

Left: Club DV8, 1993. Right: The same building in 2025, now home to the Faulkner Theater and the Pike Road Theatre Company

12/25/2025

THANK YOU JAMES DARDEN!! aka Sarge!!!!! Much Love, Brother!! WOW!!

Listen and make your own on Suno.

12/24/2025

The Skatehaven Murders – Part 19 “YOU SHOULD BE DEAD TOO!!”

September, 1986.

The courtroom was still echoing from Marion Thompson’s outburst, her voice cracking with fury and grief as she screamed that Jerome Vincent Berard deserved to die for the murder of her son, Jon Thompson, known to everyone as Bunky.

Moments later, outside that same courtroom, Marion Thompson stood beside the parents of Jeffrey Smith, the other teenager Berard had murdered. Together, they faced reporters and answered the question that stunned the public:

Why would the families of the victims agree to a plea deal that spared the killer from the electric chair?

“They kill our sons in front of us every four years,” Mrs. Thompson said.

Berard had just been convicted, for the third time, of murdering Jeff and Bunky. Each conviction reopened the wounds. Each appeal dragged the families back into court, forcing them to relive the worst moments of their lives again…and again.

“We’ve been through eight years of unbelievable hell,” Mrs. Thompson said.

“And we just did not feel we could go through it again.”

This time, Jerome Vincent Berard agreed not to contest the charges. In exchange, prosecutors took the death penalty off the table. His sentence would be life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Twice before, Berard had been sentenced to die in the electric chair. Twice before, higher courts ordered retrials.

“Each time he was sentenced to death, the courts would order that it be retried,” Mrs. Thompson explained. “And each time we would have to hear it…to relive it.”

Under Alabama law, even with a plea bargain in place, the court was required to hold an abbreviated trial. During that proceeding, prosecutors played the most devastating piece of evidence of all, the taped confession.

The courtroom sat in silence as Jerome Berard’s own voice filled the room.

“I just shot them dead.”

That was when Marion Thompson broke.
“YOU SHOULD BE DEAD TOO!!” she screamed, leaping from her seat before running from the courtroom, unable to endure another second.

Montgomery County District Attorney Jimmy Evans made it clear this agreement was not about mercy.

“I would have retried the case for the rest of my life,” Evans said, “if that’s what it took to get Berard into the electric chair.”

But Berard’s defense attorneys, Ira DeMent and Ron Wise, pointed to a different reality. They cited hundreds of pages of psychological and psychiatric testimony, evidence that ultimately led the Court of Criminal Appeals to rule that Berard’s case was not a death-penalty case.

“What is needed,” DeMent said, “is a verdict that reads guilty—mentally ill.”
But he added there was a devastating problem.

“The state would need secure, long-term treatment and detention facilities. Alabama has neither. Hence, you never find a jury that will return a not guilty by reason of insanity verdict.”

And so, Jerome Vincent Berard would not die in the electric chair.
Instead, he would spend the rest of his life behind prison walls.

To be continued…

12/23/2025

The Skatehaven Murders – Part 18: A Disturbing Detail Uncovered

By the morning of April 15, 1978, the damage was already done.

Jerome Vincent Berard had vanished from Skatehaven, leaving behind two young lives shattered in a moment of unthinkable violence.

WiseUpProductions' followers who've been reading this story since Part 1 know all too well, Jerome didn’t flee on foot, he drove away in Bunky’s vehicle, steering it toward the vast, empty stretch of Marshall Field.

WiseUpProductions uncovered a chilling detail.

During Jerome’s taped confession, he revealed what happened when he reached his chosen spot in the field. He wedged an eight-track tape against the accelerator, forcing the vehicle to keep moving, rolling farther away from the dirt road and deeper into the open field.

Second Trial – 1982

Jerome’s first trial had already ended with a guilty verdict and a sentence of death by electric chair under Alabama’s old capital punishment law, but when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled portions of that law unconstitutional, the fallout was immediate.

New trials were ordered.

Jerome Berard would face a jury again.

Much of the evidence presented during the first trial resurfaced in the second, but controversy followed closely behind. Defense attorneys Ira DeMent and Ron Wise moved for a mistrial, arguing that crime scene photographs shown to the jury were deeply prejudicial. Prosecutors had allegedly claimed the slides would be a reenactment based on Jerome’s version of events, not the actual photographs, according to the defense.

Circuit Court Judge William Gordon disagreed.

“I did not see what I expected to see,” Gordon said, but he stopped short of accusing Assistant District Attorney Jim Williams of intentionally misleading the court. The jury was allowed to continue viewing the images.

The trial pressed forward.

Jerome’s mother took the stand.

Veronica Berard, known as “Vera” to those close to her, testified through visible emotion. She told the court that her son cried when he heard on the radio that his “best friend,” Jeff, and Bunky had been shot outside Skatehaven.

Her voice faltered as she spoke.

“I don’t know why,” she said. “He liked Jeff, he really did. I don’t know the Thompson boy. Jerome did not know what he had done.”

She testified that Jerome remembered nothing from the night of the shootings.

The defense did not deny the killings. They did not deny that Jerome emptied his father’s .45-caliber pistol into the victims, instead, they argued one thing and one thing only: Jerome’s mental state.

The Battle of the Experts

Dr. Chester W. Jenkins, who diagnosed Jerome as a latent schizophrenic, told the court it was probable Jerome experienced a psychotic episode at the time of the murders.

Dr. Ronald Hamby, a licensed clinical psychologist, reinforced those findings, stating Jerome was not “obviously crazy,” but that his history and behavior pointed to a psychotic break. Hamby concluded Jerome was schizophrenic at the time of the shootings.

All three experts, Jenkins, Hamby, and psychometrist Terry A. Frye, agreed on a crucial point: Jerome knew right from wrong, but Hamby testified, his illness prevented him from adhering to the right.

“I would not think he could be held accountable for the act.”

That testimony ended the defense’s case.

Then the state struck back.

A Birmingham psychiatrist from Bryce Hospital, Dr. Thomas L. Smith Jr., testified that Jerome suffered from a personality disorder, not psychosis. While acknowledging the difficulty in distinguishing such disorders from the onset of a psychotic episode, the forensic board concluded Jerome was competent, sane, and responsible.

The jury deliberated.

Once again, Jerome Vincent Berard was found guilty of Capital Murder.

Judge William Gordon accepted the jury’s recommendation of ex*****on. He called the crime senseless and committed for no apparent reason. The homicides, he said, were heinous and cruel.

For a brief moment, Gordon stated, the victims must have felt terror as they realized what was happening.

“The court knows,” he said, “that was the defendant’s purpose” referring to the final shots Jerome fired into both victims with the intent to take their lives.

Another conviction.
Another death sentence.

But just like before… the story did not end there.

In July of 1984, Jerome’s sentence was struck down by the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. In December of 1985, the Alabama Supreme Court overturned the conviction entirely, ruling Jerome was entitled to yet another trial.

In an 8–1 decision, the court found prosecutors had crossed a line, asking questions meant not to seek truth, but to inflame the jury. The justices took particular issue with speculative questions about what Jerome might do in the future.

“We have not been cited to any case in Alabama,” the ruling stated, “that approves of a prosecutor asking a question about what the defendant is capable of doing in the future.”

For the second time, everything unraveled.

Two trials.
Two death sentences.
And still… no final resolution.

Because the question now wasn’t just what Jerome did, it was whether the system itself could survive what came next.

To be continued…

12/22/2025

Caught this quick snap before the Montgomery crew piled into our rides and headed up to The Circuit in Birmingham. Late 90s nights, bass in the chest, no GPS, just vibes🎤🎧🎹
📸Winona Avenue, Capital Heights.

12/22/2025

Celebrations staff hanging out at Fox and the Hound in Atlanta Crossing (formerly Union Square Shopping Center) ~ 1998
📸Ryan Lambert

12/22/2025

Celebrations, 1998. (📸 Ryan Lambert)

12/15/2025

🚨 BREAKING NEWS 🚨
Can somebody PLEASE post my bond and get my attorney on the phone?! 😳📞

The folks finally caught me this morning while I was hiding in my girl’s attic. Apparently somebody ratted me out trying to cash in on that Crime Stoppers reward 💰👀

😂😂 JUST KIDDING!! 😂😂

No fugitives here, just your friendly neighborhood filmmaker getting close while filming a SWAT Team training exercise.

Check out this quick WiseUpProductions Behind-the-Scenes footage🎥

Thanks for supporting this local filmmaker!
Much love and God bless! 🙏❤️

12/14/2025

Jerome Vincent Berard playing guitar on national television.

Back on December 4, 2006, Season 2, Episode 4 of MSNBC’s Lockup: Inside Holman Correctional Facility aired, taking viewers inside Holman, the notoriously tough prison in Atmore, Alabama.

Among the inmates featured was Robert Tedder, a former general contractor whose building and electrical skills didn’t fade behind bars. Instead, he used whatever materials he could get his hands on to craft homemade guitars, ingenious, functional instruments born out of resourcefulness and isolation.

Tedder built one of these guitars for his friend, Jerome Berard, and then taught him how to play. Jerome appears on screen with the handcrafted guitar. Notice the program’s narrator adds a striking layer to the story, referring to the Skatehaven murders as a “drug-related double homicide.” That phrasing continues to reinforce one of the theories surrounding Jerome’s actions, or at least one of the possible motivations behind them.

WiseUpProductions would like to extend a deep and heartfelt thank-you to a dedicated follower of the Skatehaven Murders series, who wishes to remain anonymous, for sending in this footage.

12/13/2025

The Skatehaven Murders – Part 17: Death In The Electric Chair

First Trial, 1978

The verdict landed with the finality of a slammed door.

In 1978, Jerome Vincent Berard was found guilty of capital murder. The jury had spoken and in his final ruling as a Montgomery Circuit Court judge, Judge Richard Emmet carried that verdict to its inevitable conclusion: death in the electric chair.

It would be his last sentence from the bench and one of the heaviest.

Judge Emmet cited the brutality of the crimes, the absence of provocation, and clear evidence of premeditation as aggravating factors that left no room for mercy. Berard’s youth, his lack of a prior criminal record, and evidence of emotional instability were weighed carefully, but in the end, they were not enough. The sentence would stand.

As the words were read aloud, Jerome’s mother collapsed into the arms of defense attorney John Capell, her sobs echoing softly through the courtroom. Berard himself remained still. Distant. Almost carved from stone.

Outside the courtroom, the parents of Bunky, Daryl and Marion Thompson, released a prepared statement. They said they were “deeply thankful that Judge Emmet upheld the decision of the jury and the death penalty, not because we want revenge, but because we want justice.”

Inside, justice came wrapped in unbearable detail.

The Battle Over Jerome Berard’s Mind

The defense hinged almost entirely on one question:
Was Jerome Berard capable of knowing right from wrong when he pulled the trigger?

Psychiatrist Dr. Chester Jenkins testified before a jury of ten women and two men, explaining that Berard “very probably” suffered from impaired reasoning on the night of the murders. Jenkins told the court it was “not probable” that Berard understood the moral weight of his actions, or that he could have stopped himself.

In Jenkins’ professional opinion, Jerome Berard was a latent schizophrenic, his ability to conform his behavior to the law significantly impaired in the early hours of April 15. “There is no certainty,” Jenkins admitted. “But the probability is strong.”

He told jurors that Berard remained ill, that his condition was ongoing and that there was even a possibility Berard wanted to be caught. When Jenkins asked Berard how the murders affected him, the psychiatrist said the change was immediate and unsettling.
“It was almost as if a switch had been turned.” Berard grew withdrawn. His shoulders hunched. His eyes fell to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” Jenkins said, was all Berard could manage.

The psychiatrist later expressed regret that no toxicological examination had been conducted immediately after Berard’s arrest, something Bryce Hospital records confirmed had not been done.

The State Pushes Back

Assistant District Attorney Richard Bentley countered with the findings of the Forensic Evaluation Board at Bryce Hospital, a state mental institution. Their conclusion was unequivocal: Berard knew the difference between right and wrong and possessed the ability to act accordingly. The report acknowledged that Berard had a schizoid personality and that his use of ma*****na may have contributed to his actions, but not to the extent required to absolve responsibility.

Berard told doctors he felt suicidal, suffered frequent headaches, and regularly used multiple substances, including ma*****na and alcohol.

Psychologist Terry Frye testified that after more than five hours of testing at the Montgomery County Jail, Berard’s IQ was slightly above average. The resulting psychological profile suggested a psychotic disorder, not a neurotic one. Frye described Berard as withdrawn, a loner, someone whose mind wandered. Berard told him he believed his father, a retired Air Force sergeant, thought poorly of him. He resented being sent to parochial school. He felt misplaced in his own neighborhood. On weekends, he drank heavily. He mixed Va**um with alcohol.

On cross-examination, Frye conceded that psychological testing contained variables and could not be considered one hundred percent definitive. He relied not only on test results, but also on third-party information.

Throughout it all, Jerome Berard never looked at a single witness.
Except one. When Frye testified, Berard’s face flushed red. His body trembled.

The Evidence the Families Could Not Escape

The jury also heard Jerome Berard’s confession, a moment that reopened wounds for the victims’ families with brutal force.

Thomas Hopen of the Department of Forensic Science testified that the gun Berard’s father turned over to police, the same weapon Jerome had taken to Skatehaven, was conclusively identified as the murder weapon. The shots were fired from three to four feet away.
The victims’ shirts, still encrusted with blood, were entered into evidence. Jeff’s shirt bore six bullet holes. Bunky’s had eight.

The weight of those numbers proved unbearable.

Jean Smith, Jeff’s mother, and Marion Thompson, Bunky’s mother, rose from their seats and fled the courtroom in tears.

Judge Emmet would later state that while Berard’s emotional instability was “certainly present to some degree,” it did not justify reducing the prescribed sentence.

The law had spoken.
The sentence was death.
But the case of Jerome Vincent Berard was far from over.
To be continued…

12/11/2025

Who remembers the original Tulane Court before it was demolished?

This photo dates back to 1982 and captures Jim Lilly launching a paper airplane while entertaining the children during Tulane Court’s Summer Vacation Bible School.