What Really Happened to Tamla Horsford?
[Music] hey guys welcome back to my channel so happy to have you here if you are new welcome so today i'm talking about a very highly requested case and this one i have to warn you advance is so frustrating it's incredibly sketchy how everything went down and i know you guys are going to have a lot of thoughts on it just like i did so today we're going to be talking about tamla horsford and again just a warning this one is very very frustrating before we get into today's video i wanted to let you guys know that i do have another way for you guys to give back to her justice you guys have been asking me if i'm going to do this again this year i am i have a partnership going with magic of i and it's pretty much going all the time magic of i is a really cool company from australia that makes these gorgeous planners astrology planners and journals in multiple different colors they're made with vegan leather they're so beautifully designed and i think one of my favorite parts about them is 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will be below but let's go ahead and get into this case because we have a lot to go over here so tamla ayanna horsford was born in 1978 in the caribbean at age 11 in 1989 her family moved to the bronx and she later moved to florida when she met her husband leander tamla went by tam a lot of the time for short and leander went by lee often times lee actually has another daughter from a previous relationship and she was pretty young when tamla first came into the picture but tamla raised her as her own from the very beginning and always had so much love and care for his daughter the two of them ended up really having a typical mother-daughter relationship even though they were not related by blood tammy raised her i mean from the time she was little so i mean she calls her mom and you know and tammy loved her like her own blood eventually lee got a new job in coming georgia and they all moved there and were very excited to start a new life and they started building onto their family and tamila ended up having another five boys she was a wonderful mother and truly cared for all of her kids and gave them so much time and attention tamla was also described as having a larger than life personality she was incredibly fun funny witty just an overall well-rounded person she was also loving kind charismatic selfless and she was very inclusive and just open to everyone that she came in contact with and being a stay-at-home mom she was obviously very protective of her kids and very proactive and involved in their lives she was always involved in their sports and their school and just loved being a mom constantly up and down the field i'm running down she would have her bull horn out there you know favorite thing was can't stop greatness you know she would always that was her favorite line on the um on the bullhorn because anytime the refs would make a bad call and then we'd answer back she'd say she can't stop greatness so their daughter grew up and she actually was expecting her first child in 2018. so lee and tamla were about to be grandparents and she was really looking forward to that she was a natural caretaker so becoming a grandmother was just something that she had been always looking forward to and very very anxiously anticipating in 2018 tamil and lee were living in forsyth county in [ __ ] georgia and i think it's important that we start out by saying that this county has a really long history of racism going back to 1912 rob edwards was actually lynched in the area for allegedly raping a young white woman and there was no actual evidence tying him to this crime at all and hundreds of people in the community gathered and watched this happen and it seemed that he was only convicted because he was the closest black man to the scene of the crime and after this a ton of people of color in forsyth were run out of town through threats of executions fear of arrest and just ongoing violence and terror in the community and it was actually deemed at the time to be one of the most successful instances of racial cleansing in the united states after the population went from 1098 black residents in 1912 to less than five in a span of a few years and sadly decades later the county remained as racist as it's ever been and a march was held to bring attention to the discrimination and racial injustices that were happening in 1987 and protesters were met with a bunch of angry members of the community who wanted to keep the town pure and free from color god bless america so that kind of gives you a little bit of a background and as of 2020 forsyth remains a place that is dominated by white majority with only four percent of its population representing people of color i'm sure there will be people out there who say that that information is irrelevant i happen to think it's incredibly relevant to this case and the way that it was handled so let's start with october of 2018. tamla was about to become a grandmother and she was over the moon about that and one day she receives an evite to a friend's party and this friend is named jean i use friends kind of loosely because the two of them had only met in august of that year so they really barely knew each other at this point and they only knew each other because their sons played on the same football team the only time that they had ever spent together was on saturdays during football games but tamla was always looking for new friends always super friendly to everyone that she met and she'd actually been to jean's house once the weekend before the party she and a few of her sons went over to their house for a pumpkin carving party and this was like the first time they had ever really hung out outside of a football game so this party that jean invited her to was a sleepover party it was saturday november 3rd 2018 and the idea was that everyone would sleep over so that they were safe because they planned on drinking that night and they didn't want obviously anyone driving home under the influence jean thought it would be a good way for everyone to relax enjoy themselves you know wear pajamas and kind of be a kid again with this whole sleepover party theme so the party was actually coordinated by jean's friend stacy smith and it was gonna be at john's house but stacy kind of figured out what they were gonna do and invited everyone there stacey invited eight women so there were ten total there including her and john and their names were madeline nicole marcy bridget jennifer sarah paula and of course tamla and tamla was the only black woman that was going to the party and although everyone knew john most of them knew stacy some of them were just kind of meeting for the first time now this party originally started as a kind of no boys allowed type theme and it was supposed to just be women but that ended up changing there were two men there that night jose barrera who is john's boyfriend and tom smith who is stacy's husband and even though they weren't supposed to be there that night jose wasn't feeling well and he told jean that he would just stay in the basement watch the lsu versus alabama game and he would stay out of their way those two were originally supposed to go out and hang out together and then i forget which one of them was having stomach issues so they said do you mind if we just watch the game in the basement we'll stay away from y'all because i have a theater room down there and then tom also decided to come and hang out with jose because stacy's sister was having a gender reveal party at their house and he wanted to be out of the way for that as well so they figured there was really no harm in having them you know hang out in the basement and the lsu versus alabama game was a big part of the reason that jon even threw this party because she was a big lsu fan also that was a good weekend for jean because her four kids were staying at their father's house and you know she had the house to herself other than jose and tom in the basement and the game was saturday night i wanted to watch the game and knew that we would all drink and said why don't we just do it here at my house as a pajama party slumber party so no one has to risk drinking and driving or calling uber and that my kids would all be at their father's house so we had enough rooms for everyone to sleep here so the day of the party john said that she was out and about all day and she came home to stacy nicole and madeline kind of setting up for the party which was set to start at 7 pm when she got home she went upstairs to get ready for the party and when she came back down pretty much everyone was already there this was approximately 7 7 30ish so tamla texted john and stacey and let them know that she was going to be running a little bit late and she ended up getting there around 8 8 30ish some of the women had their husbands dropped them off and they were going to pick them up the next morning tamla just drove herself over there before going to the party tamla had expressed to lee that she wasn't super thrilled about going to this party she didn't really want to go but she was such a nice person that she didn't want to offend anybody or make them think you know she didn't like them so she decided to go lee actually also had plans to go out that night but he ended up canceling to watch the kids because he felt like tamla did deserve to you know go out and have a good time because she was such a good mother to her kids and always always taking care of them and didn't really take much time for herself so he decided to sacrifice his plans he was a little bit upset about that but you know he got over it and the two of them said there i love yous they kissed goodbye and tamla was off so everyone at the party said that tamla came in in a great mood that she seemed very energetic and excited to be there and like i said earlier she was such an outgoing fun person that she was definitely the type that you would want to come to your party she came hopping along into the front door trying to take her boots off to be considerate new carpet so she was hopping around trying to get her boots off left him at the at the whatever you call that hutch or whatever there in the dining room she brought her bag in laid it down behind the back side of the um sectional couch and insisted that she was ready to put her pajamas on so she put her pajamas on and she was wearing a white onesie with gray paw prints all over it and also had on black and red socks with multi-color star patterns on them so like most of the others who were there tamela didn't know everyone who was attending the party so she introduced herself to anyone she didn't know yet and this included sarah marcy and nicole and she had also only met bridget once before so she kind of reintroduced herself to her tamla ended up bringing a bottle of tequila a really nice bottle as a gift for jean and john did not really appreciate this gift at all john especially hated tequila and made it very clear to tamla that she was not going to be drinking it and at one point tamla went out to smoke a cigarette and all the women kind of passed around the bottle and no one really drank it so tamla ended up being the only one to really drink it that night and she had several tequila waters throughout the night she brought a bottle of tequila as my gift and said it was a tequila from mexico and i said thank you but i don't drink tequila and she said no you don't understand it's good and she opened it and i smelled it and i threw up in my mouth and said no so she offered it to other people because she's the life of the party she's always been the life of the party and everybody's like can't drink tequila stacy and jean i can remember it vividly they were over here by the bar and they smelled it and i saw jean go like this like no way i number one she doesn't like tequila but number two she was like i'm not drinking that stuff and then same with stacy so then all of us were sitting on the couch and cam was on the back porch smoking at the time and i was sitting on the couch right here and they all said smell this stuff you've got to smell this it's awful and every one of us smelled it and we're like i don't want anything to do with that you know um and then that was it i didn't see her make a drink but i wasn't paying attention so um nobody was doing shots that i had seen not while i was here so i didn't even see that oh thank you um but that's that's the only liquor that i saw that she was excited about she had brought it and it was um imported from mexico she was all excited about it the only two women who are not drinking at all that night were sarah and nicole and that was because they were planning to go home they did not want to spend the night now pretty much everyone there has a similar story of how the night went they just hung out had snacks watched the game and throughout the night people started having more and more fun because they were drinking more and more and kind of relaxing around each other pretty much everyone handled their liquor pretty well kept it under control except for one guest and that was jennifer it was very clear very quickly that she already had too much to drink now she had a history with alcohol as well she had actually received a dui in the past so no one seemed to be too shocked that she was the one to drink too much right away and throughout the night tamla went outside several times to smoke a cigarette and even though she was the only one who smoked according to people at the party she normally wasn't alone outside someone normally went with her do you remember her going out on the deck at any time to smoke cigarettes yeah i sat that's when i uh sat down and talked like i had just met her but i like early in the night i we went out on the deck for probably about 10-15 minutes okay and we were just talking and everything because her son's name is gavin my son's name was gavin okay so just talking about silly stuff like that and she's a libra i'm a libra so we thought it was cool and then we went inside and she kind of like wandered off and like with the other girls and just started mingling right with all the girls right so madeline who's actually jean's aunt decided to smoke some weed with tamla at the beginning of the night and stacy also said that she had just one puff however they had to stop because john saw them doing it went outside got really upset and made them stop and stacy actually does admit to having one puff as well and the reason that jean got so upset about them smoking weed is because jose was there and jose was actually a pre-trial probation officer in forsyth now even though jose and tom said that they would spend the night out of the way of the party downstairs watching the game they did come up to eat with the girls at halftime madeline told them that they were welcome to eat she had made gumbo for everyone but she did ask them to leave at one point and go grab some ice at the gas station because they were all out of ice for their drinks so after this the night continues with all the women and the men on the main floor of the house watching the end of the game so at one point tamla decides to facetime lee and say goodnight she also has all her kids get on the facetime say goodnight to her as well and she has pretty much everyone at the party hop on the facetime as well and just say hi to her kids and everyone said that tamla was very energetic and seemed to be happy to be there even lee who said you know earlier she didn't seem to want to go said that once she was there she seemed like she was really having a good time and seemed in good spirits tamla also made a second facetime call later that night to her daughter as well you know just saying hello so the last person to actually arrive to the party was paula and she came in around 10 o'clock so pretty late and by this time sarah and nicole who had always been planning to leave were getting ready to leave the two of them have estimated that they left the house around 10 30 pm however this is right around the time that tamla was facetiming lee so it's not exactly clear if that's actually when they left but probably pretty close to this time so once the football game had ended those who were still there decided to play a game of cards against humanity and obviously that's a really fun game to play when people are drinking but it can also get kind of hard to keep up with and you know stick to when there's people who are really drunk in the group so the game didn't last too long but while they were playing everyone said they had a good time [Music] in my studio my soul my soul [Laughter] after the game everyone was getting kind of tired and started getting ready for bed marcy actually took jen to bed because she was by far the most drunk of everyone there and they went into one of the bedrooms around 12 45 they watched shrek and passed out shortly after putting it on after this everyone else started kind of winding down and it was about 1 115 at this point so when they all start talking about going to bed and deciding who's going to sleep where tamla mentions that she would rather go home but stacy tom and john were not into that idea they said she needs to stay the night and not get behind the wheel of a car since she had been drinking when lee found out that tamela had wanted to go home that night he said that she would have been absolutely fine to drive home and would have made it home safely one thing i do know about my wife and this is i mean it may not be a good thing but we're both from the islands and we both grew up drinking and she could handle her liquor she could have i mean and she she would drink like straight shots of tequila but my wife would have made it home i can guarantee that a hundred percent a hundred percent because oh yeah a hundred percent she would have made it home eventually tamla agreed to stay the night and jean said that she just didn't seem ready for bed she was telling other people there that she wanted them to stay up with her and hang out for a little longer but the whole group was really insistent on going to bed they were tired so most of them hit the sack at that point john and jose said they're good nights to everybody and they went upstairs to their room and around that time stacy said that tamla seemed very upset about not having a sleeping buddy that most people were sleeping with someone else at the party and she was going to be sleeping by herself so stacy says that she put her phone next to tamla's in the living room so that their phones could sleep together whatever that means i left my phone downstairs and because she said tom was selfish because she didn't have a sleeping buddy right so she we put our phones there she said well our phones can sleep together we laughed and hugged and i she said she was going to smoke and i went to bed so at that point stacy and tom go off to bed and tamla and bridget are the only ones still up at this point tamla and bridget are just hanging out in the kitchen together talking and at some point jose goes down to get his phone charger from the basement because he left it down there and he saw them in the kitchen didn't think anything of it goes back upstairs i went down the basement to grab my phone charger that i left in the theater room and the staircase is kind of obvious here right underneath each other going from basement to upstairs so i mean i didn't really look at who was still up i mean i came up in the basement shut the door saw tamly in the kitchen just glancing over and saw she was there who was she with i just saw her by herself but okay from that i guess that vantage point from coming out from the basement there is that wall there so i just kind of saw her through here kind of up where the stove would be so i can't see anything back in the kitchen and then i just went upstairs so bridgette actually decided not to spend the night there after all so she was still up and hanging out with tamla because she was waiting for her husband to pick her up she said the reason she didn't want to stay the night is because she had really bad anxiety and felt like she had to keep one eye open while she slept if she was at someone else's house so her and tamala were hanging out in the kitchen waiting for her husband gary to get there and pick her up and tamela was actually having a bowl of gumbo and they were just kind of hanging out she told bridget that after she finished her gumbo you know her plan was to go smoke a cigarette outside and then head to bed and that's what bridget thought she was doing when she left when gary arrived to pick up bridgette tamela actually according to bridget walked her over to the door gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek and said good night now something pretty interesting and also very helpful in this case is that john's house has an xfinity security system that logs anytime the door to the house was opened or closed and this is just for any doors leading to the outside so not doors within the house just the front door and back door the system also sends alerts to john's phone with the name of the door that was open or closed and the time that it was opened or closed so the system recorded the front door opening and closing at 1 47 am which is consistent with the timeline of bridget being picked up by gary then two minutes later at 1 49 the back door was opened and then shut one minute later at 1 50 which is consistent with tamla going outside to smoke a cigarette and then shutting the door behind her a few hours later the system ends up picking up the front door opening and closing at 4 10 a.m which is actually when marcy
left shawn's house to go back home marcy said that she left early because she started a new job working at coach at the local outlet mall so she said that she had set an alarm to get up and go home so she could shower and get ready for her second day on the job but we actually find out later on that her shift doesn't actually start until 10 30 a.m so 4 30 seems pretty early pretty out of the ordinary to be going home and getting ready for work but who knows so paula who was last to arrive at the party ends up being the next to leave and she left at 7 30 a.m so sometime between 8 and 8 30 a.m stacy and tom wake up and they head home to get back to their kids because her sister was watching them before she left stacey went into the living room to grab her phone and she you know had left it next to tamlas for the night so that their phones could sleep together or whatever and she remembers seeing her phone and being happy that tamla decided to stay the night so madeline who again is jean's aunt wakes up between like 8 and 8 30 a.m and she kind of lingered in bed for a bit before actually getting up to do her typical morning routine which involves making coffee and during this process madeline walks by the window and sees that tamla is outside on the ground face down in her pajamas and isn't moving and strangely enough the first thing that madeline decides to do is get down on her hands and knees and pray i went get the coffee maker started and i went stand by the window and i was just staring out the window and i saw those dalmatian pajamas damn but i couldn't remember her name right because that was the first time i'd met her so um i didn't start the coffee i i i got on my knees and i said a prayer obviously many people are upset and just weirded out that the first thing she decides to do is pray it seems like in a situation like that you would immediately take action and try to help the person why wouldn't she go check and see if tamla was breathing see if she needed any help instead she starts praying it's just weird after she finished praying she gets up and she goes and tells jose what she has seen madeleine said that when she got to jose and jean's room that she could hear water running she thought it almost sounded like they were taking a shower and she kind of lightly knocked on the door so she decides that instead of interrupting them because they could have been in the shower together that she was going to go downstairs and briefly look at pamela one more time she said she just went down there for about a minute and then went right back up to their room this time she knocked a little louder and john told her to go ahead and come in then madeline said she needed to talk to jose right away john asked her why she needed to talk to him and she said she saw her friend from the islands laying outside on the ground not moving so then it went knock on the door loudly never went out there and that's when i told jose that uh i knocked on the doors jean said come in and they were sitting up in bed and i said jose and i looked at jean and i said i just want to talk to jose i want him to come downstairs with me and john said why what's wrong and i said um your friend your friend from the islands is laying in the backyard and she's not moving this whole running water thing has been very confusing because jean and jose said that they were not showering that they were actually asleep and they were woken up by madeleine's knocking i don't know what the sound she was hearing was or if she even heard a sound or maybe the water was coming from somewhere else i don't know jose said that as soon as madeleine told him what she saw he quickly put on clothes and ran downstairs to see and john also said that she got up immediately put on her clothes and asked madeline if she needed to call 9-1-1 they ended up calling 9-1-1 at 8 59 a.m four five counting one
hi yes um i need an ambulance and a place to my home my name is john myers j-e-a-n-n-e okay what's going on we had people over last night we were drinking most of us went to bed one of them stayed on the balcony she was drinking and we just went outside outside and she's going face down in the backyard i'm guessing maybe she fell off the balcony okay is she breathing i don't i don't know if she's face down okay how old is she at 41. here hold on hey this is jose pereira hey have you all checked to see if she's breathing she's not moving one [ __ ] she's not breathing i just try to assess her tesla she's completely face down in the yard um do you see any blood or anything to where from where she fell um i i don't know if i should move her over i mean she's completely closed down okay i mean can you just check and see she's breathing if she's not breathing and you and you know she's gone then just leave her where she's at if she okay i'm completely not sure do you know if she was suicidal at all i have no clue i've met her one other time um you know like my girlfriend said people were over last night she was the last one i saw before everybody i mean everybody was typically put off the bed she was last one in the kitchen she was just either waiting around for a ride or waiting until the morning okay how far is the um where she would have fell from how far is the deck from the ground um i would probably say 20 feet okay you know 20 feet from where your feet would be on the railing the railing itself is maybe three and a half four feet and jose never performs or attempts to perform cpr on her or any other life-saving techniques even though he is professionally trained so according to the official crime scene report police units were dispatched at exactly 9 am and they arrived there at 907 the responders who came to the scene include detectives from fsco major crimes unit a crime scene investigation unit and an investigator from the forsyth county coroner's office so sometime between 8 50 and nine when everyone gets there jen who was the one who drank a ton that night said that she was woken up by all the chaos and she says this is when she learned that tamla was outside found on the ground and wasn't moving now something extremely crucial to point out here was the way that everyone reported seeing tamla's body on the ground versus the way that police claim she was positioned when they arrived and we actually hear for ourselves in the 911 call that jose says that she is face down without her head being turned to either side she is literally face down and everyone else said that when they saw tamla outside that she was face down with her arms right to her side straight and that her legs were also just straight out she was face down but like her arms or down like she just face planted is the best way i can describe it so her arms are like by her side yeah they were by her side palms up but allegedly this is not the way her body is found when police get there instead her left arm was bent at the elbow and extended away from her body and having an arm bent out like this would indicate that she may have tried to brace herself for impact on the ground meaning she could have tripped or fell so the official distance from the balcony to the ground was measured at 14 feet and 10.5 inches and again everyone who is there says the image of her lying face down with her arms to her side is burned in their brains i am telling you jen saw it i saw it jose saw it my aunt saw it i will never get that image out of my head that that woman's hands it was so just unnatural and that they were down by her side and like even if she fell why didn't she try to stop like that's my first thought is i guess i would put my hand like how do you land like that and i'll never get that image out i don't know who failed in documenting what whether the corner the officers on the scene i don't know if it's somebody moved her i don't know but that is what i saw so a lot of people have questioned whether it's possible that the police actually moved her arm out to fit the narrative that she tripped or fell because it would have been a lot easier to close the case and just rule it an accident and considering the racist history of this county a lot of people have pointed out that they would not be surprised if that was the case the upper deck was also not a place where people were hanging out during the party and the only time that they were on the deck was once and they were trying to turn on the fire pit but they gave up because they realized that there was no propane in the tank the initial observation of tanla's body was that she had a few visible injuries this included cuts to her wrists her legs and the side of her face after the initial observation of the crime scene tamla was brought to the medical examiners for an autopsy and while the investigators were in the backyard jean jose madeline and jen were all brought inside for further questioning john was also asked if she could call back the rest of the people who are at the party so that they could interview them as well and it's really important to note that everyone who was still there were left in a room together unsupervised able to talk to each other while they waited for questioning so not long after the police had first arrived at jean's house and found tamla they ended up going over to tell lee what happened to her and he was immediately met with disrespect when they first knocked on the door he was going to the bathroom so he asked his sons to answer the door and they quickly came to him and said dad there's police here so he finished up and met them at the front door they asked him three times if his name was lee and he kept asking what does this pertain to and they kept asking him are you lee and every time they got more aggressive and louder the last time that he asked what does this pertain to they got fed up and they told him your wife she's deceased in a very cold and aggressive tone he said that it was said to him with no remorse no sympathy no care at all i finished using the restroom go downstairs answer the door and the cop says is your name lee and i said and what's this pertaining to and he said is your name lee and i said i'm going to ask you once again what is this pertaining to he said is your name lee and i said actually no it's not it's leander but once again what is this pertaining to and he said well your wife is deceased so he said it's about your wife she's deceased that was his exact words it's about your wife she's deceased and i said what i said no no no no no and they wouldn't even let lee go over to the house himself they just told him what happened which they came to a conclusion about very quickly they said that she tripped and fell to her death i said where's she at and i went to go get my clothes and and all this stuff because i was thinking this is horse [ __ ] i was first i think she got into a car accident or something like that somebody hit her or something like that and they're like oh no it was an accident and this and that and i was oh you can't go you can't go you can't go over there everybody everything's been taken care of already no we don't want you going over there this and that and so i was sitting on the front porch with them and they're like well it seems that if there was an accident seems she tripped over something and fell in the grass and and this and that and i'm like my wife tripping over something and falling in the grass i've seen this girl drink a half a bottle of tequila and dance salsa in six inch heels um that's don't make no sense but ultimately no one would know much more until the autopsy was performed so they really shouldn't have been saying this to him with such certainty without even having that information so the autopsy came back and the medical examiner found a lot of small cuts and lacerations including a one inch laceration to her right wrist a quarter inch abrasion to her left forearm and a 1 8 inch abrasion to the tip of her left index finger as well as half inch lacerations to her lower legs and in addition to the cuts found on her body the medical examiner noted small superficial abrasions to the right side of her forehead left upper eyelid bridge of her nose and chin and all the abrasions on her face were smaller than a half inch internally they found a three-quarter inch laceration to the right ventricle of her heart and there were no fractures of the bones in her face and no damage to her shoulders abdomen or back and although the lacerations were small it was reported that she did sustain severe injuries to her head her neck and her torso the toxicology report did find her blood alcohol concentration at .238 which is almost three times the legal limit and she was found with trace amounts of thc which does make sense according to everyone's story and also xanax in her system and i do want to note that tamla was not known for taking xanax she was not prescribed xanax and no one in her family was either and the interesting part about this is it wasn't yet metabolized in her liver which means she had just recently consumed it after the analysis tamla's official cause of death was due to multiple blunt force injuries consistent with a fall and her manner of death was ruled an accident the medical examiner's report was made public on february 6 2019 and stated that there was no evidence of injuries that would indicate vowel play also another huge piece of information to note here is there were no photos taken of tamla's body during her autopsy which is incredibly strange because it's required for some reason it just was not done and also the crime scene was incredibly poorly documented it does make you think maybe there's a possibility that the police wanted to close this case very quickly and not you know have a lot of room for people to ask questions so the police's first theory before the whole falling off the balcony theory really began was that she tripped and fell on ground level in the backyard in john's backyard there was a small metal barrier separating some of the rocks from the grass i'm sure a lot of you guys have that in your yards as well it was first thought that maybe tamla had tripped over this and that caused the fatal fall which seems pretty dramatic and unusual and logistically speaking that would not make any sense with her injuries but it also wouldn't make sense that she fell off the balcony either because you'd think her injuries would be much more severe if she had actually fallen face-first from a balcony i mean the first thing you would think of right is that she would have some type of fracture in her face or in her skull or that her nose would be broken but none of that happened even her teeth were in completely fine condition it doesn't really line up with someone who had fallen off a balcony but the autopsy was suitable for police and they decided to close the case on february 20 2019 and as if this family had not been through enough trauma and hadn't been treated badly enough from the beginning when lee actually went to the funeral home to view tamla he found that she had been basically put in blackface she had been painted a much darker color than her actual complexion this is the thing is that a lot of people don't know the extent of the injuries but i know them because and this is going to shock some people but when i went into the funeral home i probably scared the [ __ ] out of everybody because i yelled what the [ __ ] as loud as i could i walked in and i saw my wife look like she had shoe polish on her face black shoe polish all over her face and i flipped out and i was like nope nope nope and i walked out and i told them take that off of my wife take all that well sir will we i'm sorry but we had to cover up the bruising and this and that and i don't cover up the brush you don't cover up the bruising with black shoebox [ __ ] my wife is my color you know but yet her her skin was this color that it like black face he was super pissed and he had left his sons outside so he could view her first but when he walked outside his sons could tell that something had really upset him so i was really pissed and i was gonna close the casket and just leave it a closed casket this was for the viewing not for the funeral but for the viewing and so my sons came out to me and said dad what's wrong man dad was wrong that was wrong and i said you can't go in there you can't you can't see that that's not that's not your mom that's not the way your mom looks they're like dad i don't care i want to see i want to see i said no i said these are grown man decisions i don't want to do i'm like you're making a grown man decision you're going to have to deal with it and he's like i don't give a [ __ ] dad i want to see and that was my oldest at the time because he was pissed and so i said you know what okay you want to make grown man decisions come on let's go so i went in with my old with my oldest boy and he stood next to me and we both just stood there and looked at her and neither one of us shed a tear because he looked nothing like her wow didn't even look like her it didn't look like her so this story has a lot of like i said in the beginning just sketchy details i've already gone through some of those but let's continue here so like i said jean's security system you know gives her an alert every time the doors are opened or closed it was mentioned that the back door was opened at 1 49 a.m and then closed a minute later at 1 50 which made sense with tamla saying she was going to go back out and have one more cigarette before bed then at 1 57 the back door opens again which is kind of consistent with the time that it would take someone to you know smoke a cigarette but the door never shuts after that it was also mentioned in the 9-1-1 call by jose that jean had security cameras in her backyard and she did but they were all dead at the time jean said that she got the cameras when she and her ex-husband first divorced because she was afraid of him and wanted them for her safety but after things cooled off with him over time they died and she couldn't find the charger and never bothered to get a new one let me ask you about kind of switch gears a little bit your cameras um which i know this has been uh i camera they're rechargeable arlo cameras they're not ones with batteries i had gotten them when i was going through my divorce because my ex-husband would come in the house when i wasn't there we were on good terms and since things were fine with my ex and i i really wasn't concerned which is really unfortunate because that footage would really clear up a lot obviously another really sketchy bit of this is how jose went about assessing the situation that morning in some parts of his interview he talks about going outside right away to see tamla later he says that he went out the door to the balcony the one that she would have fallen off and he says that before he actually got the chance to look over the balcony and see tamla for himself which keep in mind he already knew that she was on the ground because madeline had told him he ends up seeing a cigarette and a lighter on the ground of the balcony and he takes the time to stop and pick it up and set it on the fire pit he told the investigators that he has ocd and that they were in his way and he's just the type of person to stop and do things like that just pick things up and tidy everything but he says that he wouldn't have done that if he had known what he was about to see which doesn't really make sense because madeleine told him what he was about to see so when i initially went out there to uh to see what was going on there was a loose cigarette and a lighter laying on the back deck and i think just as ocd as i am i walked out and it was just kind of in my path from you know the door to the railing where i looked out i mean i walked up set it on the fire pit and just kept walking okay so you actually did that before you saw correct time or anything oh yeah i wouldn't have moved anything if i knew what i was trying to walk up on okay and this is odd because if the cigarette and lighter are upstairs on the balcony that doesn't line up with the downstairs door being opened that night how else would tamela have gotten out of the house i mean this security system alerts you for every door that's opened so why was the cigarette and lighter upstairs unless it was smoked earlier that night but it almost seemed like it was kind of being set up that way to make sense of her falling off the balcony from the top it just wouldn't make sense for those things to be up there especially since we know that tamil went outside from the downstairs back door so the next confusing sketchy thing that happened was jean actually bought the investigators tyler sexton and mike christian duncan donuts gift cards which just seems weird to me get out of my head look and i just went and got y'all gift cards oh what are they gonna be bringing them on and i told but then i was told i shouldn't because then it could look bad if i give you something before the case is closed oh you better wait so and it's very stereotypical because i [Applause] someone just died at your party at your house and you think it's cool to make jokes like this and you have time to go get dunkin donuts gift cards it's just weird then we also hear madeline tell the investigators that she made them cookies so many people feel like the investigators were bribed into not investing further not pushing further for the truth so just seconds after jean gives them these dunkin donuts gift cards she asks them if they need her or if she can just go upstairs and start getting ready for this funeral do you need me or can i go upstairs and get ready for this funeral go do your thing this is a friend of yours who just died in your home it's just her tone of voice and her choice of words that have really bothered people she doesn't say my friend's funeral or even her funeral it's this funeral i don't know just it bothers me what do you guys think so these interviews also were not conducted right away they did some the day of they did the rest of the interviewing five days later and you'd think at that point they would do it at the police station but no they chose to do it at john's house for whatever reason the first round of interviews happened on november 9th and they continued until november 20th so that's a lot of time for everyone at the party to communicate with each other and kind of line up their stories and many people have been very disturbed by that many people believe that if this was a party with all black women and there was a white woman who died that things would have been handled very differently from the start i mean guilty or not everyone at that party should have been brought into the police station be questioned properly so let's talk a little bit more about the xanax and the autopsy report obviously the xanax found in her system is a pretty bizarre finding considering she doesn't take this it's not something she's ever known for taking and it was consumed very shortly before whatever happened to her happened so that brings bridget fuller the one who was hanging out with tamla the most that night into question so she left early because she has a lot of anxiety and she is prescribed xanax for that anxiety and she actually wears it around her neck i don't know exactly what this necklace looks like i haven't been able to find a picture of it but i'm assuming it's some type of like vial i don't know if she has that many pills in there like a full bottle's worth or if it's just like a few just in case i don't know when everyone at the party was asked about the xanax and how tamila would have gotten into her system no one knows how this would have happened the only person who had it at the party was bridget bridget and the other people at the party say that they never gave any or bridget never gave any to tamla as far as we know nobody saw her take anything throughout the night and everyone said her behavior was completely normal even lee said when he spoke to her that she seemed fine however we do know that she must have taken it later in the night and likely had taken it or was given it um after lee had spoken to her but reality is some of the women had gotten xanax from bridget before and after tamla's death including jean who got klonopin from bridget on occasion when stacy is asked by police if bridget gave her anything that morning she says no but is actually caught by the officer not telling the full truth and rather than admit to the truth she says i'm not gonna say i didn't did bridget give you anything the morning tam died while you're back at the house and then meet you later that night to give you anything no i don't recall i do not recall at all i guess you'd be surprised to know that there was a text on your phone to her asking her to meet you to give her you some more of her medicine because it helped you that morning okay well maybe i'm not gonna say i didn't that's fine you just don't but you don't remember it no i don't bridget's interview as a whole has definitely caught the attention of those who question what happened to tam she constantly goes off topic and addresses things completely unrelated to the case i'm kind of your mother hen whenever i'm at parties and my my very first priority is children granite there were no children this time about the weekend before there was i've been a nanny for nine years and not just with my own children other people's children completely trust me and um so i'm i'm very adamant about watching what's going on you know and it's like stop flipping your head around you're gonna knock your head and head into the damn wall i'm not doing any er things for you stop being stupid right and i think that was one of the things tam liked so much about me is even though i had a couple drinks i still kept my faculties about bridget also brings up that she doesn't care about a lot of people but she says the people that she does care about she takes good care of and i don't have a big circle of friends i'm very close i'm very protective i have john you know i have a little closer relationship with my boss to the point where he understands my anxiety and issues and stuff you know um i've had time with his kids they come here they play where daddy's working um i mean overall i i i don't see my dom my downfall i don't trust people though yeah you know and it's more grown-up people that i don't trust it's not so much children so before the investigation was closed jose who at the time worked at the police station actually got caught accessing confidential information about the case it turns out jose was looking into what the police knew so far specifically he was caught looking into more information about a woman named michelle graves and michelle is tamla's close friend and she from the beginning was very unsatisfied with the investigation and made 13 facebook posts detailing the whole event and included the names of the witnesses from the party questioning their stories and the overall investigation and her posts were viewed more than a hundred thousand times and that upset those that michelle questioned in her writing john and the others ended up suing michelle for suffering irreparable damage to their character and reputation but michelle states that beyond this lawsuit the group has threatened her and had her unjustly arrested which the reason for that is unknown that's a very foggy part of this so jose was fired for accessing this information illegally however no legal action was ever taken against him and jose is not the only corrupt one on the force in this case there's also mike christian he had to be pulled off the case because he leaked confidential files including photos and sensitive information to his girlfriends and this was only discovered because these women decided that was wrong and reported him and if that's not enough to make him look bad one of these women who he met through a case that he was working said that he groomed her for over a year before she agreed to go out with him so an internal investigation was opened against him but at that point he resigned from the force probably because he knew he was screwed at that point it is also rumored that both investigators mike and tyler are racist and have treated several people of color unjustly and there's this photo as well which really speaks for itself so in 2020 there was that incredible fight for justice for the men and women of color who have been murdered in this country by police or have been treated unjustly by our justice system and millions of people fought for tamla's case to be reopened and celebrities like kim kardashian and 50 cent also rallied for tamla in hopes that she would have a proper investigation so in june of 2020 the georgia bureau of investigation reopened her case after receiving a letter from the forsyth county saying they are ready to assist in any manner but the gbi has said that they didn't find any further information to indicate that there was any foul play involved in tamla's case ralph hernandez who is the horsefarer family attorney sent a letter to lee saying that he and his office reviewed the case and said that there is a strong possibility that this was a homicide also their attorney has stated that they found conflicting witness statements a tampered crime scene mishandled evidence and an unheard absence of autopsy photos but unfortunately these findings have not led to any change in the final outcome and to this day tamla's death is still being ruled an accident i wish i had more information at this point you'd think with how much time has passed there would be more but there's not i really want to know what you guys think about this case i know there are going to be mixed opinions and some crazy comments on this one but i felt like it was really important to talk about this case and just how even if it really was an accident how messy how unfair the entire case was handled from the beginning and just the overall strange way that this case was handled from the beginning please let me know your thoughts on this one guys i definitely want to know what you're thinking after hearing all of this i feel so sorry for lee and for all their children that they have to miss out on life with tamla when she was such an incredible mother you know it's so sad thinking of lee having to live his life without her thinking of all the friends that tamila had that no longer have her in their life to cheer them up to celebrate milestones with them it's just incredibly heartbreaking to think about and to this day to me her death just doesn't make sense i just don't understand how she would have fallen 14 feet from that balcony and not had way more severe injuries and if she fell at ground level the injuries that she did have don't make any sense and i just can't wrap my mind around it fully i feel like a further investigation should have absolutely been done and i hope that one day the case is reopened and given a second look because tamala deserves that her family deserves that that is all i have for you guys today i know that was a very tough one thank you to everyone who stuck through till the end and like i said i really want to hear your thoughts so leave them down below but that's it for me this time guys i will see you next week with another video until then please stay safe out there and i will see you next time [Music]
2022-02-09 00:04
