Dark-haired man in sunglasses making a face

Rob Budd bio

Robert Glen Budd was born on June 12, 1988, in Milledgeville, Georgia. He was the only son of local highway trooper, Lonnie Budd, who was killed in the line of duty just seven days after his only son's birth.

Budd's mother, Marguerite, committed suicide when he was eight years old, and Budd spent the remainder of his youth being moved from foster home to foster home. According to records from an adoption agency in Atlanta, Robert was a problematic child. By age 16, he was serving time in a juvenile corrections facility.

At the age of 21, Budd moved to the West Coast with aspirations of becoming an actor. While few jobs materialized in the acting field, he became an apprentice for Bob Stanfield, a special effects whiz who ran an independent firm. There he learned how to construct realistic make-up effects, rig small explosions and create squibs — blood packets placed under the clothing and connected to a tiny explosive that, when fired by remote control, create a believable gunshot effect.

He employed all of these skills later when he returned to Georgia and began what he termed "guerrilla theatre," a violent drama staged in public places in which the players enacted high-adrenaline scenes, such as drive-by shootings, beatings, and stabbings, to thrill and frighten unsuspecting passersby. Dalton Kimbrough reportedly joined Budd's theatre group in 2015 and began performing these skits with Budd and a rotating group of players in cities all around the South.

Apparently, Budd and Kimbrough became quite close friends during those years. With Cheyenne Wyoming, they became known as the "Terrible Trio" because they were willing to do almost anything — far beyond what the other players would agree to do — to give the group's performances ever-increasing shocks and thrills. In March 2019, witnesses who refused to be identified say Kimbrough abruptly left the group without a word.

Police around the South, including the State of Mississippi, had been alerted to Budd and his group's dangerous theatrics and had been on the lookout for Budd himself. In August 2019, he was arrested in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, for armed robbery, possession of marijuana and LSD, driving under the influence, and hitting a pedestrian with his vehicle. He is currently serving a twenty-year sentence in the state penitentiary at Parchman.