Crime Weekly - S3 Ep145: Tamla Horsford | When Justice Feels Out of Reach (Part 3)

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

On the night of November 3rd, 2018, a group of women gathered at a quiet home in Forsyth County, Georgia for what was supposed to be a casual birthday sleepover. There was football on TV, drinks flowing, and nothing about the evening seemed out of the ordinary. But by the next morning, one of those women- 40-year-old Tamla Horsford- was dead. Try our coffee! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.comBecome a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeeklyShop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shopYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcastWebsite: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.comInstagram: @CrimeWeeklyPodTwitter: @CrimeWeeklyPodFacebook: @CrimeWeeklyPodADS:1. https://www.FactorMeals.com/CrimeWeekly50Off - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY50OFF for 50% off your first box and FREE daily greens!2. https://www.MintMobile.com/CrimeWeekly - Shop for your new phone plan TODAY!3. Bull Shot - Text CRIME20 to 64000 for up to 20% off and FREE shipping!4. https://www.Quince.com/CrimeWeekly - Get FREE shipping and 365-Day Returns with Quince today!5. https://www.TryFUM.com - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY for a FREE gift with your Journey Pack!

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek LaVascer. And we are here to do the third and final part of the Tamla Horstford case. Yeah. So it's been a wild ride. It has been. Can I say something before we start? Yeah. The hype thing? The hype is real. Like I didn't know about it. I felt old when we brought it up. But I will tell you that this video, now I can see, especially with smaller channels, we have an ability. to basically influence the algorithm. And more people have seen this series than we've had seen in a while.

It's mainly because of you guys. So thank you so much for hyping it. I can see the numbers and see how high we are on the leaderboard, which is kind of cool. Like as a competitor, I'm like, I like seeing this get hyped up and go to the top. So if there's a series that you really like or a story that you want to have more people hear about,

for anybody who doesn't know how to do it, because I definitely didn't, all you do is like the video. And when you like the video, So this little pop-up thing comes up below it where you can hype the video and basically a lot, a certain number of points to it. And it's free. It's absolutely free to do.

So we would appreciate if you did it would help get the stories out there. If you like, you must hype. I like it. There's a logo. There's a shirt right there. But now that, it's new to me. But when you have a smaller obscure case, if you want people to hear about it and you want YouTube to recommend it, that's the trick.

You can basically control or influence the algorithm by having your own audience hype it. So that's pretty cool. That's awesome. We love it. I do love it. Thank you. I still don't know how to do it, but I will figure it out. Yep.

I will figure it out. Same thing on audio, too, by the way. If you're liking and commenting on audio. You can't hype, but if you're liking and commenting, Spotify and Apple has already told us, like the more of the engagement and comment section and all that, they will promote that content. They will share it more. you'll see it in like your your home screen so we say it all the time we've been saying it for years like we wouldn't be here without you it's such a cliche cliche thing to say but it's actually the truth like

if you don't promote the content if you're not engaging with it nobody sees it it doesn't matter how good it is so we appreciate you guys anything you can do to help us grow moving forward get more notoriety on these cases it's a win for everybody so thank you yeah um i'm so bad at this stuff by the way this like there's like strategic things you can do as like a content creator to make more people see your stuff or like do certain things there's like whole you know blogs and and people out there who talk about it and I am so bad at it yeah I don't even post on social media I'm you know so I have to like be we have been doing good on the Patreon though yeah we love Patreon well it doesn't have to be like an official post like I posted Saturday that I was at my kids basketball games you know it's just

like it's a random photo most people. People don't want to see it on Instagram, but if you're on the Patreon page, you're getting that random stuff, that behind the scene stuff, that like our daily lives. Like my messy office. Yeah, I saw that the scripts. I was like, okay, that tracks. Like that makes, that makes sense. You know, it would absolutely drive you to, to really.

We have to, I like we have different offices. If we ever in the same building, we're definitely going to not share an office. No, no, no, we could never. Okay. Okay. So let's dive in. As we know, we had, you know, we've been right. regularly talking about kind of the outcome, which was the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office officially closed the investigation into Toml Horstford's death on February 20th, 2019. They ruled it accidental. So five days after that, a lawsuit against Tomlis friend, Michelle Graves was filed.

Jean Myers, Nicole Lawson, Stacey Smith, Thomas Smith, Bridget Fuller, Marcy Hardin, and Jose Barrara, all sharing the same lawyer, Eric Tatum, alleged, that they had suffered irreparable damage to their character, reputation, and business as a result of the statements made by Michelle Graves. And so this was basically things that Michelle was saying on her Facebook page and the complaint listed 13 posts made on Michelle's Facebook page, which named each of these people and made statements about Toml's death. So the complaint stated, quote, defendant made these false statements maliciously with the intent to injure plaintiffs by accusing plaintiffs of committing murder and or aiding and abetting the same. behaviors that are so repugnant, debased, and immoral, that it could exclude plaintiffs from society. Defendant's intentions have been carried out as some of the posts have been seen more than 100,000 times.

End quote. So yeah, Michelle Graves' Facebook page picked up some traction, right? And, you know, she was saying things. She wasn't necessarily saying, she wasn't, I guess, I don't know, she wasn't saying like these people committed murder, but she was, like, suggesting, hey, there's more going on here than we know. these things aren't adding up, these statements that these people have made aren't adding up. And like, maybe there could be something more going on here, such as maybe Toml was murdered and people are covering it up and things like that, which is legal to do.

It's legal to do, but there are civil consequences to that. Like, I try to stay in the middle here. We are going to talk about this case and these people that you just mentioned and their involvement or lack of involvement in some cases. Like, we're going to talk about all that. They're not exonerated from being bad people. But there is something to be said, especially in our world today with the internet, where you can go out there and say whatever you want. But if you present it as fact, when you have nothing to substantiate it, you can be civilly liable.

We deal with it every single week. We have a big insurance plan because we're giving our opinions on these cases and someone could sue us. It doesn't mean it's going to hold up in court. But yeah, if you're out there on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, making these comments and they find out who you are. And what you're saying is factually not true, you could be sued. And I believe in that. But she didn't, yeah, she didn't say anything that was factually not true. No, she's giving her an opinion.

And that's how you have to qualify it. So again, you can get sued for anything. It doesn't mean you're going to lose or you're going to win. It would actually be like a long drawn out thing. Of course it would be. Went on for like two years, if not more. And eventually the judge was like, no, I don't, I don't really see how there were any false statements made maliciously. No, it's her opinion.

Yeah. So it's the same way. your phrase allegedly, right? In my opinion, the reason we see that you guys get sick of us saying it is because we have to. We have to qualify it by making sure everyone knows. These in some cases are just our opinions. Yeah. And I mean, according to the lawyer, Jean and her crew had received a death threats on social media.

They feared for the safety of themselves and their families. Now, Michelle Graves, she was like, I stand by what I said, right? She told the Forsyth County News, quote, I state nothing but fact. actual information, which was verified after reading the case file obtained through open records. I stand strong behind my statement that these people know what happened, and if they were not directly involved, they have not come forward with the truth, end quote. Which, by the way, who doesn't agree with that? There's more to the story for sure.

I really feel like there is. Yeah. Well, we'll save it for the end, but there's a gradient of what could have happened here. But there's, to me, it's very unlikely that just nobody knows. She just was left alone and Tamla was on her own. and they woke up and found her like this. I think that the chances of that are slim to none. It's obviously possible, but very unlikely.

We talked about it last episode, being the host of an event, having people sleeping over, making sure that, you know, they have bath towels or they have blankets or pillows, whatever they need. Like, that's a common thing. That the doors are locked. Yeah. Hey, is everybody good? Everybody tucked in.

I'm going to shut the doors. I'm going to make sure everyone's good for the night. I mean, especially if you know your security cameras, their batteries died months ago. You want to make sure your houses at least, locked up before you go to sleep at night, right? At minimum, it would be something along the lines of, hey, we tried to get Tomola at the bed, but she was refusing to do so. She wanted to be left something more there that resulted in her being on the porch alone, if that's what happened,

because we've already had people come out and say nobody was ever out there alone. So why would this case be any different? So I agree with her assessment as far as they know more than what they're saying. I mean, at the very least, you're opening yourself up to a legal thing where it's like if you have people at your house, let's say you have a swimming pool and you have people at your house and they're drinking and then you go to sleep and somebody drowns in your swimming pool, you can still be sued for that. 100%. Absolutely. So you would want to avoid those things, right?

Those are the kinds of things that you'd want to avoid and you'd want to make sure, as the homeowner, that everybody's tucked in and, you know, on their way to sweet dreams before you yourself go to bed. Now, Michelle Graves also mentioned a previous claim against her that had already been dismissed. That was a temporary protective order that Jean had filed against her in November of 2018. There was also a cease and assist letter sent to Michelle in December of 2018 that the lawsuit claimed she had ignored and she continued to post about the case and her opinions on Facebook. And this is just what Michelle believes is like a constant barrage in attempts to silence her to make her stop talking publicly about her doubts of how her friend Tamla died. Now, I'm not going to say what Michelle Graves was doing was right or wrong because she wasn't just a regular person with no connection to the case.

She's not just like a person on TikTok who sees a case and is like, this doesn't look right to me. You know, in that situation, even though we do that sometimes as well. But in this situation, Michelle knew Tamla, right? There was things she knew about her, her behavior, what she would do, what she wouldn't do. And that gives her kind of an additional context into, hey, this doesn't look right. Something's not right about what these people are saying happened that night. And everything in Michelle was screaming from the beginning that these, things weren't adding up. So what Michelle was posting on Facebook wasn't necessarily random,

unsupported claims of murder. She was pointing out inconsistencies that actually existed from the police reports that she had gotten through FOIA requests. Whether these inconsistencies and all of these, you know, things that didn't add up could be explained away by non-nefarious reasons. That's not really important at this point because Michelle wanted them explained regardless. And so that's what I'm trying to say. It's like we have already gone over this stuff and even us sitting here looking at it. We're like, well, that doesn't make sense. And why did Bridget Fuller lie about having Xanax? And then why did she lie about giving it to people? And then why was Xanax in Toml's system? And nobody saw her take it. And she'd never prescription. And she'd never taken it before.

And things like this, there's things that we need answered. And then there's these other things that come up that look like they could answer those things. But then the people who are in charge of those other things like the Xanax, they're like, no, I didn't give her a Xanax. I didn't see anyone slip it in her drink, which is a weird thing to say, right? And that right there, too, when we go back to knowing more than you're saying, if you had Xanax in your necklace and you have a prescription for it and nothing happened that night, me personally, if law enforcement comes to me and asks me, I'm going to say, yeah, but just so you know, I just want to make sure it's all out there.

I have a prescription for Xanax. I didn't give anybody anything that night, but I'd keep him on myself. So if anybody says anything, I did have Xanax. I was taking Xanax that night, but it's my prescription and I'm the only one who uses it. However, we know that's not the case now. And we know that Tamla had Xanax in her system. So when you take those two things together and the fact that Bridget wasn't forthright about that, it makes you wonder, as a layman, why would you not disclose that information?

Is there more that happened that night that you're aware of that may have contributed to whatever happened to Tomola? And that's the reason you didn't tell us. Because you have a prescription. There's no crime against that. Even giving it to people isn't necessarily a crime. that would supersede trying to figure out how this person died? It wouldn't supersede it, but it would be a crime. That could be part of it.

But that right there, if you're giving people prescription medication and their death occurs because of it, you are criminally liable. So could that be a reason that even though you're not directly responsible for what happened to her, you think that you're indirectly? So what I'm talking about here is consciousness of guilt, right? Behaviors that are displayed because you know your actions or your decisions may have contributed to the death of another. I mean, if Bridget gave Tomla Xanax, wouldn't she technically and legally sort of hold responsibility for what happened to her?

Well, you were saying that it's not, you're not potentially criminally liable. No, you are. It wouldn't supersede the murder investigation. No, I meant when Bridget admitted to giving Xanax to like, Jean and, you know. That's a crime. Yes. But if it's not connected to how Tomla died, and I think that's where it comes back to like, okay, maybe these things have non-nefarious explanations for them. Like, hey, I know I'm not supposed to be giving people my Xanax, and I know I gave it to

Jean and, you know, another person, I forget her name now. But I didn't give any to Tamla and I don't want it to look like I'm just giving Xanax out to everybody and them to think that. But if she did give it to Tamla, or if she did slip it into her drink, right, which is, see, here's what I'm thinking. Why would you say, I never saw anyone put Xanax in her drink? Yeah, a lot of commenters were talking about that in the last week's episode. It's a weird thing to say.

First of all, Bridget, ain't nobody got Xanax except you. So why would you see anybody put it in her drink? And second of all, no one is knowingly typically going to take Xanax by saying, oh, thanks for this pill of Xanax. Let me dissolve it in my drink. And that's how I'm going to ingest it. Yeah, it's not the normal way to do it. No.

That sounds more like somebody gave someone Xanax without the person ingesting this. Zanix knowing that sounds more like you're getting roofied here and so for her to say it that way and you know you hear her complaining about Tomlin she was all over the place she just had all this energy were you just trying to be funny and maybe like you crushed up a Xanax and put it in her drink thinking like man this this Tomlick needs to chill out maybe this'll help that's what I was going to say not to be funny but to even take it a step further by her not being forthright if she had given it to other people right we keep talking about Bridget Bridget Bridgett Bridget, but if she had given it to Jean or someone else, it's also possible that one of them

crushed it up and put it into Toml's drink or gave it her because they said, hey, I have this. Do you want half of it? So all of those things are important, and that's why you have to be truthful so that detectives can track it down and figure out who's the last person to have that Xanax. But to what you just said there about the crushing up of the Xanax, not necessarily to be funny, but Bridget herself has said, she was out of control, she was grabbing my breast, She was sitting on top of me. I wouldn't do it. You wouldn't do it.

But maybe someone who's not thinking right, it's like, oh, we got to calm this chick down. That's what I'm saying. Let's give her a little zan. Yeah. That's like, oh, I'm going to kill her. Yeah. But like, man, I know when I take Xanax, my, you know. Melos me out.

And mellows me out. And I get kind of tired. And I'm not as like all over the place. So maybe if I give it to Tamla, without her knowing, she'll chill a hell out for a second. And she won't be crawling all over me and everybody else anymore. But what's one thing you don't want to. do when you're doing when you're taking zanics drink that's the problem you don't want to drink that's a problem we know she was drinking tequila but she could hold her liquor according to lee and bridget knew that

as well so if it had come out that bridget had done that even she'd admitted to him been like yeah i mean i crushed up a zanx and i put in her drink because i was just like i wanted her chill out a little bit and that would be a crime that would be now you are yeah responsible for this woman's death even if we don't know for sure that the Xanax contributed to the death, you can't give somebody who's drinking Xanax, and especially if you crush it up, because then it's going to kind of not have that like steady release aspect. It's going to hit kind of hard. And somebody's going to be disorienting. I mean, you're not supposed to operate a motor vehicle when you're on Xanax, much less Xanax and alcohol. Maybe that's why Bridget was so dead set on Tomlin not driving home because she knew.

She had something else coming. That was going to be. I mean, I don't, again, this is all speculation. We're not saying this happened, but hypothetically, if I learned as an investigator that someone had crushed up a Xanax and threw it into someone's pill, a drink without them knowing, and that person was affected by it because of the combination of alcohol and Xanax and they lost their balance and fell over a railing on a deck and died because of it, I would need the attorney general's consent to do this, but I would find a way to charge them. I'd be looking for something there. I don't know what it would be because you wouldn't have intent. There's a lot there. But there's definitely a crime there. Some reckless kind of. There's a crime there for sure.

Maybe like manslaughter. I don't know. There's something there. I would leave it up to the attorneys in the comments. But there's something there where she would be criminally liable. Reckless endangerment maybe. Yeah. Without her actions that you would be under the assumption that the victim would still be alive.

I mean, without knowing exactly why she fell off that balcony, you'd have to assume they were probably kind of related, especially if. if Tamla wasn't known to take Xanax. Right. And that's if this was an accident. Yeah, it wasn't something her system had built up a tolerance to because you have to understand Bridget's, Bridges taken Xanax like it's, you know, multivitamins here. She's got a, she's got a resistance to it or what is it, what are the, a tolerance to it.

So it's not going to affect her as heavily as it would. Yeah, the same way someone else. Yeah. And that's if this was an accident, right? We're not saying that's what we believe. There's a whole spectrum to this. where that's the, that's in the lower end of things, but we haven't ruled out the possibility that what happened is much more nefarious. Absolutely. I would never know. Not in this case. I wouldn't. No. Not in this case. I wouldn't.

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It makes eating very realistic and easy. It takes the thought out of it. Love Factor. So head to FactorMeals.com slash Crime Weekly 50 off and use code Crime Weekly 50 off to get 50% off and free daily greens per box with a new subscription only while supplies last until 927, 2026. Once again, head to factormeals.com slash crime weekly 50 off and use code crime weekly 50 off to get 50% off and free daily greens per box. Okay, we're back. So it was around this time when Michelle Graves is posting on Facebook and her posts are getting a lot of attention and the people at the party are starting to like file lawsuits.

and, you know, there's stories coming out that Mike Christian told the people at the party, oh, you know, Michelle Graves is dangerous. You guys should go and get guns. And there's some police officers that are helping the people at the party, kind of waged this legal battle against Michelle Graves. And Michelle is saying, hey, not only does it look suspicious, but the people at the party are trying to silence me. And the police officers who were supposed to be investigating Thomas' death, they are also helping

these people try to silence me. what's going on here. And this is when Tomla's case started gaining a lot of traction online, right, outside of Forsyth County. And then it was revealed that the Horsford family had hired an attorney, and this attorney, Ralph Hernandez, he was making moves behind the scenes. The attorney for the family, Ralph Hernandez, was very, very clear. He says that there are just too many inconsistencies. Hernandez is referencing Jose Barrera for Seif County Superior Court employee who was fired for accessing police files about Horstford's death. Hernandez believed the injuries, meanwhile, from the fall didn't seem to match the injuries of Blount Force trauma listed in the medical examiner's report.

Now, we also got her toxicology report, which shows she had Xanax in her system, along with marijuana. Her blood alcohol level was 0.238, nearly three times the legal limit. Hernandez says he will review the evidence himself and meet with the sheriff before deciding if he or the family will ask for any further investigation. And no one surpass judgment that led us to our work. So does that mean that they want this to be further investigated, even though from Forsyth, it's case closed. What do they want? Well, you know, Hernandez, he said he's confident that any reputable law enforcement

agency would reopen a case if there was new evidence found. Now, meanwhile, the attorney for the homeowners where the party took place, he sent us a statement also saying that this was a tragic accident, asking that threats against his client on, his client's online stop and that this was not a case of murder. So basically at this venture, Ralph Fernandez is saying, hey, I'm going to look through what the police did. I'm going to see if there's anything there to see. And he has quite a hard time getting the records, the police records. I think we've all kind of been there on this side of the table, at least when you're filing a FOIA request. If it's an especially kind of controversial

case or the police are getting heat for it, it's difficult to get them for some reason. If it was just a case that, you know, the police felt they had done their best on and nobody was talking about it, it's pretty easy. You can get it in a few days a week. But if it's something like this, they make it a little bit more difficult. And once again, that could be explained away by non-nafarious reasons. Or it could be because the police didn't want anybody to see what a poor investigation they had put on. Ralph Fernandez, he eventually does get some case records. he has a team look through them. They kind of do their own investigation. And in June of 2020,

he sent Tomla's husband Lee a letter saying that his team's investigation strongly suggested a homicide. Quote, witness statements are in conflict. A potential subject handled the body, as well as the evidence prior to law enforcement arrival. Evidence was disposed of and no inquiry followed. The scene was not preserved. Evidence was inappropriately handled. end quote. So I'm not done reading from the letter, but we kind of have to ask what is he talking about when he's talking about, you know, the scenes not being preserved, evidence isn't appropriately handled. Well, during a conversation early on with members of Tomliss family, Mike Christian from the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office was asked about the cigarettes that had been found on the balcony. Because remember that Jose said the morning that Toml's body was discovered,

Aunt Madeline had come to the room where he and Jean were sleeping and she was like, I need Jose. And she was like, you know, something's going on with your friend from the island. She's outside. And he said he went out on the balcony. And before he even saw Toml's body, he saw some cigarettes and a lighter. And not thinking about it, he just kind of grabbed those things and moved them from where they were and put them on the fire pit. And I do have an issue with that because if somebody came to my bedroom and woke me up and was like, hey, one of the people that was at your party yesterday is laying in the lawn, not moving face down.

Would I even have like been focused on, oh, what are these cigarettes and light are doing on the ground here? Let me pick them up. You know, it's messy out here. Let me clean up before I walk to the edge of the balcony and see this body. Would it have been something that's on your mind, Derek, if somebody told you somebody at your party last night is laying face down in the yard. And I don't know why. Can you come check it out? Yeah, no, it doesn't make sense to me.

Start removing things. Oh, let me get the debris around the body that's not moving. I mean, you're talking a balcony and outside balcony, maybe what, six feet from the door to the edge of the balcony? Looking at those photos when we look at it, let's say, let's say eight feet. Yeah. And in that small, short distance, you're like, cigarettes and a lighter. Good Lord, let's pick that up. I don't know if that's what would even process to me.

Yeah. If somebody just told me that I'm going to be pretty laser focused on. Let me get to that yard and see what she's talking about, right? Yeah, you would think. So everyone had kept saying that Tamla was the only smoker there that night. We heard a million people say that. She was the only smoker there that night. Everybody, you know, went out with her various times, but nobody else was smoking cigarettes besides Tomla.

Yet, as it turns out, there were two different brands of cigarette butts found. Okay, so these cigarettes that were on the port, that are all to the same brand. Two different than the cigarettes. There we just look at it. I'm not smokers, though. I can't tell that. Which is the different one, Kurt?

One closest to the lighter. Wilson? Mm-hmm. And the one right just right behind it. Do you have those actual cigarettes? You didn't keep them? So the reason why this kind of thing wasn't kept? Was it because it was considered accidental at the time?

at the time? No, there was just they were captured and photographed. It's not something that we would normally take. Was that, did you dump the Australia? No, no, no, I can't. That's how we found it. Can I explain that? No, that's what that's concerning to me. Why is the cigarettes out outside the ashtray? But there, no buts on there. No. Now, some of the things that have been said, other things about the cigarettes, this actually was right here and got picked up before we got there just somebody walking through. It's like, oh. Do you know who did that? No, I'm 10. I was Jose. Okay.

So this is, you know, a lot happening here. Basically, the voice you hear is Kurt St. Jor. That's Toml's father. And he's saying, no. They're not all the same brands of cigarettes. And in the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office report, it states the brand of cigarettes were the ones that Tomliss smoked. But in this interview, Tom was father of Kurt. He's looking through the photos with Mike Christian. And he points out, no, there's two different cigarettes brands present. And then when asked if they had the original cigarettes, right, because this could prove it, Mike Christian said, no, they don't usually keep those things, that they had photographed them.

And then that was it. And like they did photograph them. And we don't know what those pictures look like, but I can assume they weren't like super close up pictures of the cigarettes to be able to determine really one way or the other like what brand of cigarettes they were or to really be able to kind of get specific on what was going on. And it sounds like they have no idea where those cigarettes were, how they were kind of located or laid out at the time that Tomla died before the police showed up because Jose did move them. And so they're asking my Christian, do you have the original cigarettes? And he's like, well, no, you know, like they got thrown out. Well, we don't really know who ended up throwing them out. But Bridget Fuller would later tell the police she dumped the ashtray and thrown the cigarettes out because they were a constant reminder to Jean of what it happened.

And so I think that's what the letter means when they're saying evidence was not properly handled, et cetera, because if you had those cigarettes, you could tell not only were they different brands, but you could test the DNA on those cigarettes. and you could see, was there somebody else out there smoking cigarettes with Tamla? And if nobody at the party saw anybody else smoking cigarettes besides Tomla, maybe that person had a cigarette with Tamla after everybody else went to bed. And that's why nobody else saw anybody but Toml smoked cigarettes. Yeah, that's the issue right there, right? Without keeping the evidence, that speculation that you're talking about right now of what could have happened and what those cigarettes could represent,

We'll never have those answers, not because they weren't available to us, because law enforcement didn't do their job. And why would there be two different brands of cigarettes? Right there. I mean, there's only supposed to be one smoker, but now we have these second set of cigarettes. If we still had them, you go back, you could process them for DNA. Maybe it turns out it's one of the other people there. Maybe there's another answer for it that I can't think of.

Maybe it was from a different party. And we don't know. I mean, although. Oh, it comes back to Derek Lavasser. you find out Derek Lavasser was at the last party and it was just, you know, an oversight. Although according to Jose, he just has to pick up every single cigarette he ever sees and they can't just stay there. On the surface, it's suspicious, right? But part of the reason it's suspicious and I just don't want to lose sight of this is because of how poor the investigation was conducted.

That's why these open-ended questions exist. Would you have kept those cigarettes if you were- Of course I would. You would have, right? Of course. Listen, oh my God. If I had a dollar, I wish my guys were here right now. I had a dollar for every cigarette butt or Coke can or piece of paper that we seized from a crime scene that had absolutely nothing to do with the case that we were working.

But I just took it in case because I was always like, there's going to be a photo later. And I see that cardboard from like a chicken nugget box from McDonald's. And I didn't pick it up. And I'm going to be kicking myself because we come to find out the suspect loves McDonald's or whatever. But like the boxes or cans are so old sometimes. rust, you know, like, they're not rusted because they're aluminum, but you can tell they're not. Yeah. You can tell that they're not from the crime that you're working, and yet I still would collect them.

But cigarette butts, are you kidding me? Yeah. It's a petri dish. It's literally a DNA swab. Yeah. Of course you're collecting all of those. And not only are you collecting them, you're putting a placard next to them, you're taking photos, you're documenting them on a graph to ensure that if you have to go back and

reference them, you know exactly where they were taken from. Yeah, well, that's why it's just convenient or it's like, Jose was like, I saw the cigarettes and I had to move them. you know, as soon as before I even saw the body, I had to move them so they wouldn't be in the original place that they were. And now Mike Christian is like, no, we just took photos. We don't usually take these things. And that's why I wanted to ask you.

No, I wouldn't move them back, right? So if someone at the party or a different crime scene says, listen, I picked up these cigarettes, I would take a picture of where they are now or I would seize the trash can, whatever it is. And document that they had been moved. Document that they've been moved. But then also go take a photograph and have the, I would. I usually would have the witness point to the area where the cigarette was. So now it's my way of locking you in because I have a photo of you and an image of you like an

asshole pointing to the ground where it was. So I can say, don't tell me later you didn't say that to me. Because not only did you say it, but I got a photo of you pointing to the spot where they were because that's what will happen to Stephanie. So many times where you'll get like a statement and what do I always say? If it's not written,

it doesn't exist. If it's not in the report, it didn't happen. And so if you have someone, who says something that's incriminating, but you don't document it. And then later you reference it by saying, oh, Jose said this to me. No, I didn't say that to you. What are you talking about?

Well, where's the statement that I said that? Where's the recording? Oh, well, I don't have anything. Well, then guess what? Your shit out of luck. It didn't happen. And once again, I want to clarify, I don't really actually believe that this, it went down like this where the police get there.

And then Jose, like, pulls them all aside. And he's like, I did this. And you got to help me cover it up. And that's why the investigation was done poorly. But as- I don't believe that either, as Mike Christian was asked, hey, did you not collect them because you thought it was an accident basically from minute one? And he's like, no, no, no, no, we just don't. No, it's because you thought it was an accident for a minute one. You didn't look at all the possible scenarios that could have happened in how this woman died. And so you didn't investigate it as in, hey, we might need evidence to look at later to figure out and piece together what happened because we already think we know. And although you're not suggesting that they showed up and Jose said, hey, like you just said, I did it and helped me cover it up, there is some bias there, right? Because even if it wasn't that extreme, it could have been a more common-sensical way of looking at it would have been, oh, this is Jose. Yeah, we know Jose.

He's a good guy. He's great. He wouldn't do something like this. This is an accident, right? That right there, that biased going into it, that preconceived notion before you even have a chance to look into the investigation skews your judgment and also causes you not. to investigate it as thoroughly as you would, another case where you don't know the people. So there is a... Yeah, we don't know this victim laying on the ground. No, we don't know her, but we know Jose.

He's a good guy. And so you go into it and you give a half-ass effort. And now you're in front of the GBI and they're interrogating you. Yes, exactly. So Ralph Fernandez's letter continued, quote, The investigation was compromised by unauthorized access and disclosure to potential targets and witnesses. They're talking about Jose, we know. A remarkable fact is that there were no photographs taken during.

during the autopsy of Tom was body. This had to have been done at someone's directive because such a practice is unheard of, end quote. So this is kind of like a point of contention. I talked to Michelle Graves, and she said, as far as she knows, there were no photographs taken. According to the records, the GBI's medical examiner took only five photographs, okay?

Which many have pointed out, even if that's true, that's a very low number of photos to take in a death investigation when the reason the person died is still unknown. According to the GBI, their policy is that the number of photographs taken is left up to the discretion of the medical examiner. And in this case, it included the body bag, Toml's remains, an identification photograph, and injuries. Now, Ralph Fernandez argued that Toml's injuries should have warranted more than five photos. And I actually did some looking into this because this bothered me, five photographs. Some sources say none were taken. Okay, so I did some looking into this, and there isn't a fixed standard number of photos

to be taken in an autopsy. But medical examiners are supposed to follow a very simple principle, which is document everything necessary to accurately capture the body's condition and preserve evidence. So before anything invasive is done, the body should be photographed as it was received. Full body shots, front, back, sides, clothing, identifying features like tattoos, scars, marks. So this is going to establish a baseline and preserve how the victim appeared at the time of intake. So if there are any marks on the body, even minor ones, they need to be documented in detail using close up shots of bruises, abrasions, cuts, lividity patterns, ligature marks, patikia,

swelling, and these would usually be photographed with and without a measurement scale. Scale. Yeah, and from multiple angles. So then once the autopsy begins, the organs would be photographed in place before removal. Then again, after removal and dissection and any abnormalities would be documented. If there's any possibility of foul play, the fingernail should be photographed for defensive evidence. The hands, wrist and neck would also be photographed. You know, if there's like red marks or, you know, anything on the hands, the wrist. You think they would take those clippings too, nail clippings after photographing it. Additionally, photos could be taken for scene correlation, so injuries to possible mechanisms at the scene, patterns that could align with

the scene investigation, et cetera. So the general consensus is in a simple, clearly natural death, about 20 to 50 photos would be taken, in an unclear or potentially suspicious death between 100 to 300, and in a highly complex or forensic heavy case, over 500. So once again, I did my research online, and then I was like, well, you know, this is what people say they do, but maybe people don't do that. So I actually called around to talk to medical examiners, and I called a lot of places, a lot of different medical examiners, kind of in my area and around. Like, I went pretty far out because obviously they're doing important work and not all of them

can just stop doing what they're doing and talk to you. But I was lucky enough to get a hold of and be able to speak to three medical examiners. And I posed the question as to whether five photos would be considered anywhere close to enough. And they all said that, five photos would be extremely low for an autopsy, especially if the cause and manner of death have not been established yet. They said that in modern forensic practice, that would generally be considered inadequate documentation in most circumstances, not even a suspicious death, just in any autopsy. So the GBI, they spoke to Dr. Andrew Kootkeminers in July of 2020. He was the medical examiner that conducted Tom was autopsy. And he was asked if there were more photos than what

the Forsythe County Sheriff's Office had provided. And he stated, no, these were all the photographs that had been taken. Quote, the reason there were not more photographs was due to a miscommunication with their photographer, and it is not standard practice to take pictures of minor injuries. End quote. He was again questioned as to why there were not any photos with a scale of Tomla's injuries, minor or otherwise. There's no scale. And he stated again that there was a miscommunication with the photographer, and quote, it seemed pretty straightforward in regard to the fact that Horstford had fallen and was not pushed, so he did a standard autopsy, end quote. Yeah, and this is right there what I just said. First off, you want as many photos as possible

because as we're looking into the case, from the autopsy, we'll get photos of all the injuries, and then I can even go back to the crime scene and try to find the objects that caused those injuries. So you'll see a lot of time, even cases that we've covered where you'll see like an impression or an indentation or a cut. And next to that will be a side by side of the thing that caused it, right? And you go through and you start to identify all the things that would have aligned with those injuries, and then you can get a better idea of what occurred. But what I just said before you just read this quote, which was they show up and they

automatically come to the conclusion that this was a tragic accident before doing any investigation. And that's why there was such a nonchalant approach to this. And that's at minimum. It's just an egregious misstep in their judgment as far as their professional conduct. But a lot of people don't agree with that. A lot of people think it's more than that. So it depends on where you fall.

But at minimum, we can all agree at this point. This is just not the way you do these things. This is not the way it's supposed to be done. I also ask the medical examiners that I talk to, how as an ME would you be looking at every single body that comes in? If you were looking at this body cursory wise, because I mean, obviously the photograph process is going to start happening pretty much right from the beginning, right? So if you're with this body for a few minutes and you've talked to, you know, dumbass Mike Christian for a few minutes,

and now you're looking here and you're like, I think it's pretty straightforward that she fell. What as a medical examiner are you doing? Like, is that common to assume you know what happened to the person before you've even started the autopsy? And they all said that's pretty egregious, actually. Yeah, it's insane. It's insane. In fact, a lot of times detectives will think one thing, the pathologist will come back and go, I actually disagree with you. Yeah. You know? So there's that, which is interesting to say the least.

We're not done talking about the autopsy, but it's even more important to note that no one has ever even seen these photos because the GBI claims there are five photos. I talked to Michelle Graves. She's like, I didn't think any photos were taken. And even after Ralph Fernandez acquired the case file through a FOIA request, they weren't included. None of these photos were. Now, the GBI told 11 alive news that they are not subject to open records.

And this is not necessarily true because under the Georgia Open Records Act, most state agencies, including the GBI, are required to provide access to public records. But that law also includes really broad exemptions, like if the case is ongoing or still under review. And at that point, the GBI can legally withhold most or all records related to it, even if the case is closed, some records may still be unavailable. and autopsy photos are especially restricted. I found out that Georgia law is particularly strict about this, with autopsy photos generally not released to the public. However, they can and should be accessible to immediate family and legal representatives or through court order. So for the GBI

to never have provided these five photos they claim existed, you know, at any point to anybody, even Tomla's family and the attorney representing them, it just seems weird. So it's like, we're there are even five photos taken, or did you not take photos at all? And what do you mean a miscommunication with a photographer? Because the GBI talked to Dr. Coop Miners, and he was like, that was a miscommunication with a photographer. And I don't see any follow-up, at least from the file that I have, where the GBI's like, who is this photographer?

What was the miscommunication? Like, can you give us more info on that? Because it's a pretty, like, not super specific response that there's a miscommunication with a photographer, because isn't the, I mean, he's the one supposed to be telling the photographer want to take pictures of, I don't know. Yeah, and I agree. Like the fact that the photographer only would take five photographs, it doesn't make sense.

Even if they're coordinating with the pathologist, because they may be taking those photos in conjunction to the autopsy being conducted. That happens all the time. Yeah, that's what it would be. They'd be along with the Emmy as the Emmy was doing the autopsy. Can I also add another wrinkle to this? When we had a death that had suspicious circumstances surrounding it, right? we're responding to that autopsy.

There's some where it's like very obvious what it is. Like it's an older person. You know, you may not have the bandwidth to get over there if you guys have a lot of cases going on. But if there's any questions about the death, a detective will be present during that entire autopsy. You know what else they can do during that autopsy, Stephanie?

Take pictures. Take some photos. We are allowed to document and take photos of what we're seeing and hearing at the same time. Now, you're going to get the official report from the pathologist, but there have been times where to kind of get in front of it, I might want to take a photo of something.

I'll get the official photos later, but something where there's an obvious injury, maybe I don't have a scale in it or whatever, but I want to go back to the crime scene before getting that official report to see if I can identify an injury that was found by the pathologist that we didn't note at the crime scene, you know?

So I might go back there and say, hmm, where is this from? But clearly none of that. I would be surprised to find, do we know if an investigator was present during the autopsy report? We do know. What's the answer?

So they said they were, but they weren't because Dr. Coot Miners, when he's interviewed, he's like, no, there was no detective at the autopsy. Man. Yeah. No detective. It's insane. Yeah. Yeah, it's embarrassing. I give up at this point.

I can't. It's pretty bad. Pretty bad? Really bad. Somebody's getting fired. And I know people did get fired. Right. For a death like this, probably you want somebody present at the autopsy.

No doubt. Like you said, it's not just a 98-year-old person who passed away peacefully in their sleep and they were alone in their house and you kind of know what happened here. Okay, you got a major caseload. Mike Christians got time all the time in the world to be Snapchating all these women. You got time to be at the autopsy, my dude. Any suspicious circumstances. But they didn't think it was suspicious apparently. Well, that's the problem. But how stupid are you? No, I mean, well, that clearly they did a lot of stupid things in this case. But even someone, let's say the case involved a 30-year-old male who it appears to, it appears to, be a drug overdose, right? It may on the surface look exactly like what the crime scene presents. I'm still going. And I'm not just saying me, most detectives are still going because how do we know that the scene wasn't set up to look that way, right? That's why you go and do the autopsy. That's why you're present for it in case they discover something where they say, wait a second, there's internal damage here. There's internal injuries. This wasn't an overdose. Now you're present for that when that discovery is made. Okay, so let me ask you, and this is what a lot of people think, right? And it wasn't necessarily just simple stupidity of, oh, this looks pretty cut and dry and straightforward. It was the underlying issues of the fact that, A, the detectives and the police who showed up recognized Jose as somebody they knew and trusted and had a good reputation. And B, they did not know the woman in the yard. She was kind of an outsider, wasn't really well known around the community, and she was black.

Well, and that's the thing. A lot of people have talked about it. And the simple answer is, I don't know. Because the reality is the implicit bias or the unconscious bias that may be present in these investigators. Who am I to defend them? I don't know what their background is. I don't know what their history is. I don't know what their outlook is on people of color.

I'm not going to sit here and defend them. At minimum, like you said, they knew Jose. And it's automatically like, oh, you know what? This is clearly an accident. but it'd be completely unprofessional of me to sit here and say that because of Tomla's appearance, that there wasn't less significance put on this case. Ah, you know what? You got a bunch of these good white people who are here.

Now you got this black woman on the back lawn. I'm not letting them go down for something that clearly they had nothing to do with. This is close and shut. I'm not going to do too much here that I don't need to do. But is it possible that these investigators, at least some of them, saw her as less than because of the color of her skin? I don't have, if you showed me a text that said that where it's like, oh, it's a tip, what I'd be all over it. Well, I mean, you kind of had Mike Christian being like, oh, what, hello from a racist cracker,

you know, like kind of making jokes about it. Without having something direct, it's, it's hard to say for certain. But I'd be lying also based on what you had told us at the top of the series as far as the history of this community, that that may carry out through future generations. So I'm not going to sit here and say, nope, no chance, because that would not be doing my job. And I think that, you know, we have a lot of these cases sometimes where people believe that race played a role. And sometimes I agree and sometimes I don't.

But if you had to ask me, what is my instinct here? Did race play a role? I would say yes. Can I take it a step further? Yeah. We just covered earlier this week about Rex Heurman on Crime Weekly News. Not only can race play a role, but socioeconomic status, right? or a current occupation, right?

When investigators come in there, they can make a judgment or they can decide the intensity of the investigation based on the victim, right? This is a poor person. This is a former sex worker or a current sex worker. This is a drug dealer, right? And so they go in there and based on the profile of the victim, that could dictate the level of investigation. It's not right.

Or it should never happen. Sexual preference, like with Jeffrey Dahmer. We know that Jeffrey Dahmer was allowed to kind of go on facts. for so long because the his victims were a lot of homosexual yes yeah so and that all plays a factor of these detectives are human beings and they have implicit biases and unconscious biases that they may not even be aware of or they or they are or they're aware of it right but they go in there and they judge a person based on who they are and there's no way I can sit here and say that's not true we know it's true we have evidence to support it they don't judge they don't judge a person

based on who they are because they don't know they judge a person based on what they look like, what they immediately present it. Who they were in life, right? There's a lot of things that could go into it, and it's never the case. This is supposed to be binary, right? Yeah. Not only with suspects, but also with victims.

I don't give a shit who you are. At the end of the day, all I care about are the facts. Nothing else matters to me. Who you were with, what you liked, what you look like, what you did for fun, what crimes you committed prior to your death, I don't care. Unless it contributes to solving what happened to you,

it's irrelevant to me. Yeah, I agree. But I do think that in this area, this kind of case ended up being not investigated the way it should have been and race did play a role. And I will say that. It definitely a higher likelihood based on the history that you've described to me earlier. Absolutely. It would be foolish of us not to consider that. Well, on that depressing note, let's take a quick break.

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taxes and fees extra. See MintMobile for details. All right, we're back. So let's return to Ralph Fernandez's letter to Thomas Husband Lee. The letter goes out. on to say that it appeared Tamla had been involved in a struggle. Quote, there were abrasions noted consistent with that scenario. There were parallel scratches to one arm. Since they were fresh, photos would have proven recent use of defensive force. There was one x-ray, yet the injury

noted as the cause of death appears nowhere. End quote. Now apparently, like I said, Fernandez had a hard time getting these case files to begin with. This is something in the letter he said he could talk at length about, but that would be for a different conversation. He then wrote, quote, let me conclude by telling you that my years of experience lead me to believe that 80% of cases where African Americans die under mysterious circumstances end up closed or cold because there are no videos and the only witnesses are bad guys or good guys that deep down are really bad. Then you have cases where law enforcement does a poor job and cares little to investigate thoroughly because of some connection or association to the perpetrators, end quote, which is

basically exactly what we're saying, right? Yeah, absolutely sounds like the case that we're covering right now. So in response, the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office claims they took another look at the evidence at the request of Thomas family. And they also had the GBI look over the findings. Quote, no additional information was found, end quote. They also said that the department was prepared to have an independent agency take over the case if new information was provided and the investigation was reopened. But at that time, they had not received any new information. So understand, Ralph Fernandez's letter was sent on June 5th. The Forsyth County Sheriff's Office responded within a few days saying all of that.

We have no more information and we took another look and there's no new information. And then by June 12th, the Forsyth County Sheriff Ron Freeman sent a letter requesting that the case be reopened and investigated by the GBI. So I think it's weird and kind of like strange timing that Ralph sends a letter to, to Lee, Horsford, on June 5th being like, hey, something's going on here. Then the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office responds within a few days being like, hey, we did take another look, and we had the GBI look over things, and we found no new information. But if some new information does come up, then we'll have it reopened and we'll have the GBI look at it.

And then literally by June 12th, the sheriff is having the GBI reopen the investigation and look into it. So what changed? You said you weren't going to look into it unless there's. new information. So did new information come up or were you just feeling public pressure? And why did you do a complete 180 within the course of, I don't know, a week? That's what I would lean toward, right? I've seen it firsthand where law enforcement may feel a certain way, but due to public or political pressure, aka public pressure on politicians, they are overruled. Right? They could

go to a mayor or a congressman and say, we don't think there's anything else here to do. And they could say, well, that's great, that's cute. Glad you think that, but we're going to still do GBI because of the optics of it. We need to get it out of our department. We need to let an outside agency look at it. So that's what it sounds like to me. But it kind of seemed like the sheriff, Ron Freeman was the one who made that request or that call. But the question is why?

Why? Yeah. Who did he speak with? He's got a boss as well. And I feel like something may have transpired there where he was told indirectly, this is happening. So as we've already discussed, right, there's the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office investigation. They close it out. Now we know the GBI. They agree to reopen the case. And on June 12th, 2020, special agent in charge, Kimberly Williams, who's with the GBI, she asked Sheriff Ron Freeman to prepare a full copy of the case done by his office and to include any evidence and attachments so that Special Agent Kelly Aldrich could review the investigation.

Sheriff Freeman said that since the case was closed by his office, they had limited evidence. and he wasn't sure what evidence they had. Okay. So then on June 18th, Kelly Aldrich, with the GBI, she contacted Verizon Wireless, and she asked how long they kept cell phone tower location information. She was told that Verizon kept tower location records for calls for one year and real-time text for seven to 10 days.

So Aldrich then attempted, one of the first things she does, is to attempt to verify Lee Horsford's location at the time of his wife's death in November of 2018. which is crazy to me because now, I mean, I guess it's like, okay, if you're going to reopen the investigation and you're going to investigate, you should include the husband if you're trying to include like a full pool of suspects. But why is that the first thing? One of the first things you do is to look at the husband now, who wasn't even at the party? Yeah. Why are they moving it outside the house?

There's a bunch of people there that need to be vetted thoroughly first. Why are you now moving it to a completely different area and focusing on Lee? So she tries to verify where Lee Horsford was at the time of Tomla's death. We also find out that Kelly Aldrich was asking Stacey Smith about Tomla's relationship with Lee. And Stacy replied that Tam loved her husband and never said anything bad about him. On July 14th, Aldrich also got search warrants for Tomla and Lee's Facebook accounts. So clearly, she's trying to figure out, Was this a bad marriage?

Was it abusive? Was there something going on? Were they having relationship problems? And that's one of the focuses of the GBI's investigation. So on June 23rd, the GBI talked to crime scene specialist, agent Elaine Honea, about evidence from the crime scene that she'd been provided from the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office. One of the items was a bucket containing a blue bottle of tequila. Honea said she had been told the bottle had been submitted to the GBI crime lab for testing.

however, the lab had not tested the bottle or its contents. She said the bottle was visually examined for latent prints with negative results. And after applying fingerprint powder, Honea noted several locations on the front and back of the bottle with partial fingerprints. She lifted four partial latent prints off the bottle onto cards. They were collected as evidence. Honea also packaged a Ziploc bag of suspected marijuana with an assigned GBI barcode to be processed at a later date for latent fingerprints. Now, there were partial latent fingerprints located on each side of the bag near the zipper on that bag of marijuana.

But the weird thing is, although we hear in the GBI's summary of this case that they lifted prints, this isn't that, we never get any indication as to whose prints those were. Those are not included. I'm sitting here as you're speaking wondering, like, okay, well, whose prints were they? I don't know. I wish I did. That makes two of us. So on July 14th, the GBI spoke to the chief medical examiner Dr. Jonathan Eisenstadt about Toml's autopsy. He stated that he had reviewed the autopsy and he agreed with Dr. Coopminer's findings that the death was an accident.

The GBI report says, quote, Horsford's death was ruled an accident due to her intoxication, injuries, and certain lack of injuries. End quote. Eisenstadt said that all of Toml's injuries could have come from a fall off the balcony. and as for a lack of certain injuries, he said that they look for certain external injuries in regards to signs of a struggle. He said Tomla did not have any broken fingernails. Her nails were clean and short. There were no evidence of her grabbing or scratching anything.

She did not have bruises on her knuckles or external injuries to her neck. There were also no injuries that suggested Tomla had been hit prior to contact with the ground. Dr. Eisenstadt said that the evidence of bruising and bleeding suggested that Tomla had been alive when she impacted the ground, and it would have been possible for her to bounce slightly when she hit the ground due to the ground not being a completely flat surface. Because if you remember those pictures, it's kind of like a slow gradient, kind of a hill thing. Yeah. Yep, I could see that.

He said that Tamla being located so close to the base of the porch suggested a fall, and if she had jumped or been pushed, she would have been further out from the base. What do you think about that? You know, I hate weighing in on things that I'm not a professional in, you know, because I feel like a lot of people do that. I get frustrated when they do it and here I am doing it. I see it lining up just based on other cases that I've done where we've recreated the scene and I've watched the experts conduct those experiments. I talked about a case that I worked out of San Diego where the crime scene itself didn't look like that's where the person would fall. And yet upon recreation using a dummy, a body dummy where we had the same weight, the same size.

the same railing and we just dropped the dummy over the bow over the railing four or five times from different angles of where this person could have went over because they were on a razor scooter we were able to replicate this a very similar fall to what was discovered at the scene in fact in this particular case what we found is that when the person went over they more than likely struck the chandelier on the way down which we didn't originally consider but it was in the police reports it wasn't a case that I worked. It was a case that I was working after the fact as a PI. And that's how we were able to determine, oh, based on how this dummy went over and it hit the chandelier, that's probably what happened in the actual scenario as well. So that's a really long way of saying, I get what

they're saying here as far as if she had jumped over, you would expect her to kind of fall a little bit further away from the balcony as she fell, where if she kind of fell over or leaned over and maybe caught herself even. I had suggested that in part two or part one where your natural reaction when you go over the railing, I know for me when I went over that railing in New York was to try to grab onto it because I wanted to save the embarrassment in front of my daughters. I was completely unsuccessful. I still went over and still fell on my ass. But it would make sense that if she tried to catch herself at the last moment, it would have caused her to drop straight down and then bounce after hitting the ground based on that kind of that grade that you have there

in front of the bottom floor. Yeah, but if she'd been pushed, she would have tried to catch herself as well. But he was saying, did he say in that, maybe I missed a part, I thought he said if she had jumped. Or been pushed. Or had been pushed?

That she'd be further away. Yeah, I don't agree with that. Yeah, that's why I was asking you what you think about. Okay, well, then, yeah, I don't agree with that. I was thinking more towards either being, either jumping or falling. If she was pushed, I feel like it would be directly straight down.

Right, I agree. Yeah. But I'm not an expert. Especially if she's already kind of leaning over or in a position where she's not completely stable or balanced and it would just take a light push. We're not talking about somebody running, you know, getting a running start and pushing her with some extreme force that's going to propel her body out. Yeah. I agree. Yeah.

So that long explanation, I agree with you. The only thing I would say is if she was thrown, then I would agree with that assessment. Yeah. But, but yeah, simply pushed accidentally or intentionally. She would try to catch herself before going over. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you.

Okay. So it just doesn't make any sense what he's saying, at least in that, in that aspect of it. So the GBI then spoke to Dr. Andrew Coopminers, the Emmy who did Toml's autopsy, and he told them that no one from the Forsythe County Sheriff's Office had attended Toml's autopsy. Because remember, before they said they had. Now, also earlier, we talked about how Coop Miners had claimed that he felt it was pretty straightforward that Toml had fallen and not been pushed, which is why he conducted his

autopsy the way he did, why he didn't do a sexual assault kit or obtain fingernail clippings, why it seems like he kind of phoned it in when it came to the photos. So special agent from the GBI Kelly Aldrich, she asked Coop Miners why he felt Tomla had fallen instead of being pushed when the information he had received from the police was that she could have fallen or been pushed. And he claimed that it was because he didn't see any evidence of her being pushed, even though he didn't make that final decision until he got toxicology, results back. But once again, you were asked why you didn't have photos taken during the autopsy. And you said it was because you thought it was pretty straightforward. But then you also just said you didn't make the final call until you got the toxicology results back, which would be weeks after the autopsy was done. And also, you've already admitted that you kind of were like, it seems pretty straightforward. She fell. And you're saying you didn't see any evidence of her being pushed. What evidence would you see of her being pushed, dude? What are you talking about? Like, are you an ex-man and you can put your hands on her and close your eyes and you can see

what happened to her in the moments before her death? God, I wish. What evidence would you see or not see of her being pushed? Did the person who pushed her have red paint on their hands? And so you saw, like, you didn't see two big red handprints on her, but what is he talking about? So now let's talk about that independent autopsy that we mentioned a little bit. And this independent autopsy was ordered by Tomlis family and the lawyer Ralph Fernandez. They asked board certified pathologist Dr. Adele Shaker to perform this autopsy on November 17, 2018.

So actually not long after the original autopsy was done. I know this was a homicide. The problem is I can't pin it on anybody because I don't have a badge and I don't have a gun. We also got access to something that is not in the GBI's report. For the first time, the family is making their independent autopsy public. In it, Dr. Adele Shaker says the dislocated wrist mentioned in the GBI's report is actually a compound fracture. And the fracture in her spine isn't a fracture at all. And to him, what is most important is what the GBI's medical examiner did not find.

There is no evidence of any significant injuries to the skull bonds. In Dr. Shaker's report, he says the lack of broken bones in Tamla's skull make him skeptical that she died falling from the second story of a building. Now, at first, deputies on the scene seemed to agree. They showed us the mulch and the rocks in the mulch and showed where, you know, oh, she tripped and fell over this little garden border. From the homeowner to the detectives, there are statements pushing back against the idea Tamla fell from the porch. If you went to brace yourself with your left hand, there ain't nothing there to brace yourself with? Yeah. And you spin, you know what I'm saying?

And even more unusual, how the homeowner and her boyfriend found Tamla's arms. It's the weirdest thing. She was face down, but like her arms were down like she just face-planted is the best way I can describe it. So her arms were like by her side. Yeah, they were by her side, palms up. It's a question we heard several times in the investigation because when you look at the scene photos, Tamla's left arm is actually off to the side bent. Her fingers curled under. Okay, so Dr. Shaker said that Tamla's wrist was not dislocated.

It was a compound fracture. So in the crime scene photos, and I'll have you pull these up again if you need to look at them, you can see a bone sticking out on Tomla's right wrist. But there was very little blood found at the scene, which raised the question of whether or not that injury happened on the spot or Toml was found. So you can also hear in that report we just listened to, there is a small amount of blood on Tomla's sleeve, but they said it's on her left sleeve, not her right sleeve. Right? That's what they said. So Adele Shaker, the independent pathologist, he described the injury to Tomla's left wrist as being postmortem. And Toml's father said, quote, I don't.

think she died with that cut, I think it was put there after the fact, end quote. We're going to talk about this in more detail because I'm confused. So Dr. Shaker also said there was no evidence of significant traumatic injuries to Tomla's skull bones or the cervical vertebrae. This is very different as far as the cervical vertebrae goes. But basically Dr. Shaker is saying, I don't see how she can fall from a second story balcony onto her head and have all of this internal issues, but not have any like breaks or fractures or anything like that to her skull. That's what he's saying. Do you expect to have that or a broken neck or something?

Right. So on August 11, 2020, the GBI agent, Kelly Aldrich, received a call from both Jonathan Eisenstadt and Andrew Coop Miners. And this was after the independent autopsy had been released and the media was reporting about it. And they told her that they had listened to the Murder Squad podcast on Spotify relating to Toml's death. And in that podcast, they'd heard information about the independent autopsy and they wanted to clear some things up. And this is funny to me, right? Because by this time, the GBI doesn't have the full independent autopsy.

It's just being reported on the news and in the media. And Dr. Coopiners and Dr. Eisenstadt are like, we heard about this on the podcast and we want to like address these things. So they said it was mentioned that Dr. Shaker's autopsy showed an absence of a hematoma and hemorrhage surrounding. Tomla's fracture on her right wrist. Dr. Eisenstadt stated that there was blood around the fracture, but Tomla had not survived long enough after the fracture for a hematoma to form, which makes sense, actually. It makes sense. Yeah. Eisenstadt also said that the absence of subcutaneous subglyal hemorrhage or lacerations

of Toml's scalp was also not surprising to him because she had landed on a grassy surface. So some people were like, oh, but you said that she had a hemorrhury, or she had a hemorrhaping. in the autopsy. Yes, that was said in the autopsy that there were hemorrhages, but not subcutaneous, as Dr. Eisenstadt is stating. So subcutaneous means like on the external. On the surface. Yeah. So an actual cut. Yeah. So there were internal hemorrhages and things, like between her brain and the overline. We've heard that all before. Internal hemorrhaging. We've heard that before. There was just no external or subcutaneous hemorrhages to match the internal injuries. saying that's because she fell on a grassy surface.

So nothing split her open. I guess. Essentially like, yeah, like a cut her open. Even though you'd think if you fell face down and you, you had that much trauma inside the brain that, yeah,

it's grass, but there's also like hard ground underneath and it's November. So the ground's cold, you know, it's not like a soft ground. If we're being impartial here, I could see it. You're falling from about 20 feet.

You fall on the grass. It may not cut you open. It may not. I agree. I agree. I mean, I don't know how soft their grass was. How thick it was. Yeah, we don't know. Like you said, a lot of variables. But like also, to your point, if there was one little rock in the grass that, you know, they didn't see and she landed on that. It could have split her wide open. And we would have been like, well, how'd she get so cut open on grass? So it's all dependent on the crime scene. Well, they would have known that if they'd, you know, process the crime scene and found the rock. Touche. Well, they ain't going to do that. So we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. We are so excited to introduce you to Bullshot, the high-performance foam cleaning sprays. Yeah, and I feel like everyone has had that mess in their house somewhere where they've just kind of accepted it.

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Crime 20 to $64,000. One more time, that's Crime 20 to $60,000 for up to 20% off and free shipping. Text Crime 20 to $64,000. Message and data rates may apply. Okay, we're back. So there had also been mentions of scratches on Tomla's hands and wrists that could have been defensive wounds. And Dr. Coot Miners claimed, yeah, they were there, but they were minor.

And he said there was no way to tell if they were from the fall. or had happened before the fall. But if you go back to Coot Miner's original autopsy, he wrote that there were abrasions to Tamla's face, her left arm, her left hand, et cetera, and he said, quote, the observed injuries are consistent with those received in a fall, end quote.

So it's kind of once again. I'm not saying you're covering anything up. I'm saying you did a really like, phone it in kind of autopsy. And in the autopsy, you're listing these abrasions and these injuries, and you're saying they're consistent with a fall, But now when it's being suggested, these injuries could be defensive wounds and you don't have

photographs to show why they're not because you just said they weren't in your report, now you're like, well, we don't know when those injuries happen. Well, also, if she was defending herself against somebody, it would have happened before the fall. But he's basically saying she could have gotten them at any time, you know, maybe earlier that day or the day before. He doesn't know. Well, that's why you take pictures.

so you could see how fresh they are. When you were mentioning earlier, the cigarette butts, right? You don't take it because you anticipate there being a problem. You take it to make sure there's not a problem, right? You do it so that if in the off chance, someone comes in and offers an alternate theory that you don't believe is true based on the evidence, you can reference photos from the day of the crime

where you can say, hey, what you were saying, it's not possible because look here. You can see photos of the scene and you can see that that's not there. But when you don't take them, you open up a void that can't be filled. And whatever it is filled with is essentially conjecture. It's just it's an opinion on the matter. And there's no way to substantiate it.

And I'll remind you, Dr. Coop Miners did not take pictures of these injuries and certainly not with a scale, but he did describe a one-fourth by one-eighth inch superficial abrasion of Tamla's interior left arm and a one-eighth-eighth-inch abrasion on Tomla's left index finger. I guess my question would be how were her injuries described as consistent with the fall if Coop Miners is now saying he doesn't know if some of the injuries happened before during the fall. And given his description of the injuries on her arm and hand, the abrasions would be very small based on those measurements.

But like you said, without valid photographic documentation with the Scouts measure, we simply have to take his word that they were that small. That's it. And nobody's going to do that anymore. There's so much mistrust within our government agencies. you need to treat it as if it's going to be questioned by the court of public opinion. A great example. You just mentioned these pathologists coming out and saying, well, we were listening to this podcast.

That's the world we live in now. Everything is going to be questioned. The pathologists are like, we heard about this on the murder squad and we want to address it. Yeah, rest and peace murder squad. They're not even around anymore. But it's like they have a big following. And they had a lot of people who were tuning into that show. And they're going to question.

it. And then there's no way for you to dispute it other than coming out and voicing your opinions, but without any evidence to support it. And you're going to have a large portion of the audience. It's going to go, hmm, yeah, I still don't believe you. Yeah. And I mean, that's pretty much what happened, which is why I think, I think these pathologists were like, hey, we're getting some heat here. And, you know, this independent autopsy came out and it doesn't necessarily match everything we said. So let's try to get ahead of this. And they call the GBI and they want to discuss it. There's egos, too, in that. There's all egos. You have somebody coming in and questioning. your work. Let's talk about the wrist, though, because I'm stuck here. We have the GBI, Dr. Kootmeiner,

saying it's a dislocation. And then we have Dr. Adel Shaker, the independent autopsy, saying it's not, it's a compound fracture. Well, a fracture versus a dislocation is not a small disagreement. Okay, they are structurally different injuries. A fracture is a broken bone, and that would usually cause significant bleeding. A dislocation means the bones are no longer in their normal joint position, which can be obviously still painful and severe, but that's often going to have less bleeding than a fracture or no bleeding at all. However, an open fracture, which is what Dr. Adele Shaker was saying, that involves the bone piercing the skin. And that's when you can see the bones visibly out of place or protruding. That's what I thought a compound fracture was. Or they called it an open

fracture because the skin's broken. But a compound fracture in general is the piercing of the skin, right? And we are looking at these pictures, and I'm confused because I'm not necessarily seeing what's being reported. So I see Tomla's right wrist, and the bone is bulging. So that definitely is the wrist that is fractured or dislocated. And in another picture, you can see what looks like a bloody spot that may be where the bone broke through the skin. And with dislocation, you can also see the bone looking out of place or even creating a visible bump beneath the skin, but you won't typically see the bone break through the skin, however.

So if that's what they're saying happened, and we're kind of looking at the pictures, and I can see that there is blood on her wrist, and it could potentially be from where the bone is poking through the skin, which would make it a compound fracture. But if that's what the GBI took pictures of, and that's what they noticed, I don't see how Dr. Cootminers could have ever called it a dislocation. I don't get it. I'm also looking at the pictures, though, and I see Tomla's left hand and arm. And the wrist that is not injured is her left hand and arm.

Okay, that's the hand she wore her redding ring on. That's her left hand. There does not appear to be blood on the sleeve of that arm, as was reported by Dr. Shaker in his independent autopsy, and then 11 Alive News ran with that, and they were like, here's the problem. Like, her wrist is injured and there's blood on her sleeve. but the blood is on the left sleeve and her injury on the wrist is on her right sleeve

or on her right hand. I'm looking at the pictures. I just don't see what's going on here because there doesn't appear to be blood on the sleeve of her left arm at all. In these pictures, the blood looks to be on the sleeve of her right arm. And that's also the wrist that's injured.

I wonder if it's underneath these images that we're not seeing. But then there'd still be blood on both. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I know. I'm looking at the foot. I'm also looking at the close-up.

Dr. Shaker would have received Toml's body and her clothes separately. So maybe he got it wrong. You know, maybe he thought like. You still know you're left from your right though, Stephanie, right? Well, they're zip up pajamas, right? So maybe I don't know, man. I'm trying to figure out how you can make such a stupid mistake. But maybe he thought, oh, these pajamas zip up in the back or something.

And so he like turned it around. I don't know. No, because it had a hood on it. I don't know. That's what I'm saying. I mean, it's. But you heard it. They said that in the report that the blood's on the wrong sleeve. In these crime scene photos, it does not appear to be on the wrong sleeve.

It appears to be on the sleeve that corresponds with her wrist injury. Which would make sense with the compound fracture. You have some type of sharp bone piercing the skin. It doesn't have to be a huge hole, but it could be something there where you're going to have some hemorrhaging. You can have some blood, even though if she, if she died shortly after. You may not have a ton. The heart's going to stop pumping. Exactly.

And Dr. Eisenstadt said that, right? The lack of blood at the scene, it could be because Toml's heart wasn't pumping long enough after the injury occurred to produce that much blood. Or if you're in Toml's camp and you think that foul play happened, the blood loss occurred somewhere else. And I know that some people have talked about it. I'm curious to see what our audience thinks about that idea as far as there being something outs that occurred here completely, where Tomla was dead before she went over the balcony. Yeah, I don't see. It's very similar to the case with John O'Keefe, right? Where it's like they had

this whole thing where he went into the basement and then they beat him up and then the dog attacked him and then they dragged him out to the yard and left him there to be found. In this case, although I don't think anything is straightforward, I don't believe that Tomla's body was moved or that something else happened, some sort of altercation, some fight, and then her body was moved there to make it look as if she had fallen. I think she fell. Yeah, I mean, I know there are people that believe it. It is hard, although with the evidence not being consistent, especially in the photos, I get it. Like, for example, one of the witnesses said that both arms were down by the side. And yet we have a photo clearly, that's not the case. So you have to wonder. Well, because Jose moved her arm is what they, yeah. That's what they're saying. Or is it a misrererere. remembrance of what actually occurred. What was your story, quote unquote, your story to say when you were interviewed?

I tend to believe whether it was an accident or intentional, whatever happened, happened, and she landed where she did. And I don't believe that she was significantly injured or killed prior to this and then thrown over the balcony to make it look like it. I do get where people are coming from saying, yeah, listen, if her heart had already stopped before being pushed over the railing, then, And yeah, there wouldn't be that much blood with a compound fracture. I get it.

But I think there'd be other pieces of evidence within that house. I believe she would have been killed inside that home. And I know this is a tough leap to make because I've already pointed out how she the investigation was. But I would think that if there was something inside the home, a cleanup, if you will, of an assault that took place at some other location in the house, you would have evidence of that. And I know what the counterpoint will be. Yeah, they didn't look for that evidence. They didn't look for it. And you know what?

My response is, you're right. But based on what we have, even though what we have is horrible, it's not good. It's not a solid foundation to work off of. It doesn't appear that she was killed somewhere else and then moved there. I also think that if there was more blood, you would see it somewhere on her. There would be more staining on her on her PJs. She's got pretty much, you know, white. She's got a couple droplets here.

Even if we're having a discrepancy about where they're located, there's a couple droplets, a small amount. You would expect to see a lot more. I have no doubt that she died because she fell off that balcony. The question is... The question is, I don't think, I can't imagine how anybody just goes out to have a cigarette and then ends up falling over a balcony that the railing is pretty good waist high. It doesn't seem to be an accident, is what I'm saying. So I think that people point to the cause of death being multiple blunt force trauma injuries. And they're like, well, how does she get multiple ones?

Maybe there's some type of fight that happens before she goes over is what you're saying? No, I think they're saying like she was beaten to get multiple, but, you know, the GBI, and they were saying, well, her head bounced maybe, and that's why, which that doesn't even really make sense. But are they multiple blunt force injuries? Because then we come back to the fact where Dr. Shaker is saying there's no fracture of the cervical vertebrae either. And that was supposedly one of the main reasons why she had died. And we're going to talk about that. So the GBI did review Dr. Shaker's findings. They eventually got the report.

And they said, quote, Shaker was not able to determine a precise and accurate determination of the cause of death due to the time elapsed between Tomla's death and his autopsy and the dissection of Toml was organs from the first autopsy. Shaker stated the absence of subcutaneous subgolial hemorrhages or lacerations of the scalp and depressed slash linear fracture of the calvaral bone, which I had to look that up. The calvarola bone is a skull cap. It's the bones that are all fused together that make up like your skull. So the frontal bone, top and sides of heads, the occipital bone, the back of the head. That's the calvara bone. This raised a red flag to Shaker as to Tomla's death occurring from a second story fall, end quote.

Shaker told Lee Horsford that without an MRI, he couldn't tell what injuries Tomla had to her neck or brain, but he did not see a neck fracture when he was dissecting Tomla's neck or indisecting. Tom was neck. So Kelly Eldridge then went back to Dr. Coop Miners, and she's like, what do you think about all this? And he stated that he didn't feel the autopsy done by Dr. Shaker was all that different from the one that he had conducted. He said that they had noted different abrasions. He'd noted some that Dr. Shaker hadn't, and Dr. Shaker had noticed some that he hadn't. But now Dr. Coopiners actually agreed with Dr. Shaker that Toml's neck was not broken. So remember, Koot Miner's autopsy report stated a fracture of the C2 vertebrae.

And that does actually mean a broken neck. A fractured C2 vertebrae means my neck's broken, okay? The C2 vertebrae is one of the most important neck bones. It sits just below the skull. It helps you rotate your head side to side. It's very close to the brainstem and the spinal cord. So a fracture there can do a lot of things. It can disrupt breathing.

It can cause paralysis. It can lead to rapid or immediate death in severe cases. and the way that it was described in the autopsy by Dr. Coopminers, it was a pretty severe break. Now, the GBI report says, quote, Dr. Coop Miner said that it was more of a crack, which was caused from hyper extending of Horstford's neck when she hit the ground. He stated that would not be a fatal injury. He stated that the laceration of the heart, along with head trauma, would have been Horstford's fatal injuries, end quote. So now Dr. Coopiners, who does the autopsy on Tomah, he's looking at Dr. Shaker's autopsy, and he's like, actually, I do agree with that.

I know I said the neck was broken, but now, yeah, I could kind of see how it wasn't. There was a crack there. And it was from her neck hyper extending when she hit the ground, which to me, Derek, look at me. Is this what he means when she hits the ground? Her neck hyper extends, like the ground catches are here and she goes up like that? Or did he mean like down like that? Well, I would think it could be either, right? Like it's hyper extending it.

Well, I couldn't be like this because her face was planted in the ground. But what it could be, though, is like you just did with you. And I hope that you guys are all watching on YouTube to see her do that because that was hilarious. But I mean, it would be an overextension of the neck in any direction. It could be on the side. It could be on the back. It could be on the front. Like we have a natural angle that our neck can stretch to.

And overextending it either forward, backward or sideways could be what he's trying to explained. But can we, can we go back for a second because I don't want to demonize the aspect of a pathologist. And I'm not saying you're demonizing it, but just the idea of a pathologist conducting an exam, having an outside party look at it and say, actually, you're wrong. You miss something. Well, he didn't have an outside party look at it. He wasn't, it wasn't his choice. Well, he didn't do it, but I'm saying an outside, which makes it even more true what I'm about to say, an independent party coming in and saying, no, you got that wrong. And him being willing to say, I got that wrong because I'll tell you in my experience, that's not normally the case.

These examiners double and triple down on their original examination and will justify their assessment based on something that's no longer true based on what was found. So I'm not saying he's a hero for correcting the record, but I do like the fact that he was willing to come out and say, you know what, after seeing what he said, I actually agree with that. Or is that exactly what he wanted you to think? Is that exactly what he wanted to do to think? I'll give them something. So it looks like I'm open to this.

Do you justify demonizing a medical examiner, a pathologist, from mistaking a crack in the neck for a broken neck? I think mistakes happen. I'm not saying it's justified. I'm just saying people make mistakes. They might have missed something. But being able to admit you were wrong is important. And we have a lot of pathologists that I've dealt with that will not do it.

Devin Schmidt, man. I've never, that case will bother me until the day I die with those medical examiners, idiots. They shouldn't even have a license. But that's a different story for a different day. I had pathologists come in and prove them wrong. Yeah, we've all seen that. But for something like this, he's pretty much doubling down on everything else.

He's just like, yeah, maybe I got the broken neck wrong. Like, big whoop. That was a pretty major injury in your autopsy report, Dr. Coot Miners. That was a pretty major. I'm not going to give him an award for getting it wrong. I'm just saying we need more people to be willing to. admit they're wrong when they are, including detectives. I mean, he didn't admit to being wrong about not taking pictures.

He made up some bullshit excuse about it being in miscommunication. And that's the problem. Yeah. That is a problem. So where it counts, he doesn't really show much humility here. All right. So on November 13th, Kelly Aldrich of the GBI, she received several reports from the GBI's division of forensic sciences, including a leafy material drug identification, latent

prints, and semen identification. Yes, you heard right, semen identification, because apparently during an examination of tomless pajamas, tank top, shorts, and bra, stains that had the characteristics of semen were revealed. Quote, chemical examination of the tank top indicated the presence of seminal fluid, but serological examination failed to confirm the presence of seminal fluid. Microscopic examination of the smear prepared from the tank top failed to reveal the presence of identifiable spermatoza. chemical examination of the pajama one piece, the shorts and the bra, failed to reveal the presence of seminal fluid. End quote. Now, this is important because, first of all, I'm not sure why the health they're looking for

spermatoza. You wouldn't expect to see spermatoza on clothing a year and a half after that clothing was collected because that it wouldn't be there. Sperm can't live outside of the body for a year and a half, just chilling on clothes. I'm not sure why they'd be looking at that or for that through a microscope. but it's important to understand that they're basically saying, hey, there were basically swabs taken from the pajamas from the tank top, the bra, and there were components there that had characteristics of semen. They said that the chemical examination of the tank top

indicated the presence of seminal fluid, but then a serological examination failed to confirm the presence of seminal fluid. We're going to talk about that more, but first we're going to take our last break, we'll be right back. I've been doing a little bit of a spring reset with my closet lately, and I'm realizing, even though I always am like, I have nothing to wear, I don't need more clothes, I just need better ones. Yeah, fewer pieces, but ones that you're actually going to wear. I'm in the same boat. Exactly, exactly.

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Okay, we're back. So let's talk about this alleged presence of semen. And once again, I want to be as fair and unbiased as I possibly can be. So even if I think there's something suspicious going out with this case, which I 100% do, I'm also not trying to look at things through like tunnel vision and just see everything as kind of evidence that there is something suspicious going on. So they had collected paint samples from the porch of Jean Myers' home, which by the time the GBI is doing their investigation, John Myers doesn't live there anymore. But the report says that the question material on the back of Toml's pajamas was atypical of paint and did not originate from the back porch at the scene. So basically there was a spot on Toml's pajamas that they thought could have been seminal fluid.

And then they were like, well, let's look into it more. It also could be paint. So let's look at the paint that was on the back porch. Maybe that's what it was from. And they're saying, no, it's not from that. So Kelly Aldrich also asked Jim Sebastian, the biology manager at the Department of Forensic Science, why the chemical examination of Tomlis Tinktop would indicate the presence of semen and the serological examination would fail to reveal the presence of semen.

And he said, basically, he said they do their screening, their initial screening using a light source to find stains that glow. Now, semen can glow, but so can saliva, detergent, and other bodily fluids. He said they then applied a chemical to the areas that glowed, and the chemical reacts to acid phosphatase, an enzyme that is found in high amounts in semen, but important to note, not unique to semen. It can also be found in other things. It can be found in vaginal secretions and also the blood of people with prostate cancer. So Jim said this test, is sensitive, but not specific to semen, which is why they moved on to the serological test, which looks for protein specific to seminal fluid. They did not find those. So basically,

what they said at that point is it must not be semen. We don't know, we don't know what it is. Yeah, I mean, this is a tough one because you have to go through different stages. Obviously, the first stage where you're looking through a light source, you're thinking, hey, maybe we have something positive. And you go on to the next phase where you find the enzyme associated with semen. okay good this might mean something this crime could be sexual in nature so you go to the last layer and fortunately unfortunately however you want to look at it there's no protein specific to semen found in it so although the first two checked off the last one didn't so the one thing you can't say is oh you know what i still think it's semen it's not it's not semen so we can rule that out but as you mentioned

it could be associated with vaginal secretion we are talking about a victim who is a woman and so to think that there could be some type of vaginal secretion found on her clothing, I don't think is out of the ordinary. I don't think that's a crazy thought. So that's where my thought goes, more than likely it belonged to her. I don't really, based on those three tests, think of anything else it could be. I know they're going to people who probably come back and say, oh, no, I still think it's semen. I think there's a cover up. And to that, I say, you got to show me something to prove it. But without, with the lack of that evidence, I can't go there. So I kind of went down that path thinking people could say that. And I was like, well, it's

been a year and a half, like, could the sample on her clothes have degraded to the point where with the serological test, it wouldn't pick up the seminal fluid? And that was kind of squashed. No, the serological test, even that long after, it would still be picking that stuff up. It wouldn't, like I said, be seeing sperm, like they were looking through a microscope for for some reason, but it would still be reacting to seminal fluid. So with the serological tests, it can be years later. They have gone back and found, you know, or have had pairs of underwear or other items of clothing that were preserved correctly. They've gone back and been able to swab and do a serological test and confirm that what they were looking at was in fact semen many years later. So yes, that is something that wouldn't dissipate over a period of time if preserved correctly.

Once again, this does not rule out a potential theory that there was an advance made on her. She rejected it or got upset and a struggle into that ended up with her falling off a balcony. It just means it did not progress to a seminal-sexual assault. Yeah, type of situation. So now the GBI spoke to everyone at the party. We know that. We heard excerpts from their interviews. And then they got permission to extract their cell phones.

Now, since then, Marcy Hardin had gotten a new phone. Now, when Jose agreed to the extraction, he said he would allow it when he got back from a vacation he was going on. Agent Derek Glasgow told Jose, just remember, don't delete anything from your phone. And this is what he had told him the first time GBI had talked to Jose. And then Jose then said to Glasgow, well, actually, I have deleted some photos and emails that weren't relevant to this case since the last time we spoke, even though you told me not to. So basically what I'm saying is the first time they talked to Jose and they talk about extracting his cell phone. He's like, yeah, yeah, I'll give it to you later. And they're like, okay, that's fine, but just remember, don't delete anything.

And he's like, I won't. Then they talk to him again. And he's like, yeah, I'll give it to you when I get back from my vacation. And Derek Glasgow's like, okay, but once again, remember, don't delete anything. Like I told you last time. And Jose's like, well, actually, after you told me that last time, I did delete stuff, even though you told me not to, but it wasn't important. So don't important.

So as long as he said it wasn't important, it must not have been important. Exactly. We're good. So when they're talking to him at that time, Jose was asked if he was open to taking a polygraph. He said, yeah, he was. I'm going to think about it. I'll speak to you guys about it when I get back from vacation. So he gets back from the vacation.

The GBI took Jose's iPhone on August 3rd, and they found that there was no text messages from 2018. Now, by 2020, Jean and Jose had broken up. He claims it was due to the pressure of Toml's investigation and the accusations that happened afterwards. But between June and August of 2020, Jose ain't. and Jean were texting each other about Toml's case being reopened by the GBI, and they talked about how they were both being interviewed. Once again, the GBI report that is available to us does not say what they were talking about. So if they were just saying, oh, hey, you know, the GBI reopened Toml's case and we are both being asked to talk to them, that's one thing. But if they were telling each other specific things like, remember to say this and remember to say this, or if they were trying to recollect things so that they could make sure their stories were straight, that's a different kind of conversation.

The GBI report does not clarify what kind of conversations were being had, just that they were talking about both being interviewed. The GBI had requested records from Verizon for Jose's cell phone records for November 4, 2018, from 12 a.m. to 10 a.m. I remember, that's the day that Tamla apparently fell off the balcony. And Verizon stated there was no records available during that time frame. So the GBI asked, well, was this because Jose didn't use his phone on that date? And at that time, and Verizon said, no, it's because Jose didn't use Verizon on that date and time. So after Tom was death, before the GBI took his phone, he got a whole ass new phone and a whole ass new cellular service carrier. And so I wonder why he didn't feel that it was relevant to let the GBI know that.

Like, yeah, I'll give you my phone. But I've switched phones and carriers since. So there's really not going to be anything in there that would interest you from 2018, you know, because I think he was hoping they didn't realize that that was. the case. So the GBI report that is publicly available ends on July 19th, 2021. And on July 28th, 2021, the investigation concluded. Developing tonight a mysterious death of a mom and Forsythe County will not bring any criminal charges. The GBI says it completed its investigation in the Tamla Horford case. However, her family's attorney tells him Tisha Lance, this is not over just yet. If it takes me 20 years and I can live that long, I'll be working on this.

For more than two years, the family of Tamla Horstford had been waiting for answers on what led to the death of the wife and mother of five. On Tuesday, a GBI spokesperson released a statement saying the Forsyth County District Attorney's review of the case do not support criminal charges. I mean, this is not a shocking bit of news. This is anticipated. Horsford's family attorney says this does not mean the case is closed. Anytime there's a homicide until it is resolved, the investigation is subject to being reopened. He has yet to receive the case file and says issues he's raised with the case have never been addressed. Fernandez says he's invested 500 pro bono hours into the case and will put in 10,000 more if it means finding out the truth.

There's not going to be any surrender. We're not going to go away. You know, there's going to be justice serving this case. Okay. And that's basically where things stand now. The Forsyth County Sheriff's Office does their terrible investigation. They're like nothing to see here. It's an accident. The GBI then does another investigation. I would say more in depth.

They actually did things like pull cell phone records and, you know, looked at evidence and questioned people pretty thoroughly. And they found out some stuff, right? Like the Bridget thing with the Xanax, they caught her in that. They found out Jose's kind of being sketchy with his phone. And, you know, they found out some stuff that doesn't look great for the people that were at the party. But ultimately, they also declined to press any charges.

Now, that doesn't mean that the people investigating with the GBI weren't like, something's off here. It means they didn't find enough to actually press any charges, which could be because they were investigating a year and a half later. And they were working with a pretty flawed and half-baked investigation to begin with. Yeah. And that's this overall story of this case for me. We're going to talk about some theories and things like that. But number one thing for me, and I'm going to be looking at my note. So I apologize if you're watching on YouTube and I'm not looking at you, but the fact that no crime scene

reconstruction was done, the fact that no subpoena for the Arlo Xfinity databases, their subscriptions, that wasn't done, disclosing their opinions with witnesses during the interrogation slash interviews, you know, what they thought could have happened. They did not speak with the neighbors. Really, they didn't speak to the neighbors much beforehand or after the fact it was kind of the GBI who did that. They did not secure the cell phones. They didn't take their phones and seize them right away to ensure the integrity of those phones from an evidentiary perspective to make sure that they didn't have time to go through and delete anything that could be incriminating in nature. There was no sexual assault kit done, a fingernail clippings weren't taken.

They did not test the tequila bottle to maybe see if there was something in the bottle or it may be in Tomlis cup that could come back to Xanax, you know, to see if there's some remnants of Xanax and one of those cups to rule out that possible theory. So overall, everything that I talk about from this point forward is going to be based on as you said, a half-baked investigation. And the main reason for that to me is because they went in there and concluded what had happened within the first 20 minutes of being there. This was a tragic accident involving someone who had too much to drink.

And we can talk about all the subtle underlayings of this, the unconscious bias, all that good stuff. But overall, regardless of what you want to deduce from their reasoning behind the investigation, it was a shi investigation. And I do think them having a previous relationship with Jose contributed to that as well. Now, as far as the theories here, and again, this is going off the premise that we're on a faulty foundation with the investigation. There's not enough evidence to me to suggest that this was a homicide where Tamala was killed by pushing her or throwing her over the railing or she was killed somewhere else and then thrown over the railing to make it look like an accident. to me the most extreme circumstance you're looking at here is that Tomola was out on the balcony

with another party, maybe multiple people. And as some have suggested, she was, you know, she was into it. She was partying, touchy-feely, pushing on people a little bit, hugging on them, whatever. And as everybody's drinking, your patience runs thin and somebody may have gotten upset with her, maybe pushed her off of them. Or maybe there was an altercation. Maybe there was a physical fight between to people and at some point Tomlo went over the railing. And then at that point there would have been a collaborative effort to cover up what happened to avoid any criminal responsibility by anybody at that party. I think that is a strong possibility.

I think that's something that would be high on my list. There's also a possibility that someone could have been out there alone with her. And maybe this was sexual in nature where everyone else goes to bed and Jose or I would assume it would have to be Jose, right, is out there with her. make some advances toward her. She pushes back, maybe gets upset about it, says something like, I'm going to go tell John what you did or whatever,

and he pushes her over the railing. Now, I say that because, yes, it's a possibility. There's nothing to support it. We talked about the test that we're done. It would be hard to prove that now.

We would need a lot more for me to sit here and tell you that I think that's the most likely scenario. Out of the two I just suggested, I think the first one is more likely that you have a lot of people there drinking, using Xanax. Now, as far as something being put in Tomla's drink, I have nothing to rule that out either. But at minimum, I think Tomola was on Xanax and more than likely it was because Bridget gave it to her. Even if she was aware of it, Bridget gave it to her. Hey, listen, we're all doing it.

You want some too. Here you go. I'm the life of the party. Have a little bit. It won't be too bad. And maybe add a more significant impact on Tomla because of her not being. accustomed to what it would feel like to have the mixture of Xanax and alcohol. There's also a possibility, and I know a lot of people don't want to accept this,

but that it was an accident. And that, although very unlikely based on all the things we talked about over the last three episodes, for some reason, Tamla did go out on the porch by herself to have one last cigarette for the night. And for whatever reason, she decided to lean up against the railing or stand up on the propane tank and because of her inebriation was a little bit unbalanced and fell over. I'm not as keen on that idea as I am on the fact that you had also mentioned that there was a railing missing on the stairs and there were multiple injuries to her body, multiple blunt

force trauma injuries. Is it also possible that she fell backward down the stairs and sustained some significant injuries and was able to get to her feet for a matter of seconds before tripping over that metal landscaping trim and then expiring from our injuries right there, maybe. Again, I'm not leaning in that camp, but I can't sit here and say it's not possible based on the limited information than limited evidence that we do have. So that's kind of where I'm at on it. But I think as I look at everything in totality, based on the behaviors of the people who

were there and the, I would say, lack of cooperation and also just the need to bring in outside parties and the GBI in order to obtain certain information that should have been disclosed initially does show at least some level of consciousness of guilt and understanding that there were things done that night that contributed to the death of Toml Horstford and they feel some responsibility for that. Why that is, I don't know. It could be as extreme as I said as somebody literally pushed her over the railing during an altercation or they were out there all horse playing, messing around.

You know, you get somebody jumps on your back or whatever, you're stumbling around, you're playing. And unfortunately, they're on a balcony and Tomla goes over. And they know that they were all in the wrong for doing it. Inebriated on drugs, horsing around on the deck when you shouldn't be. They're not going to come out and say that. Tomla's already gone. Why, why incriminate, why ruin everybody's life? That might be their thought process.

The reality is if that's what happened, they should have just come out and said it right away. It would have made much more sense based on what we do have here. And although there may have been some, there may have been some liability on their part, I don't think they would have went to prison for the rest of their lives, but apparently nobody wanted to take accountability. But I leave this investigation understanding why people are so caught up in it because it doesn't appear to be as straightforward as the original investigators thought it was,

or at least pretended that it was. And I'm glad to see that they're no longer investigators because they did a horrible job with this case. And that's why you and I are sitting here covering it because they didn't do their job initially. I want to be very clear. I'm not saying this was a homicide. But I'm saying that if the official ruling is that this was an accident, then there should be a clear explanation of what that accident looked like. Not just my Christian sitting in an interview with people being like, yeah, we have no idea how it happened either.

It's just the best we could come up with. with the investigation we didn't do. People don't just accidentally fall off balconies without a sequence of events leading up to it. Was she sitting on the railing? If that's the case, then show me evidence of that. Show me dust being disrupted on the railing in the place where she would have been sitting that kind of fits the width of her body. Did she lose her balance? Was she standing on the propane tank?

Or was it wiped off and moved because they were trying to get the fire started? what exactly happened in those final moments? Why did the door open as if she was going out for a cigarette and then close like you would if you were going out to smoke a cigarette? You don't want to smoke getting inside. But why did the door open again as if she went back inside, but then the door didn't close again? Why would you smoke a cigarette, open the door to go back inside, and then go and sit on the balcony railing or stand on the probate tank?

It doesn't make any sense. So right now it feels like we're given a conclusion without a theory or without like an actual mechanism of how it happened. And for me, that's why the disconnect is. And if they were investigating this as a murder and they had to go to trial and support this, they would have to say, oh, this is what happened. You know, like they did in the John O'Keefe case when they brought in accident reconstructionists. And each side was trying to show how they were going to prove that it was either an accident or intentional or it didn't happen at all. show me the mechanism of how this happened. What did she do to get to a place where she was able to accidentally fall off?

And some people were like, well, maybe she was sitting on the balcony facing inwards, facing the door to go inside. The crime scene doesn't support that. She fell face forward. It doesn't, it wouldn't make sense how that would happen, especially if she fell with her feet so close to that landscape divider. Maybe you could say she fell off backwards and she flipped, but then you wouldn't really see her going straight down in that way if she flipped. It doesn't make any sense.

So that's what I think is making this so difficult to process. Accident sounds simple, but when you really think about it and you're trying to figure out how you get from point A to point B, it's not simple. It doesn't make sense. And they can't explain that. And I think that the whole factor of Mike Christian sitting in the interviews with people and all the people being like, how did this happen? Like we've been on that balcony before. It feels like it would be pretty hard to just accidentally fall off it. He's like, yeah, I agree.

Big mystery. That's what the investigations for, dude. That's what the investigations for. There's also reports that there was a piece of jambalaya in the yard near her. There was like an evidence marker, and they decided it was a piece of jambalaya, which is what she was eating, right? When Bridget left, apparently, she was still eating her bowl of jambalaya. did she have the food out there with her?

Was it in her mouth when she fell and it popped out? Like, what's going on here? None of this makes sense. So you have all these factors. And it feels like the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office, they sort of like grabbed a bunch of pieces of the puzzle and then like put them on the table and just were like, what do we need to put this puzzle together for? What do we need to see if there's missing pieces? What do we really need to see the full picture? because gathering all these pieces, it shows us it's a puzzle.

And that's all we need to know. It's a mystery how this could have happened. We really can't explain it either. I don't like that. That's the part I don't like, and that's the part I'm having a hard time moving on. If you could tell me any potential plausible theory of how Tomla, alone on that balcony, fell off face forward, then I would be able to possibly follow you down that path. But they are not able to do that.

And it's clear from those interviews that they had no idea either. So they can even come out now and be like, yeah, this is how it could have happened. You didn't know. In the weeks and the months after this happened and you were saying it was an accident, you didn't know how it could have been an accident. And then you still didn't do a thorough investigation, even though you were saying it was an accident and maybe you wanted it to be an accident, but you couldn't say how it was an accident. And I feel like in that case, if you don't know, as a police officer, if you don't know exactly how something happened,

that's when you'd want to kind of do a deeper investigation, but that didn't happen. You know, the thing about the falling backwards off the railing, I can see that being the case because my natural instinct, if I'm sitting up on a railing facing the house, once I go backwards, my natural instinct is going to be to grab the railing to try to like grab the railing to go backwards to try to like brace my fall, to try to stop me from going over. And if I'm only able to grab onto the railing with one arm, the natural physics of my body will be to go backwards, but then maybe sideways and then bounce off. off that railing and fall head first. But here's what I do believe, regardless of what happened, whether this was some type of just, you know, rough housing or a tragic accident where she fell off the railing because she lost her balance, I strongly believe that somebody else was present for it. There were other people who were there when this occurred, and they know exactly what

happened. And yet they haven't come out and said that not only for Tamla, but for the rest of her family. That's a problem for me. Because there's no doubt, in my mind, at least, that someone else knows exactly what occurred that night. And for whatever reason, whether it's because they're directly involved with what happened and they're protecting themselves or because they fear there's going to be some level of accountability that then are willing to accept. They haven't come forward and they got lucky because the investigators helped them out and did a completely terrible job with this case,

just unprofessional and everything that you're not supposed to do when you show up on a scene like this and you have someone who's deceased. So it's unfortunate. And I think where we sit right now, unless someone from that house comes forward and says what happened, we may never know. I agree. And I think it'll be one of those cases that it's not something we can figure out once again because of how the initial investigation. That's why I started with it. It's everything.

So I guess how do we prevent that from happening? Because at this point, not in this case maybe, I'm not saying there's not what there's, but what if there is something more nefarious happening? And then the police can just act like they're just bumbling idiots who didn't do a proper investigation and like, oh, who us? Like, we just, we're just bad at our jobs. We're not, like, nefarious. Not to make this about you and I or everybody who tunes in every week. I think we have a role. I think we have a significant role. It's part of the reason that I'm so willing to do this with you every single week is because we have a responsibility to, especially myself, to

police to police. And you talked about the forensic pathologist coming forward and speaking after they heard a podcast, right? Like we have an influence, we have an impact as a community, not just the podcasters. So we can hold people accountable after the fact where you see people out there losing their jobs because of their incompetence. And it serves as a lesson for everybody else out there who may be acting under the same principles and also as a deterrent so that when you go to your next crime scene, because don't think for a second that there aren't crime scene technicians and detectives who listen to these shows, who are seeing the mistakes. being made and going to these crime scenes in the future and saying, you know what, it's probably

this, but just to cover my bases, because I don't want to be on the next episode of a podcast, I'm going to make sure that I do my due diligence and I'm going to work as a defense attorney here and make sure I dot all my eyes and cross all my T's so that after the fact, I don't have some freaking YouTuber questioning my work. And if, you know what, if that's the only reason they do it, so be it. At least they did it. But we have to have officers go in there and start treating crime scenes as if they have been altered or cleaned up before you arrived. Even though that's more than likely not going to be the case, if you treat it that way, you're less likely than miss signs that that is what happened.

And, you know, complacency. And we also talked about it just to wrap it up, a potential unconscious bias toward the victim where they show up and see a black woman laying on the ground with all these white people and decide, you know what, these are good people. These are good people. They wouldn't do anything bad to this woman. She clearly was out of control. Slam dunk shut.

Accident. Let's move on. Yeah, I agree. It's really, really concerning. And I'm just worried that this sets a precedent where, like I said, police stations, sheriff's offices, they can be like, well, if we just make a really bad investigation, then like, yeah, we'll be looked sideways at. Look what's happened to these guys.

A lot of their lives are ruined. And justifiably so. This woman's life was not treated at the level of respect that it should have been. and now you have detectives doing these podcasts or these interviews looking like morons because they didn't do their job and I have no sympathy for them. As a former cop, you can go because anytime we have to cover a case like this from where I'm sitting, it makes my job that much harder because every time we have any question of cover up or anything, what argument do I have where we have living, breathing examples of it

or at minimum incompetence? And so you can always push back on me and go, yeah, but Derek, what about you? about Toml Horstford and I got to go, yeah, you're right. So I have no use for these people. There's a lot of cops out there. Not all of them are good. And when we identify them, we got to call it out for what it is. I agree. Well, let us know what you think in the comments. I mean, as we kind of stated, it's frustrating because Toml's family and Ralph Fernandez, they're like, we're not going to stop, but how far can they take this when there's nothing left to pull from? There's nobody, I mean, they could go to the FBI, but they're going to run into a similar issue.

They're just not going to be enough to prosecute anybody or to bring charges against anybody. The only shot we have, and it's a glimmer, is whenever there's a collaborative effort, right, there's a group of people who decide on a story and are going to stick to it. There's a hierarchy there, right? Like, there's always people who are more culpable, right? And then there's some lesser people who may have been present but didn't actually contribute in any way, shape, or form. You have to hope that there's a crack in that armor. Something happens over the years or there's a change of mindset where the person who doesn't have as much to lose and maybe wasn't as involved finally decides to come forward for whatever reason.

And that's why continuing to talk about these cases is important because it continues to apply public pressure, not only on the people in charge of the case, but also the people involved. And that's why we do what we do. Is there a glimmer of hope that anybody actually... It's not likely. No. But there's still hope. No. Because I really believe...

I don't believe everybody in that house or everybody at that party knows something. I think a lot of them are genuinely just like... I agree with you. We don't know. We were sleeping. I think if anybody knows anything, it's one, two people tops. That's the only way you can keep something like this under wraps. Yep.

If more than one person knows it's no longer a secret. We have to hope that there's something that transpire to communicate. a conversation because they were hanging out a lot at that house after it happened and maybe somebody got caught wind of something. Or it was, we're hanging out at that house a lot because we are trying to now tell you what you saw that night. And we're trying to tell you what happened that night so that when you do talk to the police,

you remember it this way. Exactly. Either way, not to be Debbie Downer, but it is going to be hard to charge someone at this point because there's, the water is so muddied to bring charges and have them stick. if that were the direction this was going to go, that is less likely than finding out the truth. So we'll see what happens.

Well, we're going to be back next week with a new case. Obviously, guys, we appreciate you being here. We've done, I'm looking at the clock on this one, we're two and a half hours of just raw recording on this. So probably be shorter than that when we do the edited episode. But overall, this was a great series. We appreciate the engagement from you guys as far as being in the comments section talking about the case.

A lot of you are very passionate about it. A lot of you were talking about the daylight savings thing and not to go back to the case. But although that is significant as far as the remembering of time stamps, we don't think it's as important considering the fact that Tomlo would have been dead or whatever happened to her before 2 a.m. When daylight savings time would have taken effect. But that's why we love the comments. And we also know that the documented evidence like the doors opening and closing stuff, that's all, that was all up to the regular time. And it showed the door opening when Bridget said she was leaving. And so that really doesn't matter the day.

And time of death. They're going off of the condition of the body, rigor mortis, things like that. They're not saying, oh, it happened at 1.30, so she's been dead for seven hours. So they're able to tell based on the biology, not necessarily the amount of time that's gone by. So, but all of these conversations that are happening in the comment section, that's what gives us more motivation to go deeper on the case the next episode because we can see how invested you guys are.

So we'll be back with a new case next week. Please continue to like, comment, subscribe. Hype up the video. If you're on audio and you haven't already, we would really, really appreciate it if you leave a rating and review. Last time I checked, we are like 40 reviews away

from breaking 10,000 reviews on Apple Podcasts. We've already broken it on Spotify. The competitor to me wants to break it on Apple Podcasts as well. So if you could help me do that, that would be greatly appreciated. I'd love to get there. Stephanie really doesn't look at that stuff. But I'm, I'm in there.

He is. As always, guys, we appreciate you being here. Everyone stay safe out there. We'll see you next week. Bye.