Snapped: Women Who Murder - Tiesh Rhue

Episode Date: September 13, 2026

A man suddenly vanishes in coastal South Carolina; the investigation unravels a love triangle.Season 34 Episode 19Originally aired: Sun, Nov 17, 2024Watch full episodes of Snapped on the Oxygen app: https://oxygen.tv/watchsnappedSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A devoted family man suddenly disappears. He promised to come get the kids, and he never came. She contacted his family, his friends. She was actively trying to find him. A search reveals evidence of a violent crime scene. There was blood on the floor, blood on the walls. The amount of blood that we found in that room, I don't know how anybody could have walked out of there like that.

At this point, it went from a missing person to, okay, we need to find his body. Detectives questioned both his wife and his girlfriend. They do not like each other. They have clashed in the past. You really thought he was on top of the motherfucker world, right? The dumb man is a bitch. This shit ain't had her, nobody could. But the invent.

Investigation reveals a more tangled web of lies and a family who do anything for each other. It's just the new, it's for all of you, they do. Blood is thicker than water. If they were going down, they were going down together. Georgetown, South Carolina is a small town where everyone seems to know each other's business. But on March 9, 2017, one resident somehow disappears without a business. Trace. Brittany Green came in to the Georgetown County Police Department to report a missing person. This man is Leon Harrison Jr., J.R., as everybody called him.

Brittany Green had dated JR. They were both in each other's past, but they had two children together. She says the last time she spoke to J.R. was on February 25th, nearly two weeks ago. I told the detective that he promised to come get the kids and he never came. He didn't reach out and say, well, we was very, very concerned because we know that wasn't like him. She called J.R. multiple times. She contacted his family, his friends.

She was actively trying to find him through the community. However, no one close to JR has seen or heard from him in the last two weeks either. Detective did ask why we took so long to come to the police about him. I told them because JR lost his phone one point of time, and it took him like a couple of days to come to the house to let us know. I just thought that that could have been the case or he got caught. caught up with words. But as the days went by, we knew something had to go wrong.

That's when really we started to get worried. Leon J.R. Harrison was born and raised in Georgetown, South Carolina. His early life was shaped by tragedy. J.R. lost his mom at an early age, and he lived with his father. He has like three brothers and a sister, and J.I.R. was close to all of his siblings. Most people would describe J.R. as joky. He got a funny, big personality.

After high school, J.R. enlisted in the military. He did about three years in Korea, and then he did a year in Iraq. Between deployments, J.R. spent time. with his family in Georgetown. On one of those visits, he met a young woman named Brittany Green. J.R. and I met through his cousin. His cousin told me that J.R. had a crush with me and told J.R. that I had a crush on him.

What attracted me to Jiar is his smile, his personality, the way that he loved on his loved ones. The Army sent JR back to Korea, but his heart stayed in South Carolina. When his four years of service were complete, he and Brittany picked up right where they left off. When he came home, that's when we got serious. It was the year 2005, and I found out that I was pregnant. And he was excited, and he was ready to be a father and build a family. After the birth of their son, they moved in together.

Within the year, Brittany was pregnant with their second child. He always said he wanted a boy first and then his girl, and that's what we got, so he was happy about that. In 2012, after 11 years together, J.R. decided to propose. But he didn't get the answer he was hoping for. That still felt like I was two years. young to be married. So he said, okay. You know, time, but we separated because I stepped out on him.

And then he found out. I knew he was heartbroken, but he just said that we just had to go out several ways and that he still be there for me and the kids. He remained a good friend to Brittany and a better father to the kids. By 2013, J.R. was looking for love again. He found it in 29-year-old Taish Roo, a single mother of five working as a security guard at the Georgetown Steel Mill. Like J.R., she wanted someone to build a life with,

and within a year, they married. J.R. was definitely a family man. That's what he wanted marriage and stuff like. that. So he was happy with his life at the moment. Over the next three years, J.R. did his best to balance the responsibilities of two families. During that time, he was more so just focused on his kids and not really being friends with me because he was married. She didn't want a friendship with us. It was kind of like, I'm going to respect my wife and just it's going to be about the kids. That devotion to his children is why loved ones are so troubled by his disappearance.

I really had to, like, talk to my kids every day and just pray with them and give them hope. Maybe he's, like, out of town, he don't own a job or something. It's been 12 full days since the last time anyone has seen or talked with, JR. So that has got to have a real, doom-like effect on anyone that's looking. As a part of the missing persons report, Brittany provides detectives with every detail she can think of. Brittany starts talking about JR's identifiable markings on his body,

and one in particular is going to be a tattoo on his forearm that is a remembrance to his mother. We asked, is he currently married? Is he seeing anybody? and she did tell us that he was married to Taich Rue. We looked up her information. She was actually at work as a security guard at the steel mill. Police immediately contact Taich to see if she knows where JR is.

She says, I've been out of town. I had to go pick up my kids in D.C. She did add that she was concerned about not hearing from JR. She said that she did reach out to JR. several times by calls and text, but to no avail. Taish comes in after her work shift for a formal interview. She says she hasn't heard from JR since she left town 17 days ago. Okay, why did you not come to a fleet department or call and reported missing?

I just put some, that this was just another ask today. According to her, they'd agree. to have an open marriage. But she recently caught him breaking the rules of their arrangement. Taich was okay with Leon having a relationship outside of their marriage so long as it didn't become where he would call her his girlfriend. She says that she suspects that he is involved with another woman. According to Taich, his cheating caused them to separate about six weeks ago, but recently they began to patch things up.

They started to reconnect. They went back and forth, and she kept saying that she wanted him back in her life. Taich explains that on the night J.R. vanished, they'd made plans to try and reignite their romance. So on February the 25th, at about 10 o'clock at night, J.R. comes over to her house with her kids, her brother, and her dad there. Ha'eesh says she was working late that night and raced home right after her shift was over. But when she got there, she found J.R. talking to someone else on the phone. I remember that he was called to him. I'm upset. at that.

And the altercation ensues, and she tries to take the phone from him. After the argument, he goes inside, grabs his belongings, and he left down the sidewalk. And that was the last time she's seen her. Oh, phone. You just told me anybody in the phone. Yeah, that girl was there. Coming up, investigators learn the details of a volatile romance. It was a way.

And she started talking something to be all . and a suspect emerges. Do you have any idea of anyone that would have wanted to do harm to JR? And immediately she says yes. Twelve days after J.R. Harrison went missing. His wife, Taish Rue, explains to detectives that the last time she saw him, they'd argued about the terms of their open marriage, and he stormed off into the night.

I didn't stop them because usually it's not getting me any rid of him. I don't know if he's going to leave this, you know. If I say it happens so often, I'm just used to. How about your brother or leave that? They hang out that night? Did they leave? Not that I know of. When this situation happened, both of them did come in and ask me if I was okay. And I said, I'll be fine and I want to speak.

Investigators asked Taish about the woman J.R. was speaking to on the phone, Rosario. I was angry at the time that you were still talking to the same to him. I've tried to reach out to this female once before when I first found out about her in June. She believed Rosario was a person who he was having a relationship with, and she even went into to describe her as the crazy, the crazy girlfriend. She tells them that Rosario is jealous and that she believes that Rosario meant to harm J.R. Detectives run a record search for Rosario's last known address. She agrees to come to the station and answer questions about J.R.'s disappearance.

She says I haven't seen J.R. either, but we were romantically involved and were really hitting it off well. She was working as a cashier for McDonald's, and so he comes through the drive-thru at 4 a.m. one morning, it was just starstruck. Rosario did seem very concerned, very heartbroken, that he was missing and that she had not heard from him. Why have you not come forward? What were we going to take to you to say, hey, something at all?

I don't want to watch for that. Well, but why? Because he's still married. I haven't wanted to... into feeling that. And like I said, at first I thought it was just, maybe he was embarrassed or trying to let it die out because he knows his wife his wife is like a crown out of life.

Rosario says the last time she saw JR was also Saturday the 25th, 12 days before he was reported missing. They spent the day together. Then around 9 p.m., she dropped him off at his father's house. A short time later, she got a call from J.R.'s phone, but he wasn't the one on the other end. This had to have an attend to broke out. And it was the wife.

And all I said was hello. And she started talking to y'all, you thought y'all were smarter than me. Taish was running and raving and cursing. Her basically saying, you think you're going to have my man and I can tell you that you're not. Um, how long is she doing about you? Mm-hmm.

Well, me and have been dead and prescated in any like a year and three or four months. So I said at least two months. Tell me about what she found about you, how that got it. Um, if I'm not to stay here, he told her. Is this the first time you're a person who talks with one? You know, right. And I hold up the phone. And then she called back in, like, five minutes out there, and I didn't answer.

Those calls went in the voicemail. So police were able to get those. And obviously, it shows Taiz is very angry. You really thought he was on top of the my fucking world, right? She says, you think I'm scared of you. And then uses a lot of anger. expletives to explain how J.R. loves her and is staying with her. Rosario says she never heard from J.R. again.

She had called him numerous times with no answer, which was, you know, one of the reasons why she believed they had just got back together and she was going to respect that. As one of the last questions that they would have is, do you have any idea of anyone that would have wanted to do harm to JR. And immediately, she says yes. He once mentioned that his wife said that, you know, if she couldn't have him, nobody could.

According to Rosario, if Taich wanted to get rid of JR, there's one person who would happily do it for her. The wife's father, Alex, they don't get along, because he's always, like, putting them mix up their issues into merits. After concluding Rosario's interview, there is no evidence suggesting she was involved in the disappearance of her boyfriend, J.R. Harrison.

Rosario is saying, no, I'm not the violent person that Taich makes me out to be. That's not me. You have Rosario throwing in Alex Jr. into the mix, also alleging that he and, and JR have an entire history of beef between each other. Hoping to gain neutral insight, detectives talk to the other woman in J.R.'s life, the mother of his children, Brittany Green. But you know if anybody who would be guessing?

Alex. They didn't get along. Yeah. It wasn't wrong. It was like those out of nature. months last year. The thing was his father, how it was family.

So he went to live out. Then the new door wasn't the friend. And I understand who it was saying. Police went and talked to a lot of the family members, sort of painting the same picture, a really volatile, terrible relationship between J.R. and Alex Jr. Investigators run a background check on Alex Jr.

He's got a conspiracy charge and armed robbery charge. So he does have violent tendencies in his past. It really made the police want to talk to him. They also need to get a look inside the Roo family's home. It's the last place anyone saw JR and one of the places he would occasionally stay before he disappeared. He was in and out of the house. He also was living with Rosario at this point in time.

Police obtain a search warrant, and on the evening of March 10th, Alex Rue Sr., Taich's father, grants them access to the residence. At the rear of the house was actually Ms. Taich, Rue, and J.R.'s' bedroom. Immediately what looked out of place, is that there was a rug over carpeted area. They pulled up the rug, and what the rug was covering was a space of carpet that had been cut out. On the carpet padding are these brownish, reddish stains,

which is consistent with dry blood. So at this point, we started looking everywhere. We pulled out all the bed landings, we checked the box springs, we checked the frame of the bed. bed. On the mattress, there's a ginormous pool of blood that barely even looks like it's cleaned up. There's something called luminal that reacts to blood. It'll turn a different color if it's got the proteins of the blood in it. You start spraying around and you get the room lighting up like Christmas. There was blood on the floor. There was blood on the walls.

on the bed. I mean, the amount of blood that we found in that room, I don't know how anybody could have walked out of there like that. It went from a missing person to, okay, we need to find his body because somebody did something very violent to him, and it happened in that bedroom. The following day, March 11th, investigators re-interview Taish.

And we found his stuff in the house. It's very alarming, okay? In the room, we found two pieces of missing carpet. Yeah. They had spots on, and we tested spots, and they tested positive. Do you have any reason why? Those pieces of carpet was missing before the man was going to separate. And he cut it.

I would he say he's going to replace the carpet completely. Okay. But it was love in the majesty. That's so caught away. Yeah, from my, me being on my group. It's my love. But we're going to test it. We're going to test it.

We're going to test. Tiesha's statement doesn't explain. doesn't explain the placement or amount of blood investigators found. But they decide not to confront her with that just yet. They go back to her brother, Alex Jr. What we've been doing, since we hate each other, they absolutely ate at one of them. They hate each other.

They said, well, where is your brother at? And she says, I haven't seen my brother since March 8th. March 8th was three days ago and one day before JR was reported missing. Investigators suspect Taish might be covering for Alex Jr. So they returned to the Roo home to talk with their father and see if he'll tell a different story. We know that Leon was there at the house around 10 o'clock. Did you see him on that night? No, sir.

Okay. Okay. Was your son Alex near to? Yeah, because he was getting ready to go out. Okay, he was getting ready to go out. Did he say anything about seeing him? Not to me, he was. Okay. Does your son, Alex, and Leon get along? She looks like they got along real well. Just like Taich, he tells police he hasn't seen Alex Jr. in days.

But detectives aren't buying his story. We didn't really know if he was telling us the truth. That he was possibly covering up for his children or giving a false alibi was definitely an idea. Coming up, the discovery of a body confirms detectives' worst fears. Somebody just doesn't tie themselves up and throw themselves in the river. And a witness comes forward. We start a little bit. You might be that because I'm there and all the party.

The guy's crap. On March 12th, 2017, three days after J.R. Harrison was reported missing, investigators receive an urgent call. The police department received information that morning that a property owner located what appeared to be a body floating in the Black River right by his dock, which would have been probably about 10 to 15 miles from the city. The sheriff's office and DNR officers responded to the scene. They get a boat and they do a recovery. Rescuers find the body of a black male floating in the water. One feature immediately stands out. Brittany Green, she told the police about J.R.'s tattoos.

And one in particular, a tattoo on his forearm that is a remembrance to his mother. The tattoo was the way that the body was identified. It's readily apparent by the decomposition of the body that this didn't happen yesterday, that this body has been here for a few days. The decomposition made it very difficult to zero in on the cause and manner of death. The pathologist is unable to identify a cause of death, but one thing is clear to detectives. This was no accident.

His arms and his legs were both bound with speaker wire. Somebody just doesn't tie themselves up and throw themselves in the river. There's no reason to tie up a person that's already dead. It was our theory that he was still alive when he was tied up. And they grabbed the knots to actually drag him and throw him over the highway into the river. He'd be bound up throwing in the water. He was completely defenseless because he couldn't move his arms or his legs. I have never seen nothing as inhumane as this, but I hope I never see that ever again.

Detectives have already gotten statements from Taich and Alex Sr. But so far, they've been unable to locate Alex Jr. to question him. Now it was very important to talk to Alex Fruit Jr. We need to get an alibi from him, and we need to try to do it like now. Lo and behold, he is locked up in the Georgetown County Detention Center. He was arrested on an unrelated warrant for stealing some money from a gas station he worked at. In a strange coincidence, Alex Jr. posted bail that very day. So detectives bring him in to finally get a statement.

You got a body who's all the other and the last person supposedly had seen him was you and your sister. I didn't see it. I heard the meeting outside. I was going to say. I never come inside. I never seen. I never seen. I had enough sex.

I was not a seat in my clothes. I feel a seat in my clothes. Do you ever go outside and make sure that things were okay? No. Obviously, this room. has gotten their story together. His timeline, his dad's timeline, and Taich's timeline are consistent, but there's small holes in it. When news of JR's murder spreads through the small town, a friend of Alex Jr., Antoine,

comes forward with information that shatters the Roo family's claims. One day in March, Antoine's brother asked if they could ride to Myrtle Beach to go get some furniture for his girlfriend. Antoine asked Alexander Roo Jr. if he would go with them. On the way there, J.R. came up. He still like me, it goes out and they're going to be in all the baddie. That's a rite. Antoine was absolutely dead set that that meant that Alexander Jr. had killed J.R.

He told me. He told me that his system knew. They called him. And they knew. She called him and he took him for a ride. Antoine's statement gives investigators the probable cause they need to subpoena the Rue family's phone records. We started out with the victim's cell phone and mapped out the, what they suspected was the day of the crime. JR's GPS data shows him arriving at Taich's house around 10 p.m.

At 1055, he sends a final message. The last text message that is sent from J.R.'s phone is actually to Rosario. And what that text message says is, I don't love you, I can't be with you anymore. We had an expert come in and distinguish the texting patterns of JR, the actual punctuation, and show that it's not typically the way that he texts. Despite what Taich told police, J.R.'s phone never leaves the house. But around 1 a.m. others do. We have pings from Alex Sr. and Alex Jr. heading north on 701.

After that one ping, we have a terminating event on almost all cell phones, leading us to believe that these phones are manually turned off at 2 a.m. There's a dead period that we are unable to see. anything that's going on. A deactivation of all three phones at the exact same time can only mean one thing. They acted together and conspired to turn off their cell phones all at the same time so that their location could not be tracked. That tells us at that point that they're up to no good. That they have something to hide. After analyzing all the evidence, detectives are convinced the murder of J.R. Harrison was a family affair.

Taish Rue was not telling the truth about her brother's location, or father's location, and then the brother and father wouldn't tell the truth about both of their locations. When lab results come in on the blood found in Taish and J.R.'s bedroom, they're even more certain the murder occurred there. So investigators had to actually go and send this blood to a private lab, and it came back as being J.R.'s blood. On March 22nd, 2017, 25 days after J.R.'s disappearance, authorities confront Taich with their discoveries. They are trying to get her to go ahead and come clean.

We've got through the message. We see a message that would then come over. She's with me, with the candles and all this stuff. And we're just curious if that was a lure to get him over there. This is my husband. My neighbor has been there for a while. So all of a sudden, that day, would we get together and get back together? You know what I'm saying?

First of all, that's absolutely incorrect. As far as loring somebody, I would never lure him to anything. I took care for me. She is absolutely livid, that that was not her intent at all, that that's not what she did. And so she really doesn't give a straight answer. During the interrogation, Taish is given multiple opportunities

to change her story. Your brother and your father's phone was on the move to do anything. It would have been a way down. Also, where your husband's phone was. You say he left, but his phone never leave your lapses.

That directly contradicts everything that she's saying. And when confronted with that evidence, she says it must be wrong. Also, in the middle, we talk to you about this report, uh-huh. If those took the Zia ask you about me. Mm-hmm. According to the forensics laboratory, that bullet comes fat, two is more than one more than. What do you know, in the meantime, he, he, he bled that much as that is. Before he nose bleeding.

No, that is no nose bleeding. You might as have been wood at night, but it wouldn't last. Okay? I can tell by the expression on your face that you know something happening in the business. And I think at that point she started getting very worried. The net is tightening, and she sees that happening. So she says, I'm not going to give any other statements. I want a lawyer.

Without a confession, detectives fear there won't be enough evidence to ensure a conviction. So they review the cell phone data again. J.R.'s phone never left the tower that is closest to Taish's house. Taish never left the house. Yet we have Pings from Alex Sr. and Alex Jr., heading north on 701. And in that direction, we have a Walmart. Police intuition was, let's go see if they stopped at Walmart. You can say a lot of things about them, but they've got good camera systems.

At 106 a.m. on February the 26th of 2017, we see Alex Sr. walk into Walmart. Investigators watch as Alex Jr. appears on camera with his father. He is then seen buying a peculiar. jewelry item. This midnight run to Walmart was four was not groceries or milk or even beer. It was for hydrogen peroxide. There's nothing that gets blood out of carpet, out of clothes, out of the back of a car, better than peroxide.

And there's certainly at this point enough for a magistrate to sign arrest warrants on all three co-defendants. After a three-week investigation, South Carolina police arrest the Rue family and charge them with the murder of J.R. Harrison. By April 9, 2017, Taish Roo, her father, Alex Sr., and her brother, Alex Jr.,

have all been placed under arrest for the murder of Taish's husband, J.R. Harrison. When I learned that all three of them was arrested for the murder, I was angry. I was mad that the fact that they took my kid's father from them. Due to the complexity of trying three defendants at once and delays due to COVID, the trial doesn't start until four years later on October 11, 2021. Almost everything that we had was circumstance. And it was really important to us to show what those circumstances were.

Prosecutors argue that the text history between Taich and J.R. Show her to be a woman desperately trying to win back her husband. And when she realized she was losing him to Rosario, she snapped. I do think it would have been different for her. if he was going around and having relationships with multiple different women. But she saw the I love yous. She saw, I can't live without you.

And that's really what caused her jealousy to come to a head. She snapped not because of love. She snapped because of control. She didn't want anybody else to have him. It's our belief that she lured him over there with the promise of sex. But the real purpose was much more sinister, and that was to exact revenge.

We theorized that they got into a fight. Taii staffed J.R., and that it wasn't that deep of a wound, but that at that point she feared that she was going to go to jail. And so her brother and her dad tied him up, and he started to bleed out. at this point. They then wrapped him up and drove him to the bridge and threw his body over. There's no doubt that Mr.

Harrison was deathfully killed in the most inhumane way possible. Taich put this in motion and then her family really stepped up to help her. And our theme in the entire case

is blood is thicker than water. If they were going down, they were went down together. The defense argues that prosecutors have nothing more than speculation. The primary focus in the case in general was the lack of evidence. They couldn't even determine the cause of death. You would assume that the jury would want to know how a person died in order to determine whether he had been murdered.

After nearly 10 days, the case is handed to the jury. to decide. The jury stayed out for such a long time. It was the longest that I've ever had to wait for a jury to come back. The first verdict that they read out was Alex Sr.'s verdict. On the charge of murder, not guilty.

And my heart absolutely dropped. Alex Sr. was found guilty of obstruction of justice and got probation for his part in this ordeal. There's no way to explain the way of jury's thinking, but I don't know, maybe it had to do with his age. It was shocking to us, but we were still waiting on the other two verdicts to be read. Alex is next, and on Alex, they find him guilty of murder and obstruction of justice. Taish, they find her guilty of murder and obstruction of justice.

Taish Roo is sentenced to 45 years in prison. Alex Roo Jr. receives the same 45-year sentence. They lost a son, an uncle, a father, a brother, a friend. You got a child out there that's now going to have to go through her life without a father. And that ain't a whole they ever feels. We celebrate his birthday. We celebrate Father's Day. We got pictures of him around the house, pictures in their bedrooms, memories.

We just pray through it, talk through it. And remember the good times to still celebrate him as if he was still here.