True Crime with Kimbyr - Part 1 : Her Head Found Wrapped in Duct Tape - Mom of 2 Murdered In Her Home! Norma Rodriguez

Episode Date: November 28, 2025

Dive into the chilling case of Norma Rodriguez in this gripping episode of True Crime with Kimbyrleigha. When the devoted mother of two was found murdered in her own home, her head wrapped in duct tape, the community was left desperate for answers. Why was Norma targeted, and what clues were left behind in the chaos of that brutal scene? Kimbyrleigha unravels the disturbing details, the hidden relationships, and the dark twists investigators uncovered. This episode asks the haunting question: Who wanted Norma dead, and why? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And this is her story. Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel. If you've never been here before, I'm Kimberlea. It's nice to finally meet you. I hope that you'll be patient with me. It's still very hard for me to talk after my surgery. So I'm doing my best, but just bear with me. I hope that it doesn't distract at all, but it is hard for me to talk.

and I have kind of like a horse voice today. And I also want to say, if I look sleep deprived, it's because I am. I think I slept two hours last night with the newborn, but it's getting better and better every day. So I want to start today's story by introducing you to Norma Garcia. Now, Norma was born to her parents, Tomas and Gloria,

on November 16th in 1960, in the town of Mercedes in Texas. Now, Mercedes is a tiny place that's in the far south of the state, just eight miles from the Mexican border, and at the time, it was home to almost 11,000 people. Farming and agriculture played a huge role in the livelihood of many of the city's residents. It was known as the Queen City. Mercedes was a family-oriented community where around 75% of the residents owned their own homes, and as you'd expect due to its location,

around 90% of the city's population was of an Hispanic background. That included Norma's family. And by today's standards, Norma was born into quite a lot of large family of eight children. I feel like families are having less and less children. I'm one of four and even that seems pretty big now. I'm curious how many siblings do you have or how many children do you have? Norma had six sisters and one brother and was right in the middle of the birth order. She was exceptionally close to her sister's Oralia and Ophelia and was more like a second mom to her nieces and nephews than an aunt. Norma had an introverted disposition, and she was quite quieter than her siblings,

always behaving and never getting into trouble. She was also known to be kind and compassionate, and she was always there for her family. When normal was around 12 years old, her family moved all the way to California, settling in the city of Oxnard in Ventura County. Now, her father, Tomas, he made his living as a farm worker,

and he was working as a union organizer for the United Farm Workers, and he felt that Southern California offered his family a better. life. This was a huge move for a girl from rural Texas. Now Oxnard was much bigger than Mercedes, with a population of around 200,000 people. But like Norma's hometown, it attracted a large portion of migrant workers, especially those in agriculture. It's known as the strawberry capital of California. The city's spectacular beaches, amazing California weather, and stunning

ocean sunsets were definitely a sight to behold for young, Norma as she was settling into her new surroundings on the Pacific coast, just 60 miles northwest of Los Angeles. In 1975, when Norma was in middle school and she was 14 years old, she met a fellow student, Teresa Paz, and the pair immediately became inseparable. They did all the typical teenage things together. They were always by each other's side. As Norma was coming into her own as a young woman and finding her feet, Teresa knew her to be somewhat of a feisty, teenager, but this balanced perfectly with Norma's sweet nature, which was what made her so likable among her peers. She was sweet, but she also wasn't a pushover, and she wasn't afraid to

show her inner strength as she started to gain confidence, and she entered her teen years. After graduating from high school in 1980, Norma enrolled in college, but stayed in Oxnard close to her family. It was there that she met a fellow student named Anthony Rodriguez, and the pair fell in love, and after After almost two years of dating, they got engaged and later married on March 6th in 1982 when they were both only 21 years old. Norma looked radiant in her traditional floor length, a long-sleeved gown with an amazing tool veil and her long, flowing black hair framing her face. Anthony also looked pretty dapper in his tuxedo, which featured a white jacket with black lapels and a ruffled shirt. The young couple beamed for the cameras and they looked forward

to a bright future together. Norma could not wait to start a family. This was something she always dreamed of since she was young. Later that year, she gave birth to the couple's first child, a boy named Andrew. And then around 1989, Norma and Anthony welcomed their second son, a brother for Andrew, who they named Austin. And I wondered if they stuck with the A-names because of the father's name being Anthony. Now they've got Anthony and sons Andrew and Austin. Norma's boys were her world. She would do anything for them. While Austin was still a baby, Norma knew it was important to do everything she could to give her sons the best start in their lives. So she decided to get a job as an assistant manager at the Oxnard Kmart store on the

corner of Channel Islands Boulevard and Ventura Road. Do you all remember Kmart? I grew up in South Florida and Kmart was like our Walmart back then. It had everything. They even had popcorn machines, and the kids would get icies, which I loved when I was going there with my mom. But I think that they've been out of business for quite a while, at least in the United States. Well, while Norma was working at Kmart, she quickly made a bunch of new friends with her coworkers, including one woman who was very close to her name Beatrice. When she wasn't working and running around after her sons, one of the things that Norma loved to do was decorate her home for the many holidays throughout the year.

She was known among her family as the first person to always have her decorations up. She was the one getting the tamale production line going in the kitchen at Christmas time, and she loved baking a strawberry jello pie. That sounds really delicious. I've never tried it. But sadly, by early 1991, the wheels started to fall off of Norma and Anthony's marriage. The couple started arguing more and more. And as Anthony was away more and more from home,

Norma felt like she was left to do everything for her. and the boys by herself, which can definitely be overwhelming. And according to Norma's childhood friend, Teresa, Anthony was also drinking alcohol more and more and getting physical towards both his wife and his eldest son. Realizing that life as a single mom would be tough, Norma also felt like it would be less stressful than keeping herself and her children in this unsafe environment.

30-year-old Norma packed up her things and moved with her boys to a duplex on 135th, East B Street in the city of Port Wainimi. Their new home wasn't that far from Oxnard. It was actually only 10-minute drive. It was an quieter part of town right near the beach, and people call this area a hidden gem. It's affordable, and there's fewer tourists in the area. It also had very low crime rates, and homicides were pretty much unheard of there. With around 22,000 people, the five-mile wide city had a small town feel where lots of blue color workers lived, and it was the perfect place for Norma to start fresh. The 50-acre Waiini Beach Park was also a fantastic spot for

Norma to spend hours with her boys getting outside and making memories together. It was just perfect, and anyone that's gone through a breakup or a divorce or a separation knows that you take comfort in anything positive, and their new home was a silver lining at the moment. The house on B Street even had its very own white picket fence outside, which Norma hoped was a sign of better things to come for them. And of course, she was grateful not to have to move too far away from her family, still having them close by for support. Norma was friendly enough with all of her new neighbors,

but she did tend to keep to herself. Her focus was on her sons. She wanted to make sure that they were well cared for, and it was important for her that they got a solid education, so they could grow up to achieve. their dreams. She was there at their tea ball games and all their school events, showing up for her children as a devoted mom that she was. Despite dealing with the struggles that came with being a single mom, Norma couldn't do enough for those around her. She was very generous, and her generosity

knew no bounds. She had the biggest heart, and she put in the hard work to provide for Andrew and Austin, even working extra shifts where she could. In early 1993, Norma joined her six sisters, for a very special dinner at the Olive Garden. They were there celebrating their sister, Janie, who had recently given birth to a healthy set of twins. Norma had been so worried about her sister. She had a really difficult pregnancy, so it was a huge cause for celebration.

And as a token, Janie gave each of her sisters a rose in Norma's favorite color, which was peach. As they parted ways at the end of the evening, the sisters promised to make these dinners an annual tradition. They were all so big, with their own lives, that being able to get together just as sisters with something to be treasured. And as something to take away from this case right away, it's that. Make time because we truly don't know how much time we have left with our loved ones. Now, as far as Norma's love life

was concerned, in March 1993, the 32-year-old was dating a mechanic named Daniel Garcia. He was her 11-year-old son Andrews Little League coach. The couple had met at a party and began a relationship and Norma quickly fell head over heels for Daniel. She had a great time hanging out with him, going out with him, and not only that, but he was fantastic with Andrew and Austin. Norma's friends could see that she was genuinely happy, happier than she had been in a very long time. She was then shattered.

When around mid-May of that year, Daniel broke the news that he was going to be ending things between them. It was really heartbreaking. And it came as a big surprise to Norma since she thought everything was going so well for them. But Daniel admitted that he decided to reunite with his ex-girlfriend who had since reappeared in his life. And that would be devastating. And Norma, of course, was very heartbroken. It's hard not to feel like you're just kind of like the filling girlfriend until they found someone that they really wanted to be with.

But Norma picked herself up and dusted herself off once again like she had done. before. She had a great network of friends to lean on, and after all, her boys were her priority. Towards the end of the month, Norma decided to host a barbecue at her house on Saturday, May 29th, for Memorial Day weekend. Among the guests were her coworkers, including her friend Beatrice. The weather was just perfect. And Norma was looking forward to entertaining her circle of friends as they relaxed, kicked back, had a few drinks while enjoying each other's company, like so many of us do on Memorial Day weekend. It would really help her take her mind off anything negative and just sort of let loose a little bit. The following day on Sunday, May 30th, Norma had a chill day

just hanging out with her four-year-old son, Austin, and watching TV together. Andrew wasn't there because he was spending the weekend with the boy's father, Anthony, and Oxnard, but he was expected to be home on the very next evening on Monday since there was no school that day for the holiday. So that's Sunday night around 10.30 p.m., a friend of Norma's called and asked her if she wanted to go to the beach the following afternoon. And Norma said yes, because she thought it would be a fun activity to keep her busy. And of course, it would keep her mind off the breakup. Everything seemed so ordinary until the morning of Tuesday, June 1st at 747 a.m. when a 911 call came in to the Port Yenemi Police Department, a frantic man was on the other line telling them to send help that he

She just found his ex-wife dead on the floor inside her home, and it looked as though she had been murdered. The man making this call was Norma's ex-husband, 33-year-old Anthony Rodriguez. Investigators including lead detective Dennis Fitzgerald and Detective Anthony Peradis rushed to the scene. This was Detective Paradis' first day on the job in a new town as the homicide detective. He had just moved up to the Sleepy Beach town from Los Angeles. All that the police knew from the call was there was a report of a supposed homicide, but they were unsure of what they were going to find.

But Detective Peridus knew the pressure was on. There actually hadn't been a murder in this town in over three years, so he was quite surprised when he got this call. When they arrived at the house, investigators found Anthony, his brother, Hector, and his two young boys waiting for them outside. The investigators definitely were not prepared

for what they were about to encounter. counter inside that house. As soon as investigators walked in, they could see Norma, lying face up on the ground in her living room next to a coffee table. She was fully dressed in a shirt and a pair of jean shorts, but what stood out was what was on her head. There was silver duct tape wrapped tightly around her entire head and face. The killer had used so much duct tape that it was almost like she had been wrapped like an Egyptian mummy. Some of the tape on her head appeared to be cut away, but not much of it. It was from the top of her forehead all the way down to the bottom of her chin. Dr. Paredes thought this was very strange right away. He had never seen anything

like this or even heard of anything like this in his entire career. They could tell that rigor mortis had already set in in the underneath section of Norma's body since she was lying face up, and that part of her body was lying on the hard ground. Because Rigromortis takes a few hours to set in, they were working backward to get a rough calculation of of her time of death. And it seemed as though Norma may have been murdered as recently as the early morning hours of that very morning.

But there was still a possibility that she could have been killed before that. They couldn't be sure with just this preliminary examination of the condition she was in at the time. Detective suspected that Norma's killer may have also forced himself on her, given that her shorts were unzipped and unbuttoned. However, there was no way to know that

until the autopsy was conducted. But it was obvious that this was a murder. But they wondered, was she taken advantage of and then dressed again by the killer? Or maybe forced to get dressed with the killer holding a weapon at her. Or perhaps her killer was interrupted before he could violate her. They also wondered if the unbuttoning of Norma shorts happened before or after she was killed. Or was it maybe to attempt to stage this scene and throw off law enforcement? There were so many questions, and they described the initial scene,

as bizarre. Once Detective Fitzgerald saw the duct tape wrapped around her face, he theorized that she knew her killer and they didn't want her to look at them, so they taped up her face. What was interesting was that there was no sign of a violent struggle or forced entry, and there was no blood at the crime scene. In fact, the scene was strangely ordinary and in Detective Fitzgerald's words, he said it was pristine. Aside from Norma's body lying prone on the floor, nothing about the home suggested that a murder had occurred at all. The TV and the VCR was still there, so it didn't appear that anything had been stolen or that someone had even broken in with that intention. But

that was just part of the house. They needed to look through all of the rooms. When they made their way to Norma's bedroom, the bed was made and the room was tidy. It didn't appear that anything had occurred in there. However, they were able to locate Norma's purse on a bedside table. It was open, but it didn't look like it had been rummaged through. In fact, her ID and her credit cards were still inside. For this reason, a burglary gone wrong was quickly eliminated as a possible motive. Now, onto the coffee table in the living room, videotapes were scattered out of their cases alongside a pair of sunglasses, a remote control, a $10 bill, a pink hairbrush, and a decorative flower arrangement. Now, on the floor, just beneath the coffee table, in close proximity to Norma's body where her house slippers,

along with a set of keys. Now, these keys were confirmed to be her house keys. And Detective Fitzgerald thought they were in a very unusual location. Why would her house keys be on the floor like that and not hanging on a hook near the door or sat on a countertop? Due to the shocking nature of the crime and the infrequency of homicides in this area, this was immediately the type of case where all hands were on deck.

Detective Fernando Estrella didn't think that this was an act of a stranger either. He felt like Norma somehow knew her killer. By the time the crime scene technicians were getting to the end of processing the crime scene, Norma's sister, Auralia, pulled up to the house. The sisters had plans that morning to go car shopping to pick something out for Norma. But when she hadn't answered any of Aaralia's calls earlier that morning, she became concerned and drove over to Norma's house. and then when she saw the yellow crime scene tape,

and police, she was shocked. She introduced herself to the detectives, and they broke the devastating news. In her heart, Aralia felt like someone Norma knew had done this to her. And given that things were strained with Anthony, Norma's ex, Aralia wouldn't have put it past him to have something to do with this.

And of course, we know, since Anthony is her ex, it was going to be a priority for detectives to speak with him. He was actually the one who called, and reported the murder. Marvel Television's Wonder Man and eight-episode series now streaming on Disney Plus. A superhero remake.

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Anthony appeared to be very overwhelmed with grief for all the problems that he and Norma had, and even though they were no longer together, the mother of his children was gone. And Anthony couldn't believe that someone could have someone could have targeted Norma in such a callous way. Down at the police department, Anthony gave detectives his account of how he and his brother, Hector, arrived at the house that morning and found Norma's body. He explained that morning of June 1st, 11-year-old Andrew was back at home with his mom and his younger four-year-old brother Austin. But around 7.30 a.m., 33-year-old Anthony came to the

house to take Andrew to school that morning and Austin to daycare. Now, this was part of the co-parenting routine since the time that Norma and Anthony split up. Anthony helped to shuttle the boys to school. With him that morning was his brother Hector, who waited outside in Anthony's truck, reading the paper and listening to the radio as Anthony went inside to retrieve the boys. Anthony said when he got to the front door, the house seemed strangely quiet. He expected Norma to answer the door when he knocked like she always did, and he usually heard his sons playing or talking inside.

but there was nothing. It was quiet, and he got no response, even when he kept knocking. So he got worried that something was wrong. And then he couldn't get inside because the door was locked, and Anthony did not have a key. So he told detectives that he used a credit card to slide between the door frame and the lock

and broke in to gain access, which is pretty interesting. So he did force himself into this home. Then Anthony explained, that he walked through the door, called out to Norma, didn't get an answer. And he turned into the living room, and that's when he was confronted with a shocking sight of his ex-wife dead on the ground.

But he didn't immediately understand what he was seeing. Their lying face up on the floor was a lifeless body of 32-year-old Norma. Her head wrapped in duct tape. The top of her denim shorts unbuttoned. Her arms spayed out on either side of her body. Anthony said he was frantic. He rushed back to the truck to get his brother Hector.

Running back inside together now, they were desperate to find Andrew in Austin. Anthony said that the boys had been asleep, but they woke up due to him pounding on the door and all the commotion. By the time Anthony and Hector went back inside, the boys had started to wander out into the living room where they saw something that no child should ever have to see. They couldn't process why their mother's face was covered,

and she wasn't waking up. But being older, Andrew definitely knew that something was terribly wrong. Anthony and Hector quickly told Andrew and Austin to go back in the room and stay there until they were told to come back out. Wow. I cannot even imagine seeing something like that at such a young age, those poor little boys. Now, Hector had to be interviewed next, and he explained that he was the one who cut through the duct tape. Remember how the investigators noticed that some of it was cut? Well, Hector explained that when he saw a normal like that,

he bent down to see if she was still alive. And in his opinion, he stated that he thought she was still warm. So he grabbed a pair of scissors from a first aid kit in the truck, and he attempted to cut the tape where her mouth and nose were so that she could breathe. But when she failed to take in a sudden sharp intake of breath, Hector said he knew she was dead. Now, I will say that investigators did think it was a sudden, odd that Hector removed the tape from Norma's face, therefore interfering with the scene,

essentially destroying evidence and contaminating it with his DNA. And when he mentioned her being warm, they knew that that was not possible. Maybe he thought she felt warm, but the truth was, her body was in rigor mortis. She was not warm, so this seemed a little suspicious. But on the other hand, if you see someone with something over their head covering their face that's really, restricting their breathing, it's natural human instinct to take steps to remove this obstruction. Detective Paredes thought it was a little suspicious, and so did the other investigators. And now as the victim's estranged husband and his brother Hector, they needed to be eliminated before anyone else could be focused on. Anthony was known to be upset about the fact that Norma had

already moved on and was dating Daniel, even though we know that Daniel had broken things off at this plus the boys were living with Norma most of the time. They wondered if Anthony had a motive like gaining sole custody of the boys and maybe avoiding paying child support. It's certainly a motive for a lot of bitter ex-husbands in all sorts of scenarios. So of course, they confronted Anthony about it. He told the detectives that he and Norma had separated a few years previously, but they were not actually legally divorced. He regularly visited the boys, and he and Norma were civil in order to set a healthy and positive example for their sons. Now, Anthony stated that Andrew had spent the weekend with him from May 28th to the night of the 31st, and him and Hector

took Andrew to a Los Angeles Angels baseball game. Then Anthony and Hector dropped Andrew back off at Norma's on the evening of May 31st around 8.45 p.m. But Anthony told investigators he didn't go inside the house. Hector told investigators that after the men dropped Andrew off, they drove back to his place in Oxnard where they hung out with other relatives, and this was corroborated by the people that they claimed they were with that night. Now, Anthony's take on the status of his relationship with Norma sounded all well and good, but Norma's family gave the police a very different account of the dynamics in their relationship, especially after they broke up. According to her sister Auralia, Norma was uncomfortable with the frequency of Anthony's visits.

While sometimes it's very difficult to get some fathers to even remain involved in their children's life following the marriage breaking down, Anthony seems like he was the opposite, but it caused conflict. He would show up unannounced at Norma's house, and then he would kind to stay to hang out. He would say that he was there for the boys, but then he would just want to kind of hang out with Norma. So Norma's sister said, don't let let him into your house. That's the advice she gave her sister. If he wasn't scheduled to come there, don't let him inside. But Norma didn't always feel that you could stand up to him. And Anthony still seemed like he wanted to be a big part of Norma's life. Not because he loved her per se,

but because he wanted to control the situation. So the investigators wondered, was Anthony's grief all in act? Plus, hanging out with your family isn't the strongest alibi. So Hector and Anthony were asked to sit for polygraphs. And surprisingly, the results came back with no deception indicated. Police also knew by this stage that the timeline didn't really make sense for Anthony to be the killer. He'd had Andrew with him the entire weekend, and it was looking more and more likely that Norma had been murdered before Andrew actually made it back home that night.

Plus, Anthony, he seemed genuinely deeply affected by Norma's murder in a way that made detectives confident that he was not their guy. So they moved on for the time being and interviewed Norma's friend, the one that invited her to the beach on Memorial Day. She told police that when she came over to pick Norma up at 2.30 that afternoon, there was no response when she knocked on the front door.

She just assumed that Norma changed her mind, so she left. That's interesting. This goes back to the timeline that the investigators are trying to piece together. They really needed to get the autopsy results back, and soon they were in. At Norma's autopsy that was conducted on June 2nd, the medical examiner determined that the duct tape had been wrapped around her head

approximately 14 times. When it was unwound, it was 20 feet long. Just imagine that for a second. It was just like taken off of a roll like that in one giant piece and wrapped repeatedly around and around. There were also indications that skin cells had adhered to this tape. tape. Hair and blood samples as well as fingernail clippings were taken and they were stored along with the duct tape. Now, despite the appearance of her clothing, Norma had not been sexually violated.

Norma's eyes had signs of patigial hemorrhaging and her tongue had cuts from her teeth clamping down during this attack. The cause of Norma's death was manual strangulation, not suffocation. Norma was dead before her killer wrapped the duct tape around her. head and it was of course Rolde Day homicide. It appeared that she'd been killed sometime between 10.30 p.m. on Sunday, May 30th, and 5 a.m. on Monday, May 31st. What was so shocking about this was that it confirmed

that little four-year-old Austin had been in the house with his mother's body for at least 24 hours, which is completely horrifying. We're going to hear more about that soon, but at the very least, he must have been wondering all that time, why his mommy wasn't waking up, and it meant that he was possibly the only witness to what happened.

And to me, this detail is especially heartbreaking. No one, let alone a young child, should ever have to see something so horrific being done to another person, let alone someone that they love. For all that time, Austin was totally alone and vulnerable. And for all investigators knew, he could have easily become a victim himself. They wondered, did Austin escape with his life

because the killer didn't know that anyone else was in the house, or was he intentionally spared? These questions were added to a very long list of answers that detectives wanted to get to. While investigators hoped that the killer's DNA might have been left behind and would be present at Norma's autopsy, 30 years ago, DNA analysis techniques were nowhere near as sophisticated as they are today. If you've been here before, I usually don't do too many older cases past maybe the 90s

unless they're highly requested because it's tough. Without the advances in technology, there's just not a lot to go on. So a lot of these cases remain unsolved until they're revisited years later. And I've talked about what was available in the 90s and a few of the other cases that have covered. But in this case, investigators couldn't use the physical evidence that they collected. There just wasn't enough for an adequate sample. So all the forensic evidence was preserved and safely stored, which always frustrates me, but that's just how it was back then.

You'll recall I said at the start of today's video that homicides were rare in this location, so everyone was on high alert. Norma's loved ones, of course, were in a state of shock. They were utterly heartbroken that something like this could happen to someone so sweet and caring. Norma's childhood friend Teresa,

who had only recently just spoken to Norma, was in total disbelief. And Norma's sister, Aphelia, likened Norma's loss to losing the use of your arm. It's part of you that would forever be numb, and that's how she felt. I don't think any of us are prepared to hear about someone suddenly passing, especially in such a horrific manner.

Her poor children, that's all I could think about, especially with a four-year-old, and you're going to find out more about what he saw a little bit later. But now knowing that Norma's killer had wrapped the tape around her head post-mortem, detectives were sure she knew her attacker. Concealing someone's face is a way for the person. perpetrator to psychologically distance themselves from what they have done and their relationship to the victim. Since investigators were at such a loss, they turned to the children. Anthony gave consent

for both Andrew and Austin to be interviewed to see if they could tell law enforcement anything that they saw or heard. Now, any interview is tough to conduct in cases like this, but interviewing a child is on a whole other level. It's a very delicate process. You don't want to retramatize them or make this situation harder, but investigators also had to weigh the fact that Norma's killer was still out there. Who knows if they were going to return and hurt her family? So they began with Andrew, the 11-year-old. Andrew stated that on the night of May 31st when his dad and his uncle dropped him off at home after the baseball game, they must not have waited, but assumed Andrew just walked up to the front door and he would be let in quickly, like so many times before.

because this time, as Andrew got closer to the house, he did notice how dark it was, and then he realized the front door was locked. Now, normal usually left it unlocked if Andrew was coming home, so he knocked, but he got no answer. Knowing that it was late, it was dark outside, Andrew wanted to make sure he got into the house as quickly as he could. So he went around to the side where his bedroom window was located, and he noticed that the window was open just a bit, just enough for him to crawl inside. He explained to detectives, he was surprised that his little four-year-old brother, Austin,

was still awake and playing on the floor in the dark with his toy cars. Of course, Andrew kind of asked, what are you doing? And what Austin said is quite disturbing, knowing what we know. He said that he thought his mom was sick, telling Andrew that mommy has a band-aid on her face. Now, Andrew didn't really understand what his brother meant. He also didn't give him much thought.

I mean, he's four. So Andrew assumed they'd just see their mom in the morning. It was bedtime, and he figured the reason she hadn't opened the door was she's already asleep and probably asleep on the living room couch. She usually fell asleep watching TV in the living room. So Andrew wasn't going to go out there and wake her up instead. Him and his brother got in their bunk beds

and went to sleep. Of course, we know that the Band-Aid was likely the duct tape, wrapped around Norma's head, which is just chilling. I feel so bad for little Austin. What did he witness? The investigators were eager to find out. In Austin's interview, had to be conducted just as sensitively and appropriately,

taking extra care to make sure they were going slowly and letting Austin ease into telling them what he remembered about his mommy that night. It was difficult for the young boy to get comfortable talking to strange grownups that he didn't know in a very unfamiliar environment. Given that he was just a preschooler, the level of detail that he could provide

was definitely limited. And there was still a lot of confusion about why his mom was gone. Explaining death to a child is very hard. But part of what's so disturbing about all of this is that while Andrew was out with his dad, Austin had been just a few feet away at the time their mother was murdered.

And had obviously seen her body to know that there was something on her face. And I cannot imagine what must have been going through that poor child's mind. And even both of them, when they woke up the next morning and realized that the person that they loved and trusted and dependent on for everything was now lying lifeless on the floor.

Surprisingly, four-year-old Austin was able to provide quite a few details to Detective Ron Burns and a child psychologist that was there just to make sure that things went smoothly. Austin told that. them that his mommy had opened the door that night to a black man and he said his name was Corey and that man entered their home. I'm actually impressed. That is pretty detailed for such a young little boy, but that wasn't all. Austin said that his mommy and the man started yelling

and then the man wrapped the bandage around his mommy's head and pulled the zipper down on her shorts. Austin claimed he actually ran after the man chasing him out of the house. Wow. What a brave little boy. And the investigators wondered if he had just helped solve his own mother's murder. They needed to get on this right away and try to find out if Norma knew anyone named Corey. But there was an issue. On June 14th, 10 days later, Austin had a different account of what happened that night. Now he's saying that a white man came through the kitchen door and

tied the tape around Norma's head. Now this man, Austin claimed, was named Warren, and he was with the black man. Oh no. I feel so bad because I know having a toddler, they have these wild imaginations, and this was very confusing for detectives, not just because Austin's stories were different, but there was nothing to indicate that Norma had been attacked by more than one person. I really don't know how they would know that in the moment, but this is just what was reported. and they soon deduced that Austin's version of events were probably contaminated due to Norma's family. Now they had a very understandable desire to get information from this young boy, so they just kept asking him again and again about what happened. And this ultimately resulted in Austin being asked a barrage of questions, and even though they were well-meaning by their loved ones, it was really clouding and altering what this little boy was able to remember.

Nevertheless, investigators had to follow up with these men whose names Austin had mentioned. And what's even more surprising is, according to Norma's family, she did know two men, a black man named Corey and a white man named Warren. But I wanted to point out, this could mean nothing. It could just be people that she knew and that Austin knew came around or were friends with her, or some people that she met at her workplace. It didn't mean that either one of them were involved in her murder. We're talking about a four-year-old.

So it was quite interesting to be in this situation going off what a four-year-old said as part of this major murder investigation. We all want to know. What makes people tick? How will they make decisions? Handle feedback. And work as a team.

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