S3 Ep145: Tamla Horsford | Was This A Cover-Up? (Part 2)

On the night of November 3rd, 2018, a group of women gathered at a quiet home in Forsyth County, Georgia for what was supposed to be a casual birthday sleepover. There was football on TV, drinks flowing, and nothing about the evening seemed out of the ordinary. But by the next morning, one of those women- 40-year-old Tamla Horsford- was dead. Try our coffee! - www. CriminalCoffeeCo.comBecome a Patreon member -- > ｿ https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeeklyShop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> ｿ https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shopYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcastWebsite: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.comInstagram: @CrimeWeeklyPodTwitter: @CrimeWeeklyPodFacebook: @CrimeWeeklyPodADS:1. https://www. WildGrain.com/CrimeWeekly30 - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY30 to get $30 off your first box and FREE croissants for LIFE!2. https://www. EatIQBAR.com - Text WEEKLY to 64000 for 20% off ALL IQBAR products and FREE shipping!3. https://www. Ladder.fit/CrimeWeekly - Get your 7-Day FREE trial and $10 off your first month!4. https://www. Rula.com/CrimeWeekly - Connect with quality therapists and prioritize your mental health today!5. https://www. TryFUM.com - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY for a FREE gift with your Journey Pack!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow.

• 0:15Derrick Levasseur?

  And I'm Derrick Levasseur.

• 0:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  So today, we're diving into part two of the Tom La Horsford case. And Derek and I talked about this a little bit on Crime Weekly News, and we've talked about it a little bit over the past week.

• 0:26Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 0:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  Great response to the first part.

• 0:30Derrick Levasseur?

  Crazy, blew up, went crazy.

• 0:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  Appreciate you guys being here. It's such an important case. And, and like I said, I think that a lot of people saw it kind of come and then go, and they didn't look deeper into it. I was one of those people, I'm sad to say. I'm so glad that I'm looking deeper into it now because there is so much there, and we're gonna talk about it today.

• 0:51Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, people have been weighing in on the, in the comments, on the social media posts. And also, it seems, and I guess I'm just old, but what I'm seeing a lot in the comments, the reason that the video did so well, at least on YouTube, audio is different. And you may be familiar with this, but people are hyping it. You know what that is?

• 1:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  I see hyping things, but I don't know what it, what it means.

• 1:13Derrick Levasseur?

  So essentially, because I saw it, and I'm like, what, what are we doing here? What is this, what's happening? And essentially, you guys-

• 1:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  Derek's like, "Why are you hyping me?"

• 1:19Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, why are you hyping us up? And essentially, if you're watching on YouTube right now, you have the ability to hype the video for free. And by doing so, for smaller creators, which relatively speaking, we're, we're a smaller creator on YouTube, you can hype the video, which allows it to be seen by more people. So if you feel inclined to do so, hype the video. And that's what happened on this last episode, which is why, compared to some of our other recent cases, this one did exponentially better, because you guys basically promoted it. And, and that's what led to more exposure. So thank you for that. Now I know a new thing, hyping. Hyped is a thing.

• 1:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  Hyped.

• 1:55Derrick Levasseur?

  Hyped on YouTube. If you're on audio, just leave a review, leave a, leave a rating, that's what helps-

• 2:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  Or go to YouTube and hype.

• 2:01Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, do both. How about that? Can we be greedy and just do both?

• 2:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  If you will hype us, we shall hype you.

• 2:08Derrick Levasseur?

  We will hype you.

• 2:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  So we have a lot more to talk about today. We're gonna dive into it. Is there anything you want to say before we do?

• 2:16Derrick Levasseur?

  No, I was trying not to be influenced by you guys because when you go read the social media comments, you guys are ahead of us or ahead of me, I should say. So I try not to be, I try to stay as impartial as I can. I think I did a pretty good job. So I'm, I'm right there with you in the story where we are, where we last left off.

• 2:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  And I know I asked you, I, you know, all of you, but specifically Derek, like, don't look into this yourself.

• 2:38Derrick Levasseur?

  I didn't.

• 2:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  Kind of unfold it. He didn't. And, and I know he didn't because I talked to him about it. So let's just dive right in. Let's go back to the morning of November 4th, 2018, when the body of Tamla Horsford was found face down in the backyard of the home of Jean Myers. Jean's quote unquote aunt, Madeline Lombardi, was the first person to see Tam and the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office interviewed her formally on November 7th. Now, we remember that Bridget Fuller, who I'm glad everybody agrees with me is sketchy and off. Because I thought I was kind of being mean, just because I get impressions of people and I'm like, ugh, I don't really like this person. Not saying she's guilty of anything, but.

• 3:21Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, that's the thing, right? Like it's one, you can acknowledge that she's off.

• 3:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 3:25Derrick Levasseur?

  And not, you're not inferring that she's guilty. Like two things can be true here where you could agree that her approach and her mannerisms are suspicious as hell. And yet it may be unrelated to what happened at Tamla. So that's, that's where I draw the line as well. Like you can still feel a certain way about her. And, and not think she's guilty of murder. I don't know where I sit on it right now, but I think anybody with half a brain would acknowledge that her behavior and her response to all of this. Minimal, it's suspicious.

• 3:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. And just the, just the way she lives her life, right? Wearing a necklace with Xanax and giving them out like Tic Tacs to everybody.

• 4:01Derrick Levasseur?

  We had multiple people in the comments on YouTube who were like, listen, I have severe anxiety.

• 4:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 4:06Derrick Levasseur?

  And I'm someone who needs. Xanax or something else at the ready. But I'm not walking around with a bunch of pills in my necklace. That's just not standard now.

• 4:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  It feels very high school to me like, like I'm a girl in high school and I need everybody to know that I have anxiety. Kind of thing.

• 4:21Derrick Levasseur?

  Can I give my opinion? I per- and again, I have nothing to substantiate this. I'll steal your phrase allegedly. It seems to me like Bridget felt a little cool and she might've been the local. Who had a prescription of Xanax and would give it to her friends when they asked for it when they went out. And you know, I've had, I've been in circles where especially in like college where. Someone might have access to something and that's the person you go to. It seems like in her friend group. It was a known thing. That Bridget had access to Xanax and she embraced that role. By carrying it around in the necklace. That's just my opinion. I don't think she was doing that for herself.

• 4:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  Like what kind of necklace is this? I would love to see. This necklace, did it have like an axe on it? Like what, what, what are we doing here?

• 5:04Derrick Levasseur?

  It was probably one of those like you see in the movies where it's a cross. I thought you had said it was a cross.

• 5:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  I, I don't, that would be if it was a cross. Like you mean like a Sarah Michelle Gellar's character in Cruel Intentions where she kept cocaine in her cross necklace?

• 5:17Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes. So maybe I was just in, maybe you didn't say it and I was just correlating the two, but. You, I've seen multiple movies where it's like a cross necklace and they open it up. Uh, Squid Games had something like that as well where. They had like a necklace. I don't think it was a cross, but it opened up and it had like pills inside of it. That you know, you could sneak into different places and.

• 5:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  That would be wild to me. If it was a cross, I'm, I'm dead. Oh my God.

• 5:40Derrick Levasseur?

  Next level. Alright, so maybe I was just envisioning that and you didn't actually say it, but.

• 5:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  But that's what it reminds me of, right? That character in Cruel Intentions. She's like some high school girl. She thinks she's so cool. She's so dark and so edgy and she's like, yeah, I'm just known to have this cocaine cross necklace. Hey, get out of here.

• 5:56Derrick Levasseur?

  It was probably an inside thing. It's like, did you bring the necklace, Bridget? I feel like it was a thing.

• 6:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  Uh, but anyways, Bridget Fuller, man, all I'm saying is if I was invited to hang out with Bridget Fuller, I would very quickly and wholeheartedly decline the invitation. Okay, this is a person I would not get along with.

• 6:15Derrick Levasseur?

  She feels uncomfortable around certain people.

• 6:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  She feels uncomfortable, you know, I, and, and she's, she's the mother hen and people only love me because of what I do for them. Cause I clean up after them.

• 6:25Derrick Levasseur?

  I was on my laptop.

• 6:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  I, I just couldn't even be, I looked at Jose and I was like, huh, take this off my hands talking about a human person. Get out of here, man. Oh, you're just so elevated. You're so evolved over everybody else. But you're the one with the necklace full of Xanax. So anyways, Bridget Fuller, remember she told the police that every time Tam went out for a cigarette, someone was with her. They never let her go out alone, even though Jose said that he believed Tam had always gone out to smoke alone. And he never saw anyone with her because he just always saw her coming back inside alone. So Aunt Madeline, she said that on the evening of November 3rd, she had made gumbo and she was encouraging everyone to eat it all night.

• 7:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  And she said, when the boys, Jose Barrera and Tom Smith came up from the basement at halftime, she told them that they could eat first, but then they had to go out and get ice because they were all out of ice. And everyone was still drinking and mixing drinks. Now at that point, Madeline went outside with Tam and Stacy Smith. Tam smoked a cigarette, then Stacy got up and went back inside and then Madeline and Tam went inside. Tam then asked Madeline if there was any ice left and Madeline said she did have some. She had an old fashioned ice cube tray down in the basement. So she went and got that ice so that Tam could make a drink. Now, the last thing Madeline said to Tam was that she liked her Dalmatian pajamas. And then she went down to the basement where, remember her bedroom was Aunt Madeline lives in the basement.

• 7:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  So Madeline said that while the guys were gone getting ice, she took a bath and then she turned on her TV and she watched it for a little bit until she felt herself getting tired. And then she turned some thunderstorm nature sounds on using her Bose speaker. She said she used the Bose. Speaker because she could hear people upstairs. They were loud and she wouldn't be able to go to sleep with all that noise coming from upstairs. Madeline said that after that, she never got up a single time, but she did turn the speaker down sometime in the early morning hours because at that point she was worried that maybe her Bose speaker might be bothering the people upstairs who were trying to sleep because she had it up so loud. Madeline said she didn't hear a thing all night.

• 8:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  At around 8:30 a.m., she started looking at the clock, thinking it was time to get out of bed and get going, but she lingered in bed for about 15 minutes before actually getting up. So that puts Madeline Lombardi getting out of bed around 8:45 a.m. And at that time, she said she started getting things ready with her coffee maker, which was downstairs in the basement. She talks about how the coffee maker is an espresso maker, so there's a bunch of things you have to do to make coffee. It's not just like a normal drip coffee maker. You have to empty out the grinds from the day before. You gotta grind the beans, et cetera, et cetera.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  I went get the coffee maker started and I went stand by the window and I was just staring out the window and I saw those Dalmatian pajamas. Damn. But I couldn't remember her name.

• 9:26Speaker 03

  Right.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Because that was the first time I'd met her.

• 9:28Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  So, um, I didn't start the coffee. I, I, I got on my knees and I said a prayer and then I ran upstairs and I knocked on the door and I thought I heard water running and I thought maybe Jose and Jean were taking a shower. So I went downstairs because I was like thinking, I shouldn't, I shouldn't wake up. Maybe she's up. So I went downstairs and I looked out the window again and then it was just like, I couldn't believe my eyes. I was saying, saying inside my head, she's not moving, she's not moving. So then I went knock on the door louder.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  You never went out there?

• 10:09Speaker 02

  No, no. And that's when I told Jose that I knocked on the doors. Jean said, come in and they were sitting up in bed. And I said, Jose, and I looked at Jean and I said, I just want to talk to Jose. I want him to come downstairs with me. And Jean said, why? What's wrong? And I said, Your friend, your friend from the islands is laying in the backyard and she's not moving. And then that's when Jose went out and Jean went out right behind them. I don't even know which door they went out of.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  I came back in here and I guess we woke up Jen.

• 10:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so Madeline said that Jennifer Morell was sleeping in the only room on the main floor. Tom and Stacy Smith had been sleeping in one of the upstairs bedrooms near where Jean and Jose's room was, but they had left earlier in the morning because they had kids. We'll come back to that. Madeline said that at the point when she woke up Jose and Jean, Jennifer Morell was the only person still there. Now, we know that technically Tom and Stacy hadn't left that much earlier. According to them, they'd left around 8:30, which was exactly when Madeline decided it was time to think about getting out of bed and starting her day. Now, at this point in the interview with Madeline, you're gonna hear another voice, and it belongs to Jean Myers.

• 11:39Speaker 04

  I'm gonna start charging y'all rent.

• 11:41Speaker 05

  Get out of my head.

• 11:44Speaker 04

  Look, and I just went and got y'all gift cards.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Oh, were they gonna be...

• 11:48Speaker 04

  Bring them on, I told them I just made them cookies. But then I was told I shouldn't because then it could look bad if I give you something before the case is closed.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  Oh, maybe better way.

• 12:00Speaker 04

  And it's very, it's very difficult because I figure all cops would be like, you don't have to start.

• 12:07Speaker 05

  You may have something.

• 12:09Speaker 04

  Do you need me or can I go upstairs and get ready for this funeral?

• 12:12Speaker 05

  Go do your thing.

• 12:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right, so if, just in case anybody couldn't hear clearly, Jean says, "I'm about to start charging y'all rent." So she's implying she's been seeing a lot of these police officers, right?

• 12:28Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 12:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  And these police officers are Mike Christian and Tyler Sexton. So she also says that she got the detectives Dunkin' Donuts gift cards, but then she was told she probably shouldn't give them the gift cards.

• 12:39Derrick Levasseur?

  Probably a wise idea.

• 12:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  You know, before the case was wrapped up because it would look bad.

• 12:43Derrick Levasseur?

  Right. Yeah, I don't, I don't like this inter- interaction. It doesn't mean they're guilty of murder, but I just don't like the implication of it, like the idea that, hey, this is already a foregone conclusion that this is gonna go nowhere. We're not being looked at as persons of interest. We'll give you some gift cards when you're done concluding that this was a tragic accident. It's almost like an assumption is being made where it may be innocent, but it doesn't look great. And I, I, at least from what so far in the story, it seems like they weren't given any type of gift, which if the police officers had accepted anything, including a gift card, when they're investigating a potential murder, that ethically and morally would have been wrong and also against policy. So I just don't like the interaction. It's just, I, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

• 13:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, and she just seems very like

• 13:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Flippin'.

• 13:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  laissez faire

• 13:32Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 13:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  about the whole thing, you know, now.

• 13:34Derrick Levasseur?

  When you wrap this up, you know.

• 13:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  Maybe then you'll get your gift cards.

• 13:37Derrick Levasseur?

  You'll get some Dunkin' Donuts gift cards.

• 13:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  Cops like donuts.

• 13:40Derrick Levasseur?

  I just don't like, it's not even the gift cards, more of just like

• 13:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  The playful interaction, like the familiarity.

• 13:45Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, someone died in your backyard.

• 13:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, and keep in mind, this is November 7th.

• 13:50Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, it's a serious thing.

• 13:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's very soon. It's not, it's not only just three days after one of her quote unquote friends died at her house, but it's also the day of Tam's wake.

• 14:01Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, she said, can I go upstairs and get ready for the funeral?

• 14:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  For this funeral. Now, you hear Jean mention at the end, she's like, do you need me? Or can I go get ready for this funeral? It wasn't the funeral, it was the wake. In reality, the funeral was the following day. And, and it's just like, you know, she's clicking around in her heels, like, hmm, do you, do you need me? The familiarity, and I feel like, I think it was Mike Christian's voice, where he's like, get out of my head, woman. You know?

• 14:29Derrick Levasseur?

  It's also the demeanor, right? Like, you're going, you're getting ready for a wake. It sounds like, kind of like a formality, like, ah, I gotta go get ready for this wake.

• 14:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  I gotta go get ready for this funeral.

• 14:38Derrick Levasseur?

  This funeral, yeah. I don't know.

• 14:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  No, no somberness.

• 14:42Derrick Levasseur?

  Right. Yeah.

• 14:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  Like, you're about to go to the wake of a woman who died in your home after your party.

• 14:49Derrick Levasseur?

  Right, right. I don't like it. I don't like it.

• 14:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  And you can also hear That Aunt Madeline made the detectives cookies. So these cops are being treated pretty well when they go.

• 14:58Derrick Levasseur?

  My kryptonite, yeah.

• 14:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  To Jean Meyer's home now.

• 14:59Derrick Levasseur?

  You want to get off on a crime, just give me some cookies.

• 15:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, if the cops are accepting the cookies when they're there.

• 15:05Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 15:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  What's that, what's that feel like to you? Is that okay? Do you think?

• 15:08Derrick Levasseur?

  I just don't like it. Like, I'm not gonna sit here and pretend like I'm on this, you know, high horse, where I haven't been in situations before where while interviewing someone, someone else there may have offered me a drink or, you know, a cookie. And I, I don't even a cookie. I don't even think I've ever been offered a cookie. But something where maybe I, more than likely I declined, but I, I don't want to get called out by a former guy who's watching this going, "Yeah, remember that time we accepted sandwiches?" Listen, if I'm trying to calm these people down and build a rapport with them where they open up to me, as a tactic, I may say, "Sure, let's, yeah, let's have some, some cheese and crackers on the table, whatever."

• 15:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  These are the best cookies I've ever had, Aunt Madeline.

• 15:46Derrick Levasseur?

  You know, you get them to open up to you where they feel like your friend. It could be a tactic. So I'm not gonna sit here and pretend like I'm, I'm above them, but I, I just don't love the overall, the demeanor of it. It doesn't sound like they're investigating a, a potential murder. That's what I don't like about it.

• 16:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  So after this, you're, you're gonna start hearing some sort of classical music being like blasted in the background? I don't know what the classical music is from, but if you asked me and I had to guess, I'm pretty sure it's Jean playing this music while she's getting ready, even though she knows there's two detectives in her home.

• 16:19Derrick Levasseur?

  Conducting an investigation.

• 16:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  Conducting an official on the record interview of her fake aunt.

• 16:24Derrick Levasseur?

  Can I, can I also put one more thing out there? And we talk about this in all these cases. As investigators, when we go into a crime scene like this, you start with worst case scenario. It's always easy to dial back the investigation if evidence presents itself that would dictate that being a necessity. But you go in there treating the crime scene and everyone involved as if this was a murder. That's the top level. And then if it doesn't appear to be that, you can, you know, you can reel it in and go the direction you have to go, but you can't treat it as an accident and then decide halfway through, "Oh, this might be a murder," because now it's too late. Especially from a forensic, from a crime scene perspective, so I just don't like that

• 17:07Derrick Levasseur?

  this is this early in the investigation and there doesn't appear to be more of a seriousness, at least on behalf of the investigators.

• 17:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes.

• 17:14Derrick Levasseur?

  As far as their approach.

• 17:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  Almost to set the, the tone, like, okay, you guys are treating this like a joke.

• 17:19Derrick Levasseur?

  This is no joke.

• 17:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  We need you to know that a woman's life is gone.

• 17:23Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 17:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  And we're here to figure out why. We're not here to eat your cookies and have, and have playful banter with you.

• 17:29Derrick Levasseur?

  You guys at minimum are all persons of interest right now. And we want that to, that, we want that tone set. At, at minimum, you guys dropped the ball here. You're in, you're drinking, partying, doing stupid shit, and someone is dead. Not a laughing matter.

• 17:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  Exactly. So Madeline, Aunt Madeline, she went on to say that Tam didn't seem really all that drunk or intoxicated on the night of the third. She said Tam and another woman were actually having a really lucid discussion about how they were both from Florida and they've never changed their Florida's driver's licenses because they both love Disney World so much and having a Florida ID gets them a discount when they bring their families to Disney World. And if you know how much it is to bring a family, especially a large family like Tam's, to Disney World, you would absolutely support that decision. I would do the same. And she said this conversation was happening pretty late in the night. In fact, I believe the conversation was happening right before Madeline went to bed, when they

• 18:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  were out on the balcony, but you know, before she came in and got the ice for, for Tamla. And she said Tam wasn't slurring or having a hard time keeping up. Madeline was then asked if there was anything she could think of that the detectives didn't ask her.

• 18:42Speaker 05

  Is there anything that you can think of that I didn't ask you that maybe I should?

• 18:48Speaker 02

  Um, yes.

• 18:52Speaker 05

  What?

• 18:53Speaker 02

  Okay. Uh, when Tam went out to, uh, smoke pot, I went out with her.

• 19:00Speaker 05

  Did she smoke marijuana here?

• 19:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 19:03Speaker 05

  Okay. That's fine.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:06Speaker 05

  What time was that?

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Right, um, I guess from, from in between the time that she arrived and the, um...

• 19:21Speaker 02

  The time that the game started.

• 19:23Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  Somewhere in between that picture.

• 19:27Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:28Speaker 05

  What else do you know I don't?

• 19:31Speaker 02

  That's the only thing.

• 19:32Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  That's the only thing because to hide anything or try to conceal anything would be so deceitful and I wouldn't be able to lay my head on a pillow tonight. Cause I've just been praying for God to reveal some answers in this case because it's it's it doesn't make any sense.

• 19:56Derrick Levasseur?

  Well said. It doesn't make any sense from a person who was there. If that's not the overall feeling of this case and why people are so attached to it, I don't know what is. Person from inside the building who was there that night saying it just doesn't make sense.

• 20:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  She's not the only person that says this, by the way, we're going to go into it, but a lot of people at the party were like, there's no way that she fell.

• 20:19Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 20:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  They were there at the party and they're like, no, she didn't. There's no way. It doesn't make sense, right?

• 20:24Derrick Levasseur?

  As far as Madeline's interview, again, it's going off just basically voice analysis, which I'm not an expert in. But she seems to be somewhat truthful at this point, appears to be composed, appears to have some type of moral compass where she's like, hey, you didn't mention this, but I think I should.

• 20:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, because she was smoking pot with her.

• 20:40Derrick Levasseur?

  Right, but now that, and I was just going to say that that could be taken as covering your own ass. Or it could be like, listen, in spite of the fact that it's going to make me not look great. I wanted to put this out there and I wanted to be truthful. So I guess it could be taken both ways.

• 20:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, but did you notice, Derek? She's like, Tam went out and it was smoking pot and I went out with her. She says, I went out with her. She didn't say, I smoked with her. Do you notice there's no follow-up questions from the detectives? Such as like, well, when you went out to with Tam and she smoked weed, did you also smoke weed?

• 21:12Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, it should have been the follow-up question. I took it as her way of admitting she was out there smoking weed with her without saying it. Like, that's what I'm writing down.

• 21:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  But when you're a cop, that's not, you can't do that.

• 21:23Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm writing it on my notepad. It should have been a follow-up question, but that's something where you'll have someone who is. Around for something like this and it's their way of kind of skirting the truth.

• 21:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  So I think that maybe that would have been a follow up question, but then Jean's ass pops back in. And she's like screaming down to Madeline. She's like, are you picking up the kids? And Madeline's like, yeah, you know, I'll pick them up. What time? And she's like, and Jean's getting all frustrated. And then the police are like, okay, we're just gonna wrap this this interview up.

• 21:54Derrick Levasseur?

  I the music playing in the background, super annoying to me. I would, as a cop, I would have been like, hey, can you do me a favor? Can you shut the F and music off?

• 22:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 22:01Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm here trying to like, I can't think.

• 22:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  What am I in a freaking, am I in a Panera Bread right now? Geez.

• 22:07Derrick Levasseur?

  We could do this at the station as well. You know, that's also an option. I'm trying to help you guys out and then do it in your home to make you comfortable.

• 22:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  And what are we, what are we supposed to believe? The Jean is just so like classy that she's putting her makeup on and she's like, I'm listening to Mozart.

• 22:21Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, no, I don't, I don't like it.

• 22:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  That's what I listen to.

• 22:23Derrick Levasseur?

  I don't like it. But yeah, no, I mean, it would have been a follow up question. Uh, it sounded, I read between the lines where she's admitting I was smoking weed with her out on the porch. But yeah, you could have confirmed it by saying, this is what happened. Maybe she's using that, those words specifically to try to give herself an out.

• 22:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. And, and first of all, another follow up question would have been to clarify the timeline, which they didn't do because maybe Aunt Madeline sounds like she's being genuine to you, but her timeline at this point is completely off because remember, Madeline said Tam was smoking pot sometime after she got there and before the game started. But we've already established that the game started at 8:00 PM and Tam didn't get there until after 8:00 PM. So that timeline doesn't make any sense. You know, like she started, she smoked pot sometime after she got there and the game started. Tam didn't get there until about 30 to 45 minutes after the game started. So what is, what are you talking about?

• 23:18Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. Are you inferring that she was smoking before she arrived at the location? Like what it?

• 23:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  No, because she went out and smoked with her. So the cops never clarify, hey, you, you said that she, she was smoking pot after the game, after she got there and before the game started. But in your first interview and earlier in this interview, you said she didn't get there until later and the game had already started.

• 23:38Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, these are questions you have to ask. And it could be because there's something more nefarious going on, or it could be what I've experienced a lot, which is just people being horrible witnesses and not having any sense of time, especially when alcohol and or drugs are involved. It's a tough one, but that's why you have reoccurring interviews to try to nail down what actually happened.

• 23:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  And to see if somebody's story changes or their timeline changes, which it did, and you didn't follow up.

• 24:02Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep.

• 24:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so Madeline is then going to be asked, what does she think happened? Remember? Because the last thing you heard from her is, this doesn't make sense. Let's take a quick break and then we're going to hear from Aunt Madeline what she thinks happened.

• 24:20Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 25:03Stephanie Harlowe?

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  Almond croissants? Just have the almond croissants?

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• 26:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, we're back from our break. As I said before the break, the detectives are like, hey, Madeline Lombardi, you say this doesn't make sense. What do you think happened?

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Well, you know, at first, when, when I saw her, it was crazy. I just thought, why is she sleeping outside?

• 26:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, like she just passed out. Oh, they had a good time with her.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I just thought, why is she sleeping out there? You know, and then my brain was just like, that's not a natural way to be sleeping while she was laying, you know, with her face down. It was like, that's not natural. And then I started thinking, it's, it's cold out there. That ground is cold.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then after, I, I, I guess the only speculation I would have had is that she went downstairs and that she tripped over that metal piece because I'm tripped over that metal piece.

• 27:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  So after this, Madeline was then asked, well, you know, knowing what you know now, which is like, why the hell does she know anything now? She shouldn't know what the cops know, but knowing what you know now, what do you think happened? And then as she starts to answer, that's when Jean interrupts the interview again.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  It's baffling.

• 28:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  It's baffling.

• 28:15Speaker 03

  If you can. Yeah, she can.

• 28:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  So you heard Madeline say, or try to say before Jean just starts rudely yelling, like, "Are the cops still here?" Yeah, bitch, they are, man. You were just here five minutes ago. But anyways, Madeline says, "It's baffling. It's baffling." Yeah. So the police never return to Madeline to let her finish her answer to that question. Jean keeps talking, and eventually you hear one of the detectives say, "We're ending the interview." Which, they're probably overstimulated by these people by now. All right, so I want to go back to something we talked about last week, which was Bridget Fuller's claim that when Tam was walking her out to leave, Tam had mentioned also wanting to leave. Now Bridget is not the only person who talked about this because both Tom and Stacy Smith

• 29:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  also mentioned this in their interviews with the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office. Tom Smith was asked about how everyone was getting along at the party, and he said there were no signs of friction. He said Tam was not that kind of person. She was nice to everyone. Tom said he and Stacy had known Tam and her husband for about four years. Their boys played basketball and football together, and one of Tom and Stacy's sons were pretty close friends with Tam's oldest son. So out of all the people there that day, I would say that probably Tom and Stacy Smith knew Tam the best and the longest. So Tom said that within the last year Tam and Stacy had gotten a lot closer, and he always knew Tam as a sweet person who was going to tell you the truth,

• 29:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  whether you liked it or not, and she would do anything for anybody. Tom also said that when he and Stacy left, he was happy to see that Tam's car was still in the driveway, and he was happy because, quote, "We had talked about her driving or not driving the night before, and I had mentioned to Tam that she should stay, sleep it off, and go back the next morning." End quote. Tom's wife Stacy said something similar in her Forsyth County Sheriff's Office interview. Remember, Stacy Smith had known Tam longer than anyone else at that party. She was also responsible for helping to plan the party and deciding who was going to be invited, and she was also the one hitting Bridget Fuller up for Xanax the day that Tam was found dead.

• 30:25Speaker 06

  Tam is kinda, like, the weekend before. She had been in the house, and she had had wine and... I told her not to drive, not drive, not driving. And I mean, I don't know what else you can do.

• 30:37Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 30:37Speaker 06

  She shouldn't have drove home and she did.

• 30:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 30:39Speaker 06

  And so I was very adamant about her not driving home. And so Tom had told her, you know, he had, no, do not drive. So when I got up the next morning, I was so proud of her because I saw her phone and I saw her stuff there because I was terrified that she would drive. All Tim's stuff sitting there, her bag and her phone, and I was so proud that she stayed and I figured she was sleeping. Didn't even think to look in the room and I didn't.

• 31:03Speaker 05

  Right.

• 31:04Speaker 06

  And I kick myself for that. Um, for a lot of it, I kick myself for not going out with her and I, I don't know. Just breaks my heart. And then we left and got home and I got in the shower and my husband called to answer the phone because Jean called and he just looked at me and said, we gotta go back. And he went and tell me, he said, Tim's hurt.

• 31:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:30Speaker 06

  And then I came back and this has been a whole hot mess since. I don't understand, like, I don't understand any of it. I don't understand how it happened. I don't understand how, like, I don't get it at all. Like, I don't get how he fall off of a deck. I don't understand, like, I mean, I've looked and been on that deck a million times, like, I've looked and I've tried and I've, I don't understand. I don't understand, like, I thought maybe if she was, got sick or something and was vomiting and maybe she was leaning over, maybe that's how she did it. I seriously don't get it.

• 32:06Speaker 06

  I don't understand any of it.

• 32:07Speaker 05

  And I'll tell you, we don't, we don't either.

• 32:14Speaker 05

  I wish somebody had a camera or some, just so we know, but.

• 32:21Speaker 06

  I mean, how does stuff like this happen? Like, this is just.

• 32:24Speaker 03

  Just freak things happen. I mean, like you said, if she leaned over, was trying to throw up or thought she was gonna throw up, maybe she sat up on her rail and was smoking or just, who knows? I mean,

• 32:35Speaker 06

  She wasn't acting.

• 32:36Speaker 03

  How out of it she was.

• 32:38Speaker 06

  She wasn't acting sick. She wasn't, I mean, you're laughing, I mean, like, she was just not acting out of the norm, like, I mean, and all she would, I mean. She would always tell us, "I can handle my alcohol, I can handle my alcohol," and I'm like, "Well, you can handle so much better than me." "'Cause this girl's gotta get up in the morning."

• 32:59Speaker 03

  Right.

• 32:59Speaker 06

  And, you know, we had to actually get up. I mean, I'm just like, I don't understand. I don't. I don't.

• 33:09Speaker 03

  Well, that's why we're going back and interviewing everybody.

• 33:11Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 33:11Speaker 03

  To make sure we understand completely, but men don't ever know exactly what happened. But everything points that she went over that rail, how that happened, this, the confusion.

• 33:23Speaker 06

  And I know we had the gas tank, 'cause we tried to light the fire pit that night.

• 33:27Speaker 03

  Right.

• 33:28Speaker 06

  And we couldn't figure it out. And, I'm not sure. Oh, I just, I don't get it now, 'cause, I mean, Jose said, "Maybe she stood on that for some reason," or... I think we just all racked our brains, just trying to figure out how this is gonna happen to our friend. And now it's like, all of us are like, "Yeah, no parties, we're not, no, mm-mm, mm-mm, no."

• 33:55Speaker 06

  I guess we're gonna all have to sleep in a pallet if we ever do it, go hang out again. I just...

• 34:03Speaker 03

  She wasn't acting sad, or...

• 34:05Speaker 06

  No.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  Or angry, or...

• 34:08Speaker 06

  No, I don't know, I just don't understand. I don't understand how this happened at a sleepover. Like, I get how you go to a restaurant, people have drinks, and then if they drop irresponsible, I get how bad things happen like that, but I don't get...

• 34:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, y'all are being a false.

• 34:26Speaker 06

  And that was the goal of the whole thing, was everybody's gonna be responsible and have fun and just... And just be girls, and that's what we wanted to do, was be silly and laugh and dance, and... And we did.

• 34:41Speaker 06

  I just, I wish I would've went out there with her and not let her go out there by herself. But I honestly did not know that she was that bad off. I didn't know that she had... I knew she had drank, but I wasn't keeping up with it, and...

• 34:56Speaker 03

  So she had actually said, you heard her say something about going outside right before y'all went to bed?

• 35:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, she told me she was going outside to smoke before she went to bed.

• 35:03Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 35:04Speaker 06

  And I said, "Okay, well, go outside, smoke, and go to bed." I'm not a smoker.

• 35:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 35:09Speaker 06

  I'm like this anti-smoker, actually. And so she came up and, I mean, she came up and hugged me and told me she was gonna smoke, and... So I saw her.

• 35:22Speaker 03

  Sometimes just things happen and there's just no explanation for it.

• 35:27Speaker 03

  But you can't blame yourself.

• 35:30Speaker 06

  It's hard.

• 35:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Alright, so a couple of things, I'll make it short. That I, that stand out to me here first, and I'm gonna be really focusing on the investigators because that's why I'm here, right?

• 35:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  I was hoping so, yeah.

• 35:40Derrick Levasseur?

  That's why I'm here. And this is not what you're supposed to do.

• 35:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, I know, right?

• 35:43Derrick Levasseur?

  You're, you're, you're, you're going over theories with a potential suspect. I, I don't understand it. I'm shaking my head as I'm watching it. And I don't like it. And I think in hindsight, uh, if these guys are on the up and up, they would do that over again because putting out there what you believe happened, that this was some freak accident, you're giving them out. You're giving them ammunition to use as part of a collaborative effort to hide something that may be more than just a tragic accident. So, that's number one, but...

• 36:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  And also, he's saying like, you can't blame yourself, you know? Like, he's like comforting her? What the hell is this?

• 36:14Derrick Levasseur?

  I don't mind the comforting as much. I, I, I hate the, the discussion of potential theories with, with people who are witnesses at minimum. I, I, I hate that because now, again, at minimum, you're influencing what they may remember. That's not what you're supposed to do. Tell me what you know, not what you believe. That's the number one. How often do I say that to you, right?

• 36:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  And they're like, we may never know, we may never know.

• 36:37Derrick Levasseur?

  And you're also telling them where you are.

• 36:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's your job to find out, yeah.

• 36:40Derrick Levasseur?

  There is a responsibility as the interviewer, as the inter, as the interrogator, as the investigator, however you want to put it, to create a level of uneasiness where the person you're speaking with doesn't know what you know. Right? So as they're sitting there, if they have more to hide, they're consciously wondering, how much does he know? Right? Does he already, does he already know what happened? Are they on to us? So maybe they, they'll, they'll break. But when you're showing your hand, basically saying, we got nothing, we don't know what happened, we wish there were cameras. That puts them in a position of power. I'm talking about the interviewee, where they now know you're grasping at straws. So that's one thing. Another thing that I want to address, and we're gonna get to it in the end of the series, but as far as potential theories, as we start to kind of break them down and the potential that they, that's what occurred.

• 37:26Derrick Levasseur?

  When we're talking about a freak accident, it's still on the table, of course. But when we think about... What could have caused her to go over for me at this point, unless you throw a curve ball at me and tell me that there was vomit underneath her body? I've kind of ruled out the possibility that this was due to her throwing up over the railing because due to anecdotal experience, I think every one of us out there has experienced this once in their life. When you're going to throw up and it comes on out of nowhere unexpectedly. If you're going to assume that she ran over to the railing because she had to throw up and the momentum carried her over the railing. Sure, you're going to find vomit on the ground somewhere out in that yard. That's basically as soon as she's running to the railing. She's almost throwing up as she's running to the railing or leaning over it.

• 38:11Derrick Levasseur?

  And so you would, you would expect to find vomit on the ground. The fact that you haven't found any of that at this point in the story. I basically ruled that out as a cause, as a reason for her going over if that's what occurred here. So that's off the table for me. The only other thing I wanted to mention, which I kind of glanced over last episode, not understanding the layout. There is a photo of the balcony where you, I think I referred to it as a table. But if you look closer, you can see that it's, that's the grill. That's the fire pit that they're referring to. It's not like your traditional fire pit. It's like a gas propane powered fire pit that we've all seen in the middle of a table that kind of goes up in the middle there. And that's where you can see the propane tank near the railing itself. So I just wanted to clarify that, but those are my initial thoughts.

• 38:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  And did you hear he asked her like, well, did she seem sad at all? Almost like suggesting maybe she intentionally threw herself off the balcony like what?

• 39:02Derrick Levasseur?

  It's a fine line, but again, I don't like the questioning because you're giving them outs. If they're trying to figure out a way to get you off the scent. You're giving them options, which I don't love. At this point, it should be more about gathering information, not providing it.

• 39:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  But it's almost like, oh, he said at one point, it was just a freak accident. You know, you can't blame yourself, but then he's also asking questions to make it seem like, well, maybe she did this to herself. What did she seem sad? Would you say it's fair? To make the observation that early on initially during these first interviews, the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office was not actually treating these partygoers as if they were potential suspects or persons of interest.

• 39:43Derrick Levasseur?

  I'll take it a step further. They didn't treat this as a potential homicide, period. They were treating it as a freak accident.

• 39:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  Which it might not be, but as you have said multiple times, you can't go into a crime scene or an investigation already ruling out something until you've investigated.

• 39:59Derrick Levasseur?

  It is very possible to treat it as a homicide and gear it down, you know, transition to an accident. It is impossible to start off as an accident and then transition to a homicide. You can try it, but I can guarantee you the investigation's going to be flawed and probably if it goes to trial, you got no shot because you didn't treat it like it should have been at first. So yes, looking at what we've looked at so far and just listening to these interviews, you can tell that the perspective of these detectives going in, their initial thought was, oh man, tragic accident. These poor people had to witness this? How terrible for them.

• 40:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  And there's another option, right? Maybe not a tragic accident that no one saw and everyone's confused, maybe not an intentional murder, but maybe an accident that more than one person at that party witnessed and they freaked out and tried to cover it up.

• 40:49Derrick Levasseur?

  Right. We've heard multiple mentions of Tam wanting to leave, right?

• 40:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:53Derrick Levasseur?

  How often have you or I or anybody else been in a situation where a friend or family member has had too much to drink and they want to go drive home or they want to go somewhere where you know it's not good for them and you're almost getting in a physical altercation with them to prevent them from leaving, right?

• 41:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, like hiding their keys.

• 41:10Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, all these different things. We've all been there. Don't act like you haven't. We've all been there. They're all mentioning this. Right there could be the secret sauce.

• 41:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  But then they all go to bed and leave her alone, which would have given her

• 41:21Derrick Levasseur?

  The opportunity to leave.

• 41:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  A perfect opportunity to leave.

• 41:23Derrick Levasseur?

  Of course. Someone would have been monitoring her at that point.

• 41:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  Instead of going outside to smoke a cigarette, she would have grabbed her keys and walked Bridget out the door and then they're like, all right, I'm going home.

• 41:34Derrick Levasseur?

  But I think it's an important point that you make where there's a gradient here. It's a spectrum, the bottom being a freak accident and a Anomaly, a once in a lifetime thing that just happened to occur.

• 41:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  Makes sense to nobody.

• 41:45Derrick Levasseur?

  Right. The other end is a premeditated homicide, right? And then there's somewhere in the middle where it may just be a tragic accident, but involved multiple people who are now trying to cover their tracks.

• 41:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  So they even, you know, I want to go back to, and we had talked about this, I think, last night on the phone. Somebody said, you said you saw a theory where Tam had been walking down the stairs from the top level of the balcony down, and that maybe she fell as she was going down the stairs.

• 42:12Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, there's no railing there or something like that.

• 42:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  There's no railing. However, there's also no dirt or anything on her white Dalmatian pajamas, except for that one spot on her butt. So then that one spot on her butt, it makes people say, well, what if she was sitting on the railing? And then fell off? I would venture to say, why the hell would she be sitting on the railing? When she's alone out there, number one. When there's chairs all over that balcony, you can see them.

• 42:39Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, it wouldn't be a smart decision.

• 42:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  I would almost wonder because the dust and the debris was wiped off the top of that oil tank or that gas tank, the one that they keep talking about. Yeah, they keep talking about that tank. It was wiped off. So the tank itself was dusty, but the top wasn't. Maybe she perched herself on that. And she was sitting there and that's how her butt got dirty. But I don't think she fell down the stairs because you'd see different areas of dirt on her body. And the injuries on her shin or both of her shins, they wouldn't add up with that kind of fall because they do line up with that landscape divider.

• 43:20Derrick Levasseur?

  I guess my question to you would be, because you know more about it than me, but just looking at the photos, is it possible that she goes down the stairs? She's injured significantly. And there's not a lot of dirt on her onesie or her pajamas? Because for the most part, she's kind of on that concrete pad before falling onto the dirt itself, which is after that landscape track that's there that Madeline mentioned tripping on in the past. Is that possible?

• 43:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't know if the injuries on her shin would be that extensive from a ground level fall onto that landscaping thing.

• 43:55Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 43:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  And and also, I I mean, if she fell down the stairs, you wouldn't assume that she would come to a landing at the bottom of the stairs on her feet, right?

• 44:04Derrick Levasseur?

  You wouldn't, no.

• 44:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  She'd probably fall on her knees, maybe even, you know, on her side or something like that, and then she'd have to stand up again in order to like stumble to be able to fall over that landscape.

• 44:15Derrick Levasseur?

  Right. Yeah, i- if that's what happened here, that would fall in the category of just a once in a lifetime thing. Now, you and I were talking on the phone about this, and and that's something I said where there are, and in these cases are far and few between, right? It's not the norm, where something did occur that is just an anomaly, just like it's such a rarity, it's almost hard for the human brain to comprehend because it's so unlikely. But I think everybody out there would acknowledge that, yeah, those circumstances do exist. So the question we all have to ask ourselves.

• 44:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  What do you mean? What are you saying? That she fell off the balcony unaided, just accidentally in a freak accident for some reason? That is like the anomaly you're talking about?

• 44:58Derrick Levasseur?

  That would be one, yeah, and or or some other just perfect set of tragic circumstances where she did somehow go down the stairs because there was no railing and the injuries that were inflicted because of it left certain damage, but not others that you would expect. And due to a severe concussion and multiple fractures, she succumbed to her injuries as she reached the the grass. I, again, I'm acknowledging very unlikely.

• 45:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  So the injuries happened from the the injuries happened from the fall down the stairs?

• 45:28Derrick Levasseur?

  Down the stairs, yeah.

• 45:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  But there's no blood there.

• 45:30Derrick Levasseur?

  No blood, no blood, and these are things that you would expect, right? So I'm trying to stay balanced.

• 45:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  Also, no blood where her body came to rest, allegedly.

• 45:41Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, there wasn't a lot of lacerations from what you described to me, right? It was a more internal injuries, correct?

• 45:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  There, yeah, there were lacerations on her face, yeah.

• 45:48Derrick Levasseur?

  Lacerations on her face, but not significant, right? They were more superficial.

• 45:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  The injuries to her face?

• 45:54Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 45:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  I I wouldn't call them superficial, but yeah, I guess you're not going to leave a pool of

• 45:58Derrick Levasseur?

  You're not a pool of blood, yeah.

• 45:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  But if you have this this hemorrhage, she had different types of hemorrhages, would you think that, given the time they believe it happened and the time that her body was found, that some blood would have come out of her mouth, her nose?

• 46:13Derrick Levasseur?

  You would expect it, yeah.

• 46:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 46:15Derrick Levasseur?

  I think I think my bigger issue with this case is not so much, in this, in what we're speculating about kind of place to this, which is why I'm bringing it up, it seems like a lot of time was spent by the lead investigators interviewing potential suspects.

• 46:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  That they didn't treat like suspects.

• 46:32Derrick Levasseur?

  I think there should have been a lot more emphasis placed on using her body to determine what happened, right? Don't go to the people who could be involved, biomechanical engineers, pathologists, people of that nature coming in and trying to recreate what potentially happened, because once you figure that out, then you know the line of questioning you want to ask. So you haven't mentioned to me at any point during this story that some type of biomechanical engineer was brought in to recreate this crime scene to try to understand, based on those injuries, what potential theories are in play.

• 47:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, to try to recreate the potential things that could have happened.

• 47:09Derrick Levasseur?

  Based on the injuries, right? That would have been the main emphasis of my investigation. There's always an opportunity to go back and question everybody. You still want to do it in a timely manner. There should have been a documented history of investigators bringing in experts who could take her injuries and then give us a list of potential theories that would be aligned with her injuries, and there wasn't. And so that's that's a problem.

• 47:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  It seems like from day one, they were kind of writing it off as an accident.

• 47:36Derrick Levasseur?

  I agree.

• 47:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  I agree wholeheartedly. Like, she fell over the landscape divider, and then the the ME was like, no, that's not possible. It's more likely she, her injuries are more consistent with falling off the balcony. And Mike Christian's like, okay, then that's what happened.

• 47:50Derrick Levasseur?

  And the and the number one question I would ask is, was the pathologist out at the scene? No, they were not. And and from what I understand, I personally believe pathologists are great, you need a biomechanical engineer.

• 48:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  I think there was somebody from the ME's office there, but not the person who did the autopsy because my Christian had to explain to them like how high the balcony was and this isn't that yet.

• 48:10Derrick Levasseur?

  I know I'm going to say it a million times biomechanical engineer all day long to tell based on the body how it works, how the hinge points are, where she was found, what's around the area, what potential theories are we looking at? What are physically possible, right? Not speculation, not conjecture. What theories are actually possible based on how the body moves? Simple. It sounds like common sense, but bring someone in, let them tell you, yep, based on her injuries, based on how she was laying, this theory is possible, that theory is possible, this one's possible. That wasn't done.

• 48:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so we, we heard from Stacy Smith. She's, seems very broken up about this. She, like Aunt Madeline, she's like, how could this have happened? I don't understand. It doesn't make sense. And this is also the same interview where Stacy admitted to having a puff of Tam's weed, even though, remember, she's, I, I'm so against smoking. I'm this non-smoker. You know, she's very much like Bridgette, like I would never drink. I would never act like a fool. And Stacy said that Marcy and Aunt Madeline may have also smoked the weed because they were out on the balcony with Tam for a long time while she was smoking. Now, this is interesting because earlier Madeline said that it was Stacy who was out on the balcony with them.

• 49:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  And Stacy's like, well, I was out there for a minute, but Marcy was also out there. And it's just, everybody's kind of trying to like, act like they're, you know, Mother Teresa's in this. So then Stacy was asked how much Tam had to drink. And earlier in the interview, she had told the police that when Tam got there and opened the tequila, she smelled Tam's tequila. And she was like, oh, this smells gross. It was, it's too much for me. So Stacy stuck to her vodka and Sprite. Stacy also said, quote, "There was a lot going on with that bottle," end quote. Meaning, I guess, that she didn't really know how much Tam had consumed of the bottle or who else may have, you know, had tequila from that bottle.

• 50:08Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, that's my interpretation. Yep.

• 50:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. She also mentions that she knows that Marcy took at least one. Shot from the tequila, but other than that, she didn't really see anyone else drink any tequila. So like I said, Stacy seems really at a loss for how this could have even happened. She doesn't understand how someone can just fall off a balcony like that. The police detectives seem equally confused. They actually say, I don't know if you heard it, but they're like, yeah, we don't get it either.

• 50:33Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh yeah, they're like, I wish we had cameras, insinuating we got nothing.

• 50:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, now I want to ask you because obviously all of these interviews are happening days after the incident. And clearly all the people at the party have had a chance to talk and speculate about what could have happened. And we know that because Stacy mentioned the propane tank and how Jose said, maybe she stood on that for some reason. And they were all racking their brains. Now, given how things went down and also given how the police are admitting to Stacy that this does not seem like an open and shut accident. Should the people present at the party have been allowed to talk so extensively before sitting down for formal interviews with law enforcement?

• 51:13Derrick Levasseur?

  No, you would have advised them to keep your distance until we have an opportunity to speak with you. Ideally, in a perfect scenario, there would have been a reconstruction going on at the house almost immediately, right? Bringing people in who are impartial witnesses, who are experts in those field, recreating potential scenarios to see which ones were more most likely based on the injuries to Tam's body. At the same time, if again, perfect world simultaneously, you would have taken initial interviews from each and every person there, understanding that at minimum they're witnesses, but they're also potentially suspects. So you'd want those two things going on at the same time. But preferably I would like the reconstruction to be completed and have those results so that I can use those tools to my advantage during the interview process.

• 51:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so we're going to talk about this later, but according to a neighbor, all of these party people went back to John Meyer's house like every day for two weeks after this happened. And they were all talking all the time.

• 52:09Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, and you could look at that multiple ways, but at minimum now you're getting, you're muddying the water, right? You want independent accounts of what occurred. And now they're hearing from other people and that could influence their perspective on what they remember and how they remember it. So on one end. It's bad from a witness standpoint. On the other end, if there's some type of collaborative effort going on to cover something up, now they're getting the opportunity to kind of tighten up that story and make sure it aligns.

• 52:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  So let's say there's not a collaborative effort. Let's say one person at that party did something wrong. Let's just say it's Jose, for example's sake, okay? Jose goes outside after everyone goes to bed, him and Tam have a thing. Let's say allegedly, he makes a move on her. She's mad. He pushes her, not meaning to push her over the balcony. She falls. And now Jose, in the days after this happens.

• 53:01Derrick Levasseur?

  She could have also pushed off of him.

• 53:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, maybe. But he's talking to everybody and he's like, well, maybe she stood on the propane tank. From a witness standpoint of all these people now accurately telling the police the events in the timeline of that night, that's muddied the waters by the one person, yeah, by the one person who has something to cover up. And he's in everyone's ear like, well, maybe this could have happened and maybe this could have happened.

• 53:24Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 53:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  So that's interesting.

• 53:26Derrick Levasseur?

  Shout out to the traitors. That's kind of the same thing, right? Where you have traitors there that are the basically the murderers, right? Amongst the faithful and they're spreading stories and rumors and all of a sudden the faithful are regurgitating those stories believing that it's something they heard or saw at the round table. Again, if you're not watching the traitors, you have no clue what I'm talking about. But it's the same thing. It's the same thing where you're right, they can poison the well. And now these other witnesses are relaying this information to law enforcement as if it's from their perspective.

• 53:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  As if it's from their perspective, but it's not. They don't even know that it's not.

• 53:58Derrick Levasseur?

  Completely agree. Yep, absolutely.

• 53:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  And maybe that's where some of that confusion comes in, right? So in her interview with the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, so this is after the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office have closed out their whole investigation and then, you know, GBI takes over when, when everyone's like, this needs to be reopened. So this is her interview with the GBI. John Myers also said that Tamla wanted to leave the night of the 3rd. She said that when everyone started getting ready to go to bed, Tamla said she was going to go home, that she felt okay and she was okay to drive, right? And John told Tam, hey, You might feel like you're okay, but you're not. You wouldn't pass a sobriety test. None of us would. You know, they're all convincing her to stay. And Jean said that Tom and Stacy, who were close to Tam,

• 54:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  convinced her to stay and not drive home, which we've heard pretty much the same thing from Tom and Stacy. However, I do want to take a closer look at the timeline in question, because there's some things that don't add up. And there's some things that were said in initial interviews that came out in further interviews and then interviews with the GBI that don't align with what was said in the initial interview. So we're going to do that, but let's take a quick break.

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• 57:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, we're back. So let's take a closer look at that timeline and question. And this is the short period between 1:30 a.m. and 1:57 a.m. So we know that Jose told Forsyth County Sheriff's Office deputies that he and Jean went to bed around 1:30 a.m. In her interview with the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office on November 9th, 2018, Jean said that it was around 1 a.m. when they started getting Jennifer Morell in bed. Because remember Jen was wasted and everybody had to take care of her. And Marcy was getting Jennifer Morell to bed on the first floor. And then everyone else went upstairs, leaving Jean, Jose, Tom, Stacy, Bridgette and Tam downstairs on the main floor.

• 58:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  So around 1:30, Jean said she was going to bed because she was tired. And Tam started talking to Stacy, telling Stacy that she was going to sleep with her. And then Stacy's husband, Tom said, no, she's sleeping with me. Jean said Bridgette was there and she either made Tam a bowl of gumbo or Tam made it for herself. And then Bridgette had called her husband Gary to come pick her up. Jean said that Tam walked Bridgette to the front door because the door log shows the front door opening and closing at 1:47 a.m. And so Jean assumed that this was Bridget Fuller leaving. Now Forsyth County Sheriff's Office spoke to Jose on November 9th, 2018. And remember, we talked about this last time. He said he turned the TV on in the main level bedroom for Jennifer and Marcy around 1:00 a.m.

• 59:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  He then went down to the basement to get his cellphone charger. And when he came back up from the basement, he saw Tam in the kitchen. He said he saw her by herself in the kitchen. And then he went upstairs, and this would have been about 1:30 a.m. Now, unlike what we may have believed, and what we were kind of led to believe during the initial round of Forsyth County Sheriff's interviews, Jose and Jean did not go upstairs to bed together at 1:30 a.m. It was kind of made to seem like Jean and Tom and Stacy were talking to Tam in the kitchen, and Bridget Fuller was making gumbo. And then Jose ran down to the basement to get his cellphone charger. And then when he came up, he and Jean went up to bed together. But that's not really what happened.

• 59:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  According to Jean's interview with the GBI, so this is not her Forsyth County Sheriff's interview, this is her later GBI interview, they initially did go upstairs together. And they were talking to Paula, because Paula's sleeping on the upstairs where Jean and Jose sleep. But then Jose remembered he needed to get his cellphone charger, so he went down to the basement, leaving Jean on the second floor of the house, the bedroom floor. Now, there is one bedroom on the main floor, and that's where Marcy and Jennifer Morell are sleeping, in that one bedroom on the main floor.

• 1:00:23Derrick Levasseur?

  And that's also the floor with the balconies.

• 1:00:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  With the kitchen and the balcony, yes.

• 1:00:26Speaker 07

  Around 1:00, 1:30, did everybody kind of go to bed at the same time then?

• 1:00:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, we all went to bed about the same time. I went up, Stacy went up, Stacy and Tom went up, Paula was up. Jose and I were up there, because we were actually in the room talking to Paula about some other crazy stuff. And Jose said, "I have to get my charger." And we all went upstairs. Bridget was cleaning. She had heated up, my aunt had made gumbo and stuff. She was heating up gumbo. So when I went upstairs, Bridget was cleaning the kitchen. Tam was sitting on the other end of the island, eating a bowl of gumbo. And she just, Bridget said, "Gary's on his way."

• 1:01:14Speaker 06

  And Tam said, "I'm gonna eat this, and then I'm gonna have a cigarette, and then I'll be up."

• 1:01:21Speaker 04

  We were upstairs. Jose said, oh, my charger's in the basement or something. And he said he went down. I saw him go down and then he came right back up. There was like not a delay or a lag of him coming to bed. And we finished talking to Paula. And we were talking about stuff, Jen, her behavior. And then went to bed and that's it.

• 1:01:51Speaker 07

  So as far as you're concerned, Jose, like the time it took him, he went straight down the basement, got the charger and came back up.

• 1:01:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, he was pretty quick to go down two flights of stairs and come back.

• 1:02:01Speaker 07

  Um, did he get up at all during the night?

• 1:02:03Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:02:04Speaker 07

  How about you? Did you get up at all?

• 1:02:06Speaker 04

  Nope. Like admittedly, I was drinking. I wasn't. It wasn't like I passed out. I went to bed.

• 1:02:12Speaker 07

  Right. Do you know, did Jose say anything like when he came back up? Do you know if Bridget was still there when he came back up?

• 1:02:17Speaker 04

  She was, I think so. I think he's like Bridget's still cleaning or something like that.

• 1:02:23Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, you can see what the investigator's trying to do there. And by the way, that's a good.

• 1:02:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  Cause it's the GBI.

• 1:02:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, this is, this is a good interview. You can clearly see the difference in, in quality, right? It's very matter of fact, it's to the point. And there also, you can tell what they're trying to do. And even, even Jean can tell what she's trying to do, right? She's trying to isolate everybody to put down an opportunity where Jose or somebody else was alone with Tam.

• 1:02:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  Exactly.

• 1:02:49Derrick Levasseur?

  That's exactly what she's doing here. These, she's asking those questions to say, hey, was there ever a window? Even if only for a couple of minutes where Jose was unaccounted for by anybody? Bridget already being gone, Jose being downstairs alone with Tam. So you can see what the investigator's doing here, which is what they're supposed to do.

• 1:03:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  Mm hmm. Now, did you hear what Jean said? Because according to Jean, when Jose came back up, he told her that Bridget was still there and she was still cleaning.

• 1:03:15Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep, which is critical to this case, because that would give Jose an alibi, right? He more than likely, if he had went outside with Tam, Bridget is the last person to see Tam alive. If Tam is the one that walks Bridget out the door before she leaves.

• 1:03:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  This would align with the timeline of Bridget. Leaving at 1:47 a.m. and being the last person to see Tam alive if Jose was upstairs and going to bed by 1:30.

• 1:03:39Derrick Levasseur?

  Correct.

• 1:03:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  However, those who have an issue with these contradicting statements point out that Jose never told the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office that he saw Bridget when he came back up from the basement. He said he only saw Tam in the kitchen. And if that's the case, these people say maybe Jose came up from the basement after Bridget had already left. Meaning he technically would be the last person to have seen Tam alive.

• 1:04:02Derrick Levasseur?

  Pretty important, right?

• 1:04:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. So if, if Tam walks Bridget out and Bridget left at 1:47 a.m. and she walks Bridget out and then she goes back in the kitchen and she's eating her gumbo, right? And then Jose comes up from the basement. Suddenly this changes the, the name of the game. Yeah.

• 1:04:18Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. And this would be a simple question to ask Bridget.

• 1:04:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  What, what would be a simple question? I mean, how would Bridget know if she left after Jose came back upstairs?

• 1:04:27Derrick Levasseur?

  But my, my point being if Jose went down to the basement and then on his way back up, he sees Bridget and Tam in the kitchen. And then goes up to the upstairs and says, yeah, Bridget was downstairs.

• 1:04:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  Cleaning still. Yeah.

• 1:04:39Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. The interview with Bridget would be, hey, while you were out there with Tam making the gumbo, cleaning up, did Jose come up from the basement and head back upstairs? And if she says, yes, I saw him come up from the basement. He had his charger and then he went upstairs. That would corroborate his story, especially if Jean tells us he never went back downstairs after that. So if she, if Bridget lays out the timeline that yes, Jose came up from the basement. I saw him. He had his charger. And then a few moments later, Tam walked me out, then that would corroborate his story.

• 1:05:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, I'm going to look for that in the interviews.

• 1:05:12Derrick Levasseur?

  It would make sense, right?

• 1:05:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. And I will come back to that, but.

• 1:05:16Derrick Levasseur?

  Now, if she says, I never saw Jose, Jose got a problem.

• 1:05:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. I want to see if the GBI asked Bridget that. That would be interesting.

• 1:05:23Derrick Levasseur?

  Would seem like a commonsensical question, right? You're trying to verify Jose's story. If he said he saw Bridget and Tam, well, then Bridget and Tam would have saw him.

• 1:05:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  But listen, Jose and Jean went upstairs to bed and they were talking to Paula. And then that's when Jose was like, oh shit, I forgot my cell phone charger downstairs. And that's when he goes downstairs. So Bridget could have technically seen Jose go upstairs. And not knowing that he had come back down after.

• 1:05:47Derrick Levasseur?

  Right. Well, yeah, that, that's what I'm saying. So that would, that would ruin Jose's story because he's saying Bridget was still there. But if Bridget was already gone. Then how would that happen? Am I, are we saying the same thing?

• 1:05:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, I, I mean, yeah, but I'm saying Bridget could technically tell GBI, oh yeah, I saw Jose go upstairs.

• 1:06:04Derrick Levasseur?

  Right.

• 1:06:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  But.

• 1:06:06Derrick Levasseur?

  That would be, you're saying that would have been the first time?

• 1:06:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, it could have been the first time and then she left and that's why when Jose came up from the basement and he told Forsyth County Sheriff's Office, I only saw Tam in the kitchen.

• 1:06:17Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I mean, it would be, this is just a, this was wishful thinking. If Bridget was able to, to tell you, yeah, he had his charger cord, his block, the charger block in his hand. That would obviously be a slam dunk. That would help, but what's the chances she's going to remember?

• 1:06:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, that she would remember. And also, who's to say that she would even say anything that would implicate Jose? Who is somebody that she actually likes and is friends with?

• 1:06:40Derrick Levasseur?

  Right.

• 1:06:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  If it means, if she thinks he's genuinely innocent and she doesn't want to say something that might potentially make him look not innocent because she believes he's innocent and she doesn't really like Tam.

• 1:06:49Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, let's take it a step further, right? Jean, who is in a relationship with Jose, if you're to believe that Jose somehow involved, she's saying that Jose came back upstairs and he never left the room.

• 1:06:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  Fast, yes.

• 1:06:58Derrick Levasseur?

  If Jose had gone back downstairs to put Tam to bed and there was an accident where she's, she doesn't want to go inside, she wants to leave and Jose's struggling with her and there's an accident. How do we know Jose didn't confide in Jean and say, oh my God, I'm going to go to jail for this and now Jean's covering for him? So there's, that's why you got to rely on the science. That's why I keep going back to reconstruction. Everybody in that house has an incentive to potentially lie. So we can't base off, anything off, we're deducing from this off witness testimony because we're talking to witnesses who could also be suspects.

• 1:07:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  And also Jean might not even know because like she said, well, like I didn't like pass out or anything, but I did have, have stuff to drink.

• 1:07:38Derrick Levasseur?

  I had some drinks, yeah.

• 1:07:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. So you fall asleep and you're drunk. Are you going to notice? Yeah. Are you going to notice if Jose gets up after that at any point?

• 1:07:46Derrick Levasseur?

  No, I mean, that's also possible, but it like, it would make more sense to me if we had a crystal ball and we were able to see what happened. If I told you that Jean knew what happened and she was covering for Jose because it was an accident and she didn't want to see. The person she's in love with go to prison for a crime he didn't commit. Would it be reasonable to assume that she lied to law enforcement to help him? No, that wouldn't be crazy. You wouldn't go, oh, my God, I'm clutching my pearls.

• 1:08:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  I'm so surprised.

• 1:08:13Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, so I mean, I think there are people even watching this channel who might say if we posed the question, yeah, I would do the same, you know what I mean? So that's also on the table here. There's so.

• 1:08:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  If you thought, if you thought it was an accident and you thought, yeah.

• 1:08:25Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, if you, that's how you justify it. I'm lying to law enforcement, not because Jose's a murderer, but because he was trying to help her, he was trying to get her to bed and something went south. Now, is that what happened? No, maybe that's what Jose told her, you know? So there's so many scenarios here, which again, is why you gotta rely on the science, not the testimony.

• 1:08:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right, but let's go back to that very, very slim timeline. Okay?

• 1:08:48Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, so it's a small window of opportunity.

• 1:08:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  So there's a book by a woman named Michelle Graves. Michelle was Tam's very close friend. Michelle was able to get the entire case file through a FOIA request. And she wrote in her book, Search for the Truth, that the garage door opened and closed multiple times between 1:32 a.m. and 1:40 a.m. And Jean couldn't really account for why this had happened because remember, everyone was going to bed at that time. Apparently, according to Jean, most people were upstairs by 1:30. Now, this was not included in the police investigation, but there is body cam footage where Jean was asked about the garage door and she suggested that Jose went out to get water from the garage. And Jose says, who, me? Because reportedly, at that time, according to Jose, he was getting his cellphone charger from the basement.

• 1:09:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  He was not getting water from the garage. Additionally, Jean had told Officer Waldrop on the scene that Bridget had left out of the garage door at 1:40 a.m. And then one of Jean's attorneys provided a letter to the GBI stating that Bridget left through the garage door at 1:40 a.m. And we know she didn't, she left out the front door. So Jean was asked extensive questions about these time discrepancies, along with information about her camera system and who may have had access to these things during her GBI interview.

• 1:10:05Speaker 07

  Let me ask you about, kind of switch gears a little bit, your cameras. Which I know this has been a. I camera, they're rechargeable, Arlo cameras. They're not ones with batteries.

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  Um, I had gotten them when I was going through my divorce because my ex-husband come in the house when I wasn't there. We were on good terms. I had given my Arlo login and password because they send emails when they're um, when they're dying or you need to set ten percent or an out stack recharge them. And my aunt and her cleaning and organizing had misplaced that charger. She didn't realize that it was for those cameras. She just saw that it wasn't an apple and we all have apples, so we don't know where she had put it. And since things

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  were fine with my ex and I, I really wasn't concerned.

• 1:11:04Speaker 07

  Do you remember about what time it was that you were like around the time of like what month, whatever that you were looking for the charger and couldn't find them?

• 1:11:11Speaker 02

  I want to say probably August, but I think the police for South County got the emails and everything. I I've I've turned all that over, but I I want to say August.

• 1:11:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so here is a screenshot of the email that Jean sent to Mike Christian of the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office on November nineteenth, twenty eighteen. The email says, quote, Mike, this is the last one I have. I must have deleted the others. I will see if I can somehow recover them. I am not tech savvy. If you would like to have a person or detective research it, end quote. And then she goes on to give the web address along with her username and password for the Arlo camera system. Now, the email sent to Jean from Arlo happened on August eighteenth, twenty eighteen. The subject says, your Arlo battery is tired and reads, quote, uh-oh, Jean, your Arlo is running low on battery. You've still got about fifteen percent of juice left, but in order to maintain uninterrupted peace of mind, we recommend

• 1:12:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  charging up the device as soon as you can, end quote. So, we had talked about this a little bit and you were talking about the cameras last time and what kind of batteries they took. And so according to Jean, they were rechargeable. And because her Aunt Madeline just cleans everything so much, the charger was misplaced and she couldn't find it. And so she was getting emails saying, hey, your your camera battery is about to die. But at that point, her and her ex-husband were fine again. So she wasn't really too concerned about. Recharging the cameras.

• 1:12:41Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, first off, as we're starting to narrow down potential scenarios, even online, I haven't seen much mention of a, some type of premeditated murder, right? If this is a homicide, I feel like what happened here was probably in the moment, right? And, and so for these cameras not to be charged, if we're believing that this is somehow connected to what happened to Tam, we would have to believe that they intended on killing her and they let those cameras run out intentionally. I haven't seen anything to suggest that, that this was the motive behind having this get together, but am I going to sit here and say with 100% certainty, it's not possible? Of course not, I never do. But when it comes to the cameras, it seems like an innocent, an innocent mistake. And if there's anything that we collectively can take from this, don't buy battery, battery

• 1:13:26Derrick Levasseur?

  operated cameras. Like if, I don't care what brand you go with, we have recommendations for what systems we think are the best. We've talked about Simply Safe numerous times on this channel. I'll tell you with my personal security system, without giving you guys too many details, I have a bunch of hardwired cameras. However, there was, there is one specific camera that I got with my set that's battery operated and I'm very disciplined about charging it because I'm a freak about those things. But I will tell you, if there's ever been a lapse or a day or two where that camera wasn't working, it's because I didn't get the chance to charge it. So for future reference, if there's anything you take out of this case, that's just, you can apply to your own life, make sure you don't buy the battery operated cameras. I don't care what brand it is, you're going to forget, it's going to create a lapse in, in the timeline, not what you want in your house.

• 1:14:11Derrick Levasseur?

  But I guess my question to you would be, Stephanie, do you believe there's more to this? Do you believe that there's, it's too much of a coincidence?

• 1:14:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  I think there is more to this because Jean says, this is the last email I have, and it's from August of 2018. So August, September, October, about three months before.

• 1:14:30Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, so the cameras weren't up and running for about, let's just call it two and a half months, if they died after that 15%.

• 1:14:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I looked it up and they said that the Arlo camera system, about 15% battery would get you about three to four weeks. So that would mean that at some point after that August 18th email, Arlo most likely sent her another email. Being like, uh oh, Jean.

• 1:14:51Derrick Levasseur?

  You're at 5%.

• 1:14:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  You're at 10%, you're at 5%, uh oh, Jean, your, your cameras are completely down now. You are no longer protected in any way. And Jean is saying, oh, I, I will see if I can, you know, get other emails. I must have deleted them. I'll see if I can recover them. I guess my question would be if you know that the cameras are not operating. Well, what's even the point in having them? Or did they charge them back up at some point after that August 18th, 2018 email from Arlo? But then they deleted the emails that were saying afterwards, like, uh oh, Jean, in September, you have 85% battery or you have, and they just didn't want those emails to be seen by the police.

• 1:15:36Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, yeah, it's a, it's a great question and one that would be answered very, very easily. It's a cloud-based system. Arlo has the ability to tell you how much battery life is left on the cameras themselves. Hence the reason they're able to send those emails. They would also be able to tell you if they were recharged at any point because once you recharge them, you no longer receive those notifications. So I again, would not take the word of the people involved as the investigating agency. I would have gone to Arlo. I would have issued a subpoena, a search warrant by a judge to determine the activity on those cameras, not go off some email provided by persons of interest. So you go to Arlo and you find your answers.

• 1:16:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  Right. So here's the thing. Jean gives the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office, my Christian. She gives him her Arlo username and password.

• 1:16:22Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep.

• 1:16:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  That email that she sent him is included in the case file. As far as I can tell, there's no follow-up with the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office of whether they signed in and actually followed up or just took her word for it.

• 1:16:35Derrick Levasseur?

  If they didn't sign in, it's a, again, a misstep and egregious misstep because you could easily confirm not by logging in. Cause you, again, I don't know if things can be deleted on that end. I would go directly to Arlo and I would have an administrative subpoena or search warrant issued where Arlo would provide me with any activity on those camera devices for the past four months. And we would easily be able to determine. Within a day or two after getting those results back, if those cameras were last charged on the date in question.

• 1:17:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  And probably the GBI wanted to do that, but the fact of the matter is they are investigating this a year and a half later. And as we know from cloud-based systems, that data may have been deleted.

• 1:17:16Derrick Levasseur?

  It may have been overwritten. I hope that wouldn't be the case. I don't have the answer to that. I would like to think that they would still have it. But you're right, it could be like a three-month window before that they can no longer retrieve that data.

• 1:17:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, here's some more questions that the GBI had for Jean, which when we're done listening to this, I want you to tell me whether you think the GBI went to Arlo or went to Arlo and were unable to get the data. And that's why they're asking these questions.

• 1:17:44Speaker 02

  And all the other times on the door, that was all from the Xfinity

• 1:17:50Speaker 02

  security system.

• 1:17:52Speaker 07

  Okay, so those are two different systems.

• 1:17:53Speaker 02

  Yes, ma'am. That was more to monitor my kids not sneaking out. And all the Xfinity passwords and everything I've turned over also. Because when we tried to call,

• 1:18:05Speaker 02

  I'm sure you've seen the first day screenshot of the times.

• 1:18:09Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:18:09Speaker 02

  The first page in that binder. When we tried to call like later that night or the next day, Mike Christian and I had talked about getting a lengthy, a more in-depth picture of the times everybody left. But I could only pull up

• 1:18:30Speaker 02

  30 a day. Like after 30, I believe, was the number that then you have to go on the site or request it. And so that's why I had given them the password and the login information for that. So they could see exactly.

• 1:18:51Speaker 04

  To match up the times, I guess, that the other people said they left.

• 1:18:56Speaker 07

  Okay. I don't know if you know the answer to this question. Cause there's been some discrepancy with the times and I know the time changed, I know, I know the time changed that night. Which makes it even more complicated. Um, do you know with Xfinity?

• 1:19:11Speaker 07

  Does that, did they automatically update that time?

• 1:19:14Speaker 04

  I don't. I don't. Cause that's the screenshot from that night. Cause that shows when she went out. And then that's Bridget leaving. And that's Bridget putting leftovers in the garage fridge. So I don't know. I don't know, cause I can't answer that.

• 1:19:33Speaker 07

  Who all had access to? Your Arlo stuff, like who got notifications?

• 1:19:40Speaker 04

  Me.

• 1:19:42Speaker 07

  Did anybody else have access to that, like have your passwords and stuff?

• 1:19:48Speaker 04

  You mean before all of this?

• 1:19:49Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:19:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, just me.

• 1:19:50Speaker 07

  What about the Xfinity door time stuff?

• 1:19:55Speaker 07

  Um. Was Jose aware of, did he have access to any of that? Was he able to log on to any of that or check your cameras, anything like that? Did he know that your cameras weren't recording at the time, do you know? You had told him that they weren't, that they?

• 1:20:09Speaker 04

  He had helped me try to turn the house upside down to look for the dang charger.

• 1:20:13Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, so it's, uh, it's clear here, they, they weren't able to go back and, and obtain documentation from Arlo or Xfinity. To confirm any of this, it's too much time has passed, is at least what it appears like because. In this interview, you would have asked these questions and then you would have provided the documentation to say, hey. Jean, it's interesting that you say this and that your cameras were last charged at this point because. You know, I have data from Arlo saying that your cameras were charged after that days. What do you think, what do you think about that? Were you aware of that? There would be follow up questions to try to see if they had an answer for it. So yeah, unfortunate, that's the case, but if you will notice, there's a common theme. As far as my investigative approach, which is whenever you have witnesses that you're relying

• 1:20:53Derrick Levasseur?

  on, I try to take it out of their hands and rely on science and technology because that is impartial, it's unbiased, and it's going to tell me exactly what it can make out of the evidence that I have. When you're relying on people, they have the ability to be deceptive, depending on their intentions, depending on their motives. So unfortunately with Forsyth, they clearly didn't do their job just from an investigative perspective and GBI is trying to play catch up with half the pieces to the puzzle. That's my assessment up to this point in the story.

• 1:21:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so just to clarify, the Arlo camera system was just the cameras. And when she's talking about Xfinity, that's the system that's keeping track of when the doors are opened, closed, etc. They're two separate systems.

• 1:21:34Derrick Levasseur?

  That would be your magnetic sensors on the doors, windows, glass break sensors, motion sensors, depending on the system they had.

• 1:21:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, it's interesting because the GBI agent is asking Jean, did anybody else have access to your Arlo camera system?

• 1:21:46Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  The ability to delete things. Did Jose, she's specifically asking about Jose, and Jean is saying, no. She also says, before this, you mean? Which leads me to kind of believe that maybe he did have access at the point that they're having this interview or at some time after that, which means he could have had access before. She just isn't going to admit to it. However, it's interesting because the GBI agent also says, did Jose know that the batteries on your cameras were dead? And Jean says, yes. Well, he was helping me look all over the place for it in August, which is interesting because if we go back to that 911 call, Jose says to the operator, well, there's cameras. So, you know, it might have picked something up. Why would he say that if he knew the batteries on the camera were dead?

• 1:22:29Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. See, that to me is a compelling point, right? That is something that you can go back and you can cross reference and you have now someone who's on his side and Jean telling us that Jose knew the cameras weren't working. So why would he make that statement?

• 1:22:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  Which I think was a slip up for her. Yeah, she wasn't thinking about it.

• 1:22:44Derrick Levasseur?

  Correct. And so Jose, if you're looking at Jose, you could take it as he's putting it out there as if he's under the belief that, oh, we have cameras, we'll be good to go, when he damn well knows that they're no longer working. And he would be one of the few people who were present that night that Would have known those cameras weren't working. Not good for Jose from that perspective.

• 1:23:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  And so I guess another question would be if everyone was upstairs and going to bed by 1:30 a.m. Who was opening and closing the garage door between 1:32 and 1:40 a.m.?

• 1:23:12Derrick Levasseur?

  That would have been tracked by the Xfinity system.

• 1:23:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, and why were they doing that? Now, Jean said something in this interview about Bridgette putting the leftovers in the garage refrigerator. But if that was the case, she didn't say that to Forsyth County Sheriff's Office, so too much time had passed to verify that. Like, they can't just open the garage refrigerator and see if there's actually leftovers in there, or ask Bridgette if she put leftovers in the garage refrigerator. And it would really only explain the garage door opening once. And Bridgette has talked to the police several times, and I don't remember her saying anything about going into the garage to put leftovers in the refrigerator there. We heard her talk about it. She said, yeah, she was eating her gumbo, and then I was cleaning, and then Gary got there, and then I walked out the front door, Tam walked me out, and I left.

• 1:23:56Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  So when did you, I feel like that is something that Bridget Fuller would have put in, like, I was so responsible, such a mother hen, I made sure that the gumbo was wrapped up and put in the refrigerator so it wouldn't go bad, because everybody else was too drunk and acting like a stupid fool to worry about that. And I didn't want that good gumbo to go to waste. That's just who I am. That's just who I am.

• 1:24:15Derrick Levasseur?

  And just, and just for clarification, from not only myself, but anybody listening or watching, when you say garage door, are you referring to the garage doors themselves, or the door that leads to the garages?

• 1:24:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  The door that leads from the house into the garage.

• 1:24:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Okay, that's what I was assuming, but I didn't want to, I didn't want to assume anything without getting clarification.

• 1:24:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, so there's this huge discrepancy of if everyone's tucked away in bed by 1:30 a.m., like Jose said, like Jean said, like Stacy said, like Tom said, who's going in and out of the garage? What are they doing? This is multiple times.

• 1:24:46Derrick Levasseur?

  I also want to add in there, and this is anecdotal, but I'd like to get your opinion on it, and also everybody listening and watching right now, as the host of a party like this, I know me personally, I'm gonna be the last one to go to bed. I'm not leaving strangers or people that I have over in the kitchen to kind of fend for themselves. I'm gonna kind of be the overseer where I'm gonna make sure Everyone's tucked away, everyone has what they need. And then once everyone's down for the night, I'll shut off the lights, make sure the doors are locked, and then I head up to sleep. Is that crazy for me to say that?

• 1:25:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  No, especially if, as John is claiming, she watched Tam take a bottle of tequila to the face that night. And Tam was trying to leave, and everybody had to talk her into not leaving. And now Tam's like, "Oh, don't worry, guys, go up to bed. I'm just gonna have a cigarette and then I'll be up there too." Because remember Tam was supposed to sleep on the second floor, or the, you know, the bedroom floor with everybody else, because there was only one bedroom on the main floor. And drunk-ass Jennifer Morrell and Marcy were in there. So, wouldn't you have at least made sure that that last guest, who was apparently, according to you, one bottle of tequila in?

• 1:25:52Derrick Levasseur?

  Make sure she's, she's down for the night.

• 1:25:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  And so drunk, and make sure she, she's down for the night, so you know she's not driving home?

• 1:25:58Derrick Levasseur?

  But also, you have a security system. You want to make sure the doors are locked. You want to make sure everyone's safe. Now, it could be just a lapse in judgment, but my common practice is, I'm the last one to go down. I want to make sure, as a host, everyone's all set, everyone has what they need to sleep, everyone's comfortable, and then I can secure the building and make sure everyone's safe for the night.

• 1:26:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, exactly. So, now, we are gonna come to something that you asked me last week. You said you would be curious to know if the police had talked to the neighbors. And I will say that the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office did not talk to the neighbors.

• 1:26:34Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, that's terrible.

• 1:26:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  But, from this clip of Jean's GBI interview, it seems that the GBI did.

• 1:26:42Speaker 03

  Did you ever tell anybody that you had a video of her following it?

• 1:26:45Speaker 04

  No. Absolutely not.

• 1:26:50Speaker 07

  You didn't tell any of your neighbors that?

• 1:26:52Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:26:56Speaker 04

  I don't even talk to my neighbors. That's funny.

• 1:26:59Speaker 07

  Did you talk to any of your neighbors after this happened? Like, just kind of explain, like, what kind of other...

• 1:27:03Speaker 04

  Just the one, Elaine and Sean, like, if you were facing the house to the left.

• 1:27:10Speaker 04

  Because when the news crews came, she was so tired of it that she put her speak out there and blasted Cardi B. So they couldn't air it. And she said, are you and the kids okay? And I'm like, we are. And I know I had said, and I don't know directly to her, but said, I wish the cameras were recording. I wish I would have had video because then this could all be put to rest. But I've never said that we have video. It doesn't even exist to have.

• 1:27:37Speaker 03

  Did you know from the get go that there was no video?

• 1:27:39Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:27:39Speaker 03

  Or was it like a, you forgot that?

• 1:27:41Speaker 04

  No, knew from the get go. Because when they came, they're like, what about the cameras? I'm like, they're not charged.

• 1:27:48Speaker 03

  And did Jose know that too?

• 1:27:50Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:27:52Speaker 07

  Were the cameras inside and outside or just outside your house?

• 1:27:55Speaker 04

  Just outside. There's one at the front door, one at the garage door. There were four total. Front door, garage door, and on the backyard, there was one on the deck. And then one at the basement. Every, all the entry points. And then one at the basement door.

• 1:28:14Derrick Levasseur?

  Would have been nice if those cameras were working, wouldn't it? Would have been great. Yeah, no, I mean, this is another lapse in judgment. I mean, we're at, we're at a point in the story where I can clearly say Forsyth Police did not do a good job with this investigation. And the overall theme is they were treating it as an accident from day one.

• 1:28:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  And once again, they're asking Jean, did you know when the police came to your house on November fourth that the cameras weren't working? Yes. Did, did Jose know that? Yes. And, and the GBI is asking her this because they've already talked to the neighbors.

• 1:28:45Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, it's almost like they've done their job, like I was saying earlier with getting the answers to the questions before you ask them.

• 1:28:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  Exactly. And they did this a year and a half after.

• 1:28:53Derrick Levasseur?

  What a concept, right?

• 1:28:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  So the GBI spoke to a neighbor across the street from Jean. It sounds like this is the person that Jean was talking about. She's like, I don't even talk to the neighbors. I mean, I did talk to the people across the street.

• 1:29:03Derrick Levasseur?

  Even more reason I want to speak to him. Why don't they talk to you? That's what I want to know.

• 1:29:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, the GBI went over there. They questioned him about that day and he said a lot of things, by the way, but he first said that when he and his wife were leaving the house on the morning of November 4th, he said they were going to breakfast. They noticed a man and a woman coming out of Jean's house with a crock pot and they saw this man and woman load the crock pot into the car and drive away. Now, the man and the woman with the crock pot would be Tom and Stacy Smith because in their interviews, they say like, "Yeah, we had the crock pot. We left. We put it in the car. We drove away." Now, Tom and Stacy Smith said they left at 8:30, but this neighbor across the street, he says that he and his wife were leaving the house at 9:00 a.m. and that's when they saw Tom and Stacy with the crock pot. He said later, they found out someone had passed away that day and

• 1:29:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  he was actually talking to his friend in Alabama and he told the friend that he'd seen someone with a crock pot leaving the house when someone died and he made a joke about a crock pot killer. He was like, "Yeah, I mean, I didn't see anything, but I did see, you know, some, something suspicious. They were leaving the house with the crock pot and according to what we've heard, you know, she had died the night before. So I was making a joke like, 'Oh, I saw the crock pot killer.'"

• 1:30:14Derrick Levasseur?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:30:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  He said a few days later, the woman who lived at that house, AKA Jean, came over to explain what had happened. When she came over to explain, like two days later, she came over and she said, "I feel like I need to explain something." I said, "I had a friend over for my birthday. We watched the Alabama LSU football game. We played Cards Against Humanity and we drank some wine and we went to bed and then I woke up the next morning and one of my best friends had passed away and we found her out back." The weird thing, and I'm not, I mean, I just simply don't know anything, but she said, "I just felt like I needed to come tell you

• 1:31:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  because the lady over here works at Silver City Elementary School and she went to school saying, 'A lady fell off my balcony and that's not true.'" Blah, blah. She said, so I think she was kind of looking at it like an insurance thing, you're in trouble. I don't know what or I don't know why she even said it to me. So she said, she acted like that lady's on her mouth. Which one? I think it was, I assumed it was this lady here in the Silver. Yeah. Because she said she worked at the elementary school.

• 1:31:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  And, uh, she said something about, uh, all we know is she went outside to smoke and, uh, she said all her videos showed that she went outside to smoke and she couldn't really tell anything. Then she said it looked like she fell and didn't try to catch herself or something. Uh, like, uh. She said she had video of it? Yeah, she told me it was on video. So. Wow. Are you sure she said that? She said the video on her door appears that she fell and didn't catch herself.

• 1:32:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  Like she was, like she was blacked out or something. We didn't see anything at all. It was, like I said, two people leaving that morning with a crock pot. Do you remember what time that was? It was probably around nine, I would guess, because we were going to breakfast. Alright, so, I'm going to quickly summarize what he said.

• 1:32:28Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, that audio was a little tough to listen to. It was hard.

• 1:32:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  I think they have the recorder in their pocket, by the way, but we're gonna take a quick break, but then I want to discuss it because it's important. So, he says that a few days after Tam died, Jean came over and she was like, "Hey, I just want to explain to you what happened because this woman who works at Silver Lake Elementary School, she's running her mouth talking, saying that some woman fell off my balcony and that is not what happened. And what it looks like is that, according to my cameras, I have video footage, and it looks like she accidentally fell and didn't brace herself, the woman who died. And the guy's like, "Yeah, I guess she came over to tell me because someone was like spreading rumors and she wanted to like nip it in the bud and maybe she was looking at this for like insurance purposes and she had the cameras."

• 1:33:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  So basically, Jean told her neighbor across the street, "This wasn't anything like nefarious. We didn't do anything wrong. It looks like this was just an accident. My cameras captured it." And that's why the GBI is asking Jean, "Did you tell your neighbor that you had it on camera?" And Jean's like, "No."

• 1:33:34Derrick Levasseur?

  Hmm.

• 1:33:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  "I said I wished I had it on camera." And then they're asking this neighbor, "Are you sure she said that?" He's like, "Yeah, that's what she said. She said she had it on camera." So, let's take a quick break and then we're gonna discuss that.

• 1:33:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right. So let me guess, because I know you work out and you care about fitness and stuff. You have a folder of saved workouts on your phone that you fully intended to do and never did.

• 1:33:58Derrick Levasseur?

  That is true. I'm definitely one of those people that'll be like, I'll start that routine Monday. Usually I just go down there and do whatever my body feels like doing. And that's not the way to do it.

• 1:34:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  That was me for a long time. I had all these random workouts saved, no actual structure, no actual motivation. So I'd either skip workouts entirely, or just do whatever felt easy that day, like whatever I was used to doing and knew how to do. And no surprise, I wasn't seeing real progress. And that's why we both have started using the Ladder app.

• 1:34:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes, it's awesome.

• 1:34:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  And it's completely changed how I work out.

• 1:34:31Derrick Levasseur?

  It's like having a personal trainer without having to coordinate schedules, which is like the hardest part. And shout out to my trainer from Ladder, Brian. We just did a workout this morning. I kept it up here. So I had, it's called the Pressure Wash. It was only 38 minutes. And one of the things I love about Ladder is the user interface. The video is very high quality. But up in the top or left or right hand corner, you have the amount of sets, the amount of reps you have to do. He's working with you on them. He's actually doing the whole workout as you're doing it. And then one little side thing that I really enjoy and love is that it works with Apple Health. So if you have an Apple Watch like I do, you can connect your watch to the app to track your calories that you're burning. So love Ladder. It's definitely a winner for me. We'll be using it going forward.

• 1:35:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, it's really cool because you can do it anywhere. So you can do it at home, or you can bring it to the gym with you. And then you have a personal trainer in your headphones. It's going to walk you through every set. It gives you cues, keeps you focused. I don't have to think about what I'm doing anymore. It's not on my shoulders any longer. And it's really cool because it's a structured strength training plan that's designed by a real coach. So every week is going to build on the last. And there's different plans depending on how you like to train. Like I said, at the home, at the gym, if you're a strength focused, they have Pilates, whatever fits your routine. So honestly, you can remove the guesswork with Ladder. You can get a real coach in your ear telling you exactly what to do for every workout. No thinking. Everything's planned for you. And if you have an iPhone, head to

• 1:35:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  ladder.fit/crimeweekly and take a quick quiz to find your perfect ladder plan. Use our link and you're going to get a free seven day trial with no credit card required, which is cool. And then you'll get $10 off your first month if you join.

• 1:36:10Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep, that seven day trial without a credit card is a great way to try it out without any obligations. And I am going to continue using the app. Brian, I'll see you tomorrow.

• 1:36:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so we're back from the break. Now, what do you make of this? Is Jean just telling the neighbor she has it on camera so she doesn't look bad? Did she have it on camera and then she just got rid of it so that the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office and the GBI wouldn't find it? What's going on here?

• 1:36:40Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, first off, let's start off with whether it's true or not. I absolutely believe that Jean said this to the neighbor, no doubt about it. She absolutely did it. The question is not whether she said it or not, it's why, right? Is it for public perception? As you said, you know, was she just concerned about the rumor mill? And people assuming that there could have been something more malicious going on here? Sort of try to nip that in the bud. She's lying to the neighbor in the hopes that they'll spread, you know, this rumor as well, saying, yeah, there's video. It was just, it was clearly an accident. It's, you know, slam dunk case.

• 1:37:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  But then why not tell that to the GBI when they ask you?

• 1:37:16Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, because she's, again, now she's lying because now she knows by admitting she said that to the guy, they're going to be like, well, why would you say that?

• 1:37:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  I said it because people were talking shit and I just, I wanted to like, you know.

• 1:37:26Derrick Levasseur?

  That's what she should have did, but she didn't. And why she didn't? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe she doesn't want to come off as a liar, but there's no doubt she said it to the neighbor. The neighbor has no reason to lie. The question is why she said it. Now, was she saying it just to kind of make them look better? Because she doesn't want them assuming that they're murderers? Or was she trying to do something else? Or did she have video? The only thing about her having video, if there were video and they didn't want anybody to know there was video, it's not impossible, but I would highly doubt she, she would have told a neighbor that there was video. Because then that could get back to law enforcement and it makes her look bad, right? Like if there's incriminating video, why wouldn't, why would she admit that to anybody? Why wouldn't she go to her grave?

• 1:38:10Derrick Levasseur?

  With the, under the assumption that, yeah, there was no video.

• 1:38:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, there wouldn't be video if she had gone into the system and deleted the video. And then if Forsyth County Sheriff's Office had followed up with the Arlo system and signed in, and they were like, oh, hey, this video was deleted. Now Jean can just make up another thing like, ah, it must have accidentally been deleted. I'm not good with technology. She's gonna make up things as she goes along, depending on what they find. But she was banking on, or hoping, that that email and her just saying, yeah, the cameras have been dying since August would be enough for the sheriff's office, which, as it turns out, it was.

• 1:38:45Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, it was. It shouldn't have been. Like I said, all of this is a lot of speculation. It would have been easily to confirm or discredit the idea that those cameras weren't running if law enforcement, instead of relying on an email or someone's word, went to the source. And Arlo would have absolutely been able to provide that information. So as far as her saying there was a video, we'll never know. Do I believe she said it? Absolutely.

• 1:39:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  Which it's like, okay, you were either lying then, or you're lying now, or you're lying both times, right?

• 1:39:16Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, she screwed, she screwed either way, because now she doesn't-

• 1:39:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  But why are you lying? If it was just a simple accident, why lie?

• 1:39:21Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, I mean, listen, that's a whole different can of worms. They understand at this point that the GBI is looking into this, because to them, there's something that doesn't smell right. And now they're lying left and right, because at minimum, they're concerned about what the ramifications could be.

• 1:39:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  I just feel like at that point, it's like, you know, sheepishly, yeah, I did say that, like, you know, it was people were talking shit. And I was worried about my reputation, so-

• 1:39:46Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 1:39:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  But you still lied. You doubled down. Even though you know the GBI probably talked to your neighbors, which is why they're asking you this question.

• 1:39:53Derrick Levasseur?

  Correct, yeah.

• 1:39:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  It doesn't make any sense. Okay. So the GBI also talked to another neighbor of Jean's. Her name's Mary. Now, the audio quality of this interview is very bad, once again.

• 1:40:03Derrick Levasseur?

  Compared to the last one.

• 1:40:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, it sounds like they have it in their pocket, maybe. It's happening outside. There's birds calling, there's dogs barking. So I'll tell you most of what Mary said. She said, quote, "I mean, I'm just throwing this out there." But she was pushed off that deck, end quote, referring to Tamla. Mary said that she and her family didn't have anything to do with the people who lived at Jean's house, because they were kind of shady.

• 1:40:34Speaker 04

  The whole thing, I mean, it was right there. I woke up, my husband and I, I woke up in the morning and went, what the heck is going on? But then when the officer came out and said, I heard everything they said. They said it was a terrible accident, and then she just fell to the ground sobbing. And I thought to myself, that's such an act. You know what? I'm sorry to say this, but that's how I feel. I really feel that something bad went on there. You know, that's my own personal opinion. You can take it for what it's worth, and you can probably talk to the other neighbors too, but they'll tell you the same thing.

• 1:41:02Speaker 03

  Did they think something happened over there? Now, did you, I gotta ask, did you see anything happen that made you think that? Or is this just more of a feeling?

• 1:41:11Speaker 04

  It wasn't a feeling. I didn't see anything.

• 1:41:13Speaker 03

  Okay. Now, you said you think somebody pushed her off the porch?

• 1:41:17Speaker 04

  So, that's what I had. I mean, I'm just saying this to you.

• 1:41:20Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 1:41:22Speaker 04

  You know, but I just, I felt it was a confrontation and she was pushed.

• 1:41:25Speaker 03

  Okay. Did you know, um, the young lady that passed away, Tamla?

• 1:41:30Speaker 04

  No, no, I didn't know. I didn't know any of them. They were all much younger than us, and, you know, they're like the soccer mom, you know, kind of group that they had going on there. It's my own, it's my own gut feeling. Okay, so, I mean, you don't have to write it down.

• 1:41:46Speaker 03

  No, that's fine. That's fine.

• 1:41:47Speaker 04

  I'm just, I'm glad somebody's reopening it. It has bothered me and bothered me and bothered me.

• 1:41:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so Mary's saying, listen, something happened there. I think she got pushed off. I've had a bad feeling about it. Now, Mary also said that both Jean and Jose gave her an odd feeling. And she said that the people who were at the party the night that Tamla died were at Jean's house every single night for like two weeks straight. And Mary said her and her husband talked about it, and they were like, yeah, these people are trying to get their story straightened out, because why are they at the house every single night for two weeks straight? Why are they all together there? What's going on? Okay, so while we're talking about Jose Barrera, let's go deeper. Now, at the time of Tamla's death, Jose was employed by the Solicitor General's office as a pre-trial officer for

• 1:42:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  the Forsyth County Court System. Tamla died at the beginning of November 2018, and by December 20th, 2018, Jose was fired. Okay, so let's fast forward a bit to February 1st, 2019, when Tamla's friend, Michelle Graves, filed an incident report with the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office. She was accusing Jose Barrera of accessing her personal information using his police access. And then, she said he provided that information to five individuals.

• 1:43:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  As I said, Michelle Graves was one of Tamla's best friends. She'd been very vocal after Tamla's death that something suspicious was going on with the people at that party. So Michelle was friends with a woman named Diane, who was also friends with Tam and Jean. And Diane had known Jean, her mother, and her ex-husband for many years. Diane was actually supposed to be at that party, but she had taken a trip to California, so she couldn't be there that night. Michelle says that Jean and some of the other people at the party were texting with Diane on November 4th, the day they found Tam. The first message was from Jean to Diane at 2:31 PM, and it said that Tam had wandered outside in the night for a cigarette and died. Two minutes later, Paula Seals texted Diane and said, quote, "We all went to bed.

• 1:43:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  Tam fell down the back steps at 1:57. They think it's alcohol poisoning." End quote. Now, Michelle says these two messages, two minutes apart from each other, saying two different things that weren't even, you know, what the police ended up determining happened. It was highly suspicious. Michelle says the following day, November 5th, Jean invited Diane to bring over some members of Tamla's family, including her husband, Lee. And, Michelle says, that Jean told Diane, "You can bring over any of Tam's friends, family, anybody who's curious. We want to, like, put this to rest." So Michelle decided to go as well. Michelle said that upon arrival, they were shown through the kitchen and out onto the balcony, and this is where they were told that Jose had found Tamla's cigarette butts on the ledge of the balcony.

• 1:44:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  Michelle said, quote, "I remember thinking that was odd because Tamla wouldn't do that. She would put them in an ashtray or throw them away, especially at someone else's house." End quote. Also, keep in mind, there was an ashtray out there on the balcony. Then Jose pointed out to them a body imprint on the grass below and told them that was where Tamla's body had been. Jean also showed them a wall on the ground floor and demonstrated how Tamla must have slid down the wall and stumbled through a six-foot section of gravel before tripping over the garden border. Jean said there'd been a table with cleaning supplies that Tam must have knocked over as she fell, and suggested that Tamla might have been having a medical event. We're going to talk more about this later, but essentially, this is how Michelle came to be on Jose's case.

• 1:45:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  Jose's radar, according to her. She says she talked to Forsyth County Sheriff's Office Detective Sexton on November 19th. She showed him the text messages and she's like, hey, don't you think this raises a red flag? Like, what's, what's going on? You know, you've got to talk to these people. And she was told that they could not interrogate people or just give them lie detector tests randomly. Michelle says that on November 23rd, five false police reports were filed against her by people at the party claiming Michelle was stalking them. And basically, they were saying like, she wasn't supposed to be at the house on November 5th. She invited herself over. We feel scared, blah, blah, blah. And Michelle said that's when she felt the police were working with these people because why would they come after her four days after she talked to the police on the 19th?

• 1:45:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  And how would they know that she had talked to the police or what she had said to the police? Because according to these, uh, police reports, they were aware that she was basically making allegations against them. It seemed they were aware of what she said to Detective Sexton. So when Michelle made a complaint against Jose Barrera on December 20th of 2018, she also asked Mike Christian why he had helped the five partygoers file false reports on her. We are going to come back to this. There was a whole legal battle. Mike Christian did help the people at the party file these reports against Tam's friend, Michelle. These allegations were eventually thrown out by the court.

• 1:46:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  But basically, Michelle is saying, why is this detective who's supposed to be investigating Tom's death, why is he helping the people who haven't even been ruled out as being suspects or involved? Why is he helping them come after me, the person who's asking questions and wanting the police to dig further?

• 1:46:57Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, great question. I think we're all asking that, Michelle.

• 1:47:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  So then, Michelle has some information and things are said during this, this legal battle that makes her think these people at the party who filed these false reports on her, they have information about her that they could only get through Jose's access through his, you know, police-connected computer. So what ends up happening is Jose gets fired. Now, the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office spokesperson, Major Joe Perkins, told the Forsyth County News that they had determined that Jose had not searched for Michelle Graves' personal information from his work terminal. However, the investigation did turn up evidence that Jose had used his work terminal to view several reports, including a death report dated

• 1:47:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  November 4th, 2018, in which he was listed as a witness, AKA, Tamla Horsford's death investigation. Not only did he access that information, but he provided it to five different people. So, what do you think about that?

• 1:48:00Derrick Levasseur?

  Terrible. Abuse of power, obviously misuse of department access, you know, it's completely unethical.

• 1:48:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  Which is why he was fired, but why did he do it? Yeah.

• 1:48:11Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I mean, that's, only he can answer that question. I know what half of you are thinking, I know what the other half are thinking. And one half is thinking Jose knows that they're on to him, and he's trying to get in front of things before it all comes crashing down because he's responsible for Tamla's death. On the other hand, he knows that he's innocent, and now these rumors are starting to swirl, and he's trying to get in front of it because he's about to be accused for a crime he didn't commit.

• 1:48:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  Who's saying that he's innocent and he's trying to get ahead of it?

• 1:48:35Derrick Levasseur?

  No, that's what Jose's perspective would be.

• 1:48:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  You said half of the people are saying this and half of the people are saying that.

• 1:48:40Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm saying as far as people watching or listening to this. You think every single person listening to this right now is of the belief that Jose killed her?

• 1:48:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  I'm not saying that I'm even of the belief.

• 1:48:50Derrick Levasseur?

  That's what I'm saying. So, half of our audience is saying he's trying to cover something up, the other half is saying he's trying to get in front of something.

• 1:48:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  What I'm saying is, if you looked up this death investigation, it means you want to know what the police know. And as a person, a witness of this potential crime, you shouldn't know what the police know, because then you can tailor your story around that, right?

• 1:49:14Derrick Levasseur?

  We're on the same page there. My point being, the question, again, is always gonna be, why? Why is he doing it?

• 1:49:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  I just don't think a person who's innocent says, "This is gonna make me look better if I do this."

• 1:49:23Derrick Levasseur?

  No, of course not, but he didn't expect them to find out that he was doing it. You know, that's, that's the whole thing. If he knew that they were gonna be able to figure it out, he probably wouldn't have done it.

• 1:49:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  Or, he knew he had friends. in the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office who might let it pass. So that's where we're moving on because in his position with the county, Jose Barrara, of course, came into contact with multiple law enforcement people. And as we know, when the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office Deputy Andy Kalin arrived to John's house on November 4th, he said he recognized Jose. Well, as it turns out, Andy more than recognized Jose because before Jose was fired from his pre-trial officer position in 2018, he was fired from his job with the state probation office, along with another person, a woman named Alexis, because apparently the two had lied about their relationship.

• 1:50:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  So this is before Tamla died, before Jose's getting fired for using his police credentials improperly, he's fired from the state probation office. Now, Andy Kalin would be interviewed by the GBI and they were mainly trying to clarify whether or not there'd been a phone call with Jose during which Jose admitted to checking Tam's pulse and moving her arm. We already talked about that, remember? Andy said that he had called Jose to kind of verify the positioning and whether or not he touched her. He said Jose admitted to it, then Jose was asked by the GBI and he was like, that's bullshit, I never said that. So that's what the GBI was talking to Andy Kalin about. And as we talked about already, Andy admitted that this happened.

• 1:50:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  And when he asked why the call hadn't been included in any report, he said he hadn't made a report of it or written it down anywhere because to him it wasn't of any significance. They were just trying to find out if Jose took Tam's pulse and where he had touched her. So in the same interview, Andy talks about his relationship with Jose. In this clip, Andy mentions someone named James Dunn, who at that time was the Forsyth County Assistant District Attorney.

• 1:51:20Speaker 07

  So you wouldn't have just written that report to cover for somebody else touching her body or anything like that? Oh, no, of course not. I don't do that. I've been doing this too long. I have no one to, I have nobody to cover for. And that's really why I was explaining to you about our relationship because all this has nonsense has come out. And, you know, I met him through being an investigator at the courthouse. James Dunn said he was a good dude and, you know, I said, okay. So I maybe talked to him two or three times over there. And then he got fired from, he and Alexis got fired from their jobs with state probation. And, you know, James was like, nah, he's a good dude, you know, if you could try to

• 1:52:03Speaker 07

  help him get a job. So I did, I talked to the sheriff about him. I said, look, you know, here, here, he, he's got a good reputation over there with the judges and the ADAs and, and as a hard worker, but here's what happened, you know. And I said, he got fired for lying. I mean, that was the bottom line. Sheriff said, no, Andy, I appreciate it, but I'm not, I, we would not take a guy. And that's when he got fired from this whole case. Then he got fired again. Then he was, yeah. So that was when he got fired the first, from his first job. That's when he got fired from state probation. And then he was, then, you know, Jamie hired him to have an ear. And he was doing a fine job, according, I guess, to Jamie over there. I don't know, he wasn't doing, you know, it was not in any issues. And then this came about.

• 1:52:48Speaker 07

  When did you get his cell phone number? Do you remember? Prior to this case? Yeah, no, no, I'm, I'm just thinking of when it would have been sometime after he would have been fired from the state probation. So, God, Kelly, I, I don't know the dates. I, I don't want to tell you, it was like 2014 and it was 2016. I don't know. Whenever he was fired from probation, and I talked to James Dunn about it, you know, that they were gone from the courthouse and they were fired, he, you know, he, he asked it, man, it'd be great if you, you know, this guy could get a job. Did James Dunn give you his phone number, or did you?

• 1:53:29Speaker 07

  Yeah, James gave it to me. I think I got it through text. And I don't think it's actually, um, I don't, I don't, I doubt I even have it. Cause I go through my phone occasionally and purge.

• 1:53:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so just to sort of recap what we just heard there. After Jose got fired from the state probation office, the assistant district attorney of Forsyth County, James Dunn, asked the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office Detective Andy Kalin personally to help Jose get hired at a job within the sheriff's office because Jose was such a good guy and a hard worker. Now, the sheriff said no, and eventually Jose gets a job through the Forsyth County court system as a pretrial officer. And Andy Kalin has had Jose's number far before Tom LaHorseford died. And apparently, Jose's always had a really good reputation with the judges and the ADAs.

• 1:54:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  To the point where one of these ADAs went out on a limb to personally try to get Jose a job. Now, this is showing that Jose's got connections and I mean, he's got an ADA vouching for him, trying to get him hired within the sheriff's, the sheriff's office of Forsyth County. And I mean, if he hadn't, you know, lied and gotten fired from his previous job, it may have worked. Jose may have been hired as, as a police officer, so.

• 1:54:50Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I mean, for sure. Let's just talk about Andy Kalin for a second. Knowing what he knew, right? That he had made attempts to get Jose hired as a, as a deputy sheriff. As soon as this case came up, he should have removed himself from, he should have recused himself and said, hey, listen, it's a conflict of interest. Yeah, it's very minimal as far as our relationship. However, I don't want to jeopardize the outcome of this case regardless of which way it falls. So I'm going to respectfully remove myself from this case because I have a pre-existing relationship with this person. Regardless of how, how minor it might be, I know this person, I have his number, I vouch for him to try to get him a job. I shouldn't be investigating him. And when you look at it from that perspective, you would understand why, because he's going to go into this, if he's vouching for this guy, he's automatically going to assume that

• 1:55:35Derrick Levasseur?

  he's a good person, he's telling the truth and that he didn't do anything wrong, which is a skewed judgment. So he should not have been anywhere near this investigation.

• 1:55:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, what do you think about Jose having friends in high places as far as the district attorney's office, being close enough with ADA James Dunn, where James Dunn is going out on a limb to bring in Andy Kalin and be like, hey, can you get him a job? I feel bad, this guy got fired, he's such a good guy and a hard worker.

• 1:55:58Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I know, same thing, right? James, if he was anywhere near this case whatsoever, he should have recused himself as well. Listen, I mean, I work in Rhode Island, there are unavoidable situations where, when we work cases, somehow there might be a connection where you know someone because you're working with them. But whenever possible, if you know this person or have a previous relationship with them, for the integrity of the investigation, regardless of what level you're at, you should remove yourself from it.

• 1:56:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right, so what I'm saying is, if the sheriff's office is investigating, and this is the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office, and they're going right off the bat, like, first of all, Andy, Andy Kalin's going in and being like, yeah, I recognized Jose.

• 1:56:32Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, he's a good guy.

• 1:56:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  You're not being honest about your, your relationship with him in the initial police report, number one. Number two, you had a phone call with him to verify how. Tomlin's body was moved and all this, you didn't make a report about it. You didn't talk about it. It happened on your personal cellphone, not your work cellphone. And now you're talking about the law enforcement portion investigating. And usually when the law enforcement portion is investigating, they'll bring it to the district attorney's office and be like, here's what we found. How should we proceed? Is this an accident? Is this nefarious? Should we press charges? Now, if the district attorney's office already is kind of like friends with Jose,

• 1:57:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  they might be more likely to be like, you know what? It looks like an accident. Let's just wrap this up and make an announcement.

• 1:57:19Derrick Levasseur?

  I mean, it's a little bit of a leap because the district attorney's office is more than one person. I understand where you're going with it. I'm just trying to stay objective about it. I mean, having one person know them, you can't assume that entire organization is going to be like, well, you know, James said he's cool.

• 1:57:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, but Andy said he had a good reputation with the judges and ADAs.

• 1:57:39Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:57:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  So he's talking about all of them, right? Because in that capacity, he was working, Jose would have run into ADAs and judges on a regular basis all the time.

• 1:57:46Derrick Levasseur?

  Of course, he would, yeah. He'd be, he'd be walking those hallways every day. Yeah, for sure. And so it does create some complications. At the end of the day, they're still going to be involved. They're, they're the district attorney's office. They have to be, right? But you would try to minimize the relationship. So what you would do in that particular case, whatever ADA was handling this particular case, you would want to ensure that they had no pre-existing relationship with Jose or anybody for that matter in that household. So that would be a question that I would have is, okay, we understand that the, the district attorney's office has to be involved with whatever happens here. Were precautions taken to ensure that nobody with a pre-existing relationship was overseeing this case? But to, on a lighter note, just to kind of just even talk about it just from a surface level, right?

• 1:58:30Derrick Levasseur?

  If there is people who know of Jose from the past and know of other people in that house from the past, is it possible that they automatically assume this was, was a bunch of good people who were involved in a tragic accident? Absolutely.

• 1:58:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, because we know him. He's a good guy.

• 1:58:46Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, he's a good guy. It's Derek. It's Stephanie. We know them. They're good people. No way they did anything wrong here. So could that skew?

• 1:58:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's already a bias before you even start.

• 1:58:54Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, of course. Of course. Absolutely.

• 1:58:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  So you're saying at the worst, maybe there's some like backtalk, you know, behind the scenes talking at the at the least worst, it's just I came in with some kind of bias already thinking this person.

• 1:59:07Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, preconceived notion about this case because I know the people involved or I know of the people involved. Yeah.

• 1:59:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  But it does seem odd that he wouldn't, that Andy Kalin wouldn't be upfront about his entire relationship with Jose.

• 1:59:19Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, no, that's a misstep. There's no, and the fact that he was such a big part of this case, you know, this and this is the why we're covering it. And now it makes sense as far as why people are so interested in this case. And there's a lot of people who have investment in it because like many cases that we cover, wherever there's a lot of rumors and speculation surrounding what actually occurred, when you really get to the root of the problem, it usually comes back to the investigating agency and not doing their job and not crossing all their Ts, dotting all their Is, ensuring that there wasn't anything there that would bring into question their decision making processes at a later date, right? Their ability to stay objective. That clearly wasn't done here. You could stop

• 2:00:00Derrick Levasseur?

  the the series right here and we could come to that conclusion. And by not doing that, you're going to always have these concerns and questions about this case because the people who were in charge of investigating it had previous relationships and that should never happen.

• 2:00:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right, we're going to take our last break and then we're going to come back and wrap this episode up. But the most shocking is yet to come. So stay with us.

• 2:00:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  You know what's frustrating? Looking back on the time in your life and realizing I probably could have used therapy then because burnout is a real thing. And the whole point of burnout is it doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't happen on the heels of a traumatic or stressful time. It's after everything is piling up. And then you realize, hey, I'm not in a great, I'm not in a great place here. And then you actually try to find someone and it suddenly feels impossible.

• 2:00:53Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, especially if you're trying to find someone who actually takes your insurance. That's the big one.

• 2:00:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  Exactly. That is a big one. And that's where a lot of people get stuck because a lot of online Don't work with insurance at all, which means you're paying for everything out of pocket. But Rula does things differently.

• 2:01:09Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, Rula is a healthcare provider group that partners with over 100 insurance plans, which brings the average copay to about $15 per session. And depending on your benefits, it could be even zero.

• 2:01:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  And what I love about Rula is they don't just match you with whoever's available. They actually look at your goals, your preferences, your background, what you need help with. They're going to give you a curated list of therapists who are a good fit for you.

• 2:01:32Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep, exactly. And appointments can be available as soon as tomorrow. And Rula stays involved throughout the process, helping you schedule, checking in, and making sure you're actually getting what you need moving forward.

• 2:01:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  That's what makes it all feel sustainable. You're not just starting therapy, you're sticking with it. So thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. You can too. Visit rula.com/crimeweekly to get started. That's R U L A dot com slash crime weekly. You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget.

• 2:02:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  You know what's funny about habits? Day one feels easy. You're motivated. You're like, this is it. I'm changing everything. My life is just going to be so much better from now on. And then, you know, day five hits, day six, day seven, six, seven. And, uh, and that's where reality shows up.

• 2:02:26Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, exactly. Because cravings aren't just about nicotine, they're about habit, right? They hand them out action, a little pause during the day, the muscle memory, your brain expects. That's what can really mess you up. And that's where you start to fall back into these things that you're trying to break.

• 2:02:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, because when that loop gets interrupted, that's when it hits hard. So the question is, what do you replace it with? That's where Fume comes in. It's a flavored air device designed to help people quit vaping or smoking by breaking that hand-to-mouth pattern. But it's, it's not bad for you, right? So there's no nicotine, no batteries, no vapor. It's just a weighted, fidget-friendly device that gives your hands and mouth something else to do. And you love the fidget part. I know that you love that.

• 2:03:06Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, the fidget part alone is useful. I have mine right here. If you're watching on YouTube, it's a really cool design, real wood, real metal. I like the magnets. It also has the little, little twisty part. If you guys can hear a little ASMR for you guys today. But yes, I love it. It's always on my desk. If you're watching the videos closely, sometimes I try to keep it out of cam, but sometimes you can see me playing with it in my hand.

• 2:03:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  I've had moments now where I reach for my fume just to fidget, not even thinking about it. And that's the point. It's that little interruption that helps break the old pattern before it takes over. So instead of trying to just stop, you're kind of gradually replacing the habit. You're tricking yourself. So don't just try to quit. Upgrade the habit loop. Reach for fume instead. The flavors are intentionally lighter than vaping, more like flavored water compared to soda.

• 2:03:52Derrick Levasseur?

  Orange vanilla is my favorite. And fume has already helped over 700,000 people take steps toward better habits with fume. So when you grab your journey pack, you'll also get a free gift just for using our code. So if you want to check it out, head over to tryfum.com. That's T R Y F U M E dot com and use code CRIMEWEEKLY. That's CRIMEWEEKLY, all one word, to claim your free gift today.

• 2:04:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right. So we're back. By the time the GBI has their first interview with Jose Barrera on June 22, 2020, and he's asked about text messages from November of 2018, he says he probably doesn't have any because he now has a new phone. Okay, that's not suspicious, necessarily, on its own. So in 2018, when the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office was investigating Tamla's death, they did not search the phones of any of the partygoers. They did not interview any of Jean's neighbors. They did tell Tamla's family that they were going to check the camera of a neighbor, but then later they told the family that what they had thought was a camera was actually just a light. I don't know how you mess that up as a cop,

• 2:05:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  but they did, apparently, allegedly. So additionally, no sexual assault kit was done on Tamla at the time of her autopsy. No fingernail clippings were collected. GBI Public Affairs Director Nellie Miles said that it is standard policy to not test for illicit substances when the possible suspect is deceased, as there would be no one to be held accountable if they were to find drugs present, because they didn't test the tequila for any illicit substances, remember. So, Nellie Miles.

• 2:05:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  Public Affairs Director of the GBI is like, "Yeah, it's standard policy to not do that because the possible suspect is deceased, AKA Tamla, and so there would be no one to hold accountable." So I don't know if the GBI is saying that it wasn't possible for anybody to put anything in Tamla's tequila besides her.

• 2:05:49Derrick Levasseur?

  That's essentially what they're saying, yeah.

• 2:05:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, that doesn't make any sense.

• 2:05:52Derrick Levasseur?

  That's essentially what they're saying though, right? I mean, they're saying, "Hey, listen, if there was anything illicit found in her blood or found in her body, we're not, it would be because of her."

• 2:06:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:02Derrick Levasseur?

  That's essentially what they're saying, yeah.

• 2:06:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  Nellie Miles also said that it was routine to not take steps in the case to like get fingernail clippings or do a sexual assault kit because there were no indications of foul play. But once again, how, on the day the autopsy is happening, which is within days of Tamla being dead, if you haven't concluded an investigation, how do you know there's no signs of foul play?

• 2:06:25Derrick Levasseur?

  As far as I know to this day, they still can't tell us exactly what happened to Tamla. So how do you know that maybe by grabbing those clippings, by doing a sexual assault kit, maybe that would explain what happened to her?

• 2:06:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  Just to make, just to have it in case. If you wanted to go back later, yeah, if you found out something two weeks or three months later that was like, "Oh, that's weird, let's check the sexual assault kit, let's check the fingernail clippings."

• 2:06:46Derrick Levasseur?

  Listen, if you have a loose end in a case, like, "Oh, could this have been an argument that was, that turned violent and maybe there were some defensive wounds," right? Wouldn't you want to tie up that loose end by saying, "Yeah, you know there wasn't," and you want to know why I know there wasn't? Because we, we had clippings and we tested them and there was no DNA found on them. Okay, all right, I can get behind that. Okay, thank you. Moving on. But you didn't do that. So now that question is going to remain a question.

• 2:07:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  Let's shine the spotlight on Forsyth County Sheriff's Office Deputy Mike Christian, who as we know, was hugely involved in this investigation. We can hear his voice on every single one of these initial interviews. Well, we are learning tonight of Forsyth County Deputy stepping down. According to the sheriff's office, an investigation revealed that he violated several rules while on the job. That report, which was sent to 11 Alive, shows that Deputy Michael Christian had inappropriate contact with two

• 2:07:38Speaker 03

  Women while working, they say he neglected his job, left unauthorized people in official cars and gave out confidential information. Christian resigned before the investigation was complete. Forsyth County Sheriff Ron Freeman says there is no room for this type of conduct and the citizens of Forsyth County deserve better.

• 2:07:58Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, Mike Christian, he's got some ladies in his cruiser trying to act like a cool guy.

• 2:08:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right, so you might be like, well, what does this have to do with Tom La? He's just a man.

• 2:08:06Derrick Levasseur?

  Has everything to do with it.

• 2:08:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  He made mis- well, it does actually.

• 2:08:09Derrick Levasseur?

  It does because it just shows the type of person you're dealing with and what they're willing to do. It's character.

• 2:08:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  So what exactly did Mike Christian do? Well, one woman said she met Mike Christian after he was assigned to investigate a crime committed against her, and she told WSB TV Channel 2, quote, "The bottom line is, I called 911 and the county sent a sociopath into my life," end quote. She said the relationship went from professional to friendly and then became intimate, and she would often meet with Mike Christian while he was on duty. He would also call and text her for hours while on duty, sending her unsolicited crime scene photographs, personal information about victims, and other sensitive information. This woman said she was actually on the phone with Mike Christian when he got dispatched to John Meyer's house on November 4th, 2018. She said he was sending her pictures of Tom La's dead body.

• 2:08:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  A second woman also came forward and said she was having a relationship with Mike Christian at the same time, and he was sending her pictures of the crime scene as well. Quote, "I know where she died, how she died, the toxicology reports, so he was just throwing this information out there like it was nothing," end quote. So three screenshots of Snapchat messages that Mike Christian sent to these women were obtained by the GBI. So in this one, we're putting up on screen, it was sent the morning of November 4th. And Mike Christian appears to be making a joke about how he is going to notify Tom La's husband about her death. Quote, "Hello, sir, I know we've never met, but I'm here to tell you that your wife and

• 2:09:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  the mother of your six children is dead. Oh, yes, I'm happy to report that she was really, really drunk, banded face down in the backyard, and either through hypothermia or potential asphyxia, or aspirated on her own puke, not sure which one. I know you have fond memories, enjoy corralling those six boys who are now going ape [BLEEP]," end quote.

• 2:09:59Derrick Levasseur?

  Not much to say here, right? It's despicable, deplorable, unethical. Bottom line, he's an asshole. And just from a professional standpoint, he's disseminating information to an independent party who has nothing to do with the case. And if you want to take it a step further, he's coming to a conclusion about this case before he's had the chance to investigate it. So I have no kind words to say about Michael Christian.

• 2:10:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  And he doesn't seem to be very empathetic about what happened to Tom La, right?

• 2:10:28Derrick Levasseur?

  He's an asshole.

• 2:10:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, she landed down, faced on the backyard, maybe asphyxiated on her own puke, not sure which one. You're not even looking at this as something like, hey, this doesn't seem right.

• 2:10:37Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, it aligns with everything we've talked about, not only in episode one, but also here tonight, which is that they came to a conclusion before doing the investigation. The minute they showed up, based on the people that were there and how Tom La was found, they concluded that she did this to herself. And so how do you have an independent investigation when the investigators in their minds have already figured out what happened?

• 2:11:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't even know how you can do any kind of thorough or detailed investigation when you're so concerned with snapping pictures on Snapchat of a woman's dead body to send to your girlfriend and chatting with her about it, right?

• 2:11:14Derrick Levasseur?

  No, it's a scumbag move. It's an absolute scumbag move. And you have to wonder about how many other cases he did this on.

• 2:11:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  Apparently a lot, by the way. Apparently a lot.

• 2:11:21Derrick Levasseur?

  It does answer my question. When I was asking you earlier rhetorically saying, you know, why wasn't a biomechanical engineer brought in? Well, now we know. Because when he got there, he had already decided that she fell over the railing and that this was her doing. And so he didn't feel the need to have an independent party and expert who actually knows what they're talking about, come in and tell you what could have occurred.

• 2:11:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  But there's more than just Mike Christian showing up to the scene that day.

• 2:11:43Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, but he's one of the lead investigators, right? I mean, he's one of the ones that's got his fingerprints all over it.

• 2:11:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  But there's Detective Sexton, there's Andy Kalin, all these people are showing up a lot, right?

• 2:11:51Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm sure his feelings were probably mutual amongst amongst everybody there.

• 2:11:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  So on November 19th, Mike Christian wrote to his girlfriend, quote, greetings from racist cracker bastard murder covering up land. How are you? It's a nice rainy day, good for digging shallow graves by the roadside, end quote. Now, if you see in this screenshot, the word graves is capitalized. And it's believed that it's spelled with capital G because it's a reference to Michelle Graves, who if you remember, had a meeting with the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office that same day and basically said something suspicious was going on with Tamla's case. And then all of a sudden, Mike Christian helps these five partygoers file false reports against Michelle Graves, trying to scare her and shut her up. So the GBI actually talked to one of these women, Mike Christian's girlfriends, one of them.

• 2:12:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  And she said Christian was obsessed with this case. She said he talked about it all the time. He called Tamla porch lady and much more. Now, they have a filmed interview with this woman. Her face is blurred. The audio is once again terrible. I can't even use it. However, I can tell you what this woman told the GBI. So this was the woman who was on the phone with Mike Christian when he got the call about Tamla Horsford. She said he told her there was a black dead lady in someone's yard. He then got off the phone with her and then started Snapchatting her. She said he would do this with every call. He had been doing it for years. He snapped a picture of Tamla's body and she said, quote, "The story was that she fell off the porch, but he didn't think that ever," end quote.

• 2:13:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  Mike Christian told this woman that Tamla's wrist was broken and he was trying to figure out why her body had been moved. Quote, "He was telling me that something didn't look right to him because he could tell her body had been moved and he said there's no way she fell off the porch. If she was that drunk, she wouldn't have braced herself." And he said that he didn't think the wrist injury matched her falling off the porch, end quote. This woman said that over the years, Mike Christian was obsessed with the case. He talked about it every day. End quote, "He said it ruined his life and his career," end quote. She said Mike Christian started having panic attacks. He had to go back on his blood pressure medication because the case was stressing him out so much. The woman said that Mike Christian told her that at some point,

• 2:14:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  he found out there had been calls made between Jose and Andy Kalin before the 911 call. And after the police left that day, November 4th, there were more calls made. Quote, "So then Mike started freaking out and at the very end, like before we stopped talking, he told me that he was convinced that he didn't think she was murdered." He said that something else happened to her. He thinks her death is accidental, but where he was getting frustrated was he said that he was convinced that maybe the people at the party panicked and talked to Andy Kalin and got a story together, moved her body, and then came up with this whole porch thing. At the end, Mike was pretty convinced. Now, at the beginning of the investigation, he was just like, I don't know what's going on. You know, like, I don't know.

• 2:14:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't think it's the porch. I don't know what's happening. But then I guess as he got more information, but I don't know. At the end, he started having panic attacks and he was like, I'm gonna go down, you know? If there really was a cover up that I wasn't privy to, that means my own officers set the scene up, knowing I was coming to investigate it, but not knowing that I was investigating something that was like laid out for me to investigate. End quote.

• 2:15:09Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, there you go. Right from the horse's mouth, right? Self-explanatory.

• 2:15:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  Right from the girlfriend of the horse's mouth.

• 2:15:14Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, that's fair. But what would be her incentive to lie?

• 2:15:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  To the GBI of all things, yeah.

• 2:15:19Derrick Levasseur?

  What would be the point of making all this up? I mean, listen, we have to acknowledge that it's possible, right? That some people have access to grind and they could go out there and say all this. But when you consider how this investigation was conducted, it's pretty spot on to what a lot of people think.

• 2:15:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, and I mean, I can see her, because she did talk to journalists and obviously she talked to the Forsyth County's sheriff's office. She was one of the people that filed her report.

• 2:15:41Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, she didn't think too kindly of Mike Christian.

• 2:15:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  I could see her, you know, maybe elaborating or exaggerating, but when the GBI comes, she got on camera. There's a, there's a recorded interview of her and she's saying all this. I'm quoting directly from that recorded interview.

• 2:15:55Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, damning, for sure.

• 2:15:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, it's pretty bad. Now, according to this woman, Mike Christian was panicking and scared that he was going to get in trouble, that even though he had not done anything wrong, he was going to go down for people who had done something wrong. And this woman goes on to say that Tom's family believes that Mike Christian was kicked out of the CID because of her case, but it wasn't that. It was because Mike was going for a promotion to sergeant and Tyler Sexton got that promotion and Mike called Tyler a preppy bastard to his face. And then, remember last episode, we talked about that other police officer? I think his name was Greg Cannon, who got fired. For drinking on the job and Mike Christian was removed from the Tom La Horsford case halfway

• 2:16:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  through because it it it came out that he had covered up for Greg. So Greg gets fired for drinking on the job, then someone lets it slip that Mike Christian had known Greg was drinking on the job the whole time. And this is when he's removed from the CID, which stands for Criminal Investigation Division. And then this is why Mike Christian is taken off Tom La Horsford's case and he doesn't stay on it the entire time. And this woman also said that Mike Christian called her freaking out about Tam's friend, Michelle Graves, all the time and basically being like, why is this woman like digging so deep? Why is she, you know, keep bothering us? What does she want here? Basically, he was feeling threatened

• 2:17:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  by her, which makes sense, I guess, why he then helped these five people who he was supposed to be investigating file police reports against her to try to shut her up and scare her.

• 2:17:32Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep, absolutely. All makes sense now.

• 2:17:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, Mike Christian, of course, responded to all of this. The thing to understand is he's caught doing all of these things. And instead of allowing an investigation to happen, he resigned from the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office. Kind of seems like he was running away from it, right?

• 2:17:48Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, good for you, Mike.

• 2:17:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  So after he resigned and everything came out, he put out a public statement, quote, "I am far from a perfect human. I chose to end a long term extramarital relationship abruptly. This person, out of anger and hurt, chose to go to Sheriff Freeman with a list of alleged misconduct on my part. In 2020 hindsight, I would not have resigned, but stayed for the investigation and taken what punishment was fitting up to termination. As is, the IA investigation lacks my side of the story and makes me out to be something I am not. All the good I have done in 16 years of law enforcement is gone with this document." End quote. Now, of course, he's saying this before the GBI does their investigation into Tom La Horsford's case and produces these Snapchat screenshots, which clearly show that

• 2:18:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  you're it's not alleged misconduct. This was actual misconduct, my friend. So as to this woman's claims of what he told her about the Tom La Horsford case, Mike Christian had this to say to the GBI.

• 2:18:46Speaker 07

  Is there any reason that Mandy would have told me that you felt like Jose may have called Andy? Like that it was still an accident, but that they panicked and Jose called Andy and Andy kind of helped him come up with a story on what to do and then?

• 2:19:00Speaker 03

  That is.

• 2:19:02Speaker 05

  So far out of left field, I, I, no.

• 2:19:05Speaker 07

  Okay, so you never had any concerns that anybody ever messed with this scene prior to your arrival? Or that you were gonna be caught up in getting arrested and something that happened that you knew nothing about? As far as the scene being messed with?

• 2:19:20Speaker 05

  I don't know, uh.

• 2:19:21Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 2:19:23Speaker 05

  I, I'll go even further with that. I have no doubt that she landed exactly where we found her. And I think we've gone over this several times, but basically those two injuries on her shin corresponded with that piece of landscaping, whatever, and, and the dent, I have no,

• 2:19:51Speaker 05

  there's not doubt in my mind that she fell from that deck and landed where we found her.

• 2:19:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  He has such a stupid face, I want to punch it.

• 2:19:58Derrick Levasseur?

  Um, you know, listen, I'm no Brad Pitt, so I'm not going to say anything, but.

• 2:20:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  No, it's not even, it's just the way he's like, like, no, absolutely, like, come on, dude. And he keeps talking, the, the, the injuries on her shins correspond, wasn't it you, Mike Christian? Who initially said she had fallen and tripped over the landscape? And that's how she got the, the injuries on her shins? And now you're like, no, the injuries on her shins show exactly that she fell off the deck, I have no doubt. Come on.

• 2:20:26Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, bottom line, nobody there knew what happened. And yet they were treating it as if there's no doubt this was an accident.

• 2:20:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  So this woman who we have been able to prove, Mike Christian sent her all sorts of things, including basically making fun of notifying Tom La's husband about her death. And being like, have fun corralling those, those five boys now. And, and he told her allegedly, according to this woman, that he always felt there was something wrong. And maybe there had been a police cover up and he was afraid and he was stressed out. But now he's saying, absolutely not, I never said that. Do you think it's just because he genuinely does feel like something happened? But at this point, he doesn't want to publicly say that on the record? Because well, then maybe these other police officers would come after him? Maybe he'd have no shot of ever working in law enforcement again?

• 2:21:16Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, it's absolutely, absolutely possible. You know, we don't know. I mean, I, I can sit here and tell you. Sure. Yeah, that's, that's, that's what happened here, but I don't know. I don't know what was going on behind closed doors. I don't know. Uh, what this woman, uh, what her agenda was, if it was just to tell the truth and get it out there, or if she had an ax to grind. I don't know, but. Everything you've talked about over these last two episodes, now we're like six hours in. My opinion is that there absolutely was something going on here where at minimum. They had come to a conclusion the minute they arrived, maybe even before they arrived. That's something that I don't think is up for much debate at this point. Whether everything that that woman said was true.

• 2:21:58Derrick Levasseur?

  There's no doubt in my mind that him saying, oh yeah, congrats. You gotta go tell your five kids, six kids, whatever that they, their mother's gone because you were drunk and you, you know. You aspirated on your own vomit, all these things, right? That to me is too much detail to be just something she made up and.

• 2:22:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, she didn't make that up. The GBI was able to verify that those, those screenshots were true. So.

• 2:22:19Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, that, that to me right there is, is there's obviously truth in that. GBI was able to confirm it. And so now we know that. Everybody involved in this case, or at least the most, most of them, the people who are calling the shots. From day one. Believe this was an accident. Now, was there a cover up? For me personally, I haven't seen any evidence of that yet. Was there assistance? By law enforcement, potentially, especially when you consider Andy Kalin and the phone calls that happened. I need, I need more to go there, but. To me, I don't need anything else to come to the conclusion that. A decision about this case was made before they ever investigated the crime.

• 2:23:01Derrick Levasseur?

  And that, that's obviously one of the number one cardinal rules when. Investigating a crime of this nature.

• 2:23:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  So the allegation was that there had been calls between Andy Keanlin and Jose before Jose and Jean.

• 2:23:14Derrick Levasseur?

  Call 911, yeah.

• 2:23:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, of course, the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office isn't going to investigate that. They didn't take anybody's phone. By the time the GBI tries to investigate that. As you heard Andy say, oh, well, I, I purge things all the time and Jose, of course, has a completely different phone. And, you know, they'd have to go through cell phone carriers at this point and you know how difficult that is.

• 2:23:36Derrick Levasseur?

  But it can be done, by the way, at the time, if it had been done correctly, it could have been.

• 2:23:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  A year and a half later, though.

• 2:23:41Derrick Levasseur?

  GBI couldn't, maybe, no, more than likely not at that point, no.

• 2:23:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  So at that point now, they, GBI goes to Jose and they're like, will you take a lie detector test? He's like, yes. They go back to him, I think a few weeks later, and they're like, okay, so you said you were gonna take a lie detector test? He's like, no, I'm not gonna do that anymore. So, and, and, you know, and they're like, hey, can I take, can we take your phone and extract it? He's like, sure, but of course, it wasn't the phone that he had at the time, Tom had died, so it doesn't matter. So there's no way to prove whether those calls, those alleged calls between Andy and Jose before the 911 call ever happened. And obviously, Jose and Andy aren't going to admit to that or fess up to that, but that would suggest a cover up, right?

• 2:24:26Derrick Levasseur?

  A cover up on behalf of the people who were at the party?

• 2:24:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  If Jose called Andy Kalin before he called 911.

• 2:24:33Derrick Levasseur?

  Would you that suggest a cover up?

• 2:24:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  That would suggest there's something, that would suggest there's something, why would you call your buddy Andy?

• 2:24:38Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm gonna look like a defender of law enforcement here, but that call could have been, hey, Andy, I know, I know ya, we found this woman outside, what should we do? And Andy says you need to call law enforcement. I, I wouldn't go as far as what you're saying, as far as, oh, he made that call to someone he knew in law enforcement, therefore, it's a cover up.

• 2:24:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, but the allegation is that Mike Christian told his girlfriend that he found out these calls had happened, and that Andy had helped them cover it up.

• 2:25:02Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh yeah, that's his, that's his opinion, yeah. I haven't seen any evidence of that yet, from what you've conveyed to me. Um, that's a big, it's a big allegation to make, and I would need more than incompetence. And there's definitely incompetence here, on behalf of everybody involved. And also, I would go as far as saying a bias, an assumption made that this was an accident based on previous relationships. But to go to the extreme of, this was a collaborative effort, a cover up between all these people at the party and the law enforcement agency, Forsyth Police Department, I'm not ruling it out, but I haven't seen that yet. I will say the call, uh, and the fact that he wasn't willing to take a lie detector test is highly suspicious.

• 2:25:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  So just to, to kind of clarify, Mike Christian is saying, I don't think this was a murder, I think it was an accident, she died, and then they called Andy Kalin and they were like, panicking, what do we do? And Andy gave them instruction of, of kind of like, how to go about this, maybe what to say when they called 911, et cetera, et cetera. So that's not necessarily, I guess, we're covering up a murder, but...

• 2:26:05Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, some advice by a law enforcement officer. To try to make this go as smooth as possible, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. That's, it's definitely at play here. There's no doubt about it. I guess my, as, as a GBI investigator, if I was working this, I would want to know what time that call took place. For example, we have already determined, based on the body, that her death was approximately that timeframe in which she kind of went off the radar. Maybe 1:30, 2 o'clock in the morning, based on how, the stage that she was in, rigor, all of these things. So we know she didn't die at 8 o'clock in the morning, right? So what I would want to know is when that call took place. Now, it still doesn't mean that they didn't wait a few hours before calling Andy,

• 2:26:47Derrick Levasseur?

  but it would give us some, some insight into when they discovered Tamla, right? Like if they called Andy at 8:30 a.m.

• 2:26:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  So like if they were present when it happened? If it was, if it, if the call took place to Andy at 1:50 a.m. or 2:30 a.m.?

• 2:27:02Derrick Levasseur?

  There you go. Now, now we are, we're talking a different ballgame, right? We're talking a completely different thing. And that's, and then they don't make the call to law enforcement until 8:30 in the morning. Well, what were you doing in that four hour window? But yeah, this is a horrible case, and I understand now. I get it. I get why people are so passionate about this case and are so frustrated and so angry by this case. Because clearly, without doing anything else regarding what transpired, not talking about any other part of this, Tamla did not get the justice she deserved. And I understand why Lee and the rest of her family is so upset about this. Because maybe if a thorough investigation had been conducted by independent parties who are impartial to what had transpired here and didn't have pre-existing relationships

• 2:27:46Derrick Levasseur?

  and weren't on phone calls with potential persons of interest or suspects prior to calling dispatch, maybe Lee would have accepted the results of the investigation and said, you know what? It was done by the book. They crossed every T. They dotted every I. I don't like it, but it's a tragic accident. But when you have all of these things in totality, in conjunction with the behaviors of the people at the party, yeah, I'd be skeptical of the investigation as well and what actually took place that night.

• 2:28:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  I agree. So next week, we'll continue on with this case and uncover more, but- As of now, I can't wait to hear everybody's comments about part two. I look forward to reading them on YouTube and discussing the case with you. But do you have anything else to say before we sign off?

• 2:28:27Derrick Levasseur?

  I would just change it up, make it a little bit lighter. Congrats to the Crime Con giveaway winner. Congrats to our Patreon winner. And also, I think we're able to say this, but we won't give any details, but if you're coming to Crime Con, Stephanie and I were talking about it before we started recording. This is a first for us. We are going to be officiating a wedding. Like, actually, we are now ordained ministers.

• 2:28:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  Someone in our Crime Weekly family is getting married at Crime Con in Vegas, and Derek and I are

• 2:28:57Derrick Levasseur?

  Officiating the wedding.

• 2:28:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  We're marrying them.

• 2:28:59Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes. And this person came up to me, and I'm not saying her name because I don't know if she wants it out there yet. I have a feeling anybody who's there from the Crime Weekly fam is going to be invited to come. That would be my guess. But we'll let, we'll let them decide. But she came up to me while I was in line at the lobby at Crime Con Denver. And we were talking and she said, hey, what if we got married next year? Would you do it? And I was like, sure. Not thinking she was going to follow through on it.

• 2:29:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  And then he brought her over to me and he was like, we're marrying them next year.

• 2:29:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. And I just, I put it on my Instagram story. I just got my official certificate and let's just say, I'm not going to spoil it here, but your boy's going all out as far as the attire. That's all I'm going to say. But that is, that is my

• 2:29:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  We'll post pictures.

• 2:29:46Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, we'll have pictures and video for sure, or anybody who can't make it. But if you can, and you want to be part of the first Crime Weekly wedding in Vegas, book your tickets. But yes, tragic case. Glad we're covering it. Completely understand why we're covering it. It needs to be covered. It's unfortunate that so much time has passed because a lot of the things that you'd like to do in this investigation, you can no longer do. But

• 2:30:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, not a lot of time has passed, if you think about it. It happened in 2018.

• 2:30:14Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm speaking relatively from the perspective of

• 2:30:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Of GBI?

• 2:30:17Derrick Levasseur?

  From, from going back and retrieving data, like Arlo cameras and cell phone data and text messages between parties, GPS coordinates, whatever you could do. Also bringing in a biomechanical engineer, recreating the scene, although you could still do that, by the way. You could still have someone at that property if it's still erect and I'm assuming it is and you could run through different scenarios with especially with AI and the technology that we have today to see based on her injuries what scenarios are actually possible, right?

• 2:30:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, they did, they did another autopsy. We're going to talk about it.

• 2:30:52Derrick Levasseur?

  We'll talk about it. Looking forward to it. Until then, everyone stay safe out there. We'll see you next week.

• 2:30:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  Bye.