What Happened To J.T. On The Young And The Restless?
J.T. Hellstrom was a young Genoa City hero for many years. Thad Luckinbill originated the role in 1999 (via IMDb) as the high school friend of many of "The Young and the Restless'" legacy characters.
Along with Billy Abbott (then played by David Tom), Mackenzie Browning (Ashley Bashioum), and Brittany Hodges (Lauren Woodland), J.T. was part of a typical soap opera teen scene where everyone dated one another before finally deciding whom they really wanted.
For J.T., it was two young women — Colleen Carlton (Tammin Sursok) and Mac, Katherine Chancellor's (Jeanne Cooper) granddaughter — who tore his heart apart. However, at one point, he surprisingly fell in love with Victoria Newman (Amelia Heinle).
The pair married and began to raise their son, Reed, but their marriage failed when J.T. blamed his father-in-law, Victor Newman (Eric Braeden), for Colleen's tragic drowning death.
Ultimately, J.T. ended up married to Mac after gaining custody of Reed, and he moved his small family to Washington, D.C.
What happened to him next was a shock to the system for longtime fans who had grown to love him for a decade, from 1999 to 2009 (via Soaps In Depth).
J.T. returned to Genoa City a completely changed man
In 2017, eight years after originally leaving "The Young and the Restless" behind, Thad Luckinbill made his Genoa City comeback as J.T. Hellstrom (via Soaps.com).
After a now-teenage Reed Hellstrom (Tristan Lake Leabu) made his way to town to live with his mom because there was trouble between J.T. and Mac, J.T. was not far behind and admitted to Victoria Newman that his marriage was on the rocks.
After a while, he and Victoria rekindled their romance, and she asked him to move into the home she shared with Reed and her two younger children, Johnny and Katie Abbott.
Soon, it was apparent that J.T. was different. He was frequently critical of Victoria, would snap at her when unwarranted, would insult her, and got physical with her on rare occasions (via Michael Fairman TV). Victoria felt they could solve their problems with couple's therapy, but it didn't work.
Victoria tried to break things off with him when his behavior became too erratic, but, one night, J.T. snuck into her home — and that's when all hell broke loose.
Victoria's mother appeared to kill him
When Victoria Newman had a girls' night at her house, she ended up confessing to Phyllis Summers (Gina Tognoni), Sharon Collins (Sharon Case), and her mother, Nikki Newman (Melody Thomas Scott), that J.T. had been abusive with her (via Soaps.com).
They were all sympathetic and shocked. When Victoria went upstairs to get ready for bed, she found J.T. in her bathroom, and, as he became physical with her in the bedroom, Nikki, who heard a ruckus from downstairs, came rushing in. She clocked J.T. over the head with a fireplace poker, seemingly killing him (via Soaps In Depth).
Sharon and Phyllis were also both hanging out downstairs, and, when they came across the scene, they all decided the police should never know. So, they somehow got J.T.'s body all the way to Chancellor Park and buried him there.
They then spent the next year trying to cover up for a murder that turned out not to be a murder at all, and Thad Luckinbill looked like he was out of a job, according to Entertainment Weekly.
A year later, J.T. turned up alive
It was a tumultuous year for the four women who buried J.T. Hellstrom in Chancellor Park. They frequently felt he was stalking or haunting them as they tried to go on with their lives while covering up this crime.
All anyone knew was that J.T. had disappeared. Nobody suspected he was dead, but, eventually, it turned out that J.T. wasn't dead, after all. He managed to climb out of that grave in the park and kidnapped the four women who buried him — after they were convicted of the crime.
What J.T. didn't know was that he walked into a trap and was soon arrested. As many fans suspected would happen, J.T.'s behavior was written off as a brain tumor that had been growing for years (via Michael Fairman TV).
After surgery, he was back to being his regular self. But J.T. went to prison for his crimes because he refused to let the tumor be an excuse for all the horrible things that he did (per Soaps In Depth).