Crime Junkie - MURDERED: Tamika Huston

Episode Date: November 2, 2020

When Tamika Huston goes missing and leaves everything behind, her family is sure from the very start that something terrible has happened, because she never would have left without her dog. It will take dedicated police work and vital clues for them to learn the truth.For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Sources for this episode cannot be listed due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/murdered-tamika-huston/ 

Hi Crime Junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I want to tell you today is all about a young woman whose mysterious disappearance baffled police for months before proving that no clue is ever too small, because even the tiniest little detail can wind up holding the key to justice. This is the story of Tamika Houston. In the summer of 2004, in Spartanburg, South Carolina, a young woman named Tamika Houston is at a crossroads in her life.

She's 24 years old, she's recently quit her job waitressing at Crackle Barrel for something you know, bigger, you know, like Tamika loves singing. She actually had gone down to Atlanta, Georgia and tried out for American Idol at one point, but yeah, but she didn't make it. So her family was encouraging her to think about maybe going back to school to finish her degree. Now, some sources I read said she was actually already in nursing school. But either way, she's at the point where she's just ready to make a change.

Adding to this desire to kind of turn things around, Tamika had just recently gotten out of a long term relationship a couple months back after things with her ex-boyfriend, this guy named Terrence fell apart. Wait, did you say Terrence, do you mean Terrence? So it's interesting that you say this. His name is spelled Terrence, but in a lot of the source material that I found, some people said Terrence, some people said Terrence, and the people who said Terrence were like Tamika's family and friends and people very close to the case.

So people who would know versus like a random newscaster. Random newscaster. I've also heard police say Terrence, but I'm just kind of going to go with that pronunciation since that's what came from the people closest to the victim. So things with Terrence really fell apart and I mean like really fell apart. But luckily for Tamika, she's got a really good support system to lean on. She's super close to her family all along the East Coast. She visits them all the time and she also has this pit bull prepping named Macy who's

like everything to her. She's like her child, their best friends. And I'm sure having Macy makes Tamika's house feel less lonely and feel safe now that she's moved out on her own again. So anyways, around the middle of June, Tamika's Aunt Rebecca notices like, you know what? I haven't heard from Tamika in a couple of weeks. And at first, Rebecca isn't super worried about it because according to Andy Parris's reporting in the Greenville News, I mean, since Tamika lives alone, it's not that weird

for them not to hear from her for this long. Like I mean, I don't even talk to my parents every day. I certainly don't talk to my aunts hardly ever. Oh yeah, definitely. And on top of that, like sometimes Tamika is known to just take off spontaneously to go, you know, stay with friends or family for a couple of weeks. I mean, that's just kind of normal for her. So at first when she's like, you know, I haven't heard from her, she thinks like, okay, she's

probably at someone's house, no big deal. But as the days go on, her family all realizes that it's not just Rebecca who hasn't heard from Tamika. Nobody has, not her relatives, not her friends. And so finally on June 14, Rebecca calls the Spartanburg police to report Tamika missing. When the police get out to Tamika's house to do a wellness check, her car is gone and no one's there to answer the door. Now the front door is locked and they wind up having to go through an open window.

When they get inside, it's interesting because they don't find any sign of forced entry to Tamika's house. There's no sign of a struggle, but there are things there that alert police that something is up because they do find her cell phone. They find some uncashed paychecks from her old job at Cracker Barrel. They find her driver's license, which is all already like super questionable. You wouldn't leave for a long time without this stuff. But that's nothing compared to police finding Tamika's dog Macy alone and in serious distress.

And we're not like, oh, you know, this dog has been locked in the house for a day or two. It was clear that the dog had been left there for a couple of weeks or more because there's like feces all over the place. And this is like so hard to even get out, but just to like show you the magnitude of like what they were seeing, Macy had actually given birth to a litter of puppies. And Macy was so starved that she actually had to eat some of her own puppies. And sadly, only one of the puppies was still alive by the time anyone got there to check. So I mean, I think it's important to say it's it's hard to hear, but for anyone who has

a pet in their life, like, I think that's like a sign, like you would never. You would never leave Chuck or like a couple of hours, let alone a day by himself or weeks. Like that's a sure sign something is wrong. And police knew how much Tamika loved her dog. So she's not someone who would just like run off carelessly. She didn't have like a substance abuse problem and just like didn't care or she like wasn't mean to her animals. Like she loved this thing.

And for, I mean, ignoring everything else for her to like leave this dog in that kind of state, the police knew right away something is terribly wrong. So with that in mind, law enforcement put out an alert for her car. They get warrants to check out her bank records, her cell phone activity. And they also start questioning people like around who knew her, who would have been with her to kind of put together a timeline of what Tamika might have been doing. And more importantly, where she might be. At the same time, her family puts up a ton of missing person posters all over town with

her pictures and they even offer a reward. According to ABC News, law enforcement learns that no one has seen or heard from Tamika since June 2nd, when she was last at a friend's house. And this is almost two weeks before her aunt reported her missing. Her friend says that the last time she saw Tamika, Tamika had gotten a call and someone came to pick her up, but the friend didn't get a look at the person or see the car or even get a name as to who it was that picked her up. Around the same time, police are also learning some very disturbing things about Tamika's

ex-boyfriend, Terrence. You see, they had broken up back in March after Tamika accused him of domestic violence and she pressed charges. Terrence was actually supposed to stand trial for it that summer, but now that Tamika is missing, the trial gets postponed, so this is sending up like all sorts of red flags for police. Yeah, and I think we've talked about it before that when victims of domestic violence leave their abuser, it's actually the most like dangerous part of the abusive situation because

of the links that abusers will go to to keep their control over the victim. Oh yeah. I mean, these people can get scary when they feel like their powers threatened and so with this in mind, police know that they need to talk to him, but when they question Terrence about Tamika, he says he doesn't know anything about her disappearance or where she might be. Of course he would say that. Well, here's the thing though.

So he actually is pretty candid about the whole domestic violence stuff when police interview him. So it's not like he's saying they had a great relationship. Like he straight up admits that he punched her. Now granted, he like of course follows this up with like the classic like it was a one-time thing. It never had happened before. Before the lines, you know, people hear all the time from abusers.

So it's not like Terrence is doing himself any favors here and he's still like the first person they're looking at this point. Like he still looks better than any other suspect. But regardless of their suspicions, police don't have a shred of physical evidence to link him to Tamika's disappearance. I mean, they still at this point don't even 100% know that a crime has been committed yet. There's nobody, there's no blood. What about her phone records and bank account?

You said they had gotten warrants for those things, right? They did, but they weren't helpful. None of it has been touched. According to the Fatal Attraction episode about this story called Tragic Rebound, police learned that there's been zero activity on Tamika's phone. And the last time she used her debit card was two days before she went missing. While police are looking for leads, Tamika's Aunt Rebecca, who's the person who reported her missing, is throwing all of her PR connections at trying to get media attention for her niece.

And at first, like it works really well locally. She's able to get coverage in all these newspapers and hold media events right there in Spartanburg, but they don't get a ton of traction nationally. So while Rebecca is advocating, police decide to diversify their search a little. So in addition to searching Tamika's records, law enforcement is also going through Jane Doe reports in local hospitals to see if anyone matches Tamika's description. They don't get any hits from the hospitals, but they do get this weird, like a little bit of a lead because what they decide to do is they decide to go back and start listening

to 911 calls that came through around the time Tamika disappeared. And on one of these calls, police hear something shocking. Some time before Tamika was reported missing, a man called 911 and said his brother killed his girlfriend. I haven't been able to find the full call anywhere, but NPR has a snippet on their website. So let me play it for you. My brother came to my house and told me that he killed his girlfriend and put in Clean Park Lake.

So the audio is obviously kind of fuzzy or jumbled or something. Did he say Cleave Park Lake? So I think it's actually Cleveland Park Lake. So officers, when they realized that this call came in around the time she goes missing, they hurry out to Cleveland Park with cadaver dogs and a dive team to search the lake for any signs of Tamika. As good as this lead seems, it's no use. There's nothing in the lake and not just nothing belonging to Tamika.

There's nothing belonging to any woman that this caller was talking about having been put in the lake. Okay. So what was this call? Just like a hoax? I don't know. The caller didn't give a name and I wasn't able to find out if it ever got traced or what happened with this.

Basically all that I can find in relations to Tamika's case is like it wasn't related to her the end. But just then when investigators are starting to wonder if they basically have to start back from square one, they get a new tip that changes everything. On June 20th, about a week after Tamika's reported missing, the Spartanburg police get a call from a woman who says she knows where they can find Tamika's car. What? Yeah.

She says it's at the Barksdale Apartments, which is across town from Tamika's house. And when police get out there and look, there it is, a black 1991 Honda CRX, just like they're looking for. Residents at the Barksdale say the car has been there for about three weeks, right in line with when Tamika disappeared, but they tell police that they only started to pay attention after they heard that she'd gone missing on the news. So police end up confirming, like this doesn't just look like her car, yes, this is her car. And so they start combing it for clues.

There's no sign of a struggle. It doesn't look ransacked or anything. The only bit of forensic evidence they can get from it is a partial fingerprint. The car isn't a total dead end, though, because according to Josh Manquitz is reporting for NBC News, they also find a set of keys laying on the passenger seat floor. Some of the keys look like car keys, some like house keys. It's pretty standard stuff. Nothing like jumps out right away.

But here's the thing about those keys, though. When police test them on Tamika's stuff, her house, her car, her family stuff, they don't work. They don't go to her car. They don't go to her house. Wait, so they aren't Tamika's keys? Exactly. They had to have belonged to whoever moved her car.

The problem is, police have no way of finding out who this person is. Now, of course, the first person they try to look at is Torrance, who is their main suspect, but the keys don't open any of his things. And the partial print that they do have from the car doesn't belong to him either. So without any fingerprints on these keys, there's almost nothing unique about them to say where they've come from, who cut them, or what they match up to. The only clue police have on these keys is a four-digit code engraved on the top of one of them.

And the code says A-A-1-4. Okay, are you going to tell me what that stands for? Well, at the time, police don't know. And so to find out, the Spartanburg police decide to go talk to the people who will know, local locksmiths. They take these keys all over the city, hoping that whoever made it will be able to look up this four-digit code in their records and be able to say, you know, who they made the keys for or, like, what complex they made the keys for.

And I did, like, a 30-second glance at Wikipedia about keymaking, and, girl, it's a long shot to me. Yeah. I don't know how they plan to make that connection. But while they're going from locksmith to locksmith and checking all of this out, police also keep pursuing other leads all summer long, and they even search Cleveland Park Lake again in hopes of finding something that they missed the first time around. According to another one of Andy Parris's articles in the Greenville News, they even

venture across state lines to Black Mountain, North Carolina, which is about an hour-and-a-half drive north of Spartanburg. By July 24th, they've chased down around 40 leads that, at the time, they felt were viable, that they thought could lead to Tamika. But all these searches keep coming up empty. And as the summer of 2004 is coming to an end and the leads keep drying up, Tamika's disappearance feels like it's starting to get cold. And police, at the end of all of this, are really only left with one thing to go on,

that mysterious key. And incredibly, one of the locksmiths in town is eventually able to use that AA-14 code and identify the key. This locksmith tells police he made this key for a public housing complex called the Fremont School Apartments, which happens to be about a five-minute drive from the Barksdale Apartments where Tamika's car was found. So police go to this apartment complex to try and figure out where this key goes. They try the key in all 46 apartment doors, one after another, after another, holding

their breath every time that it goes into the lock. But it doesn't work in any of them. And just as they're getting this, like, sinking feeling that they've hit yet another dead end, they get this idea. Let's try this key one more time, in one more place that we haven't checked yet. They take it to what they think might be a storage area down in the basement of the complex. And honestly, it's like something out of a movie, because this time, it works. On the last door that they tried, the door opens, letting them into what is actually

a 47th apartment, one that isn't currently listed up for rent because it's got flood damage. So now that they have this apartment, law enforcement gets a forensic team down there right away to scour this apartment from top to bottom for evidence. I mean, they're looking for blood stains, hairs, anything that might give them some clues leading back to Tamika. But here's the problem, as promising as this seemed, there's nothing in the apartment. It's totally clean, and if Tamika was ever there, she didn't leave anything behind.

Now police and her family are just gutted. I mean, it feels like every time they feel like they're getting somewhere, they just hit another roadblock, another dead end. Now they do get a little break though, because someone, I couldn't find out exactly who, like if it was someone at the front office that worked at the apartments or someone that lived there or what. But after they think they hit this dead end, someone informs them, like, oh, by the way, that door knob you opened down in the basement may not have actually belonged to that door.

Wait, what do you mean? So the Fremont school apartments had this policy that any time a tenant got evicted, they would just swap out the door knob with another unit. So that way whoever got evicted couldn't get back into their old place with a copy of the key that they had. And to me, this is a little frightening because the implication is that some disgruntled ex-tenant could theoretically just like keep trying doors and get into some other random person's home, which to me feels like a liability.

But what do I know? Yeah. Like I changed my locks when we moved into this house, but I kind of want to change them again just hearing that. Isn't that strange? Yeah. But the point is that the door knob down at the basement could have come from any of the other 46 different apartments.

And the problem is the management office says they don't really keep good records of which knob gets switched to where, which again seems like a liability problem. But basically, you have all 46 you have to search at this point. So logistically, you can't just send a forensic team into 46 apartments. Like even if you could get a warrant, that is a logistical nightmare. So police take a step back and they say, okay, you know, for a second, let's forget the door knob. Let's focus on the records.

Do you have the names of everyone who's living here right now and everyone who's gotten evicted recently? And they get this list and they take it to Tamika's family to see if any of the names stand out or ring a bell and none of them do to her family. But then they decide to show the list to her friends and they do recognize a name. One of Tamika's friends remembers that before she disappeared, Tamika had started casually dating again and she was seeing a guy named Chris. Now this friend doesn't know his last name or anything about him, but right there on

that tenant list is a man named Christopher Lamont Hampton. He used to live in apartment 215 until he got evicted about a month after Tamika went missing. So if he got evicted, where is he now? According to Nan Landine's piece in the Greenville News, Christopher isn't exactly hard to track down because he's actually in federal prison on a parole violation and since he's going to be there until August of 2005, he's not a flight risk either. Here's the thing though, they obviously have Chris's print since he's incarcerated, but

the partial print from her car doesn't belong to him either. It doesn't match anyone in the national database and at some point they just kind of have to think this print is a dead end. Okay, but I mean this guy seems like a really good match. If I were them, I'd still want to talk to this guy, right? Oh absolutely, because when police are kind of like looking into him, they also learn from his record that Christopher previously did four years in jail for armed robbery, so he has a record and they also learn about a very interesting gap in his record because

Chris was out of jail at the time of Tamika's disappearance. When police go and talk to him, he admits to knowing Tamika and says they met at a mutual friend's birthday party back in April of 2004. He said their relationship was pretty much just like a physical thing, not super deep. I mean that would make sense because like you said, her family didn't know about him or recognize the name at all. Yeah, totally. I mean especially with what happened with her last boyfriend too, like maybe Tamika didn't

want to explain things with Chris to her parents, like I totally get that just her friends would know about that. So Chris tells police that he and Tamika only knew each other about a month, which lines up with what her friend said, but he says that he hasn't seen her since the end of the month after they got into an argument over money. Chris swears he doesn't know anything about where she might have gone or what might have happened to her after that, but police can't shake this gut feeling that he's not being entirely honest with them.

So while they're learning more about him and talking to him and all of this is happening, the Spartanburg police aren't the only ones hard at work to learn what might have happened to Tamika. Her Aunt Rebecca, the same person who reported her missing, is doing like I said everything she can to keep Tamika's story in the public eye. Now as a benefit to Rebecca, she actually does PR down in Miami where she lives and she's married to a former NFL player. So she has connections galore and she's not afraid to use them to try and get national

coverage for Tamika. But here's the thing, none of the big national news stations will even call her back. I mentioned that before, they got some local press, but not this national stuff. And it's interesting because this is right around the time when a lot of missing women are totally dominating the news cycle, like there was Chandra Levy, Natalie Holloway. Just case after case over the past couple of years where the national media gives tons of coverage to missing white women while missing black women like Tamika get hardly any. And while I was researching this, I actually came across an NBC news article where they

published some statistics in 2005 about the coverage disparity. According to a media analyst named Andrew Tyndall, morning shows gave 941 minutes to talking about Lacey Peterson, 135 minutes to Lori Hacking and 98 minutes to a college student in Wisconsin who faked her own abduction. So there is this huge disparity and they go missing under a very similar circumstances. But no matter how hard Rebecca tries, she can't get this national coverage. But she is getting a lot of local coverage in Spartanburg and in South Carolina. And even though it's not what Rebecca wanted, her efforts pay off because the one person

who needed to learn about Tamika did. They saw a news piece on her and it rocked the entire investigation. Christopher's ex-girlfriend and the mother of his two kids actually calls into the Spartanburg police and tells them that she has Christopher's wallet and there's something they should see. According to the forensic files episode about this case called Skeleton Key, she says Christopher had mailed her his wallet for safekeeping after he went back to prison. And she had decided to call police after seeing on the local news that law enforcement were looking for connections between Tamika Houston and the Fremont School Apartments, the very

same apartments where she knows Christopher used to live. Okay, but what does this have anything to do with the wallet? Well, here's the thing. So it's not the wallet itself. It's what's inside. Because like a lot of people, Chris carried around photos, which isn't weird on its own. But one of the photos in his wallet, like I mean, she must have been going through it. But on one of the photos, she finds this tiny speck of blood.

But it's so creepy because as they showed on forensic files, the speck is on a family portrait of Christopher's ex and their kids. She turns this over to police and their testing confirms that the stain on the photo is definitely blood. And after they're able to do a DNA comparison, they're able to tell that it matches Tamika's DNA. So now police know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they need to get inside Chris's old apartment because at some point it's likely Tamika was bleeding in there.

But before they can go search, police get another call. Like the strokes of luck just keep coming here. So this call is from a young woman who tells them that she was actually in Christopher's apartment to hook up with him around the time Tamika went missing. And she saw something that really stuck out to her. According to forensic files, she tells police she saw a weird reddish brown stain on the carpet in Christopher's bedroom. And he had his dresser moved over so it blocked his closet door, almost like he may have been

hiding something in there. So armed with this new information, finally on January 10, 2005, almost seven months to the day after Tamika was reported missing, law enforcement is able to search apartment 215. As soon as they get into the master bedroom, they can immediately see a big bleach mark on the carpet. Someone had clearly made a mess in here and then tried to clean it up. But as police reveal when they pull up the carpet, the bleach only got what's on the

surface, like in the actual carpet fibers. There on the carpet backing and soaked all the way through to the padding is a stain just like this young woman described. And sure enough, it tests positive for blood. And once they bring out the luminal, police find evidence of blood all over the apartment, especially in the closet. So it's obvious beyond any shadow of a doubt that something terrible happened in here. But according to NBC News, when police asked Christopher about the stains in his old apartment,

he says, no, no, no, no, that's not blood. That's just a lot of hot sauce. I'm sorry, what? Yeah. Yeah. It's a little bit better, which already it's so off the wall, like who spills that much hot sauce all over the place and in the closet, on the floor. In a bedroom.

Yeah. In a closet, like maybe you drop a bottle in the kitchen and it shatters, okay, sure. But this is... Yeah, but it gets weirder because Christopher then changes his story again. And then he says someone broke into his apartment and I guess raided his fridge or something. And he says they vandalized the carpet with ketchup and mayonnaise. But also still not blood and still weird. And besides the fact, like, does Chris not think that they're going to test this stain?

Like... Yeah. I don't know what the point of the weird lies is. And like, you think they're just like, oh, it's ketchup. Like don't bother. Like we only have her blood on your wallet and people putting you with her and the key. Like probably not her blood. It's a bizarre, twisted, weird lie.

Yeah. It seems so unnecessary. Yeah. I mean, it was completely unnecessary. And I almost... Maybe he didn't understand like how it works because I was watching on forensic files. They actually had some video of him being questioned by police and you can hear him trying to even pretend like matching a person's blood with DNA isn't really a thing.

So I think this guy's no stranger to like bs-ing. And Christopher honestly didn't do himself any favors during this time. Like he writes letters to police from prison admitting that he rented a carpet steamer to clean his floor. So he's like giving them lies, but also giving them more information than they had to begin with. Have they even charged him with anything? No, they haven't even asked him about the cleanup or the steamer at this point.

He's kind of just like providing all of this information. But at the end of the day, it wouldn't matter. Police already had all the evidence they needed. On February 1st, 2005, the DNA results from all the blood in Christopher's apartment comes back and it's a match for Tamika. Now this is pretty damning evidence, but police are still missing one major piece of evidence that would make this a slam dunk case. They still have no idea what really happened to Tamika or where her body is now.

Now, obviously it's a lot harder to make a case stick when there's no body. But I mean, we've seen before, like in February when we told you about the case of Jessica Herringa, it's not impossible. But since Christopher is still in jail, law enforcement doesn't have to worry about him like skipping town. They really take their time to gather everything they can to show beyond a reasonable doubt that he's responsible for what they believe is a heinous crime. With all of the forensic evidence and the DNA matches, police in the Spartanburg County

District Attorney's Office are confident that even without a body, they may be able to prove a murder. So on Friday, August 12, 2005, the very same day that Christopher is supposed to be released from prison, he's actually re arrested and charged with the murder of Tamika Houston. And he's also charged with sexual misconduct because that young woman who called police about the stain in his bedroom, it turns out that she was only 15 years old at the time that they had sex. So she was under the legal age of consent in South Carolina.

Before the case can go to trial, Christopher makes a shocking decision that turns the entire investigation upside down. On the very same day he's arrested for murder, Christopher informs police that he's willing to tell them where Tamika's body is. Wait, so he's confessing to her murder? Yes and no, because Christopher says that Tamika's death was an accident. Okay, so what is he saying happened? According to WIS News, Christopher tells police that he and Tamika got into a fight

one night in late May, and he says that he went to pick her up at a friend's house, brought her back to his apartment, and the timeline gets a little weird here because different sources give different dates, but we know for sure this happened somewhere between May 27th and June 2nd, like right in that time frame. But he goes on to say that he and Tamika had sex before he got up to iron his clothes and then get ready for work. While he was ironing, Tamika allegedly confronted him about his relationship with another woman who was now pregnant, and she asked to borrow some money.

Christopher said no, and according to him, they got into a fight, which led to him hurling a red hot iron in his hand at Tamika hitting her in the head. Is that what killed her? Did it kill her right away? We don't know. There's really no other details beyond that. I find it a little hard to believe that one throw would cause that much blood in the apartment. We know there was a lot of blood in that area and in the closet.

Christopher tells police that basically he just panicked and there wasn't an additional attack, and instead of calling police or taking her to the hospital, he says he wraps her body in a blanket and shoved her in the closet before cleaning up all the blood in his apartment. Rachel E. Leonard reported for Go Up State News that he then went over to a friend's place to have a few beers, and then, as if that's not callous enough, literally a woman is dead in your closet, you're going to hang out with a friend, that's when Christopher went and picked up that young 15-year-old girl I told you about and brought her back to his apartment, and he had sex with her while Tamika was right there in the closet.

That's why he had that dresser in front of the closet. Christopher admits that at some point, either later that night or really early in the morning, he went to a Walmart to buy a shovel, drove Tamika's body about 25 miles west and buried her in the woods off Tiger River Drive near the town of Duncan. Along with this confession, he takes law enforcement out to the spot right where he marked Tamika's grave with a cross made of twigs. So police start digging, and it doesn't take long for them to find human bones in this shallow grave.

But I feel like this story can't keep getting crazier, but something's missing from the grave. The excavators can't find Tamika's skull. You mean like her head isn't there? Yeah, and honestly, this is one of the things that kind of blows my mind about this story, because Christopher explains that he actually came back to the grave site at some point after Tamika died and dug up her body. He says that he felt guilty and that he was going to confess the whole thing to police,

but ultimately he says he couldn't get the courage to do it, and so he reburied her instead. But what he actually did is much, much darker, because for whatever reason, Christopher cut off her head before he reburied her body, and he says that he put it in a plastic bag and tossed it in the garbage bin. It almost makes me think that maybe he was doing it to prevent her body from being eventually identified, like, you know, it was on the news all the time, especially locally. I don't know, it's possible, but what I know about anger killings, which is, I mean, even from his own story where it's, quote, an accident, like, it came out of anger, and what I know

about anger killings is that the act itself doesn't stop until the anger subsides. Like, sometimes, even if you're super angry, killing someone isn't enough. That's why in some cases you see, like, mutilation after the fact, like, a killer, a perpetrator will continue to go after someone until that feeling of anger subsides, and it has nothing to do whether the person is alive or not. So you see that in, like, overkill charges in cases. Yeah. Yeah, so I kind of had that thought, like, whatever it was, like, whatever hate he had

in him against Tamika. He wasn't gone yet. Even after she was gone, even after she'd been in his closet, even after he buried her, like, he still hated her so much that he had to unbury her, take off her head and rebury her. But even without her skull, there was enough in that grave, jewelry, parts of her jawbone, enough that they could positively ID her body with dental records, though the rest of her skull has never been found.

Now, what's interesting is, despite straight-up confessing and leading police to Tamika's body, initially, Christopher actually pleads not guilty to murder. However, on the very day that his trial starts, which was April 3rd, 2006, Christopher changes his mind and decides to plead guilty, and he's sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole, where he remains to this day. I know we often think of cases as having, you know, like, a big smoking gun or that one giant piece of evidence to tie the whole thing together, but often that's not what solves crimes.

Most of the time, it's the little breadcrumbs leading from A to B to C, all the way to the truth. For Tamika Houston, the most crucial piece of evidence came from those four digits on a key that eventually unlocked the truth and gave her family the justice they deserve. You can find pictures and our source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Crimejunkie is an audio chuck production.

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