Hello everyone, today I am telling you about a case of destruction of humanity: the disappearance and murder of Tricia.
Tricia and her ex-husband Steven met since childhood, which can be described as a young woman, and when they became adults, they entered the North Carolina Air Force together, and then the two naturally came together, and it didn't take long to get married.
However, after 11 years of marriage, they divorced in January 2016. The reason for the divorce was simple, there was no messy plot, just because the two had been together for too long and had no feelings for each other. At the time of the divorce, the two divided the family property equally, and because the daughter Faith was young, the custody of the daughter was given to Tracia, but Steven could see her daughter at any time.
At the age of 33, Tracia left the army and took her daughter Faith alone to her hometown of Hobsand, Florida, where she found a job as a nurse at a hospice center.
On Tuesday, April 26, 2016, Travia's ex-husband Steven came to Hobsander to see her daughter Faith, and the family of three spent a wonderful night together, but unexpectedly, after a day, Tracia suffered misfortune.
Tricia is missing
Since her daughter Faith had just turned two years old and had not yet reached the age of school, Tricia had to work herself. Although the hospital allows children to work, sometimes it is inevitable that children will not be able to take care of them when she is busy, so Tricia has found a non-residential nanny to help take care of the children when she is inconvenient.
Usually, Tricia would take the child to the nanny's house when it was inconvenient, and then take the child home when she was finished.
On the morning of April 27, 2016, Tricia, who was scheduled to go to the nanny's house to pick up the child, never appeared, and her mobile phone was also turned off, so the nanny had to contact Tracia's brother Jonathan.
When Jonathan learned of the situation, he immediately went to his sister's residence to check on the situation. Upon arriving, he found his sister's car parked outside the house, but in a different location than usual, with it parked across the road. Not only that, her wallet was still on the seat of the car, and the lights in the house were on, but there was no response to knocking.
At this time Jonathan realized that something was wrong, his sister Tricia has always been a very punctual person, and she loves her daughter very much, usually if she can't pick up her daughter on time, she will tell the nanny in advance, this has never happened, he thinks that Tracia must be in trouble, so he immediately called the police.
After receiving the alarm, the police immediately sent someone to the scene. Since the door to Tricia's house was locked, the police had to use special means to open the door. However, when they entered the house, they did not find a terrible scene, but the inside of the house was very tidy and looked like everything was normal.
The only thing worth noting is that on the kitchen table is a tote bag containing some fresh ingredients. Other than that, no clues were found. Because the lights in the house were on, police speculated that Tricia should have been in trouble after returning home the night before.
Fortunately, the kitchen's handbags were printed with supermarket logos, so the police decided to go to the supermarket to check the surveillance video, hoping to find some clues.
Soon, police found Tracia in surveillance footage from the supermarket, which showed that at 9:40 p.m. on April 26, Travia was alone in the supermarket to buy some ingredients, and she left the supermarket after buying them. It can be seen that the police's guess is correct, and Tricia has indeed returned home.
However, there is no trace of forced entry into the home, so the police speculate that the suspect is most likely someone triathria knows. Thinking of this, the police planned to talk to the nanny to find out when Tracia had sent the child over and whether there had been any other explanations at that time.
Unexpectedly, an important clue was found, and the nanny said that Faith was not sent by Tricia on April 26, but by Steven on the morning of April 27, when Steven told her that after a while, Tricia would pick up the child, but Tricia never showed up.
Suspect: Ex-husband Steven
Hearing this, the police think that Steven has a great suspicion, after all, usually, the probability that the wife is in an accident and the husband is the murderer is very large, so the police directly listed Steven as an important suspect.
However, when the police informed Tracia's family of this suspicion, they simply rejected the possibility. Because although Tracia and Steven are divorced, they are still very good friends, their relationship has always been very good, and they have no financial contradictions, and they are peacefully separated when they divorce, Steven has no motive at all.
After learning of the situation, the police, out of professionalism, did not let go of any clues. They still found Steven and asked him about his april 26 whereabouts.
Steven said the troops were on vacation that day, and he drove hundreds of miles and spent about 10 hours from North Carolina to Florida to see his daughter Faith. After arriving, he rented a homestay as usual, after all, he and Tricia had broken up, it was not appropriate to live together, and he also wanted to have space alone with his daughter.
On the evening of April 26, Tricia took her daughter to the homestay, and the family of three had dinner, and then Tricia went home to rest, and he and his daughter Faith stayed at the homestay for the night.
The next morning, April 27, the plan was for Tracia to pick up her daughter from the homestay and take her to the nanny's house, and he drove back to the army, but he waited for a long time without waiting for his ex-wife, and her phone could not be called.
Because the discipline of the troops was very strict, he had to rush back as soon as possible, and in desperation, he had no choice but to send his daughter to the nanny's house, and notified his ex-wife by text message, so that she could pick up her daughter as soon as possible after seeing it.
Since he could not contact the outside world at will after returning to the army, he did not know what happened next.
Although Steven's claims are justified, the police cannot believe that they conducted an in-depth investigation into Steven.
According to the location of Tricia's mobile phone, she did stay at Steven's homestay for a while before 9:40 p.m. on April 26, indicating that she had been separated from Steven when she went to the supermarket. Secondly, after a background check on Steven, it was found that not only did he not have any criminal record, but he also had excellent grades in school, and he was a respected professional soldier after enlisting.
In fact, from the above survey results, Steven's suspicion can be basically ruled out, but as the last person who has had contact with Tracia, out of caution, the police still put forward a request for a lie detector test to him, and Steven also happily agreed to the lie detector test, and as a result, he passed the lie detector test, and Steven was excluded from suspicion.
For Tricia's disappearance, Steven provided a direction to the police. He said Tracia had a quirky problem and that she would often play Missing. For this reason, the police deliberately found Tricia's family to confirm, the other party said that it was indeed a matter, did not say before because Tricia will arrange the child before each disappearance, but this time the situation is obviously different, so it did not mention this matter.
In the face of this situation, the police still feel that it is impossible for Tracia to run away from home, because since her disappearance, there has been no operation on the mobile phone, credit card and bank account, and it also indicates that the case may be related to hatred, so the police decided to investigate from Trasia's private life.
Suspect: Tricia's boyfriend
Police quickly locked in a new suspect: Tracia's boyfriend.
Tricia made a new boyfriend not long after the divorce, and she also loved each other very much, Tricia once told her girlfriend that the boyfriend was his true destiny, and she had never been so happy. So, their relationship is so good, why would the police suspect him?
The police found a sentence in the dynamics of Tricia's social accounts: This is a painful relationship, is it inevitable that Scorpio and Pisces will encounter difficulties when they interact? Am I really happy? It was my first time with Scorpio, and while sweet, it was accompanied by bitterness.
Obviously, there is a problem with the feelings between them, so will this case be caused by emotional entanglement?
The police soon found the mysterious boyfriend, and what people did not expect was that the other party's attitude was the same as Steven's, very cooperative in the face of police interrogation, and also provided an alibi.
He said on the night of April 26, he watched turtles lay eggs on the beach. Coincidentally, there happened to be surveillance on that beach, so the suspect was quickly ruled out.
New clues
The case inquired about this, and Tracia's closest two people, ex-husband and boyfriend have ruled out the suspicion, for a while the police can not start. However, this state did not last long, a police officer said that from the perspective of Tricia's network dynamics, she seems to like to express her inner feelings in words, and she sent a dynamic content that can show people, so it is inconvenient to disclose the content, will she write it down?
The police searched Trícia's residence, and they quickly found a diary in the bedroom, and the contents of the diary were unexpected, and it turned out that Steven, the ex-husband who grew up as a first-class student and was trusted by Travia's family, actually hid another face.
The diary states that whenever the two quarrel, Steven will deliberately beat the pet in the house, because Tracia likes small animals, and it is not difficult to see that his purpose is to stimulate Tricia by hurting small animals, and even killed S several times.
Sometimes Steven's emotional loss of control will directly hurt her, so in fact, Tracia has always been more afraid of Steven, but it is not easy to talk to outsiders because of the face problem, which makes friends not know steven's true face for so many years.
The discovery of the diary made the police turn their attention to Steven again, and this time, they also found very important clues.
There was a surveillance not far from Tricia's house, and the police had looked at the video before, but found nothing suspicious.
At that time, the police speculated that Tracia had returned home, and there was no abnormality in the home, plus the car was parked in front of the house, so they one-sidedly believed that she went home and went out with someone again. It is for this reason that the police put the main focus on the two people in a group or suspicious vehicle when looking at the surveillance.
As the direction of the investigation changed, some people suddenly remembered that a man seemed to have appeared in the surveillance video, so they checked the video again and found that late at night on April 26, a man was walking in the night with an oversized military backpack, and the pace seemed to be particularly heavy.
The police stared at this footage many times, and finally confirmed that this person was Steven.
Arrest Steven
In this way, the police contacted Steven again and asked him to come to the police station for further questioning, this time the police did not detour with him, and directly showed the surveillance video. Steven hesitated only for a moment to face the evidence before admitting that he had done it.
Steven said it was all an accident, and on the night of April 26, the two clashed over some trivial matter, and he couldn't resist hitting Travia, and in the process of her fall, her head hit the foot of the table, and then she lost her breath.
Hearing this, Officer Mack, who was in charge of the case, suddenly realized a problem, and when he had previously made a lie detector test on Steven, he seemed to have been in a groggy state, as if he had eaten some contraband.
At that time, the police searched his belongings and found a plate of gabapentin (a drug for epilepsy), and the side effects of this drug are drowsiness and dizziness, in other words, the drug will calm people down.
Steven, as an active air force, could never have suffered from epilepsy, and Officer Mack realized that steven's real purpose in taking gabapentin at that time was to fight lie detector testing, and they were all deceived by Steven. Officer Mack repents of his mistake, but the most important thing now is to find Tracia as soon as possible.
When police asked Steven Tricia where she was, he only said that he had left his ex-wife in a farmland on the outskirts of Hobsand, but refused to give the location.
Officer Mack understands that Steven's actions are nothing more than that he wants to make a deal with the police in order to achieve the purpose of reducing his sentence.
However, Officer Mack did not intend to compromise, he arranged for a number of officers to carry out a carpet search of the farmland area that Steven said, but after more than a month of searching, he never found Tracia.
At this point in the case, Officer Mack had to consider reaching some sort of deal with Steven, but even then, he didn't want Steven to take too much advantage.
Mike basically agrees with Steven that he lost control of his emotions and lost his hand that led to Tracia's death. There is no deep hatred between Steven and Tracia, no huge financial disputes, and the divorce is very calm, and it is really impossible to find his motive for premeditated crime.
Guilt of this nature falls under the category of second-degree murder, and the heaviest is only sentenced to life imprisonment, and parole can be obtained after more than a decade. For this reason, Mike drew up an agreement to 35 years in prison, which seemed to avoid life imprisonment, but in fact was about the same time as parole. Steven saw the agreement and did not find the mystery in it, but just thought about it and signed it, which made the police breathe a sigh of relief.
Steven then informs Trasia of the location of Tricia's location, the Hengriland Wildlife Refuge east of Florida, in the exact opposite direction of the suburban farmland the police are struggling to find.
Find Tricia
When the police, led by Steven, come to Tracia's burial ground to dig her out, Officer Mack is furious.
The police dug out a plastic storage box, and Tricia was indeed inside, but she was divided, and some parts were missing, and the storage box was filled with corrosive chemical reagents. Apparently, this is done for one purpose: to make it impossible to confirm the identity of the deceased.
That's not the point though, the point is that the police found out they made a huge mistake.
According to Steven, he came to see his daughter on the day of the crime, but whether it was a storage box, a chainsaw, or a chemical reagent, it could not have been prepared for her daughter, which means that it was not a miscarriage, but a planned and premeditated case.
Steven did later change his previous testimony. On the day of the crime, Steven rushes to Hobsander's real purpose, which is to get rid of Travia.
On April 26, 2016, Tracia returned home after dinner at the homestay that night, but shortly after she arrived home, she received a call from Steven saying that her daughter had suddenly developed a fever. Tricia drove back to the homestay, and when she entered the house, Steven killed her.
The burial of Tricia was also planned, and Steven had dug a large pit there beforehand and placed a plastic storage box in the pit, but he had a little accident during the process of moving.
Originally, Steven planned to drive Travia's car, but the car ran out of gas shortly after leaving the homestay. Because Tricia's house is close to the homestay, Steven temporarily changes his mind, parks the car back to Travia's home, walks back to the homestay with a military backpack, and then drives his own car to the wildlife sanctuary.
Although the outcome of Tricia's death has not changed, the nature is very different, and Steven's actions fall entirely within the category of first-degree murder. If he does not sign that plea agreement, he will be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, and may also be sentenced to capital punishment. So when the police learned the truth, they regretted it, because they were deceived by Steven again.
From the investigation, we can find that Steven and Travia do not have any deep hatred, so what is his motive for killing Tracia? Steven never revealed this question during interrogation.
In search of answers, Officer Mack makes a special trip to the prison to ask Steven, but his answer is very simple. Steven said that whenever she video chats with her daughter, Tracia always says something disrespectful to him, and he expresses concern about where the alimony goes.
Today's case ends here, I have to say that Steven is really cunning and deceived the police, but fortunately, in the end, the police found the truth and arrested him.
Do you have any thoughts about Steven's motives? If so, you can leave a message in the comment area and discuss it together. We'll see you next time.