Crime Junkie - MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF: Tamla Horsford // Joseph Smedley

Episode Date: June 22, 2020

In the last few years two people died under very mysterious circumstances. Though their cases aren't connected they were each quickly ruled an accident or suicide. But if you take a closer look, there might be much more to their stories and their families need your help to find the truth about what really happened. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/mysterious-death-tamla-horsford-joseph-smedley 

Hi Crime Junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and I'm Britt, and today I'm going to tell you two stories about two mysterious deaths. One death that at first many saw as a terrible accident, and another that many saw as an unexpected suicide, but when you take a closer look, that might not be the whole story. These are the stories of Tamela Horsford and Joseph Smedley. On the morning of Sunday, November 4, 2018, in coming Georgia, police get a 911 call at 8.59 a.m. The call is from a woman named Jean Myers and her boyfriend, Jose Barrera, saying that Jean's friend is in the backyard, lying face down on the ground.

Jean says that they'd been partying the night before, doing some drinking, and she thinks her friend might have fallen off the balcony and into her backyard. First responders from Forsythe County Sheriff's Office hurry to the scene and arrive in less than 10 minutes. There, just like Jean and Jose said, they find the body of 40-year-old Tamela Horsford. Tamela is fully dressed, still wearing the fleece paw print onesie that she had on the night before. She's face down in the grass, with her head pointing away from the house and her feet

pointing towards the house, arms splayed out pointing at different angles. And with her laying face down, one of the only immediate visible injuries is on one of her wrists, which is swollen and looks like it might even be broken. Right away, police start talking to Jean and Jose and the other women who spent the night there, trying to piece together what the heck happened. Jean tells police that Tamela was one of a group of friends that she had over to celebrate her birthday with an adult sleepover. She says that there were eight of them total, eight women, and from a video I saw of the

sleepover on Atlanta Black Star's website, it looked like they were having a great time. Tamela's got her PJs on, everyone in the group is arm in arm singing happy birthday in the kitchen. It was perfect. Yeah, it sounds like a normal girls night in, like everyone can have a few drinks and not have to worry about driving home and just enjoy themselves. Yeah, and that's totally the impression I got, a girls night in, but it wasn't just girls, because Jean's boyfriend, Jose, was there also, and two other guys named Tom

and Mike. According to Brian Peglia, who reported on this story for the Foresight County News, the group spent the evening at Jean's house watching football, playing cars against humanity, drinking, and Jean gives law enforcement a pretty detailed timeline of the whole night. She says people started to show up around 7 p.m. that night, and Tamela got there at about 8 o'clock, bottle of tequila in hand. And she said the first thing that Tamela did when she got to the house was take a shot of whiskey, and then she kept drinking her tequila for the rest of the night.

Was everyone drinking like that, like shots of hard liquor and stuff like that? Oh yeah. The women were keeping pace with her, all drinking pretty heavily. In pictures I saw from the party, they're holding cups, all like smiling, piled together on the couch, having a great time, which is matching up with what Jean is telling police, that everyone there got along that night, there was no conflict, nothing. They all look really comfortable with each other, like a tight-knit group of friends. So they're all having fun doing the typical party stuff, but this isn't an all nighter

or anything. We're talking about women in their early 40s with stuff to do the next day, and for Tamela at least, that includes parenting. Yeah, I cannot last much past midnight these days, and I'm only 31. Same. This past weekend we had family in town, I stayed up to 12, 32 nights in a row, and I feel like I am still recovering midweek right now. Totally.

So as people get tired, the party starts to die down a little, and Jean says Tamela wasn't ready to turn in. She wanted to stay up and keep the party going a little bit, so a couple of the women had already left by this point, because some of them weren't staying the night, some of them were going home, and everyone else was pretty much ready to crash. So around 1.45 in the morning, Tamela told the people that were left that she was going to head out to smoke one last cigarette on the balcony before turning in for the night. Most of the women went to bed probably thinking Tamela was close behind, though the case file

states that Bridget, who was one of the women in the group, actually decided to head home around the same time that Tamela went outside, and so she was actually the last person to see Tamela. Then there was a second woman who left really early that next morning to go to work, like before the sun even came up, it was like 4.10 a.m. when she left the house, but Jean tells police that to the best of her knowledge, everyone else had settled in for the night, and they had no idea anything was wrong until the next morning. So no one heard or saw anything, not the women who stayed behind, or the women who left,

right as Tamela was heading out to the balcony, and even the women who left at like 4 in the morning when Tamela was presumably already on the ground. No, nothing. Police spoke to everyone who had been at the party that night, and they all say that Tamela was alive when they went to bed, or they didn't see anything when they left, and according to them, there was nothing to suggest that anything had happened to her. I guess I'm kind of shocked that no one heard anything, like, I mean, to take that kind of fall from high enough to kill you, and no one hears anything?

Well, the balcony wasn't like, I mean, we're not talking a hotel balcony, it's not stories high, it's just on the second floor, I mean, 18, 20 feet tops off of the ground. So I don't know how loud the fall would have actually been. And truthfully, we don't even know how long she was out there, right? Like she went out there sometime between 1.30 and 2 o'clock in the morning, but we don't know when the fall actually happened. And if it happened like her friends are saying, then maybe they're all just passed out drunk and oblivious, even if there was a sound.

Exactly, right. And then what? It was Jean that found her the next morning? No. And truthfully, the person who finds Tamla is John's aunt, Madeleine, who lives in the house too. Madeleine tells police that she had gone to the backyard just to get like a feel for the weather that morning, and at first she thought Tamla was sleeping.

But once she got a better look at the way Tamla was laying, splayed out and face down like that, like literally face straight down, not even to the side, she got scared and ran back inside to the house to tell John, who then made that call to 911. And here, I'm actually going to play you a part of that 911 call that 11 alive news posted on their YouTube page, because I think it's important to hear it for yourself to understand why this case is coming under such scrutiny. So first you'll hear Jean's voice, and then you'll hear her boyfriend, Jose. Of course I've got 911.

Yes, I need an ambulance and a place to my home. What's the address? What is your name? My name is Jean Meijer, J-E-A-N-N-E. Yes. Okay, what's going on? We had people over last night who were drinking, most of us went to bed, one of them stayed on the balcony, she was drinking, and we just went outside and she's laying face down in

the backyard. It looks like, I'm guessing, maybe she fell off the balcony, but she's stiff. Okay. Is she breathing? I don't know if she's face down. Okay. How old is she? 41.

Here, hold on. Hey, this is Jose Guerrero. Hey, have you all checked to see if she's breathing? She's not moving one bit. She's not breathing. Okay. I just tried to assess her, Tesla. She's completely face down in the yard.

She is stiff. Okay. Do you know if she, do you see blood or anything, where she, I don't know, drops? Are you there? I am. Okay. I was outside. It's okay.

I'm not sure what happened to Lana for a second. I don't know if I should move her over. I mean, she's completely face down. Okay. I mean, can you just check and see if she's breathing? If she's not breathing and you know she's gone, then just leave her where she's at. If she, okay. One minute.

So, a large part of the call here is actually redacted. But when it resumes, here is the first thing we get. I'm completely not sure. Okay. And that's the only blood that you would see? That's what I can see without moving her over. Okay. I had her face.

Do you know if she, do you know if she was suicidal at all? I have no clue. I've met her one other time. You know, like my girlfriend said, people were over last night. The call goes on for almost another five minutes and I will link out to the full call on our blog post for this episode on our website. But I think there was a lot of interesting information that we got there. Oh, I have a lot of thoughts.

First, when I first heard John's call, that's not what I was expecting to hear from someone who just found their friend, possibly dead in their backyard. Like John is very calm and collected. And it sounds like when she makes that call, no one has even checked to see if Tamla is even still alive. Yeah. I mean, the operator asked that a bunch of times, right? Like has anyone checked?

And the reason the answer seems to be like we're not sure. And listen, I mean, we say it all the time. It's impossible to know how you're going to react in a situation like this until you're actually in that moment. And not everybody is going to react how we necessarily think they should. But I mean, I too definitely noticed how, I mean, not panicked. They both sound on this call. I mean, I even understand kind of Jose being calm and collected.

Like he didn't know Tamla that well. Like girlfriend's probably what we think she should be freaking out. But you would expect to hear someone in the background like, oh, like there could be a dead person in your backyard. Right. Because these aren't the only two people there at this moment either. Yeah. And what's also interesting is on that call, they get her age wrong.

So again, he didn't know her super well. He says she's 41, but she's actually 40. I don't know what to read into that either. True. But let's talk about the thing that stuck out to me more than anything. What's that? What's with the whole redacted part? And then when the operator comes back in asking if Tamla was suicidal, I mean, without hearing

the whole tape, I can't know for sure. But are we to assume that Jose made some sort of insinuation that Tamla killed herself? Girl, the first time that I heard that call, I couldn't stop thinking about that redacted part. So I did a little bit of digging online and I was able to put some of the pieces together. So there's a reporter named Desiree Thompson from Vibe Magazine, who I presume based on her writing, heard the whole thing because she reported on a part of the call that I didn't hear.

So I'm assuming that she's reporting on the redacted part. And what was redacted really stuck out to me because according to Desiree's article on the call, and I believe this is after Jose was told to go look for blood, Jose says, quote, I'm noticing a small cut on her right wrist. She's not breathing whatsoever. I don't know if this cut was self-inflicted, end quote. Was that the wrist that police thought looked broken? Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's the same wrist that had that visible injury I talked about

earlier. But in the end, there's nothing else at the scene to suggest Tamla died by suicide. And there's nothing to suggest foul play either. Based on what they see at the scene when they arrive and what they hear from Jean and Jose and others at the party, police tell Tamla's family that her death was almost certainly the result of a fall off of the second story balcony. They basically say this is tragic, this is heartbreaking, but we think it's an accident. However, they have to wait for the autopsy results from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation

before they can actually make a confirmed ruling on this. And with those autopsy results, police are also hoping that it will give them more information, maybe fill in some of the blanks for Tamla's grieving family. But when those results finally do come in, instead of giving the Horseford family answers, they are left with so many more questions. According to the autopsy report and the death certificate, Tamla died from multiple blunt force injuries. Wait, what? Multiple blunt force injuries?

Yeah, so the list of injuries in this report is shocking. Like, let me just give you the rundown of what the medical examiner says he found. Severe injuries to her head, her neck, her torso, bleeding in her brain, a broken neck, and damage to her heart. And those are just the severe injuries. Oh, oh my gosh, like, what about the wrist that was cut that paramedics maybe thought was broken? Was the medical examiner able to tell if the cut was self-inflicted at all? So according to the released case file, Tamla's wrist wasn't broken, but it was dislocated.

And the cut that he saw or was mentioned on the call is only mentioned as a part of like, a long rundown of minor injuries listed in her autopsy report, all of which that they say happened during the fall. But there were so many other injuries, too, like other minor injuries. Adrienne Haney reported for 11 Alive News that Tamla had cuts on her shins, her face, and according to the medical examiner's report, she had a scrape on her left forearm and another one on her left index finger. So while the cause of death is officially multiple blunt force injuries,

the ME confirms the police's theory and rules that the manner of death is accidental, saying that alcohol was a contributing factor because her toxicology report showed that her blood alcohol level was at 0.238%, which is almost three times the legal limit in Georgia. The thing is, I don't know exactly how messed up she would have been, because I mean, everyone handles and holds their alcohol differently. Well, I remember an example from a case I was looking at a while ago, and I don't know how much Tamla weighed, but if I remember correctly, I think for a like 150 pound person to get around that same blood alcohol level,

it would take about nine or 10 drinks, which is kind of a decent amount for anyone, I think. Agreed. And on top of that, the report also found both marijuana and Xanax in Tamla's system as well. I mean, none of this is really a surprise though, right? Like that amount of alcohol, it's at least consistent with what Jean and Jose and a lot of other people were saying about what everyone was drinking the night before. On top of that, mixing it with even just prescription drugs can lead to other things. Yeah, and I'd be shocked if Tamla was the only person with drugs in her system.

Like that's not the kind of thing you really want to mention on the phone with police that you're all doing drugs, but I haven't seen anything reported anywhere else about drug activity at the party or anyone else even being tested. So in the end, the medical examiner found that all of Tamla's injuries, the cuts, the scrapes, the blunt force trauma to her head were consistent with a fall from the balcony. So I know we didn't play the full call here, but I have listened to it. And later in the call, he mentions security cameras.

I feel like that would clear everything up. Yeah. What do those cameras tell us? So he did. He mentions the fact that there are these cameras and even says that, like I'm sure that caught everything and you can see what happened. But that's the only mention of security cameras that I could find. In the case file, though, there was this email from Jean's home security company

saying that the battery on her system was running low and needed to be charged. So I don't know if the cameras maybe weren't working that night or if something happened. Or like weren't working at full capacity at least. Yeah, but it's weird to me that that's not even addressed. Like to me, that's a glaring hole. Like say definitively that they weren't working or there wasn't a camera on the balcony, maybe somewhere else in the house, but it's a huge question mark I have. And I'm sure other people who listen to this call have as well.

I just, I don't know how to answer it. And so without any footage to contradict what the police and the medical examiner are saying, the ruling from the ME is that there's no evidence of foul play and that Tamla's death was just a tragic accident. But not everyone is satisfied with that ruling. Tamla's good friend Michelle Graves is one of them. Michelle doesn't think Tamla's death was an accident. She thinks that Tamla was murdered and she is not shy about it either. Pretty much right from the time Tamla dies, Michelle is in the press and on social media

asking questions and demanding to know the truth about what really happened to her friend. She just doesn't buy that this was an accidental death. She thinks that the people at the party know more than they're saying about that night. In an interview that she did with WSB TV News, she actually shares her concerns to the interviewer asking why did they leave her alone in the first place? And like why didn't anyone go check on her? And if Tamla really was that drunk, how did she manage to even get over the balcony railing to begin with? Wait, is the balcony railing really high, like too high for someone to be able to climb over by themselves?

So I don't think so, but I'm only basing that on one picture that I've seen. It looks just like any other balcony railing that I've seen. It's like about waist height. And here, let me actually just show you. Yeah, I feel like this railing is a pretty standard height. And even if it wasn't, there were our tables and chairs and even a propane tank out there. These are all things that she could have climbed onto and hoisted herself over. Here's my question.

And it is a genuine question because I'm not an expert in full trajectories or anything. But we know that her head was away from the house. Her feet were towards it. Like she went straight out. And to me, that's like not consistent with an accidental tumble off of a balcony, right? Like if you're sitting on the railing, I would think, you know, you lose your balance. You're kind of like flailing out looking for something to grab onto. I would think that you would fall not flat on your face.

But again, I mean, I'm trying to put myself in Tamela's shoes and there could be a lot that I'm not considering. But that isn't the only point Michelle has. Michelle is also critical of the investigation itself. She tells WSB TV News that she was told at first that Tamela had died not from an accidental fall from the balcony, but from alcohol poisoning. And she didn't even learn about the fall until much later. Now, she is sure that something else is going on, that other people at the party are hiding something. She's so sure that she starts posting online about it.

And those accusations lead to, according to Jean's attorney, death threats against Jean and the other party goers. So as you can imagine, Jean and the others are not happy that their names are out there and they're being accused of committing a crime that they say never even happened. But it doesn't end there because then Michelle finds out that her personal information like her home and work address, her phone numbers, her driver's license, even details about her extended family has all been stolen and is now in the hands of Jean and Jose and other people from the party that night that Tamela died. Michelle files a police complaint saying that whoever got all of this information got it from confidential court documents. Okay, but who would have access to those? Well, it turns out Jose Barrera did. What?

Jose was a pre-trial services officer in the Forsyth County Courthouse and was is an important word here because as Alexander Popp reported in the Forsyth County news, Jose got put on administrative leave in December after he accessed confidential files about, quote, a current investigation surrounding a death in which you were a witness, end quote. Clearly Tamela's, but why would he do it? Well, Jose says it wasn't him. He says that he isn't the only person with access to those files. He says anybody could have done it. And I mean, technically, yes, he is right.

But there's only one person who works at that courthouse and who also happens to be part of that investigation. So for people like Michelle, who are already skeptical about the story of what happened that night at John's house, it's clear as day to her why Jose accessed those files. She thinks he's either guilty of something or protecting someone who's guilty of something. Jose totally denies that he went anywhere near these files. And he says at the time basically, listen, it's 2018, information is everywhere. Anybody can get stuff like this stuff like this gets leaked all the time. However, I mean, his boss obviously disagrees and Jose actually gets fired from his job just three days into his leave on December 20th, 2018.

The police don't arrest Jose or charge him with any crimes. And for Michelle, that just furthers her suspicions that Jose is somehow in bed with the police. But the whole situation puts a dark cloud over the investigation and the police are actually pretty upset about it. But none of this came out in the media until February 8th of 2019, which brought Tamla's case back into the public eye once again. Then, not even two weeks later on February 20th, the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office announces that their investigation into Tamla's death is complete. It was indeed an accident and they are calling it case closed. But instead of putting the case to rest, this flurry of activity, Jose getting fired, the announcement from police, all it does is stir up even more attention. So now the Sheriff's Office makes a huge amount of information public.

Like, I was surprised how much they actually released incident reports, time logs, the medical examiners, full autopsy report, everything in the case file got put out to the public. And another thing that police released as part of the case file are security records from Jean's house. She had a system basically like Simply Safe that logs every time a door opens and closes. And the Forsyth County News published those logs from the night Tamla died. And Bert, I'm going to have you read exactly what it says. So the log shows that the front door was opened and closed at 1.47 a.m., which must be the first person who got picked up from the party, right? Yes. So that was the front door, which wouldn't have been the balcony.

So that's what we're assuming. Okay. Two minutes later at 1.49 a.m., the back door opens and then closes at 1.50 a.m. But then at 1.57, it's opened again. And does it stay open all night because I don't see a closing timestamp? Yes. So when the door was checked in the morning, it was slightly ajar. So it had never been closed.

Right. And also security systems aren't foolproof. There are just so many different variables I can go into it. But here's a question. I don't think you've mentioned Tamla's time of death. Do we know that? We do. So on the death certificate, it lists 1.30 a.m. as the time of injury.

Okay. But we just had activity from 1.49, 1.50, and 1.57. I guess who was opening the door during those times? I don't know. I've always been under the impression that the time of death is more of a window rather than exact pinpoint. I mean, unless you have a video or a witness or something. Right.

But there's another weird variable about the night of November 4th, 2018 that we have to consider. That night was actually daylight savings. So instead of going from 1.59 a.m. to 2.00 a.m., the clock would have gone from 1.59 to 1.00 a.m. So my best guess is maybe- Is that 1.30 is actually 2.30? Yeah.

And maybe that's where the discrepancy lies. But truly, I mean, it's just one of the many questions in this case that has never been fully explained. So as more and more questions are popping up, Tamla's friend Michelle isn't the only one who's questioning police. Tamla's dad, Kurt, is too. He calls the whole thing fishy. And even Tamla's husband, Leander, is quoted in the Foresight County News questioning the

lead detective on the case and saying that the story about Tamla falling off the balcony doesn't make sense to him. So with the case officially closed by police and traditional media having moved back from the story as well. But this is when social media picks up right where traditional media left off. And Tamla's story starts gaining momentum on Twitter, different Facebook groups, even different blogs, and more and more people start to question the police's conclusion in Tamla's case.

They point out that the Foresight County has a brutal history of racist violence and segregation. And when I was reading about this case, I learned about how the county literally claimed to be all white for decades and how in 1987, over 2000 National Guard troops had to be called in to protect black civil rights marchers from furious white supremacists. This is 1987. That is not that long ago, you guys. No. And according to DataUSA's website, in 2017, coming Georgia, which is the Foresight County

seat where Tamla and her family lived, had only 202 black residents, just 3% of the population. So many people on social media in these blogs were starting to think that Tamla's case was handled differently because Tamla was a black woman in a very white town. And in the current climate, that belief is even more magnified. So with this as the backdrop, the Horsford family decides that they can't accept the police's conclusions of what happened to Tamla. And they want to prove it. So later that same month, the one that police officially closed the case, that was February

2019, later that month, the family hires an independent pathologist to do a second autopsy. According to Michelle, the pathologist found multiple abrasions all over Tamla's body. Alexis Stevens and Mike Pacinac reported for the Atlanta Journal Constitution that the pathologist also found injuries that get this could have only happened after Tamla was already dead, that there were no blood around her body and that someone could have thrown her body off the balcony. There's not a lot else out there that I could find about what exactly this independent pathologist found.

I think probably because Tamla's family has legal counsel who are doing their own like deep investigation and keeping that information close to their chest for now. But it's just one more layer of curiosity to this whole tragedy. However, it is far from the last. Just five days after Tamla's case is declared officially closed by the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office, Jean Jose and several others from the party that night actually sue Michelle Graves for defamation, claiming that they've suffered irreparable damage as a result of Michelle being so publicly vocal with her theories that they had something to do with Tamla's

death. They claim that Michelle's statements to news outlets and on social media led to a total barrage of nastiness like defamation and even death threats. That suit goes forward in November 2019 and the judge asked Michelle to download a bunch of her social media posts and information onto a flash drive and to drop it off at the Forsyth County Courthouse, just like pre-trial stuff. So Michelle goes ahead, gets the flash drive with all the requested information on it, and she drops it off at the courthouse.

And then the flash drive vanishes. What? Yeah, it's just gone. And that's the second time in less than a year that Michelle's personal information has run into trouble at the county courthouse. So you can imagine that she's starting to get super suspicious. She tells WSB TV News that even though she was able to redownload all the information and get it to the judge like he asked, she doesn't think that this was a clerical error

or a simple mistake. She thinks the original drive was stolen. Now, the county clerk says, no, it wasn't stolen. It got lost. We gave her a new drive, no harm, no foul. And they also say they've changed their policy to make sure that this doesn't happen again. But it's just one more reason for Michelle and for the Horsford family to be just a little bit distrusting of the system.

Yeah, I was going to say, if they had concerns before this, this almost confirms it. Exactly. Now, Tamela's case made headlines again very recently when the Black Lives Matter movement catapulted her story back into the spotlight. Social media once again has lit up, fundraisers were started, and the clamor for answers was growing louder and louder after voice after voice was asking what really happened to Tamela Horsford. And among those voices, I mean, you had big people, 50 cent, TI, who according to BET,

both shared social media posts about Tamela's death, both questioning the investigation. And earlier this month, on June 8th, 2020, WSBTV news reporter Mike Pacinac published a letter on his Twitter page. It's to Tamela's husband from his attorney Ralph Fernandez. And it's absolutely stunning. Here, Brett, I want you to read it to our listeners. The letter says, quote, Dear Leander, two weeks ago, we finished the exhaustive review of the records related to the investigation into the death of Tamela.

I am glad we had the opportunity to conference today with the rest of the immediate family. Hopefully by Tuesday, I'll have a more detailed analysis for you. But for today, however, I want to repeat some of what I told you. The review reflects that homicide is a strong possibility. Witness statements are in conflict. A potential suspect handled the body as well as the evidence prior to the law enforcement arrival. Evidence was disposed of and no inquiry followed.

The scene was not preserved. Evidence was inappropriately handled. The investigation was compromised by unauthorized access and disclosure to potential targets and witnesses. A remarkable fact is that there were no photographs taken during the autopsy of Tamela's body. This had to have been done at someone's directive because such a practice is unheard of. Let us address one issue as a sample in reverse order from the above. It appears Tamela was involved in a struggle.

There were abrasions noted consistent with that scenario. There were parallel scratches to one arm. Since they were fresh, photos would have proven recent use of defensive force. But having no photos in years to our detriment, there was one x-ray, yet the injury noted as the cause of death appears nowhere. Getting the records has been another monumental task to say the least. I could go on and will in a few days. Forsyth County Sheriff's Office employees have been the subject of much criticism.

The case agent was a close friend of the subject who turned out to be the leak of the ongoing investigation. The town of Cumming has a history which raises eyebrows. After conducting my extensive review, I have come to the conclusion that the truth never had a chance here. Let me conclude by telling you that my years of experience lead me to believe that 80% of cases where African Americans die under mysterious circumstances end up closed or cold because there are no videos and the only witnesses are bad guys.

Or good guys who deep down are really bad. Then you have cases where law enforcement does a poor job and cares little to investigate thoroughly because of some connection or association to the perpetrators. Take the Ahmaud Arbery's laying recently. Without the video surfacing in the media, there would never have been an arrest in that cozy relationship between the perpetrators, prosecutors, and the investigators. A rookie lawyer who gets a video in a wrongful death case where a stopped car is rear-ended by a speeding semi will win each time.

A video of someone walking up to a bank teller, face uncovered, and firing a gun point blank will most certainly lead to conviction. But those facts are not what we are dealing with here. Here we are fighting an uphill battle because those who wear the badges and were entrusted with the investigatory task failed you. But this is not over. It will never be over. Be safe.

Be strong. We will get to the bottom of this. Sincerely, Ralph Fernandez. End quote. The same day this letter is published, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation who conducted Tamal's autopsy and the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office both responded. They stand by their original findings and claim that photos from Tamal's autopsy do actually exist, though I don't know that they made them available to the lawyers or to the public.

That's at least for me now, still unknown. Now, what is amazing about this is that on June 12, 2020, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation agreed to reopen Tamal's case. And this is huge. And there is no doubt in my mind that it is because of people like you. It is public pressure that made this happen. So never think that you can't make a difference. They did this in direct response to a petition that got over like 500,000 signatures.

So when you hear stories like this, you can make a difference. If we all act, if we do more than listen, there is something that you can do. There is change that can be made because you care. For Tamal Horsford's loved ones, her tragic and mysterious death left behind way more questions than answers. But hopefully, the reopened investigation will help them finally get the closure that they deserve. They fought long and hard to get her case a second look and their efforts paid off. Your efforts paid off. So before we end our episode, I want to quickly tell you about another case that needs attention like Tamal has got.

Because again, Tamal has records only got released because everyone in the public was asking for them, was making a stink. It only got reopened because people were signing petitions and cared. I couldn't do a full episode on this next case because there have been no records released, no real media attention. There's been nothing. But this case is equally as strange and the only way that we will get records released and the only way that there will be more media reports or re-investigation is if you, our listeners, demand it. This is the case of Joseph Smedley. In September of 2015, Joseph Smedley II is 20 years old and going to college at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he's majoring in biochemistry. He lives off campus with a couple of roommates and all three are members of Sigma Pi fraternity.

And literally everything in Joseph's life seems to be going pretty well at this time until early on the morning of September 28, 2015, when his older sister Vivian gets a weird text from him. And here, Britt, why don't you read that text for us? The text said, Viv, I love you. I'm leaving the country by not telling you why I'm keeping you safe and protected. Please don't try to contact me at this number. It won't work. I'll contact you once I'm set up overseas. Thank you for everything, Viv. I love you. And I'm sorry. Okay, so was Joseph known to travel like this kind of on a whim last minute? Not at all. According to WTHR News, he doesn't even have a passport. So Joseph sends that text around 4.15 in the morning and Vivian sees it when she wakes up shortly after 8 a.m. And initially she's kind of like, shut up, Joseph, like thinking this is him joking or being weird.

When he doesn't respond, she immediately starts to worry. Joseph's family calls police to file a missing persons report, and the Smedleys make the hour and some change drive from Indy to Bloomington to start looking for him. As soon as they get to Bloomington, Vivian heads straight for Joseph's off-campus apartment, and it takes her no time at all to notice that some things are really off. First of all, Joseph's stuff is still in his room. I mean, everything, his clothes, laptop, shoes, even his phone charger. Everything that you would expect to be gone if someone's leaving the city, let alone the country. Right. But is his phone missing too? Yes. So his cell phone is gone, but it's like pretty much the only thing missing besides Joseph himself. They also find a note that Joseph left on his bed for his roommates with pretty much the same message that he texted to Vivian, that he's leaving the country, it's pointless to try and contact him.

Vivian says it's not Joseph's handwriting, although when officers compare it to Joseph's class notes, they find what they call similarities between the two. But as far as I can tell, it was never sent away for official analysis, like everyone's just eyeballing it. Now, what police don't find, though, during their initial search for Joseph is any evidence whatsoever that he actually bought any plane tickets or made any other travel plans. So frantically, Joseph's friends and family spend the next few days searching all over Bloomington and the surrounding areas looking for any trace of him. The last time anyone saw him was 1130 the night before when his roommates say that they all went to their own rooms to go to bed. So for days, there is absolutely nothing, no sightings, no word from him, just nothing, until four days after he went missing on Friday, October 2nd, when Joseph's family gets a phone call that will change their lives forever. On October 2nd, 2015, a fisherman is out on Griffey Lake, which is just outside of Bloomington and north of the IU campus, when he notices something. There floating in the shallow water is a human body.

When the Monroe County Coroner comes out, he confirms the Smedley's worst fears. It is Joseph. The coroner says that his cause of death is consistent with drowning, and just like we talked about in the death of Tamela, officials say right away, no foul play is suspected. In addition to being beyond heartbroken, Joseph's family is also, I mean, completely taken aback. According to Sandra Chapman's piece for WTHR News, Joseph was a good swimmer who was comfortable in the water, coupled with the strange texts and the note that he may or may not have written. None of what they're being told by law enforcement makes any sense to the family, and they feel deep in their gut that there's more to this story. You mentioned that the only thing missing was his phone. Did police find it with his body or at least near where he was found? Vivian is quoted in the Indiana Daily Student on December 8, 2015, saying that the phone was never recovered.

But according to an interview with one of the detectives that appeared in the Daily Student three days after that, Joseph's phone is recovered, though they don't say exactly where. But police do say they access his cell records, and what they see doesn't seem to jive with the story that his roommates were telling about everyone going to bed at 11.30 that night, because the text sent to Vivian the day that he disappeared, that one from like four o'clock in the morning, came from near 7th and Walnut Street, which is near this whole strip of bars kind of downtown. But then just a couple of hours later at about 6.30 a.m., cell records indicate that Joseph might have been near Old State Highway 37, which runs up north of Griffey Lake. So law enforcement, both the IU campus police and local cops, along with scent tracking dogs, go up to that area, like looking for any kind of trace of him, but they don't pick up his scent or any of his belongings or anything that would lead them to him anywhere in those areas where his phone was pinging, which I don't know if it washed away. I don't know if they couldn't pick it up, or I don't know if the implication is that he wasn't with his phone. Again, because we don't know where it was found or who was found with, we don't know. For family already reeling from the shock and grief of losing their 20-year-old son, all of this just adds up to more uncertainty. And that uncertainty is compounded when two months after his death in December of 2015, the coroner rules Joseph death a suicide. And right away, Joseph's family says no way, no how, this was not death by suicide. And listen, I know a death by suicide is a lot for loved ones to digest, but for the Smedleys, they're saying it's impossible.

So why don't they believe the ruling? Well, there are a couple of reasons. According to Vivian, Joseph had agreed to run an errand for her on the Monday that he disappeared. And he also made other plans for the following weekend. I couldn't find anything in my research to suggest that he had a history of depression or suicidal behavior. Now, while the coroner's report has never been made public, the Indiana Daily Student Newspaper reports that the family has seen it. And that's not too unusual for like the ME or the coroner's reports to be released to the family upon request, but not made public. Right. In December 2015, Vivian and her husband, Deontay, come to campus for an open event called the critical conversation, Joseph Smedley and the aftermath, where students could come together and basically a safe space to talk about race relations on campus. Because, I mean, one of the big issues here is Joseph's death and how the university handled his disappearance. Like, for example, Joseph was reported missing on Monday morning, but IU didn't alert their community about it until Friday, like just before Joseph's body was found. So literally, unless someone knew Joseph personally, no one on campus even knew that he was missing. And it's at this event that Vivian shares some really curious information. Vivian says that Joseph was found in Griffey Lake with his clothes and his backpack on. Now, his backpack had a few papers in it, a phone charger, an external hard drive, like all pretty light and easy to carry things.

But Vivian also says that she later learned that Joseph's backpack was on his chest, not on his back. And it was carrying somewhere between 62 and 66 pounds of rocks inside of it. What? I mean, I guess that would weigh him down. Right. But I guess the question then becomes like, is he weighing himself down or did somebody put all of those rocks in there to weigh him down? According to Becca Costello's article on Indiana Public Media, Vivian eventually says, listen, enough is enough. And she requests a second independent autopsy. And the second autopsy has some consistent findings. For example, there's no question Joseph's cause of death was drowning. But there are inconsistencies to and really important ones. For example, the pathologist from the second autopsy found hemorrhaging on Joseph's back that could have been caused by someone holding him down. And the second autopsy ruled that his death was not a suicide. What did they rule it? So I wasn't able to find that specifically. All it said was that it was not a suicide. I don't know if that means it was labeled undetermined.

I don't know if it has an official labeling, because again, the family has maybe seen the report, but it hasn't been released to the public. But now that his family has this, Vivian absolutely disagrees with the police's finding that there was no foul play involved. She is confident. She is sure that her brother's death was a homicide. And here's what's super interesting. So when you talk about, you know, these rocks, did he put those rocks and did someone else put them in when you when you think about the hemorrhaging on his back that maybe someone held him down. One thing I haven't mentioned is that when Joseph's body was found up in Griffey Lake, it was only in about three feet of water. So I don't know that that would be somewhere if he chose to take his own life and you're going to weigh yourself down with rocks to do it in a place where you could you could kneel and still be above water. Right. That just doesn't make sense. It doesn't. And they also found one more thing. So in addition to his backpack and all that stuff, they also said that he was wearing binoculars around his neck.

Okay. I don't even know what to make of that. Neither do I, to be totally honest. But when I looked into this a little bit, apparently there was a lunar eclipse that night, a specific one where you would see the blood moon. And it was happening between 10 and 1130 p.m. So there's this alternate theory that maybe Joseph was up there to catch a rare glimpse of it. And something went wrong, something happened, something I truly don't know. But didn't his roommates say that they were all together right at that time? Yeah. So that's the interesting part, right? So clearly, even if you want to say this wasn't a homicide, someone is lying. Things are not adding up. And that's the thing about this case.

If you take everything as it seems, the text to Vivian, the note, the backpack full of rocks, it can seem really straightforward, devastating. Yes, but the pieces can fit together into a puzzle that tells a comprehensive story, a tragic story of a young man who died tragically by suicide. But imagine Joseph's death like a jigsaw puzzle, a puzzle that someone else has put together and handed you already complete. Now you could leave it like that and it would be fine put together just like that. But it's only when you start taking the puzzle pieces apart one by one, again, the text to Vivian, the note in his apartment, the backpack, that they suddenly start to look different. And they don't quite fit back together the same way. And that's how I like to think about this case. Could it be a tragic death by suicide? Maybe. But could there be more to Joseph's story? Absolutely.

When the investigation first began, it was led by IU campus police, but then was transferred to the Bloomington PD a few days in. But instead of continuing to work with Vivian as Joseph's necks of kin, they did this interesting thing. When they took the case to BPD, they started working with Joseph's father. Okay, is that a big deal? Well, it wouldn't be a big deal, except according to the Justice for Joseph Facebook page, he was actually estranged from his father, like to the point where he legally got emancipated. Oh, wow. And like he's been like that since he was a teenager. So there's really no reason for this man to be involved in the case, let alone be the point of contact for the family.

Right. And I'm not sure why they chose him. I don't know if he was officially listed on something. Again, this is just like one more example of the puzzle pieces not quite fitting together. In the days and weeks following his death, Joseph was described by friends and family and acquaintances on social media and even in the press as joyful and full of life. Now, listen, you know, he wouldn't be the first person with depression to paint a very different picture for the outside world. And we've come a long way when it comes to the stigma around mental illness, but it still exists. And in some cases, that stigma doesn't come, you know, as much from the outside in, but rather from the inside. But there was this one thing that I found, Britt, that really had me thinking. So take a look at Joseph's Twitter bio.

Can you read that out loud for me? Sure. It says, Joseph Smetley, IU undergraduate, biochemistry, pre-farm. If found dead in police custody, it wasn't suicide. So here's the thing. I don't have any background on this. Again, this is a screenshot from his Twitter account. I don't know, you know, was that changed after his death? Was it made before? I have a lot of questions around this and I don't have the tools or the insights to verify any of this. It is strange. Is this someone who was contemplating suicide? Or is this somebody who maybe had something going on that no one else knew about?

Like, was something happening in his life that made him feel like he would need to write something like that? Or I don't know if maybe like so many other black Americans, Joseph was just suspicious and distrusting of the police and possibly for good reason because that suspicion and distrust would not be misplaced. Why didn't IU take Joseph's disappearance seriously or at least not seriously enough to alert people to be on the lookout for him? I mean, when you think back to the other IU case that we covered, Lauren Spear, how many podcasts and blogs and news articles have been done on her case? Like, the entire campus, even now, I mean, you have like graduation years after graduation years of people who have passed who never even went to school with her, but you say the name Lauren Spear on IU's campus and everyone knows who she is.

Well, and even going back to IU's handling of announcing or notifying students that Joseph was missing, like, I remember when Lauren met Missing and I lived three and a half hours away from IU. Yeah, I had never heard of Joseph's case until it was suggested to us. So I'm even closer than you are and it never made it on my radar because literally try and look up his case. You have like a couple of news articles with like fleeting mentions. The only people who've really kept the story alive at all is actually like the IU student newspaper itself. There is now an official petition for Joseph's case like there was in Tamla's. You can find the link to that on our blog post for this episode and you can also find it by visiting the Justice for Joseph Facebook page.

You guys have the power to change the way these cases are handled. Please go sign the petition. Talk about Joseph's case. Talk about Tamla's case. Share this episode with your friends and family. This is the only way we get changed. You have to do something and you have to talk about it. With your help, we one day may know the real story of what happened to Tamla and Joseph.

But there's one thing we know right now and that's that their lives mattered and they will not be forgotten. To see pictures and to get to the links of everything I talked about today and to see all of our source material, you can find all of that information on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. And you guys, if you are interested in any of the new shows that Audio Chuck has coming out, check out Audio Chuck on Instagram as well. And we'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Crimejunkie is an Audio Chuck production, so what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?