Part One | Welfare Check: The Murder of Tiara Burch

Part One of Two Part Series
In January 2022, a welfare check at a quiet apartment on 11th Street NW in Canton, Ohio, uncovered a brutal scene. 26-year-old Tiara Janae Burch was found unresponsive on the floor of her home. She had been stabbed multiple times. What began as a routine call quickly became a homicide investigation that would expose a calculated break-in, robbery, and killing.

Timestamps
08:04 A Father’s Concern
14:07 Police Enter The Scene
18:34 Horror Behind The Door
32:12 Vincent’s Jail Alibi
48:40 A Setup 
57:49 Tracking The Killer

#unspeakable #podcast #crime #truecrime #TiaraBurch

Speaker 1: Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast. Or I tell

stories of real crimes with real victims whose cases are

so shocking that many are left wondering how is this

even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections,

and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator,

dig deep into complex cases of evil acts, some so

evil many feel they are unspeakable. Warning. Unspeakable as intended

for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm

not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey y'all, kJ

you're back with another episode of Unspeakable. How's it going?

I have got to do a shout out today. I

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So first of all, you have an awesome dad who

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All right, So let's jump into this episode, and this

is going to take us to Ohio and this is

going to be back in twenty twenty two, specifically the

Canton area, and we were twenty six year old. Tiera

Birch was a college student at Stark State College. Now

that is a community college, and it would prove to

be a perfect fit for Tierra because not only was

the school affordable, but it was one that was very

focused on industry based careers. That meant that there wasn't

as much theory and ideology and all of that that

you get on on big campuses for your universities. This

is more about skills and work based learning, and it

was heavily encouraged that this is a hands on type

of school where you get your education. One of the

things I love about schools like this is that the

faculty usually has industry based experience, which makes for much

more effective, in my opinion, effective teaching if you've actually

done it. But also you get these smaller classes the

teachers have done what they are teaching you to do.

And Tiera's focus was education. Y'all know that that's a

girl after my own heart. She dreamed of having her

own class and inspiring young minds to think, to not

just repeat what they see and what they hear, but

to think and to learn. She loved helping people. She

was an incredibly social person, so this was just a

natural fit for her. Her academics had been going really well.

She in high school had maintained a be average throughout

high school, and she was continuing to make her parents proud.

She already had a track record of success and this

dated back also to high school where she was an

avid swimmer and she was on the varsity team for

three years. And during the swim meets, if you went

and you were watching everyone knew that when it came

to the freestyle stroke, look out because Tiera was coming

in hot. The girl could swim. She had grit and

she had tenacity that pushed her like a machine. When

she was in the water and she was swimming, she

gave it everything that she had. But those days of competition,

those were now over and she was more profession focused

while focusing on school and becoming that professional that she

wanted to be. She also had met a guy that

caught her eye and his name was Vincent Ryan. And

while the physical attraction was absolutely there, there were things

that an outsider looking in might look at and say, well,

that might be a little bit less than desirable for

a girl like Tierra. So the relationship was rather new still,

they hadn't been dating very long, and because of this,

Tierra was really willing to overlook some of those flaws

for right now because she was just so smitten. And

don't we all do that. I'm not hating on that

we overlooked the obvious. When something is brand new and

someone is still intriguing and new and you're getting to

know them, you're willing to let it slide. She was

no different. She wanted to focus on his positive qualities

and for right now, he hung the moon. So it

was January twenty ninth when around six thirty in the morning,

Tiara texted her daddy to say, Daddy, I have COVID.

I'm not feeling good and I'm going to be at

home for the day. And being an absolute daddy's girl,

she wanted him to know, and he immediately was going

to do what all good daddies do. He told her,

baby girl, honker down, get you some rest. I know

you probably don't feel good, and as soon as I can,

I'll be there. He said, I'm going to bring you

some medicine and hopefully you can start feeling better pretty soon.

Now this alone was enough to settle her heart, because

Daddy always knew what to say. Any chance that she

could get to be around her. Daddy's name was mister Clarence.

Any chance that she could get to be around him

was one that she was gonna take. And even though

it was snowing outside and it was freezing, Daddy would

do anything for his baby girl, COVID or not, and

he would be on his way. He was her safety net.

He brought her comfort and all the things that a

girl needs, no matter how much she asked for, and

no matter how old she got, she knew that her

daddy would be there for her. And what a wonderful

thing to know in life that you have a man

that has your back no matter what. So he pulled

up to the house that that evening when he got

off of work, and his boots crunched through the snow

and he was hurrying up to her door, where he

finally got underneath the overhang and he was able to

stomp off his boots and get the snow off of them.

And she lived in this apartment complex. Hers was on

the on the floor level and she was just inside

the walkway. It wasn't very far of a walk for

him to get to her front door. So he got there.

He had knocked off his boots. He was nice and clean,

and that's whenever mister Clarence knocked on the door, boom boom, boom,

and he stepped back waiting for her to unlock it.

But Tierra didn't come to the door. So he was like, hmm,

she must be sleeping pretty hard. Remember COVID made you

sleep and you were so tired, And so he's like, Tierra.

You know, he's knocking on the door, and he kept knocking,

but without a key of his own, he wasn't going

to be going to be able to just go inside.

She would have to come answer the door. But again

she never came. He's like, what is that girl doing?

Maybe maybe she's in the shower, because if the shower

was running, she might not be able to hear him

over the water. So he kept knocking, kept knocking, and

then he's like, well, let me call her phone, maybe

she'll answer her phone. Dials her phone and it never

no one ever picked up. Matter of fact, when he

kept calling, the phone connected, but it would go straight

to voicemail. So he tried calling her over and over

and over again. He kept pounding on the door, pounding

a little harder, now you know, where are you? Girl

answered the door, but there was no answer, and he

started to get nervous. So because of this, he made

a phone call to a buddy hit Is to see

if maybe he had spoken or heard from Tierra, but

that also was a no. This was now getting Daddy

pretty pretty dang nervous, and the friend decided that he

would show up at the apartment to lend a hand

and a shoulder of support while they tried to figure

out what exactly was going on with his baby girl.

Tiera's brother, Tyresee, he also lived very close nearby. He

was beyond worried about his sister when he got the

phone call to see if he had possibly been in

touch with her, and so he showed up at the

apartment too, just full of worry, wondering what was going

on and hoping that his sister was okay. And we

need to think back. I know it hasn't been that long,

but we got to think back to COVID and how

it affected everybody differently. You never knew what you were

going to get when people caught the virus. Some people

just got a headache, some people couldn't taste anything. But

some people lost their lives. I mean I personally know

people that lost their lives because of this. And so

the unknown during that time was stressed well for everybody

that was involved. So nobody had spoken to her, nobody

could get in touch with her, And so they went

and they spoke to a couple of the neighbors and said, hey,

have you seen her, has Tierra come outside? Have you

spoken to her? Anything? But the neighbors had not seen her.

They hadn't seen her go anywhere either, come and go

as far as anyone knew. So that's whenever mister Clarence

made a call to Tiera's mama, and mama's name was

miss Yolanda, so she was at work whenever she received

this call, and when she picked it up, mister Clarence said, hey,

have you spoken to Tiera? And miss Yolanda said no,

we talked on Sunday, but not today. Why what's going on? Well,

let me insert something here for you real quick. For

mister Clarence to call Miss Yolanda in and of itself

wasn't very common because they did not have a good relationship.

They weren't married or anything like that, so they had

been excess a very long time. Mister Clarence was remarried

and so they really didn't speak anymore, especially now that

their kids were grown. It just was a different phase

of life. So the fact that he took it upon

himself to even call her was a bit alarming. When

the phone rang so instantly, she knew something was wrong

because Tiara would always call back. She would always call

back if she missed a call and the time that

it had been now, between calls and knocking on the

door and her brother trying her, this was not good

and she just knew in her gut something's amiss. So

she said, look, you know, maybe we need to call

nine one one. I think that's what we need to do.

Because she and mister Clarence talked and she found out

that Tiara's car was unlocked. It was still there, it

was parked right by the apartment, but it was unlocked.

And another thing that mom and dad knew was that

she never left her car unlocked. Never, even whenever she

would go over to her grandparents' house, their driveway was

right up to their door. Okay, I mean her car

she didn't have to park far off. But even when

she parked right in front of her grandparents else she

locked the door. They knew something here was not right,

so she said, call the police, Clarence, and he did

just that. He called the police and he said, I'm

calling for a welfare check. I can't get my daughter

to answer the door. I've been calling and I'm trying

to see if someone can help make entry into her apartment.

And his exact words were, I'm afraid that something is

really wrong here. This is not normal. So they said, yes, sir,

let's get the address, and they had officers respond right then.

So when the officers got there, they got out of

their unit and they greeted all of the men now

that were standing around mister Clarence Tyrese and the friend

that had shown up, and the men explained again real

quick what was going on, and Tyresee added, look, we

keep calling the phone. I've called the phone, but it's

going straight to voicemail at this point it's not ringing anymore,

and that this isn't normal for her. We're just concerned.

So they make it to the door and the police

start banging on the door, but they ounce who they are,

you know, Tierrace. The police answer answer, and they're knocking

pretty hard, but it was silent. No sound was coming

from the apartment, no response, no hang on, just dead silent.

So considering that it was very quiet, all they could

assume was that something else must be amiss here, right,

it can't be good. And so the door was this large,

solid brown one, but there was no window or anything

like that that they could peek into through the door,

so all they could do was bang on it. Well,

the issue at this point became making entry because not

answering the door. First of all, that's not illegal. She's

an adult, she doesn't have to answer her door. But secondly,

the police didn't have anything that was evident in that

moment to tell them that there was an issue. They

didn't see any forced entry or any blood or anything

like that that would give them the authority to break

down the door. It just was simply locked and she

was an answering So, following procedure and protocol here, they

would have to get a hold of the landlord to

gain access to the apartment, which would take a little

bit of time, but they were able to make contact

with him and he was en route. So although they

were all pretty nervous, the men just kind of stood

around and they all remained very cordial with one another,

just kind of making small talk and discussing the situation

and just kind of talking to bide some time. The

officers asked, well, does she have a boyfriend or anything

like that, and mister Clarence said, yes, she does have

a boyfriend. It's a newer one, but she does have

a boyfriend. And so the officer says, okay, well, is

there any history of violence or anything between them, any

domestic history, And that's when mister Clarence looked up and

he said, well, actually yes there is, so we all

right now in our gut go uh oh, that's not good.

But then he followed up and clarified but it hadn't

been between him and Tiera. This had been with another

woman before this. It was a different relationship. They didn't

have anything between the two of them, So, okay, that's

a good news. Well, about that time, the landlord showed

up with the key, but the issue now was that

he couldn't unlock the apartment before he gained permission from

the emergency contact that was on file for Tierra, and

that emergency contact happened to be her mother, miss Yolanda.

So now the apartment manager had to call miss Yolanda

back and say, hey, can we have permission to go

into the apartment, and she's like yes. Of course, this

alarmed her even more. Now she's getting another phone call,

but she says, yes, absolutely, please go in, and I'm

on my way. I'm at work, I got to finish up,

but I am coming. So starting to feel a little

worrisome about what he might be walking into the landlord

decided to give the key to the officers because they

had permission now, and he's like, maybe y'all should go

ahead and make entry first, and that made a lot

of sense to him, for safety reasons or because of

what might be found inside. I have to say, I

think it was actually a pretty good good call there

to let the police officers with the weapons be the

ones to go in first. So body cam was rolling

and captured this as the events unfolded, I'm going to.

Speaker 2: Give you the key. Almost feels like something's plotting, Tara.

It's the police.

Speaker 1: So, as you heard, they were able to unlock the door,

but something was blocking it from opening. Officers knocked and

they announced their presence and they're they're pushing, but they

weren't necessarily able to get through the door with something

pressing back. So the question was like, did has she

barricaded herself for some reason? Had someone possibly been after

her before we got here, and so she was trying

to block the door or something like that, or maybe

was it possible that someone was inside and they weren't

making any sound and they weren't letting her answer, or

even worse, even worse. Maybe COVID had hit her incredibly

hard and she was just too sick to get the

door open, and maybe was on the ground or something.

So obviously this was odd. And because of that, they've

tried the key, they're trying to push, they can't get

the door open. That gave them enough probable cause that

they were willing to use force to make entry into

the apartment. So as they pushed their way in and

they make their way inside, they were very cautious, and

they remained vigilant scanning the area, and they're calling out

trying to make their way through. But when they make

entry back into her bedroom, they were relaxed, but kind

of nervous, you know, as they were doing this. But

that feeling once they went into the bedroom quickly turned

very sharp, and their commands were very direct. As officers

backed immediately out of her bedroom. Tiera's father and brother

and that other friend were just steps behind them. Whenever

the officer stopped and turned and they tell him, get back,

get back, You do not want to come in here.

Do not come in here. You don't need to see

what's in here. And the sternness in this voice of

the officer told Tiara's daddy everything. He did not want

to know. He's like, no, why, why, oh my god, man,

why what is it? What is it? And without answering

him directly, in that same moment, the officer keyed up

on his radio and he started talking, come in here.

Speaker 2: To give a female down in a bedroom. Oh, no,

believe this may be a homicide.

Speaker 1: The pain in the voices of the men of Tierra's

family could be felt through their words, Oh my god, no, right,

oh my god, Oh my god. But the person in

the room that the police had seen on the ground,

the identity had not yet been confirmed. They had to

do that, okay, so they back out of the apartment.

Of course, the family is beyond upset at this, but

an investigation would have to be completed before they knew

exactly who it was on the floor in the apartment,

although your gut tells you who it probably is in

the room. So this was now going to be an

active crime scene. And everyone was forced to exit the

apartment immediately. And there are so many questions, what happened, sir?

What did you see? Please? Man, tell me something, tell

me something, What is it? What is it? Tell me

what you are seeing? But the officer would have to

wait for a detective to take over the scene and

release information as scene fit. And while that is not fun,

and that is terrible for the people that are standing around,

heartbroking and totally in the dark as to what is

going on, it's just the way that it had to be.

So for now, all the men could do was wallow

outside in the snow and their angst and in their grief,

believing that someone inside the apartment was dead, but they

weren't sure who at this exact moment, but it was

very much looking like it was their Tierra. But who

would want to hurt her? The brain goes there, Who

would want to hurt her? Tiera was so friendly, She

was outgoing, She made friends easily. She had even joined

her father's motorcycle club. They were called the Brothers of

the Hammer, just as she could spend more time with

her daddy. That's the kind of girl she was. They

were known for their red and black colors that they wore,

and their leather and the club. They liked to ride

and they like to enjoy each other's company. I know

I've done episodes before where motorcycle clubs are involved in

it It's about camaraderie. It's about i'll say family, but

you know, friendship and having people to connect with. Tierra

wasn't out running the road ode. She wasn't someone who

associated with dangerous people or anything like that, y'all. She

was average. She did the right things. I mean, hell,

the motorcycle club, the members of the club had even

given her a nickname. And that nickname that they gave

her sugar loaf. Does sugar Loaf look or sound like

the name of somebody who's out being edgy or doing

crazy things that would ever lead you to believe she

might be dead inside of her apartment? The answers no

why they gave her the name sugar Loaf. I don't know.

As the saying goes, club business is club business, okay.

But I choose to believe sugar Loaf was indicative of

who she was. She was just a big ball of sweetness,

a kind person. It's just who she was. She was forgiving,

she was caring. Everybody knew this. This wasn't up for

discussion or debate. Everybody knew this. She wasn't one to

hold a grudge or to stir up nose nonsense bickering

with anyone, So this tragedy unfolding caught her family and

everybody in the wake of this completely off guard. It

was not expected in any way, shape or form. So

the scene was cordoned off and detectives got to work

trying to determine what had happened so that they could

hopefully then find out why it happened and possibly who

did this. The apartment, going inside and looking around did

have things that were missing, so it was possible that

this was a burglary gone wrong. But the murder weapon

of choice in this case was a knife and stabbing

someone the way that this woman had been stabbed and attacked,

and this apartment sure did give the feeling of being

very personal, extremely personal for you to come up on

someone and stab them like this person had been stabbed.

Her dad had mentioned, as you already heard, that she

had a boyfriend, but something that police couldn't help but

notice was that he was clearly not around right now,

and he hadn't shown up either. After all the phone

calls had been made and people are starting to show up,

he was evidently not there, and so if he had

been trying to call her, they were willing to entertain

that maybe he's been trying to call her and get

in touch with her, but they would not know if

that was the case, because her cell phone was one

of the things that was missing from the apartment. The

people closest to us are unfortunately the ones that are

most likely to do us harm. I think I've said

that over and over. If you follow true crime, you

know this, and so police are very well aware of

that too, and so they wanted to have a word

with this boyfriend Vincent. Now in the apartment, it was

very clear that not only was her cell phone missing now,

but things were not as they were supposed to be

or normally would have been. Her brother said or noticed

that her electronics were gone, things like her TV. It

was not up where it normally would have been over

the fireplace. Her Alexa was gone, her laptop was gone.

The furniture was in disarray. It kind of looked pushed

off from its normal location. Strangely, on the couch, she

kept this blanket that was special to her. Her grandfather's

girlfriend had crocheted for her and she loved that blanket.

The blanket was gone, but her Apple watch that she

always had on her wrist it was missing too, So

burglary seemed to be a motive for certain here. But

stabbing someone as many times was as they saw on

this woman, this was overkill. It was way way too

personal and overkill has to be stated here over and

over again. This was wild. Okay. They were able to

confirm finally at this point that it was their precious

Tierra that was on the ground deceased, and as you

you can know and imagine, this made people start falling

apart as the words started to spread now on the

scene there. The exact number of stab wounds wasn't yet documented,

but it was unbelievable what they were seeing. So it

was very clear too that she had fought valiantly for

her life. It was very clear to the investigators by

the scene that she had done this well. About that

time was when Mama Yolanda pulled up to the house.

She had left work and she had just now made

her way there, and when she got there, the scene

had already shifted. The crime scene tape was up, and

she gets out of her car and jumps out, what's

going on? What is going on here? She got out

and she tried to go straight up to the front porch,

and as she was getting up there to go into

this house to go find her baby. That's whenever her son, Tyree,

stepped in front of her and stopped her. No, Mama, no, no,

you can't see. No, you can't go in there. What

do you mean, Tyrese, what do you mean? I can't

go in there? Where is your sister? And he looked

as mama in the eye and he said, she's gone, Mama,

she's gone. Tiara is gone. And miss Yolanda was just

suddenly in the throes of the only thing she could

describe as an out of body experience. No, no, she's

not No, let me go in this house, and no, Mama, no.

Her body went completely numb. When he finally looked her

in the face and said, Mama, she is dead. She's gone.

You cannot go in there. She was unable to process it.

She was unable to process anything. Her body physically went numb.

She couldn't think, she couldn't feel. All she could do

was stare. Utter shock was manifesting itself physically and her

body she almost collapsed. How do you tell somebody and

just break it to them that their baby is gone,

just like that? But Tyree's had to because she could

not go into that house. She had to stay outside.

This cannot be real. Her mom is standing there, going

this cannot be real. This is not my life. This

doesn't happen to me. This happens to other people. This

doesn't happen to people like us. This doesn't happen to Tierra.

You cannot tell me that this has happened. I won't

accept it. My baby girl is in trouble. She has

a job, she's smart. Tyrese that she loves the color green.

She dressed up as an eminem for Halloween. This is

not real. You're not telling me the truth. Her motorcycle's

in the shop right now. She's excited. She's about to

get it out and she's gonna go ride with her daddy.

She could not be gone. This is not real. But

it was no matter how much her mind blocked it

and she couldn't accept it. It was real. It was

so real, And once it started to somewhat hit her

and hit everybody that this is not a movie. This

is We are in the throes of reality here. They're

all starting to wonder who would have done this, who

could have done this? Who do we know that would

be capable of this, that could make this happen to

my child, who would want to hurt my child? And

while they're trying to figure this out, because the family

didn't know, the family did not know who to point

a finger at. Vincent. Vincent again came to the minds

of the police because again he was noticeably nowhere around.

And now, I mean, is her own mama knows what's

going on. Clearly, it's believed that he should have known

by now that his girlfriend had been murdered. So Tiera's daddy,

talking with the police, said, you know, he's been in

trouble with the law before, and he confirmed that this

was a domestic police knew that they could not ignore that.

Just because he hadn't done anything to Tiera in the

recent time they were dating doesn't mean he wasn't capable

of it if he had that in his past. But

miss Yolanda had no idea who this Vincent was that

they were speaking of. And She's like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Tiara's boyfriend isn't named Vincent. What are y all talking about?

I just met her boyfriend about a week ago. Tiera

was having a seafood boil right there at that apartment

where you're telling me that she's dead. She was having

a seafood boil here and I came. She cooked, and

I came and got food. Here I met her boyfriend

and his name was Ricardo, not Vincent. Who is Vincent?

I'm her mother, I think I would know, And she

says this Ricardo. He was very polite. He was well mannered,

you know. He wasn't some wild animal come in here

trying to kill my daughter. So the question kind of

inside the mind here goes, what was Tierra possibly dating

two different men? Is that what's going on here? Do

we have a bigger problem on our hands? On a hunch, though,

an officer went to his police car and he decided

to run Vincent's name when lo and behold, a rather

important bit of information was obtained just through that simple search.

Vincent was the boyfriend's real name, and he matched the

description of who Tiera was dating as far as his

picture went. But his middle name on the record was Ricardo.

So it was realized very quickly that Vincent and Ricardo

were the same person. It was just that Tiera had

introduced him as Ricardo to her mother while everybody else

knew that his name was Vincent, but something else stood

out to this officer whenever he ran the search, and

it was that he found that Vincent was currently sitting

in jail. No wonder he hadn't shown up to the scene.

He couldn't because he was locked up. But looking at

his arrest date, it wasn't like he had been locked

up that day. He had been in jail for about

ten days, so he's been off the streets and he

probably wasn't aware of what was going on right now

because he was behind bars. Vincent, as far as police

were concerned, couldn't have been the one responsible for Tierra's murder,

at least physically, because he was in the custody at

their jail. And miss Yolanda was able to actually confirm, yep, yep,

that's it, got it, that's true because she had spoken

to Tiera, and Tiera had mentioned in days prior that

she was trying to get her boyfriend some bail money

together to get him out, and it was something about

they had the wrong guy though, and he was wrongfully arrested.

So with this in mind and understanding that he's been

behind bars, he was scratched off the immediate suspect list

as Tierra's actual killer because her death wasn't that old.

It wasn't she hadn't been there ten days. She had

been talking to people, so based on the condition of

the body and all of that, it was pretty clear

that she had been murdered relatively recently based on what

they saw at the home. He wasn't, however, scratched off

of the need to speak to list, so detectives would

make their way down to the jail to talk to

him in due time. Now, Tiera's daddy had said some

other things to the officers before her body was discovered,

while they were just doing that small talk, before they

realized the extent of what was going on. When he

was trying to get into the apartment and he had

gone and he had spoken to the neighbors. Remember they

had said that, no, they hadn't seen her, blah blah blah.

But one actually said, well, I didn't see her, but

I had seen someone earlier coming out of her apartment

and they were carrying laundry baskets from the apart heart

but that was earlier. Well, exactly when was earlier? What

exactly did that mean like earlier, a few minutes before

he got there, was it earlier? This week? When was that?

And that wasn't quite clear in the moment. So the

hours would pass as detectives are documenting the scene. The

crime scene photos were taken and with each flash of

the camera capturing more and more images of the trauma

to poor Tierra's body, just pure evidence of the struggle

to live and the fight that she put up, but

she was overcome regardless of her desire to live. This

was just inhumane what was at the scene. She loved

her life and someone had viciously stolen it from her.

After all of this was documented though, her body was

removed and she was taken to the Medical Examiner's office

for autopsy. But the night would continue to creep on,

and as word of Tierra's more continued to spread, the

phone continued to ring of her daddy and the people

that loved her, and ring by ring, and call by

call and text by text. The family was forced to

over and over and over again face the truth that

this was so real, and you know, they just had

no clue, They had no clue where to even start

of who could have done this? Mamma Yolanda was thinking

back to the fact that at that seafood boil just

the week prior, she had even noticed while there that

Tiera didn't have a porch light on her apartment. She

even was so worried about it she had mentioned it

to her baby girl, that, honey, that's dangerous. It's very

dangerous that you can't see on this porch and it's

not lit up good. You need to make sure that

you get a light out here because at night it's

hard to see. She was so worried about her girl,

and she wanted her to be safe. And now that

conversation just kept replaying in her mind over and over

and over again, the what ifs and the understanding and

the realization that that conversation was real and they had it.

But no matter how many times she thought through over

and over again, it was too late, no matter what,

it was just too late. So standing outside of the

apartment and just staring at it in just shock and

taking in what their lives had just become, something stood

out to Miss Yolanda, and her head somewhat kind of

tilted to the side as she realized what she was

looking at. Because Tierra's bathroom window. It was closed, but

as she was staring at it, she realized that the

curtain was trapped and it was hanging and blowing outside

of the window, and her Tierra would have never done that,

She would have never left it in that position or

with her curtain trapped in it, And that, in her mind,

just made it very visually clear that someone had been

in there, and what she was being told, it's just real.

Someone had been through that house and they had violated

her daughter in every aspect. She knew that window was wrong.

But leaving the investigators to do their job, the family

eventually left and they went back to their respective homes.

They were exhausted, they were devastated. Their adrenaline had spiked

and now dumped, and they were in the just throes

of grief. And when mister Clarence's phone dinged again with

a new text message, and he didn't want to talk.

He didn't want to talk, y'all. He didn't want to

do much. He didn't want to think, he couldn't think.

He was just trying to absorb what he had just

been through. When he glanced over and he just looked

at the phone, and he was immediately jarred. To attention

that text that had just come through his cell phone

was from Tierra. And he's staring at his daughter actively

texting him. What in the world? And he looked at it.

He picked the phone up, and he looked at it

for a minute. Was this a miracle? Was this a

delayed message? Was that not Tierra? Maybe in the house

he had already been told it was Tierra. How is

she texting me? Was this a delayed message that came

through that maybe she had seen it earlier. Was this

a sign from heaven? Maybe? What is this? And so

he opened and he swiped the message, and he began

reading the words direct quote, sorry about your daughter, know

the game? End quote. He read that message over and

over again, trying to understand or maybe even more convince

himself that this wasn't what it seemed, because it really

really seemed like whoever had taken his daughter's phone and

probably killed her was now texting him, taunting him, saying

know the game, sorry about your daughter. The fear and

the anger combined in that moment it was palpable. Here's

a daddy staring at his phone, know the game, says,

in a fucking game? What is this? My baby is dead?

Who says, know the game? What kind of animal? What

kind of animal could be? This heartless, so nonchalant, while

overtly threatening, and a victim's family member nonetheless knowing good

and damn well that she was loaded in her phone

under daddy in her phone. Whoever sent this message knew

exactly what they were doing, and if they wanted to

hurt him, damn it, they did it. This is sick.

So mister Clarence immediately contacted police with a message, and

they would be just as stunned, but ready to jump

on it as a lead and believing that this really

could be the killer. They wanted to find out all

that they could about that message and who had possibly

sent it. Now that's gonna take time. They're gonna have

to send off for reports to be able to get

that information back. And they did it, but they would

have to wait. Well, the autopsy would be completed within

just a few days, and it would confirm all that

was feared in terms of the torture that Tiera had

experienced before dying. She had suffered defensive wounds on both arms,

cuts to her skin and her hands as she had

tried to stop that blade that was being swung at her,

just all over the place, just rapidly, just all over

in her trying to defend herself as best that she could,

and you could see it in her body and what

it had it had been through. She had fought so

hard that she had broken her own fingers in the process.

When I thought about that, to break your own bones,

for your to be fighting back with such tenacity and

just wanting your life so bad and you're just snapping

your own bones trying to do it and you still

didn't win, it just paints. I'm a very visual person

when I'm thinking about this and what that girl was doing.

She was giving it her all to try to stay alive.

And Tierra was strong, guys, she was very capable of

defending herself. These broken bones were proof that she had

put up an epic fight. And the stab wounds, my god,

the stab wounds. She was covered in them. What a

human being is capable of doing against another is so unhinged,

especially in cases like this one. This was pure hatred

exhibited upon another and in an animalistic nature. The killer

had lost all control and had gone completely and totally

bersark on Tierra during this attack. The stab wounds were

all over her, but they were mainly concentrated to her

torso the assailant had penetrated her chest wall as well

as penetrating her back. And you can only envision this

as Tiera was fighting and fighting and trying to defend

herself and reacting to every injury and slice in real

time as it was being just rained down on her.

So she was likely rolling in response after she hit

the ground, trying to get away, and she's rolling away

from the pain. But the stabs just kept coming and

kept coming, no matter what position she was laying in.

And right now, if you think that I am just

overdoing what this girl went through, listened to me. After

an extensive effort was put forward by this doctor to

count all of her injuries, there were fit fifty two

stab wounds into this young girl's body. Fifty two. No

matter what Tierra would have done, she stood no chance

against an attack of this level, with things this personal

and the confirmation of what she had been through. Vincent again,

he is right back up there on the top of

the interview list because he was the one closest to her,

and he was the one that had been spending the

most time with her, and as you know, police didn't

have to work too hard to find him because he

was still behind bars as they were investigating. So at

the jail he was brought in, he was shackled and

he was in his orange jumpsuit and he sat in

the interviewing room and he was just waiting the questioning

by detectives for something that he had not yet been

briefed on. So he didn't even know why he was

being brought into this room. He just knew that the

police needed to talk to him. But one thing is

for certain, and two things for sure. He was pissed

to be behind bars because he was adamant that he

didn't do anything to be locked up like this. This

was wrong and he should not be behind bars. So

as the detectives began speaking with him, it became clear

that they were there to talk to him about Tierra,

and that caught him off guard because he knew Tierra

was a good girl. She definitely wasn't someone who would

be tied up in his current charge, the case that

he just caught, and she wouldn't have caught her own

because she wasn't like that, So why was her name

coming out of their mouth in an investigation at the

jail talking to her boyfriend. I mean, this just was

not really resonating. He wasn't understanding why are we talking

about Tiera? So somewhat cautious, He's listening as he was

asked these roundabout questions and trying to gather information about

his girlfriend, until finally he was like, what is going

on here? Why are you talking about Tierra? And that's

when the detectives broke the news to him that there's

no easy way to tell you this, Vincent, but Tierra

was murdered. Tierra is dead. And his physical reaction wasn't huge.

It wasn't big. He didn't jump back, he didn't fall

out of the chair or anything like that. But he

had a mask on one because remember it was still

the throes of COVID and so it covered a lot

of his face. But even if there's not a huge reaction,

body language, to me, is still important. And anybody I

think who's ever been in a law enforcement or does investigations,

I think would agree that body language still can tell

you so much, and even without a huge emotional reaction,

other factors can and should be observed in totality of

this circumstance when this news is broken. And so someone

who's blink rate slows down dramatically is someone that you

know when you're talking to them that they are locked

in and they are very focused on what you were saying,

because their eyes will fix and they'll kind of like

open their eyes and shock almost and they're really staring

at you, and the blinking slows, and he stared at

the detectives in that moment with this blinking very slowed,

and then started stumbling over his next few words, and

he's going, oh, who wait, when wait, what happened? Man?

What is going on? What do you mean? What do

you mean that she's dead?

Speaker 2: Like?

Speaker 1: What do you mean? Tell me? I'm in jail right

now on a bogus charge. I'm telling you that I

didn't do anything to deserve to be here, and now

you're in my face telling me that my girlfriend is dead.

Like what the fuck? Man, y'all gotta tell me something here.

This does not make sense. And I don't think I

understand how this is going right now. Like he's in

the twilight zone, is how he felt. But from the

active's point of view, they're like, all right, man, you

know everybody claims that they didn't do what they're in

jail for, right, But like, he was adamant that he

did not commit a burglary, which is what he had

been arrested on and why he was behind bars for

the last ten days. He maintained that it was not him.

I did not commit this burglary. And now you're telling

him a girlfriend's murder. You're telling me that I committed

a burglary I didn't commit. And this is not cool.

This is not driving. And I am telling you for

all my faults and all my problems, I'm this is weird.

And he straight up said, I think that this is

a setup. I think I'm being set up by like

an ex girlfriend. So his current girlfriend is dead. Police

are now realizing that he's saying that he's in on

a bogus charge, which, all right, fifty to fifty not

fifty to fifty. Really, I mean, usually you don't believe

somebody when they say they're down bad and they didn't

get locked up, because why'd you get locked up? But

now you're saying be set up by an ex girlfriend.

Police would have been and if they weren't slightly intrigued

by the lady problems that this guy was allegedly having

behind bars. Okay, you got a girlfriend, you're saying as

setting you up. You got a dead girlfriend now, and

you didn't do the burglary. Okay, Well, with that in mind,

he sent back to his jail cell. Police decided, no,

let's just entertain this. Let's go look into the burglary

charge that Vincent was currently being held on. Let's just

see what it's all about. So when the report was run,

they found that that burglary report wasn't just made by

one person like an ex girlfriend. It was made by

two people. The names of these people there was an

older gentleman, a white man named Jeffrey James, and then

there was a younger female that made the report with him.

This is a black female and her name was Taylor Hammond. Now,

starting with Taylor the female, they decided that they wanted

to contact her and get more information on the burglary

and see what exactly had happened in the report and

her memory. So, upon contact, Taylor confirmed who she was,

and she then confirmed that she actually was Vincent's ex girlfriend,

which was very surprising and interesting. But then she says

that look, I got to tell you something. I didn't

file a police report against Vincent. I didn't make any

burglary report. And the police are like, are you sure,

because we have it right here in front of us,

and she's like, I dated Vincent, we broke up. I

have never made a report against him for burglary. All right, Well,

that's weird, Okay, that's not driving. Was it possible that

maybe she was the one setting him up on a

false charge, but now was just trying to kind of

like back out of it and say it wasn't her

because she realized that the jig was up. Well, then

she goes a step further and says, not only that,

she said, I don't even know anybody by the name

of Jeffrey James. I've never I don't know who that is.

I don't you're throwing stuff at me and I don't know.

I'm not clocking it here, I'm not tracking. I don't

know what to tell you. Now, this may come as

a shocker to everybody listening, but people lie to the police. Okay,

So when she said all of this she didn't know

about it, they're not just gonna go, oh, well, sorry,

we didn't mean to waste her time, no, of course not.

And concerning she did date Vincent and admitted that they

were going to look further into this because filing a

false police report is also a crime, and if she

was playing games with them, they weren't taking too kindly

to it. And also, unfortunately for her, there were cameras

at the police station, and those cameras were recording the

day that this police report was filed, and so all

police had to go do was pull the tapes. So

the report was made inside the station. It wasn't a

call out where an officer was dispatched to go make

it at a home or anything. No, these victims had

driven there to the station to make this report, and

so the faces of the people would be right there

on camera and easily seen. So police roll back the tapes.

Here we go, and the officers watched them when sure enough,

and walked an older white male and a younger black female.

She looked to be in like her thirties or so,

and they both took a seat next to each other.

They were waiting to file the burglary police report. And

so police say, bingo, here we go. There they are,

they're sitting together. They're against this large window right there

in the station, Jeff was easily identified. That is exactly

who was sitting in there filing the police report. It

was also really cold outside, and so they were both

dressed appropriately in their jackets and their hoods, and the

woman had a beanie on that she pulled down. So

they're watching the video go in all right, here it is,

but they started to look really closely at the woman

in the video and that's when police were like, wait

a second, that isn't Taylor, that really is not her.

Taylor has a very obvious neck tattoo, very obvious neck tattoo,

and this woman did not have it. Also Taylor, she

was a black female, but she was a very light

skinned black female. The woman sitting next to Jeff was dark.

So they're like, WHOA. Incredibly, Taylor was telling the truth.

She was absolutely telling the truth. She was not the

person who filed a police report, and she was not

connected to this Jeffrey James guy. If Taylor hadn't made

the report, the question now was was the report in

fact bogus and that Vincent really hadn't done anything, and

maybe he was actually telling the truth that he had

been set up by somebody like that's a wild jump

and chain of events to believe, but this is kind

of looking like that could actually be true. So police

tracked down Jeffrey and the questioning with him began. Y'all,

it didn't take long for this guy's story to completely

fall up and he gave a confession. There was no burglary.

Vincent was also telling the truth. He had agreed to

file this report with his friends against Vincent. But why

why had this guy jeff agreed to go in and

make a false police report against some guy because his

friends asked him to do it, Like what did he

have to gain from this? So to determine that, they

needed to know who were your friends? Who are these

people that you say you want to go do this with? Specifically,

who is that woman in the video with you at

the station? And he readily gave the name. He says,

that is Asia Lindsay, now it's kind of said like Asia,

like you know Asia, but it's spelled a Ja, so Asia.

But he also named another man who was supposed to

be in on this, and that was his roommate. So

Jeff lived with this guy named Jamal Bullock. The more

they started talking Jeff's quote unquote agreement that he says

he agreed to do this was more of caving to

the pressure of those two asking him to go do this.

So he says, I was really kind of pressured into

doing it, and so I went along with it. Now,

Aga and Jamal were friends. They had also worked together

at a meat processing facility, so there was a connection

between those two people. But Jamal wasn't on the police

report and Jeff was there, So why had he brought

up this other name, you know? Well, Jeff then tells

the police, no, Jamal was there. Jamal was there when

we did this. Police are like, we looked at the tape.

We saw you two together. There was no third person

with you. And he says, well, you know, maybe go

back and look at it. Go look again. So they're like,

all right, we'll take that into account. But what was

most interesting about all of this as their uncovering everything,

was that Aga was the name of another ex girlfriend

of Vincent. Vincent said that he thought that an ex

girlfriend was possibly setting him up. Well, Taylor was an

ex but she didn't do it. But Asia had dated

Vincent two hmm. Now, looking into their relationship history, they

had had a very toxic relationship, but that was over

and he had moved out and they weren't living together

or anything like that. Now, Aga for sure was bitter

about their breakup, and so this false report looked like

a way for her to get even with Vincent by

setting him up and then hahaha, laughing at him as

he was locked up on a bogus charge. Total bitch

move for sure, and it totally looked like it had worked.

But you know why, like why would why would these

men be willing to do that? Like that's that sucks?

You know, why would you be that kind of guy? Well,

Vincent was then so sbsequently released when all of this

kind of came to fruition. So police did what they

said they would. They did go back and they looked

at the video from the police station, and sure as

shit if at one point, while Jeff and Asia are

talking to the police and making that police report, Jamal

comes walking into the frame. He comes walking into the

police station, but guess what, he opens the door and

he just walks by the lobby through to another area.

He never acknowledged or or said anything to these co conspirators,

but he was there right on tape, just as Jeff said,

he would be like, this was so bizarre. Everybody was

actually telling the truth at this point of all the

wildness that was going on. So they figured all this out.

Police solve the fact that Vincent didn't actually do the

burglary and these guys were lying about it to set

him up, and so they got to release Vincent. But

this was not solving Tiera's murder. The taunting message that

was sent to her father, remember that had been sent

off to get the information on her off of her phone,

they had subpoenaed for those records because what they were

thinking was if we can get the subpoena on those records,

then we might can get the location of the phone

from when the message was sent. Ie. I'm talking about metadata.

So briefly, metadata is a huge concept and this could

cover a whole lot of stuff. But specifically, you can

get call metadata, photo, and you could get text metadata

from a cellular device. So a call, the police can

see who called who, the start time of that, how

long it lasted, when they hung up. They can even

tell when a cell phone was locked, like a timestample,

when the phone hung up and was locked. It's very

very detailed report. If there's a photo that was sent,

they can get the camera settings, and they can also

get GPS coordinates of exactly where that photo was snapped.

That's why when you go in your phone and you're

searching photos, you can put in the location or the

address of where you were on vacation three years ago,

and those vacation pictures will pop up because it knows

where the photo was taken. But also that GPS can

be tied in with these text messages. Okay, and basically

what I'm saying is they can see what phone towers

the phone was accessing when it sent the text messages,

and that had been done in just the last twenty

four hours. If they could locate the phone, then they

could find the killer. So when the report came in,

they took it and they were able to map the

location or basically the towers and these messages, or where

the phone was in proximity to the towers when the

phone had been connecting to it while it was in use.

So assuming that the phone was on the whole time

and wasn't turned off, they could then just kind of

connect the dots and watch the travel of this cell

phone as it moved. Luckily for the detectives, the killer

was way dumber than he was mean. Because the phone

was never turned off, they were actually able to create

this travel path and draw where the phone had been

during the last twenty four hours. And now the police

were off on a very specific mission. With this path

outlined for them, they decided to go, now, go anywhere

that may have cameras on the routes and see if

they could find a person or a car that would

contain the phone. So they knew that the killer would

be on camera if they were in the area. But

the question now becomes probably what you're thinking, Okay, well

you drive by a camera, how the hell would they

know that if the phone was there or not? Well,

great question, Okay, unless the person's walking around with the

phone like this, then on camera I'm holding my hand

up like I'm taking selfie. Then the camera usage isn't

going to show exactly who has the phone. But what

the police could do was used that time stamps at

each location from the metadata and compare that with the

cameras where the phone was pinging in that area. So

using the time stamps, they then compared the videos at

all these different locations and what they tried to pick

out was a pattern or a commonality amongst the traffic

or the people. And the method paid off because a

yellow Ford focus hatchback was seen consistently throughout all of

the footage when they were checking the time stamps, and

it was an odd color, y'all, and it was ugly.

This was not a cute car. So police are honing

in and going, is this the car of the killer?

If so, the license plate wasn't readable, and so they're

seeing the call are they'll be able to visually see

this car and they believe that's the killer in the car,

but they can't pinpoint it because they can't see the

license plate. It's not clear. But this lead, it was

a solid one. It was a good one, and the

detectives were determined to solve this case. And while they

didn't know who the killer was by name, they did

believe that they knew what this killer drove. So, if

you've ever heard the saying that people and their pets

look alike? Have you ever heard that before? They say

that people and their pets look alike? If you really

start to pay attention. But in next week's conclusion of

this case, a different similarity is going to be proven.

In this case, the killer in their car may look

a lot alike, both having a flat backside and ugly

both inside and out.