True Crime Campfire - Devious: The Murder of Tami Reay

Episode Date: March 12, 2021

When I was little, I collected holograms. I was fascinated by how their iridescent images could change depending on the angle of the light. It seemed like magic. It’s less fun when real life starts to imitate this specific kind of art, though. When you start confidently down a path based on information you believe is solid…and then you find the path shifting and changing beneath your feet. Suddenly, you can’t trust anything you believed in an hour ago. You can’t even trust your own eyes. How do you solve a murder when everywhere you look, it’s smoke and mirrors? Sources:https://caselaw.findlaw.com/sd-supreme-court/1431479.htmlhttps://www.yankton.net/news/article_fe14cf00-d1dc-51f1-9e78-152e30fa15ab.htmlhttps://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna29125204https://siouxcityjournal.com/news/state-and-regional/twin-brothers-sentenced-in-pierre-womans-death/article_6f108ddc-b574-534f-b557-cc39cf809631.htmlOxygen's "Framed By the Killer," Episode "A Lover's Frame"Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/true-crime-campfire/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. When I was little, I collected holograms. I was fascinated by how their iridescent images could change. depending on the angle of the light. It seemed like magic. It's less fun when real life starts to imitate this specific kind of art, though. When you start confidently down a path based on information you believe is solid, and then you find the path shifting and changing beneath your feet. Suddenly, you can't trust anything you believed in an hour ago.

You can't even trust your own eyes. How do you solve a murder when everywhere you look, it's smoke and mirrors? This is Devious, the murder of Tammy Ria. So, campers, we're in the little town of Pierre, South Dakota, the smallest state capital in the country. It was the morning of February 8, 2006, when 911 dispatch got a call. call from a man named Brian Clark. He sounded worried, said he needed to file a missing person's report. The 911 dispatcher asked him who was missing, and he said, Tammy Ria. Foul play could be suspected here. Me and her have been having an affair. Brian said, apparently her husband's found out

about it. He was quiet for a second, and then he added, hopefully this is discreet? Uh, discreet? Well, I don't know how discreet filing a missing person's report on your girlfriend, is, Brian, but okay. I mean, here he is cheating on his wife with this woman, and he calls 911 to report her missing, so he must be pretty worried about her. Pretty worried about something, anyway. Obviously, he didn't want his wife to find out about his affair, but he made the call anyway. Detectives were immediately suspicious. This Tammy had only been missing about an hour, so why would Brian's brain go straight to missing foul play? I mean, she was just an hour late to work. Kind of odd. They had the dispatcher asked

Brian, if he could come into the station to speak to them directly, and he agreed. Sitting in an interview room, Brian told the detectives he'd last seen Tammy the day before at a motel. They'd had a little trist before Tammy had to go watch her 11-year-old daughter's basketball game. And he reiterated that they'd been involved for a while now, and her husband Brad definitely knew about it. Tammy had asked him for a divorce about a month ago, and Brad had not been taken it well. He'd called Tammy's mom to try to get her to reason with Tammy, and Tammy said he'd and moping around the house, barely eating or sleeping. He'd just sit on his bed and stare at the wall.

Brian said his own wife didn't know anything about the affair, and he was hoping she didn't have to find out. Brian and Tammy both worked at Kmart, and he said it was totally out of character for her to be late for work without calling first, and unheard of to just not come in at all. He hoped he was wrong, but Brian was worried something bad might have happened to Tammy. So the detectives, Panzer and DeJabbit, decided to swing by the Ria house and have a poke around. See if Tammy's car was there,

see if they could get her to come to the door. They knocked and rang the bell, but nobody answered, and there was no indication of anybody inside, like no noise, no movement. When one of the detectives peeked through the garage window, he saw a Dodge Durango parked inside, and something caught his eye, a reddish-brown stain on one of the doors of the SUV. It gave him a prickly feeling on the back of his neck. Police deal with missing persons reports all the time, and more often than not, they don't turn out to be anything sinister, but already Panzer and DeJavitt had a bad feeling about this one. Tammy's husband Brad was a manager at Walmart, so the detective's next move was to head over there and talk to him. Brad Ria seemed surprised to see them, but he was cooperative.

He said that when he got home from work the night before, Tammy wasn't home. He worked a lot of long hours, he said, so they sometimes kept to different schedules. At one o'clock in the morning, Brad said he'd heard a car pull into the driveway. He peeked out the window to see Tammy's Dodge Durango, parked in the drive, and another car driving off. He assumed it was Tammy and her boyfriend. Brad said he'd be happy to go back over to the house with him and check things out, so he got into the back of the detective's car and they all drove back over to the Ria's house. When they got there, Brad signed a form giving the police permission to search his house and cars.

and while Brad waited outside, Panzer, DeJabbit, and a dude named Detective Swenson went in to have a poke around. At first glance, there wasn't too much of interest inside the house, though they did notice that Brad and Tammy seemed to have separate bedrooms. Kind of odd for a married couple, but not unheard of. When they went into the garage, though, it was a totally different story. There was an eye-watering smell of cleaning solution coming from the Dodge Durango. And when they went around to the back of the SUV, they saw a spattering of blood drops on the floor under the back bumper. Blood was dripping down from the back door of the car.

You could hear it. Drip. Drip. Ereep. This did not look good. Dejabit called in for a search warrant and told everybody to hold off until it got there. If there was evidence of foul play in the garage, he wanted to make damn sure they could use it in court. Yeah, detectives get nervous about this stuff as they absolutely should.

I mean, you want to make sure all your eyes are dotted and your T's are crossed. Otherwise, whatever you find could be fruit from the poison tree, as they say. And I mean, if a suspect gets a bad feeling about what you might find, even if he's already consented to a search of his house, he can withdraw that permission at any time. And you got to leave. Yeah, exactly. The police are kind of like vampires. They have to be invited in, either by you or by courtesy of the courts. Fortunately for them, it didn't take long for the search warrant to come in.

Yeah, blood dripping down audibly from the back door of an SUV is pretty good probable cause, I would say. I would guess so, yes. Once they had their search warrant in hand, the investigators left some officers there to conduct the search, while the main detectives invited Brad to come to the station for an interview. Another detective went to Brad and Tammy's daughter, Haley's school, to ask her a few questions as well. They didn't want to scare the poor kid. I mean, it's not like they found a body or anything. Not yet. They couldn't even be sure the blood in the SUV was Tammies, but just in case it was,

they needed to find out what Haley knew as soon as possible. Haley was a sweet kid, super close to her mom. When she heard her name over the intercom at school that day, Haley Ria, please come to the office. She felt a jolt of anxiety. That morning, when she'd woken up for school, she'd gone to her mom's bedroom and noticed that it didn't look like it had been slept in. That was weird because Haley had seen her mom the night before. Her dad had still been at work when Haley went to bed, but Tammy kissed her goodnight around 9 p.m.

So she was there when Haley fell asleep, but she wasn't there now. And her cell phone was right there on her dresser. Haley went into the kitchen where her dad was making breakfast. She said, Dad, where's mom? Brad was quiet for a minute and then he dropped a bomb on her. He said,

Haley, your mom has a boyfriend. She's been seeing him for a while, and last night he came and got her. She's probably still over at his house. I'm sure she'll be back in a few days. Oh, God. So this was the first Haley had heard about her mom having a boyfriend.

She knew her parents were planning on getting a divorce, but she didn't know why, and it pretty much stunned her into silence. She sat in the car as her dad drove her to school, just trying desperately to compute all this, bless her little heart. Now, sitting in the principal's office with the investigators, Haley asked, Where's my mom?

They had to tell her they didn't know, but they sure were going to keep looking. And then they sent her back to class, which is just surreal. Can you imagine? For God's sake, middle school is shitty enough already. Now, Haley gets questioned by the police, and they're just like, OK-dokey, you've got to go back to social studies now. Bye. Yeah, I'm sure the rest of that day was a blur for this poor kid. I mean, if you're anything like I was at that age, losing one of your parents is pretty much your absolute worst nightmare. I used to worry about it all the time when I was a kid. Like, I would lay awake at night just thinking, like, what if one of my parents dies? Right. So I can't even begin to imagine how traumatizing this must have been for Haley. Absolutely. I mean, your parents just told you that they were getting a divorce and now you're being questioned about one of their disappearances. Those are a lot of big feelings.

As she was talking with Detective Swenson at her school, her dad was sitting down in an interview room with Detective's Panzer and Jabbit. He repeated his story about hearing a car in the driveway at 1 a.m. seeing the Durango parked and empty and watching the other car pull away. He assumed it was Tammy and her boyfriend, dropping off her car and then leaving. Brad told him he didn't know who Tammy's boyfriend was. All he knew was that she'd met some other guy and now she wanted a divorce. And he added a new detail to his statement, something he hadn't. mentioned back at Walmart. He said that when he saw the other car pull out of the driveway, he jumped into Tammy's Durango and chased after them, I guess, in hopes of finding out who the boyfriend was. But it didn't work, he said. His car broke down before he could catch the other car.

As he was fiddling around with the Durango by the side of the road, trying to get it started again, a state trooper had pulled up to see if he needed help. But he got the car started up again right at that point, and then having lost sight of Tammy and her lover, he turned around, went back home and just went to bed. And when he woke up in the morning, Tammy was still gone. He'd had to explain it to his daughter, he said. Hard stuff. Tammy was a sweetheart.

The kind of person who'd sit with the new kid at lunch at school, you know, she was outgoing, athletic, close to her family. She met Brad Rio when she was 27, and they hit it off hard, despite the fact that personality-wise, they were pretty much polar opposites. Where Tammy was extroverted and funny, Brad was quiet and thoughtful, kind of kept to himself and focused on work. They got married in 1992, had Haley a year later, and for a while, everything was great.

Tammy's family like Brad, Brad's family like Tammy, they were both doing well in their careers, despite the West Side Story-style rivalry that must have existed between Kmart and Walmart, let's be honest about that. Because we know it's got to be there. It's kind of like Romeo and Juliet, if you think about it. Two houses, both alike in dignity. and all that jazz. But they made it work. They adored Haley, and there were lots of outdoorsy family trips to go whitewater rafting and hiking and camping and stuff like that. But then Brad got promoted to assistant manager at Walmart, and they transferred him from Billings, Montana, to the little

bitty town of Pierre, South Dakota. And on top of the move, from a bigger city to a tiny town, Brad started to get kind of obsessive about his career. Long, long hours. Tammy started to feel like a single mom. The only time Brad really spent with Haley was when he'd take her to work with him on weekends. Oh, whee, I get to go to work with dad and watch him file paperwork. Somebody helped me sit down. I'm giddy with delight. Wee. So, unsurprisingly, Tammy was feeling pretty neglected as a wife. The man was just always at work.

And about a year into their time in Pierre, Tammy met Brian Clark, the manager at the Kmart where she worked. Now, it started as an emotional affair. Brian, who was married himself, shame on him, gave her all the attention that she was missing at home. Instead of giving it to his own wife. Ew. For a while, it was just that, flirting and attention. But as most emotional affairs do, this one became physical in December of 2005.

They'd both caught feelings, but Brian was hemming and hawing about ending his marriage. Ugh. All right. I know you guys were expecting it. but it's relationship advice time. If you've taken up with somebody in a relationship and they swear they care about you and love you, but don't leave their partner, it's a red flag. Yep.

They are never going to leave them. Prob's not. They're eating their cake and having it too. They want a little something, something on the side. An adventure, a new supply of flattery. Tammy wasn't hemming at all, nor was she hauling. She was ready to be done with her marriage, and early in 2006, she told Brad about the affair. She just said she'd met somebody else, and she wanted a divorce.

Now, it always floors me when people say this, but apparently Brad didn't see this coming, like, at all, and it just knocked him flat on his ass. And he was morose about it. He didn't want any part of a divorce. But eventually, he agreed to sit down with Tammy and tell their daughter they were splitting up. Haley said she took it pretty well, bless her heart. She didn't get to see her dad that much anyway. He was always at work. But now, Tammy was missing, and the Ria's world was coming down around them. While the detectives were interviewing Brad, of course,

officers were searching the Ria's house and cars. They found fresh laundry in the washer and dryer and a pile of it on Brad's bed. Obviously, he'd been doing quite a bit of washing that morning. Inside the Dodge Dorengo, the smell of bleach was overwhelming. It had staying the inside of the SUV in several places, in what one detective described as a rush job. Somebody had tried to clean up a bloody mess in there, and they'd done a crap job of it. It was interesting because, of course, Brad Ria had given them permission to search the house and the car without a moment's hesitation. Was he, like, really dumb or something?

Really arrogant? Or could something else be going on here? They didn't know for sure, but they were suspish of Brad. On one hand, his demeanor was very calm and collected, almost soft-spoken. He wasn't fidgety, he wasn't throwing off deceptive tells left and right or acting nervous like he'd expect of a man who just disposed of his wife. Brad denied hurting Tammy. He just kept saying he hoped she was okay. And Haley told Detective Swenson that her mom and dad never fought in front of her or anything like that.

It wasn't a violent or contentious marriage, as far as they could tell. But when you find blood all over a man's car and his wife is nowhere to be found, you can be forgiven for drawing a few conclusions. Yeah, right. Brad argued with them. When Detective DeJobit said he found it tough to swallow that there'd be blood all over the last car he admitted to driving if he wasn't involved, and he said he suspected Brad and Tammy had an argument in the house the night before, Brad said, so there'd be blood everywhere.

Right, so where was all the blood in the house? And it was true that there wasn't any obvious blood spatter in the house. The forensic text took swabs from various surfaces, but it's not like they walked in and found blood stains. The house seemed pretty pristine. They were planning to spray luminal when it got dark. That would light up any cleaned up blood like the Vegas strip. Detective DeJobbit brought it back to the blood in the Durango.

He said, Brad, I know you harmed your wife. And Brad said, all this evidence points at me, but I'm hoping that the body is found because there'll be something to set me free, maybe DNA and stuff like that. It sounded like he'd given up on the idea

of Tammy turning up unharmed, seemed kind of stunned. And at this point, Brad stopped talking and asked for an attorney. The investigators were in a quandary. They didn't have anything solid, really. I mean, they didn't have a body or a woman. weapon or a witness. All they had was the bloody Durango in Brad's garage. But the medical

examiner was sure of one thing. If this was Tammy Ria's blood in that Dodge Durango, there was no way she could still be alive, not after losing that much blood. Somebody was dead for sure, and Tammy was the only one unaccounted for. Brian Clark was a possible suspect, of course, but since he was the one who called 911 to report Tammy missing, they felt like he was less likely to have done something to hurt her. Brad was the one in the crosshairs. It almost certainly wasn't enough to get a murder conviction, but they were afraid that if they let Brad go home, he'd destroy any remaining evidence,

or maybe even take 11-year-old Haley and go on the lamb. So they made a call. They put the gravis on him for the first-degree murder of his wife. When they told him they were arresting him, Brad took it calmly. He just kind of nodded and stood up and put his hands out for the cuffs. And now they had to find somewhere for Haley to stay. And that somewhere, for the moment anyway, ended up being, a foster home. So just imagine

what that would be like for an 11-year-old kid. Everything's normal. You're just going about your life. And suddenly, with no warning at all, your mom is gone and your dad is in jail, and you're living in a house full of strangers. Oh my God. Detective Swenson had to be the one

to sit Haley down after her dad's arrest and tell her that they thought her mom was probably dead, and her dad was the one who'd done it. It was rough on him. He said it was the hardest thing he ever had to do. They'd arrested Brad Rhea on razor-thin evidence. Now it was up to the investigators to make it stick.

The CSIs had collected various samples from the house and the Dodge Durango, and the lab quickly confirmed that the blood in the car was Tammies. As for the house, bupkis. It was clean as a whistle. No blood spatter, nothing lighting up under the luminal, no signs of a struggle, nothing. If the murder had happened in there, then Brad must have done a superhuman job of cleaning it up.

which is not easy to do. I mean, blood gets everywhere. And even if you clean it up pretty well, it's still going to light up under the luminal. So the idea that somebody could commit a murder, like obviously a bloody murder, judging by all that blood in the car, and not leave any trace,

is pretty tough to imagine. So the investigators were starting to doubt that Tammy had been killed inside the house. So then where did it happen? In the Durango, the logistics of that seemed pretty unlikely, and there didn't seem to be enough blood in there for that to have been the murder scene. Like, enough to be sure that Tammy was dead, but not enough to say for sure like this is where she died.

So was there a third location that they haven't discovered yet or what? And if so, where the hell would it be? And then yet another curveball came flying at their heads. Remember Brad's story about jumping in the Durango and following Tammy and her boyfriend? Yeah, and the Durango broke down by the side of the road and he lost them. and then a state trooper pulled up to ask if he needed any help? Right. Well, guess what?

The investigators tracked down the state trooper, and his story matched Brad's exactly. They even had the dash cam footage. He'd pulled up on the Durango at 1.30 a.m. offered to help, then Brad got the car started and headed off towards home. Well, shit. Yeah. The detectives had pretty much assumed Brad's story about Tammy driving off in the middle

the night with her boyfriend was a load of shit. He made up on the spot. Turns out maybe not so much. At least they could confirm the part of the story about the car trouble and the cop, and they could confirm that Brad was out in the Dodge Durango

for some reason at 1.30 a.m., just like he said he was. Mm-hmm. They were starting to get an uncomfee feeling in the pit of their stomachs. Did they just arrest the wrong guy? Oh my God. Should they have taken a closer look at Tammy's boyfriend, Brian Clark?

Could he have killed Tammy and planted her blood in the Durango to make Brad look guilty? Shit. Shit. It was time. Shit, shit, shit. That's a technical term that cops use, I think. Yeah. When they're seeing their careers start to circle straight.

Flash before their eyes. So after all that shit, shit, shitting, it was time to regroup a little bit. So they asked Brian to come back in for an interview. And to everyone's surprise, he showed up with a lawyer. Interesting. Now, we can talk all day about how it's everybody's right to hire an attorney if you're being questioned by the cops. And we can wholeheartedly agree, even, that it's a good idea to do it. sure but that doesn't change the fact that for an average detective

lawyering up is one of the surest ways to start those cop antennae vibrating yep Brian repeated his original story that on February 7th the last time he saw Tammy they met up at their usual no-tel motel for sexy times but they left at 5 p.m. he said Tammy to go to Haley's ball game and Brian to go home to his wife Shame on you, Brian, you cheating shit, weasel. He said he never saw or heard from Tammy again after that. Now, obviously, this didn't match Hubby Brad's story that Tammy had driven off with her boyfriend around 1 a.m.

Somebody was lying. And then, on February 9th, a National Guard helicopter pilot spotted something that looked like a mannequin near a dam north of town, about 15 miles from the Rhea's house. It was Tammy. Dead. Naked. Throat slashed and stabbed 37 times all over her body and face.

Oh, my God. Yeah, she'd been murdered with a viciousness that way exceeded what would have been necessary to kill her. Overkill. Big time. And what does overkill usually mean? Rage. It was immediately clear that this was not the scene of Tammy's murder. She'd just been dumped there.

Near her body, Tex found a t-shirt full of stab holes and a pair of bloody gloves. They transported the body to the Rapid City Medical Examiner for an autopsy, and the doctor took the standard DNA samples, fingernail scrapings, and vaginal and rectal swabs. Hi, I'm Darren Marler. Host of the Weird Darkness podcast.

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check out Spreaker.com. That's S-P-R-E-A-K-E-R.com. It was obvious that the cause of death was exangination from stabbing and slashing, a violent, agonizing, terrifying death for a woman who sure is held and deserve it. got the awful news at her grandparents' house. Tammy's parents, where she'd been moved from the temporary foster home. I don't want to imagine what that was like for her. So, what, if anything, did this reveal about the identity of Tammy's killer? Well, the autopsy didn't tell investigators much, just her cause of death and the overkill, which suggested a personal motive. They already

figured that, and both their suspects had a personal connection to Tammy. With Brad, the motive could have been jealous rage. With boyfriend Brian, fear of being found out by his wife. That was an intriguing possibility. One thing that their interviews with both suspects had brought up was the fact that while Tammy had confessed to Brad about the affair, Brian hadn't told his wife. In fact, he'd insisted on keeping his affair with Tammy a secret. Now, how did Tammy feel about that? Well, I sure as hell wouldn't like it, and I can tell you that for free. Here I am blowing up my life, asking for a divorce, uprooting my kid and you're not willing to do the same. So it's not hard to imagine Tammy saying, alright then, dickweed, if you won't tell your wife, I will. But then they had to consider the

fact that Tammy's body was dumped. Would boyfriend Brian have done that if he was trying to set Brad up? I mean, if he was already smearing a ton of blood all over the Dodge Durango, why wouldn't he just leave her body in there too, to be found by police and point the finger very directly at Brad? And, of course, Brian was the one who called 911, drawing attention to himself and risking his wife finding out about the whole sort of thing. So the investigators went back to boyfriend Brian, and they said, look, but we're super sorry about this and all, but you're going to have to tell your wife about all this, because we're going to need to talk to her too. Aw, too bad, Brian. God, can you imagine finding out your husband was cheating on you in an interview room at the police station? Like, that's how you find out.

Oh, honey, sweetheart, love of my life. Funny story. I am real, real sorry about this, but. Funny story, true story. Yeah. And not only has he been cheating on you, but now he's a suspect in her murder. I'm pretty sure I'd have the divorce attorney on the phone before the end of that sentence. Uh-huh.

Oh, and by the way, Tammy was brain subordinate. It came art. So that's real nice, too. Charming. Okay, so Brian came clean to his poor wife right there at the police station, and then, then, campers, right then and there, they asked her if she could confirm his alibi, as if this woman had not already been through enough and didn't need a damn minute. They just like, was he really at home with you? After 5 p.m. on the 7th?

You know, after he got back from Bone and his mistress that you just found out he had at a seedy motel across, sound? And here's where I believe she's a better person than me. Because in my head, in that moment, I'm sure that little impulsive, intrusive voice that tells me to jump off the edge of cliffs when I'm hiking would become the loudest it's ever been pushing me to say, hmm, this is awkward. You know what? I can't remember, officer. But this. But this is awkward. You know what? I can't Remember, officer. But this stand-up citizen confirmed it. She said, yes, he was with me the whole night.

Where is her fucking Nobel Peace Prize is what I would like to know. Yeah, or her charge for obstruction of justice. We don't know yet, do we? Nope. So, okay, Brian's got an alibi, allegedly. But, I mean, according to Brad, he showed up at 1 o'clock in the morning with Tammy to drop off the Durango, Brian's wife could have been asleep by then, so maybe she didn't know he left. Or maybe, like I said, she was just lying through her teeth to protect him.

Happens all the time. The investigators could not be 100% sure, yet here Brad Rio was sitting in jail on a first-degree murder charge. They were in desperate need of more leads. And then, on the third search of the Ria's house, as CSIs took a fine-tooth comb to the place to make absolutely sure they hadn't missed anything. They found something that made everyone sit up and take notice. Inside, one of the dresser drawers in Brad's bedroom was a small, digital voice recorder. And when the investigators hit play, their eyebrows just about hit the ceiling. First, they heard Brad Ria's voice

testing the recorder. Test, test. Then came just one side of a phone conversation. Tammy's side. she'd called Kmartin asked for Brian Clark, and when he came to the phone, she said, I just needed to hear your voice. Tammy told her boyfriend that Brad had left a note and some flowers in her car, and she didn't know what to do about it. She ended the call with, I love you very much. Oh, boy. Yeah. Seems like our guy Brad had just a little bit of James Bond in him. He'd been spying on Tammy and creepily. They figured he must have hidden the recorder, which was teeny-tiny, in the bouquet of flowers, Tammy mentioned.

Oh, Lord. So Tammy thinks he's just left her a nice gift and a love note when really he's planted a bug in her car. Yikes. Yeah. Now, I don't know if y'all remember this or not, but Brad originally told the investigators that he didn't know who Tammy's boyfriend was. right row now they knew different they'd finally caught him in a bald-faced lie is it bald-faced or bold-faced bald-faced which is weird it seems like it should be bold-faced that makes more sense yeah I mean aren't most faces bald like are bearded men the only truth tellers in the world that

doesn't seem right I have a hard time believe in that anyway you all need in trouble yourselves about that. So they just caught Brad in a lie. Now they were cooking with gas. Who plants a voice recorder in a bouquet of flowers? Like, who is he? Jigsaw? I think, I think planting it in the flowers is creepier than just hiding it under the seat of her car or something, because it's like, yeah, for sure. Oh, here are some beautiful flowers for my lady love. Like, he's romancing her. Yeah, but really, he's just laying a trap. And then does that insinuate that he was like watching her make the phone call and then when she left the car he went in and took the recorder out like at some point he had to right oh that's so creepy because he like it is it's super

creepy because like she was at work and he put the flowers in her car and oh my god so she was on break oh my god that's so creepy super creepy now obviously this didn't prove brad killed tammie but any time a suspect lies to the police, that's going to get their hackles up and make them wonder what else he might be lying about. And why? So at this point, the investigators were feeling more confident that they had the right guy sitting in jail. And then, one afternoon, and I know y'all are going to scream at your phones when I say this, because we just had one last week. An anonymous letter arrived at the Attorney General's office. Holy crap. And like always, campers, it was a doozy. The letter writer claimed to be a cousin of Tammy's killer, her boyfriend, Brian Clark. The writer knew intimate details of the murder that Tammy was stabbed multiple times, for example.

They wrote, Brian came home with a bloody Durango and said he'd just got into a fight with his girlfriend. And the letter include one more bombshell detail. It said that Brian had raped Tammy and, quote, the rubber came off in her ass. Holy shit. Brad Ria had been locked up since February 8th, and all his correspondence had been monitored.

So he couldn't have sent that letter. had boyfriend Brian killed Tammy and then made the fatal mistake of confiding in somebody with a conscience? Did this mean Brad was innocent? It was sure starting to look that way. So the medical examiner hadn't found a condom during Tammy's autopsy, but it was possibly could have missed it. If that evidence was there and they could pull DNA off it, it would resolve the question of who killed Tammy for good and get the right person brought to justice. Fortunately, Tammy's body was still at the M.E.'s office. Everything in this case just moved lightning fast for some reason.

Like normally it's just, it just drags on and on, but this one's like an episode of law and order. It just gets resolved within a week. So they sent the body back for reexamination, and lo and behold, there the condom was, right where the letter had said it would be. So they sent it off for DNA testing, and everybody held their breath. But when the results came back, they were a huge disappointment. There was DNA there, but it was too deteriorated to get a profile. Ugh. Ugh.

Damn it. So, where did that leave us? Well, they needed to figure out who the hell wrote the letter. And something had started gnawing at Detective Swenson. Something he remembered from Brad Ria's initial interview the day Tammy went missing. You'll probably remember this, too. When they told him they suspected he'd killed his wife, Brad said something like, well, I hope they find the body soon, because there'll probably be some DNA or something to prove I'm innocent.

And then they did find Tammy's body, and they didn't find any DNA evidence on it. And then, like a gift from the gods, this letter arrived and said, hey, look again. And lo and behold, a condom. With DNA inside it. Degraded, sure, but still. It was there.

And if it hadn't been in such bad shape, it would have pointed the finger at somebody. It was all just a little too convenient for Detective Swenson. He started thinking, What if Brad had followed Tammy and Brian one night and spied on one of their trists? They didn't always go to the motel. According to Brian, they sometimes did their thing in the car instead. What if Brad had lurked in the shadows, watching Brian and his wife until they finished what they were doing,

and tossed the used condom out the car window? What if the sight of that dropped condom caused an evil little plan to blossom in his mind? What if he'd picked it up? It would explain why the DNA inside it was too degraded to test, even though the murder and alleged rape had only happened a few days before. This is so creepy. I've got, like, actual goosebumps. Yeah, me too, actually. But the fact remained that Brad had been locked up when that letter arrived. He couldn't have sent it himself.

But he did have visitors in jail, and one of those was his brother Brett, his twin brother. Okay. Okay. There's a twin in play now? Yes, ma'am. This case just keeps getting weirder. And in case you haven't figured it out yet, Campers, the theme for this month is cases that could have been Lifetime movies. Yeah, and for some reason, the jail didn't have cameras in the visitor rooms. And when they checked the visitor logs,

it turned out that Brother Brett had been to visit quite a few years. times. There were quite a few recorded phone conversations between the twins, too. The jail monitors inmate correspondence, like we said, and they make photocopies of it. So the investigators got hold of the copies of all the letters Brad had sent his brother since his arrest. One letter immediately raised the hairs on the back of their necks. It was a letter about where the good fishing spots were around the Oaxi Dam. The dam campers were Tammy's body had been found on February 9th. Brad had drawn a map on the letter, too, to illustrate where those good spots were. The investigators immediately sent a team out to the dam to search the spots marked on Brad's map,

and they hit pay dirt. In a hedgerow, they found three trash bags full of evidence. Bloody bed linens, bloody blankets, a bloody tarp, rubber gloves, a pair of panties, and a box of condoms with one missing. The blood, of course, turned out to be Tammies. Later, foliage from the hedgerow matched with plant matter found on the bottoms of Brad's shoes. Forensic texts would also match the trash bags to a box of bags in the Rhea's house. And when the investigators got a search warrant for twin brother Brett's house and car, they found a copy of the anonymous letter, word for word. Because he kept it for some fucking reason.

Jesus, Murphy Brown. Why do they do it? Why do criminals love holding on to evidence? The world may never know. Oh, my God. So this campers pretty much put the lid on it for investigators. Brad was the killer. Later on, at Brad's trial, boyfriend Brian confirmed that he and Tammy used to drive out to the country to have sex, and they'd usually throw the condom out of the window afterwards.

Okay, gross. Okay. First of all, don't litter. Right. And especially, do not throw your nasty used condoms on the ground. Not only to protect Mother Gaia, but also, now we know that if you're careless with those things, somebody can try to frame your ass for murder. Exactly. For God's sake. Keep a trash bag in the back seat or something. Exactly. Life lessons from true crime campfire. Life lessons, TM.

But anyway, it confirmed the investigator's suspicion that Brad must have picked up one of the used condoms to try to frame Brian for Tammy's murder. Which means this was premeditated as all hell and it almost worked. If that DNA had not been too degraded to test and it had given them Brian's profile, do you have any doubt he would have ended up in jail? Nope. And that's the scariest thing about this case. Brad almost got away with it. It could have been the perfect crime. So, where was the murder actually committed? Remember, the house was pristine, no blood, no nothing.

So here was the prosecution's theory based on the bloody bedding and tarp found in those trash bags at the dam. Brad had put a tarp on top of the mattress before Tammy got home and covered it with bedding so that she didn't know it was there. Then, she went to bed, he waited for her to fall asleep, and attacked her in bed. And because she was covered in bedding, there was no blood spatter. all contained in the linens, and the blood that seeped out of her was contained by the tarp underneath, so nothing got onto the mattress. After he killed her, he wrapped her in the bloody bedding and

tarp, carried her out to the Durango, and dumped her by the dam. And his car broke down on the way home. That's when the state trooper ran across him. I'm sure that's why he made up the story about following Tammy and Brian as they drove away. He knew they'd find out he had an encounter with a cop that night, so he had to have a cover story. Mm-hmm. When Brad's trial rolled around, everybody wondered what his defense would be. Tried to blame Brian despite the mountain of evidence against him? Try to claim self-defense or sudden passion?

Oh, no, no, no. Nothing so boring as that. Brad had decided to throw out one final Hail Mary. And campers, we are going to need you to put on your seatbelts for this. Yeah, this pathetic little trail of cat-sick decided to blame the murder on his daughter. Haley, who was 11 at the time of Tammy's murder. He said that late that night, he'd heard a noise from Tammy's room,

and when he went to investigate, he saw his daughter in a, quote, catatonic state, standing over her dead mother with a dripping knife in her hand. And because he was such a top-flight dad, such as selfless protector, he covered up the murder to protect her. Not interested in protecting her anymore, obviously. I mean, jail. Ew. But at the time, he wanted to protect her.

He looked over at the jury at one point and said, I gave up my life because I love her. Aw. What a fucking martyr for our times, right? Yeah, he's basically a saint. We should be making medallions with his face on them, really. so apparently no longer interested in protecting his daughter now Brad told the jury that Haley had always been emotionally disturbed

that as a child she used to stab her stuffed animals and that she was furious with her mom about the divorce on the stand Haley told the jury that the night of the murders she woke up when her dad looked in on her he was holding a bunch of what she thought looked like laundry he set the bundle down and laid down next to her on the bed He told her he loved her. Haley fell back to sleep, and the next morning she woke up to the sound of the washer and dryer running.

She also testified that as he drove her to school that morning, he told her to keep the fact that her mom wasn't home to herself, because, quote, it's personal. Yeah, don't tell your kids to keep secrets like that. There's a difference between a surprise, like a present, and a secret. It's gross and predatory, and just don't do it. Yeah, kids should not be keeping grown-up secrets. That's beyond their pay grade. It's just a bad idea.

The jury, unsurprisingly, took only three hours to tell Brad Ria to take his bullshit defense and shove it right up his ass. He was convicted of first-degree murder of his wife Tammy and sentenced to life without parole. Slightly less evil twin, Brett Ria was charged with four counts of being an accessory to a felony and was given time served, which amounted to about 172 days, because he cooperated fully with the investigation. And here's an interesting little P.S. to this story. In his initial interview, Brad told the detectives that he'd been awake for several days before Tammy went missing. Later, during one of the searches, they found a bottle of Viverin in his truck. Now, if you don't know what Viverin is, it's a caffeine pill, like no dose. Yeah, I took one once in college, and it was literally one of the worst experiences of my life. Like, I felt like I was going to crawl out of my skin. And this is coming for me, like a long-time fan of caffeine. But that stuff was a lot So at trial

The defense brought this up I guess to imply that You know if Brad did kill Tammy It might have been partly because of the vibrant I don't buy that Given how premeditated the murder was But it is interesting because I think it points Like that he was taking this stuff

Points to a guy who was not in a good place mentally And emotionally And one final thought Haley Tammy's daughter Has chosen to use her mother's death to educate other people about domestic violence. And we just think that is awesome. It's amazing.

Not everybody would be capable of turning such a horrible thing into something that could make the world better for other people. No doubt. And on the show that we saw about this case, she said that she hoped her mother would be proud of her. We have no doubt that she is. So, Haley, if you ever hear this, we wish you nothing but the best in your life

and we hope you found some peace. So that was a wild one, right, Camper? you know we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the True Crime Campfire. And as always, we'd like to send a grateful shout out to a few of our newest patrons. Thank you so much to Laura, Wendy, Key, Sarah, and Debbie.

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