Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Pregnant teacher murdered after reaching out to boyfriend's 'secret fiancee'?

Episode Date: September 15, 2017

The pregnant Maryland teacher shot dead and left in a shallow grave had tried to talk to another woman with whom her boyfriend was also engaged to marry, police said. Investigators lured the boyfriend, Tyler Tessier, into speaking at a news conference while Wallen was still missing with the hope that his demeanor and words would help them solve the mystery. Tessier, 32, was charged with the murder of Lauren Wallen, 31. Nancy Grace digs into this homicide with forensics expert Sheryl McCollum,  psychoanalyst Dr. Bethany Marshall, and CrimeOnline reporter Leigh Egan. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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of independent lawyers without being billed by the hour. Since LegalZoom is not a law firm, hurry to LegalZoom.com now for your free estate planning kit. No obligation, just great resources to help you protect what you care about, your family. For special savings, be sure to enter code NANCY, N-A-N-C-Y at checkout. LegalZoom.com. LegalZoom.com. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace on Sirius XM Triumph, Channel 132. Montgomery County police have searched Laura Wallen's condo looking for clues. Wallen didn't show up to teach her social studies class on Tuesday, the first day of school at Wall Lake High. I spoke with her on Saturday, just through text message, and then briefly on Sunday, and then I had one text message in the morning on Monday.

The missing teacher's father and sister say she was four months pregnant. The message that I have is that she was a woman of faith, and right now she is in the arms of God. Her body has now been recovered. Tyler Tessier, Mrs. Wallen's boyfriend, was arrested for her murder. In addition to having Ms. Wallen as a girlfriend, he was engaged to another woman. Just as many of us were settling down to supper or getting our children to bed, preparing for the next day, maybe watching TV. It was getting dark outside. A press conference came.

And I knew it. I knew it. When I learned they were having a presser, I knew Laura Wallen had been found. We were furiously texting, email calling. Who do you think? What do you think? I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. It all turned out as we suspected.

And it's not the answer we wanted. It was the answer we feared, not the answer we wanted. It was the answer we feared, not the answer we wanted. This pregnant teacher, Laura Wallen, Montgomery County, beloved by all of her students. One story really broke my heart. One of the student's parents spoke and said, you know, my son told her he loved a skateboard. And you know what? That weekend, doorbell, it was Laura. She showed up with a skateboard and skateboarded back and forth up and down our street with our son. And he will never forget it. I was telling our awesome guest today, Lee Egan, Dr. Bethany Marshall, and Cheryl McCollum.

A story about my little girl. They are assigned a book. They all have to read for this month. Realistic fiction. And Lucy picked a book, Mrs. Bixby's Last Day. And it's about their teacher. A girl, a little boy's teacher. And they love her so much.

She gets sick and they write on and on and on. The whole book is about how she touched their lives. Laura is gone. Why? Dr. Bethany Marshall, psychoanalyst, joining me out of L.A., when you learned, as we had suspected, that her boyfriend, who was there at the press conference, acting like he was crying, acting like he was crying, sharing a podium with Laura's mother and father, who were clutching hands.

What was your thought, Bethany? Well, first of all, I thought about the agony of the parents. Second, I listened very carefully to the boyfriend's words, and they seemed trite, shallow, rehearsed, as if he was practicing saying something he heard on the evening news before, like, we're praying for her safe return. Laura, there's nothing we can't work out. And it was the shallowness and the lack of details and also the very dramatic and manufactured quality of how he was talking that made me suspicious he was the perpetrator.

We know women are at the greatest risk for homicide when they're pregnant. I thought about the fact that they'd been together for 10 years and he wasn't living with her. I thought about the fact that the timeline was so vague, and yet the boyfriend was supposed to be the most intimate person in her life. Yet during the public plea, there was nothing that he could say that could actually aid in an investigation. And that just all flashed through my mind as I was listening to them. I want you to take a listen to what we all sat on the edge of our seats listening to at dinnertime. Detectives and members of the Montgomery County Police

Search and Rescue Team were searching a wooded area near Prices Distillery Road in Damascus. They located a patch of freshly dug ground in a secluded area of a field. Cadaver dogs indicated on the area and ultimately detectives found the body of Laura Wallen in a shallow grave.

Her body has now been recovered. At 5.30 p.m. this afternoon, Tyler Tessier, Mrs. Wallen's boyfriend, was arrested for her murder. Since Ms. Wallen was reported missing by her family nine days ago, we've determined that Mr. Tessier was the last person known to have been with the victim. They were seen together on surveillance camera video on Saturday, September 2nd in a grocery store near the victim's home. It is suspected by investigators that she was killed the next day. The victim's sister received texts from Ms. Wallen's phone on Monday morning, September 4th. We have determined that these texts were sent by Tyler Tessier, the suspect in this case. Since this investigation began, Mr. Tessier has provided information to detectives that led them to suspect his involvement in this case.

In addition, Mr. Tessier was determined to have driven the victim's car to the Columbia area. He admitted to removing the front tag and disposing of it. Tessier also texted an acquaintance asking for a ride to Baltimore late Sunday night. He said that he needed help to, quote, to clean up a mess. The acquaintance declined to assist him. Mr. Tessier had made several trips to an acquaintance property on Prices Distillery Road in Damascus. Investigators showed up there today with a search warrant for the property which was

a dwelling along with open fields and woods. During the search, the team observed tire tracks on a nearby property. They observed a freshly dug ground on the property, which was some distance from the property that they were originally searching. We spoke with the owner of the property where the ground had been disturbed and we were ultimately able to recover the victim's body. The property owner of that property has no involvement with the case. Warrants for Mr. Tessier's arrest were obtained this afternoon and he was taken into custody at around 5.30 p.m. this evening. He's being charged with the murder of Laura Wallen.

I want to thank the detectives and all of the members of the public, both here and in Howard County, who assisted us with information related to this case. I also wanna thank my homicide detectives who worked around the clock on this case, and were able to bring it to closure. And in closing, while this arrest does provide some answers, I'm aware of the impact that this had on Ms Wallace community and all we know that many of you are grieving with Laura's family tonight. So I'll answer any questions that you might have. Yes, anything in the news conference on Monday in which raised some eyebrows amazing things. Something was wrong here that would lead you to believe that

Tyler Tessier was a suspect in this case because he did speak to the media. That's correct. And the decision to allow him to participate in that news conference was a calculated decision made by the the day that Laura Wallen went missing. You all wouldn't tell us what was in it, but the family said it was troubling. She sent a text message to, and I can't remember if it was her sister or her friend, saying that Tyler had taken her to an open field up in the Damascus area and she says I'm not sure why we're up here but he's taking me to this place in the middle of nowhere something to that effect the friend said take a picture and she did she was pregnant did he give any indication why he allegedly did this I

can only speculate as to the motive. We have not gotten any information from him about the motive of this case. Fox 5 was able to confirm that he's living with a woman in Damascus. Has that woman been questioned in this investigation? He's actually got three different places where he was living. He lived three different locations typically during the week. Everyone who he lived with has been interviewed in this case. What led you to that particular area in which the cadaver dogs then said, you know, we're going to look into this? Why why there we had been able to determine over the past week that he had made several visits to that area and we also determined that he

would occasionally or during some period of time would stay there and so we got a search warrant for that property which including a dwelling and quite a bit of wooded area and fields and the search search team our search team actually did search the perimeter of those entire woods and at some point noticed tire tracks that went into an area of the woods and followed and that's what led them to the area where we recovered her body. Chief, had you walked in on Mr. Tessier as a suspect by the press conference on Monday, or was he still a person of interest? He was definitely a person of interest.

We had already identified a couple of inconsistencies in information that he'd given us. And again, it was a calculated decision by the detectives to allow him to speak at that press conference. We were going to be very interested in what he had to say at that press conference. And again, it was done with knowledge and concurrence with the family. They knew as well. So the family knew he was a person of interest yes prior to anything can you just clarify the timeline of the

princess that text message that you said that was sent to the friend what you said September 2nd was the surveillance video at the grocery store yes that was also on September 2nd which was a Saturday and then we had nothing no activity from her phone on Sunday and then on Monday morning I believe it was her sister received texts from this wall and phone that were determined later to have cut that Tyler was one of sending those texts we have been able to confirm that Laura's disappearance happened around the same time she found out that Tyler was living with this with another woman she had known that for some time was there any evidence on the body that

would give you some kind of a gauge like evidence of blunt force trauma or anything? There was not. So we're going to have to wait for the autopsy to get that information. Can you talk all about motive in this case? I can't talk about motive because I don't know what the motive was. I know that people have speculated the fact that he was in another relationship. People have talked about the fact that the victim was pregnant. That's all speculation. I don't know what the motive was in this case.

Thank you all very much. Thank you. To Cheryl McCollum, director of the Coal Case Institute, remember he said at the beginning, Lord, there's nothing we can't work out. Nothing we can't work out. Nothing we can't work out except a hole in your head lying in the middle of a field. I don't think we can work that out. What do we know about the actual cause of death and how she was killed, where she

was killed? Nancy, she was found in a shallow grave. And again, the thing that just leaked out at me during that press conference is when he said, you've left a gaping hole. Well, that to me, I was stunned by that. And again, law enforcement did such an unbelievable job in drawing him out and forcing him to make a public statement. It was brilliant. Yeah. What about that? Alan Duke. That's true.

What Cheryl McCollum just said they actually lured him into speaking and Dr. Bethany Marshall I think pointed this out to me that you see the mom and dad sitting kind of over on one side of the podium he's by them clutching the mother's hand and the dad Laura's dad actually reaches over and pats him on the back and comforts him the whole time they knew he was a suspect they were trying to lure him into speaking right the family knew this the police chief said at the news conference that you just heard that they told the family he was a person of interest and got the family's cooperation in luring him into the

news conference so he could make these potentially incriminating or revealing statements. I want you to take a listen to what the boyfriend, as we are calling him, had to say at the family news conference. This is what we're talking about. This is what piqued our interest to start with. Listen. Now I'd like to ask Laura Wallen's boyfriend, Mr. Tyler Tessier, to step to the podium to say a few words on Laura's behalf. Thank you all for coming here. Laura, if you're listening, it doesn't matter what's happened, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter what type of trouble, there's nothing we can't fix together, myself and your family. There's so many people, so many people that miss you. There's so many people that

we're out. We haven't slept. We haven't eaten. We're just looking. We're praying that you're safe. And I'm asking you to just let us know that you're safe. If somebody has her, please understand that you've taken away a huge person in so many people's lives. Friends and family and students that she has, I know what she means to me. I know what she means to everybody else. And we just want to know if she's okay. We just want her back. Thank you.

Dr. Bethany Marshall. You know, I was telling you and Cheryl and Lee earlier, I can still remember the moment I last saw Keith, my fiance before he was murdered. I remember it distinctly. It was cold outside in the morning, early, early morning, like five o'clock. And he was the horn and he stuck his left arm out the window as he drove away to my right and held it up high in the air to wave goodbye. And I remember I had always heard, don't watch till they're out of sight. That's bad luck. Just before he disappeared out of sight, I closed my eyes and literally ran in to get to school, to college, to take a final statistics exam.

I remember it like it was yesterday. But when he is asked, Dr. Bethany, he can't even say exactly their last conversation. Yeah, Nancy, it's so startling. It's so revealing that when he speaks at the public plea, there is no detail. And that's what I kept thinking was missing. There was this sort of this dramatic demeanor, like he was crying crocodile tears, although I don't think I really saw any tears coming out, touching the mother's hand, saying these vague statements, but really no detail. Like this is her boyfriend of 10 years, Nancy. This was the Labor Day weekend. This was a time when families gathered. She was four months pregnant. There should have been something like we were looking for a baby crib or we were barbecuing with friends or I had breakfast with her on Labor Day and then she went to the school to prepare her room for the upcoming school year, the person who had the most cognizance of the timeline was the father

because it was the father who called the school Tuesday morning to see if she was there. And then when the school said she hadn't shown up, he asked if she had called in for a substitute teacher and they said no, and that's when he was alarmed and called the police. So the father was much more cognizant of the timeline than the boyfriend was. It also tells me that the father was suspicious. I think the family, you know, as this story unfolds, we're going to learn that the family was quite suspicious of the boyfriend. I also read in one report that Laura had said to somebody

that she was afraid her life was going to end this way. Guys, let's take a listen to the boyfriend, who, by the way, I was always stumped. They've been together 10 years. She's pregnant, four months pregnant, about to give birth to his baby, and they still don't even live together? I mean, what's with that? Take a listen to what we're talking about. He can't even answer a simple question?

Listen. What's she been like over the last couple weeks and your interactions with her? Like Mr. Wallen said, she was super excited for the start of the school year. I know she had talked to some principal and her teachers, like her co-workers, about her being pregnant and how excited she was and it's just a complete shock that

I mean I think leading up to the weekend that she's missing, I mean, I don't believe anybody has any inclination to think that something was wrong. Do you remember any of your last conversations with her? I'm sorry? Any of your last conversations with her? I don't know where she is. That's all. I don't know. Like, I don't...

I know we're all trying to do everything we can to find her, and... I just pray that... I pray that she's safe. She comes back. That's all I care about right now. How long have you all been together, and were you all... How are you feeling about the Navy coming? How long have you all been together, and how long have you all been planning, or how do you feel about the Navy coming? We've, you know, any normal relationship, just take one step at a time and take the

progress that comes with you. And been to doctors' meetings, we've been to sonograms and all the prenatal care that, you know, you could ask. And I'm sorry. It struck me that, as Bethany had pointed out, it was Labor Day. She wasn't required to be at school. But her car was found five minutes away from school. She wasn't in it. Lee Egan from Crime Online,

you and I speculated when we first learned that that it had been dumped there by her kidnapper or killer. What do we know now? We know now that it was dumped there by her alleged killer, her boyfriend, Tyler Tessier, and he reportedly admitted to police that he also got rid of the front license plate that was on her car, and he also dumped her driver's license and her iPhone somewhere.

So it looks like it's something he had planned out. I mean, the police said he had already been to the land where they found her on several occasions before she was found, and the property actually belonged to someone he knew, an acquaintance that he knew. So this was something that he had probably been thinking about for a while before he actually went through with it. Alan Duke, there's so many pieces to this jigsaw puzzle. Do we know the cause of death? No. All we know other than she was found in a shallow grave is there was no obvious immediate indication of blunt trauma of blunt force trauma according to the police chief the autopsy is what they need of course and that is

yet to be done well I think you know at this point we would know if it was a gunshot they didn't see anything like that so I'm guessing that it's going to be asphyxiation, which Bethany is always so common in these type of cases. It seemed like he had planned it out. What do we know about his living arrangements? According to the police chief, he actually was sleeping three different places. Other than his girlfriend, pregnant teacher's home, he was staying with another woman not far from where the body was found. Plus, he had a third place. He had a girlfriend. He's living with somebody. What am I missing here? This guy. I mean, he's not all that. I mean, I wouldn't even look twice at him.

Of course, you know, I'm so busy working and trying to raise the children. And if a guy, you know, if Fabio walked right in front of me, I probably wouldn't even notice. Okay. But this guy, I mean, what? No, I don't get it at all. Dr. Bethany, he's sleeping in three places. She's pregnant. He can't even move in for Pete's sake. What is he going to be a deadbeat dad and drop by a bag of Pampers once a month? Is that what this is going to be? Why couldn't he just break up for Pete's sake? You know, what's emerging for me is the profile of a sociopath. We talk so much about sociopathy. The features are an inability to attach, hold calculated, lack of empathy, homicidal intent. But one of the most essential features of the sociopath is that they have a parasitic lifestyle. They're leeches, Nancy.

They live off of other people's apparently preparing... Three places. Well, he was living off the kindness of strangers. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't even have a job. I wouldn't be surprised if we learn that Laura was supporting him or giving him money. and then the fetus eventually floated to shore. And one of the reasons he killed his wife is that he did not want to take up the responsibilities of fatherhood. And remember, he was dating somebody else. He had another woman on the side. So it could even be that multiple women will come forward. But this whole situation of living in multiple places

is just right in line with what we see with sociopaths. And Nancy, we also have the statement from State Attorney John McCarthy, the prosecutor, speaking to reporters after the bond hearing on Thursday afternoon. Take a listen to what we've learned. Ty Lewis Tessier, age 32 of Damascus, has been charged in three charges, including the first-degree murder of Laura Wallen, age 31, a magnificent teacher from Wild Lake High School in Howard County. In addition to the murder charge, which carries a maximum sentence of life without the possibility of parole, The defendant is charged with altering evidence. If you read the charging document that was distributed to you in court, you will see there were various actions or activities taken by the defendant, Mr. Tessier, in the days after he murdered Ms. Wallen, changing the evidence, moving her car, taking a tag off of her car,

throwing keys or a license away. He did tamper with the evidence. It's all contained within the charging document. He also did, and as Donna Fenton mentioned in court, he did give a series of statements to the police, essentially none of which were consistent with the others. I think Ms. Fenton characterized his statements as containing hundreds of lies that the police could prove based on their inconsistency with his other statements or other investigative efforts that were made by the police that showed that what he was telling them was not, in fact, the truth. The defendant today appeared before Zubari Williams,

a judge of the district Court for Montgomery County. Judge Williams, at the request of the state, agreed with our request that he be held without bond, and the defendant is held without bond. He will remain incarcerated pending a preliminary hearing date, which is set for October the 13th of this year. I will tell you, for many of you who are experienced covering these cases that preliminary hearing date will probably never come to pass because the reality is we will take action bringing this matter to the grand jury of Montgomery County prior to that date and the only thing that will happen on October the 13th will be the announcement we hope of an indictment

of the defendant for what we believe are the appropriate charges at that time. As we know from in court today, the defendant in this matter was characterized in court and did characterize himself to some as the boyfriend of the deceased. As was mentioned also in court, there was somewhat of a triangle atmosphere surrounding this because the defendant, in addition to having Ms. Wallen as a girlfriend, he was engaged to another woman. I think that he was, it was clear, I think, from what was said in court, he was not honest with either of the women regarding the true nature of the relationship with the other. The family was present in court.

We have had constant communication. Members of my office, Ms. Herdman and Ms. Fenton, have been working around the clock on this matter. I will tell you the autopsy on this matter is still pending. It's not done. We do not have the results of that as of yet. As you know, the body of Ms. Wallen was recovered in a field up in Damascus, Maryland. Again, I want to salute the Montgomery County Police Department, the Homicide Division. I think they did a marvelous job following this case, repeatedly interviewing the defendant, challenging him on his inconsistencies,

and then using the forensics. They used cell phone records to show that he was repeatedly, night after night after night, going back to the same field. That is the field where Ms. Wallen's body was, in fact, recovered. With me is Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Institute, Lee Egan, investigative reporter with CrimeOnline.com, and Dr. Bethany Marshall, psychoanalyst out of L.A. Have you seen the text messages, Dr. Bethany? Because remember what really started the timeline for me, and that's where I start every investigation is the timeline.

They got odd text messages and that got the father and Laura's father and mother upset. But the police would not reveal the content of the text messages, Bethany. Right. And they were so strange. You know, the text messages read like a sixth grader had written them. They were so obvious. And I just had to, you know, my first thought when I read the text messages, I'm like, what a nincompoop this guy is. I mean, he's trying to cover his tracks and he's so obvious. You know, Nancy, I think that he was

really planning this for a long, long time because apparently he visited the place where he dumped the body multiple times before he took her there. And you think with all that plotting and planning, he would have thought through the text messages a little better. Let's go through the text. Alan, what do we learn? What do they say? Well, the most bizarre one was the one apparently sent by Tyler on that Monday, but that was an odd one. But the really revealing one is on Saturday when she texted her sister. She said that Tyler's taken me to this field out of the middle of nowhere, and I don't know why. And the sister said, well, send me a photo. So Laura actually sent a photo she took with her phone from the field near where she was later found buried in a shallow grave.

Okay, Lee Egan, you know what's so pitiful? You know that she was thinking he was going to propose. He's taking me out to this big, open, beautiful field. And I don't know why. What do you think? I mean, if you were the least bit afraid, you wouldn't go. I guarantee you she thought he was going to propose. Because she's telling her sister and friends, he's taking me to this spot.

What do you think it is? I think she probably did think that. I mean, obviously she went with him. And according to surveillance that the police obtained from a grocery store near her house, they were together, you know, for a long time on Saturday and they looked, you know, happy, normal couple. So I don't think she had any reason to believe he was going to harm her. She probably went with him thinking, oh, this is, this is great. He's going to propose. We're going to maybe have a dinner, you know, nearby. I mean,

she could have been thinking anything, but I don't think that she had any idea that he was planning to kill her. We know that Tessier texted a friend or an acquaintance and asked for a ride to Baltimore Sunday night and needed to, quote, clean up a mess. He needed help to clean up a mess. Luckily for that guy, they declined to help him, or they would have been part of this whole thing. He made several trips to an acquaintance's property there at Price's Distillery Road. That's one of the places he would sometimes stay. We don't know whether that was a man or a woman,

but we know that property had open fields and woods. Police got a search warrant and went to the area. And during that search, they found tire tracks, freshly dug ground. And that is where they found Laura's body. They found her body around high noon, and the presser then goes down that night. You know, at his press conference, the boyfriend, Tyler Tessier, says, I pray that she's safe and that she comes back. You know, I cannot wait for a jury to see that presser played over and over and over. And then those texts, the text, she sent a text message to her sister and a friend just before she was killed, as Lee was telling you, stating that her boyfriend had taken her to this beautiful open field in Damascus, and she wasn't sure why they were there. And she actually, I think it was you, Alan, sent a picture at the sister's request.

The other thing that I thought was maybe there was such animosity, or maybe she was in fear. Maybe that they had been arguing because we do know now that she had learned about the other woman. And if she was afraid, and so she alerted her sister, hey, if you don't hear from me, here's a photo of where I was last. I agree with Alan. That could have been it as well. I agree. Do you really? Because I don't think she suspected anything.

I think she was all excited about the baby and really thought that the baby would bring them together and they would ultimately get married. And actually it was the complete opposite. He didn't propose. They didn't get married. She was murdered. And I'm going to put, if I were a betting person, money on asphyxiation that he strangled her. And that's what went down right there in that field. And, you know, looking at crime is not easy. I learned that the hard way. You know, Bethany, when Keith was murdered, you know, I never to this day have been to the crime scene. I've never read the trial transcript. I've never read the appeal. Nothing. And I don't, I just, I just can't. I don't know if it's can't or won't. But then when I made my way through law school and started prosecuting, I never turned away from the evidence, no matter how horrible a crime scene was,

how long an autopsy, because to know the truth is worth it all. It's worth it all. And it's hard sometimes, Bethany, to look at the facts, to look at this guy, the boyfriend, who's up there begging for her safe return, and know what he did, Bethany. It's almost, it's like a mind trick. You're looking at him and listening to him, but you know he killed her. Well, absolutely, Nancy. And you know, I'm not surprised that you never read the transcript, that you never visited the scene of the crime when your fiance was killed, because you were traumatized. And avoidance is one of the primary signs of PTSD. That's what we see as the person

starts to avoid the details and avoid situations that are similar to the early trauma. And yet you became a prosecutor, an attorney, and you did not turn away from the facts of the case. And that tells me that you're a very courageous woman. And this family is going to have to be equally courageous because there are so many, I think, really disturbing details in this case. The fact that this young man was living in multiple areas. The fact that he began to look for a dump site for the body, as I keep saying, because that's what happens when murder is premeditated. The fact that there was a shallow grave, meaning that his planning was poor and hasty after he did kill her. The texts that are so revealing. You know, in one text, he writes, I'm 95% sure that the name of the boyfriend is not the father of the baby. So he pretends to send a text from Laura's phone

to the sister saying that he's not the father of the baby. So the family's going to have to listen to all of this in court and know what really happened. And they're going to be re-traumatized. This is going to be a very painful, long journey for them. Bethany, you're so right. I'm thinking about this family and they're looking back and they're, they're awake, they're waking up in the morning going, we were getting ready for the baby. We were going to Babies R Us. We were making a registry. It's all over.

And the silence is deafening. Go ahead, Alan. Nancy, Laura Wallen was not only a daughter and a sister, but to dozens and dozens of high school students, she was their favorite teacher, the teacher of the year one year at Wild Lake High School in Maryland. And now we're going to hear from Rick Wilson, the school principal, about what the loss of Laura Wallin means to their high school. Laura Wallin is an amazing person, as I told the press yesterday evening.

She's one of those special teachers that aims for the heart before she aims for the head. So many times we as educators think we just have to produce data points and test scores and everything like that. Laura understood very clearly that you've got to connect with the child before you can teach a child up here. And I think that the outpouring of support that the community has seen for Laura and her family has been a result of that. She touched so many people in 31 short years that she's one that many of our students will never forget and I think we've all seen that. You've seen the social media campaigns from alum that have been put out there and students here and they're already taking their grief and trying to move it in a positive direction

in remembrance of Laura and just the positive spirit that she was for all of us. Nancy, we're getting some new information now in addition to what Montgomery County Police Chief Tom Manager said at his news conference. We're now learning from the police chief that investigators have concluded that the cause of death was that Laura Wallen was shot in the back of the head. We also understand that no gun has yet been recovered. It seems to me the closest people in her world are her parents, and I want you to hear Laura's dad speaking. A lot has happened in the last 24 hours.

I wanted to speak on behalf of our family, how we are coping with the senseless tragedy of the murder of my daughter, our daughter, and sister Laura Wallen. I've written this from the journal that I keep that was recommended by my best friend and wife of 37 years, Gwen Wallen. In this senseless tragedy with the murder of our daughter, I want to also speak to the beauty and kindness of humanity and all of the wonderful people that have lifted us up. I have four points in particular. First, the tireless effort by the Montgomery County Police Force. The police are there to protect and to serve. They have done their job with superb precision and during this whole process

kept us as updated as they possibly could. Second, our faith community, during this whole process, I repeatedly responded to texts and emails and prayers of support and concern. I responded to each with variations of the idea that we were praying for a good, old-fashioned miracle. God did not give us the miracle that I asked for, but he did give us a miracle nonetheless. We have our daughter back. I think that the message that I have is that she was a woman of faith

and right now she is in the arms of God. In closing, I think that the symbol of God's love is marked on her life and ours forever. I would also, in closing, ask you to each hug your kids every day because nothing is guaranteed, and we are all loaned to each other for just a brief period in time. Thank you.

You know, Dr. Bethany, somehow I got so attached to Laura Wallen. Maybe it was because we talked about it so much. Maybe I got my hopes up that she was going to be the one that's found alive. Maybe the idea, you know know I always wanted more children I was I don't I've never met her but I was happy for her that this was coming in her life that she was going to have all the happiness that I have with the twins and it just it just seems so upsetting that it's just another headline that the man in her life killed her because he's got somebody else or maybe two or three other people for all I know. And to look at this guy, I mean, he is certainly no big catch. OK, I wouldn't even look twice at him at the gas station.

He's no catch, Nancy. And that it all ended because he did not want to be the father of a baby. That's what this is about. There's two reasons primarily that men commit domestic homicide against pregnant women. One reason is envy towards the unborn baby. They don't want to share the mother's love with the baby. The other is that they're just irresponsible, homicidal, and they do not want to take up the responsibilities of being a father. They don't want to pay child

support. They don't want to support the child. So when you think about the fact, it's probably the latter reason, you think about how senseless this killing was. Nancy, he could have just broken up with her, gone on with his life. She had a loving family. They would have supported her and the baby. There was no reason for this. He killed her and then didn't even give it a second thought. And I think one of the reasons you're moved and I'm moved is that she touched so many people's lives. I think her sister said or her father that she had joy in her heart regarding her job. She was looking forward to the school year. She wasn't one of these people that dreaded going to work. She was looking forward to being in her classroom. Like you said, when one of her students mentioned that he didn't have a

skateboard, she dug an old skateboard out of her house and took it to the child's house so that he could have a skateboard. She skated up and down the street. She was actually attached to people and loved them. I think the other thing that's so disturbing to me, I keep going back to these texts, that her sister kept receiving strange texts from Laura's phone, and it was really the boyfriend sending the texts. And how is the sister going to feel knowing that Laura

was already dead when she was receiving these texts and that the sister was helpless to go and find her? She was helpless to go find Laura and she was getting the text. To me, that's just so tragic. And now we wait. Tyler Tessier is going to be charged with murder one. My only question is, will he be convicted? And what will his sentence be? At the end of the day, when people leave the courtroom, even if there is a conviction, I know I learned the hard way. Nobody leaves happy.

Everybody leaves the courtroom with a broken heart because nothing will ever be the same. The only thing we can do now is look for justice. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.