November 12, 2025 • 42 mins
Neighbors call for a welfare check on Tammy King after not seeing her for a couple days. Tammy is 61, and is raising her 17-year-old granddaughter, Tara King. Law Enforcement does the welfare check and find Tammy dead under a pile of sheets in the middle of her bedroom floor, and it looks like the house was ransacked! Tara is not home, and neither is her boyfriend, 18-year-old Uriah Urick. Tammy has been dead for a couple days. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack will take a look under the covers placed on the body of Tammy King, and see if there is a chance the killer will be caught.
Transcribe Highlights
00:00.57 Introduction - Grandparent
04:03.63 Grandma raises granddaughter
08:06.49 Tara King, Uriah Urick
13:31.94 Welfare check
18:28.66 Collecting rare weapons
24:04.49 Body Covered
34:17.72 Size of ammunition
39:26.08 Drug dealer involved
42:45.83 Conclusion
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body bats, but Joseph's gotten more. There are not too
many things in this old world that I can hold
forth on as an expert. But there is one area
that I'm very proud of, and it has absolutely nothing,
and I mean nothing to do with forensics. You know
(00:25):
what it is. It's being a grandparent. As a matter
of fact, I think that for me at least, it's
been one of those journeys that has been quite easy
and quite pleasurable to become an expert at There's nothing,
I don't think in this old world, except for maybe
(00:46):
my wife, that brings them more joy than being around
the grand babies. I love it. And you know the
problem with loving being around your grand babies is that
you always want to seem benevolent. You don't want to
be the one that is stern any longer those days
are passed for you. I love when my grandkids climb
(01:10):
up on my rat lap, and I love it when
they say can we go to the donut shop? Say,
of course, not only can we go, we can go
tomorrow as well. As long as you're here, will go
every morning, and darling, you can get anything you want.
That's the benefit or one of the benefits of being
a grandparent, but sometimes sometimes families are an absolute train wreck.
(01:36):
There's no denying that, and the grandparent many times has
to step in and no matter what their life was
like before with their kids, they have to take on
the mantle of once again being a parent, and many
(01:56):
times that ends with a brutal lesson. Now we're going
to talk about one such case today about a granddaughter
who received assistance from her grandmother along with a granddaughter's boyfriend,
and it ended in the death of a benevolent lady.
(02:23):
Coming to you from the beautiful campus of Jacksonville State University.
I'm Josephcott Morgan and this is Bodybacks. I loved hanging
out at my grandma's house. Dave couldn't help it, love it.
And it's because my mother was very hard work and
she worked outside of the home, and so when I
(02:44):
was little, I would be with my grandmother and of
course anything I wanted, including trips to TG and why
you remember too, Yeah, I do, wow, walking up and
down La Toya. It was just part of it. I
went to the grocery every day with her.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
You know, so you have the tip cool you had
the grandma, Grandpa thing going on when you were little,
so that there was a difference between mom and dad
and grandma and grandpa. I grew up the same way.
But you know what, my grandpa and I think about
this now, especially when I'm with my oldest grandson, Braylan,
(03:19):
because I can do things my grandfather couldn't do, but
he still looks at me like I'm an old guy,
and I don't feel like an old guy. Okay, but
today we're actually going to talk about the nightmare scenario
of grandma stepping in, as you mentioned, and becoming the
primary caregiver to a now seventeen year old daughter granddaughter.
(03:41):
This is a granddaughter now, not a daughter. Now. Grandma
is sixty one years old and she has been raising
her grandchild for her life. They live in the same
house and everything else. But as many teenagers want to do,
they can fall off to the side and go a
little wacky with the wrong We always loved to blame
(04:02):
the wrong crowd. I oftentimes wondered if I was the
ringleader of that crowd, if I was the one that
do not let her around him, you know that kind
of thing. But anyway, that is the scenario that we're
dealing with grandma raises grandchild. And I will tell you this,
my daughter Hannah, when she had Braylin, having him very young,
(04:23):
she was so hyper intense about not allowing me to
be the you know, to step in and take the
place of her. You know, she wanted to make sure
it my job be the mom, it's your dad, be
the grandpa, You be the grandpa. You know she didn't.
(04:43):
He was two and a half three years old before
she even let him go to the grocery store with me. Actually,
our first trip was a home depot where he actually
went with me by himself to home depot. And I'm
not kidding. That's how protective she was of her motherhood
and her responsibility. Se is like, that's a rare occurrence
nowadays when some of our young people have children, they
(05:05):
tend to drop said child off on granny and papa.
And granny and Papa don't get experience what you and
I get to experience being granny or papa. You know,
that is a wonderful thing to be is you can't
beat it, man, You.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Can know you can't. I can. I can say that
I can truly die die fulfilled man in that in
that sense. It's just you know, uh, it's when we
choose to have these kids, and which is more often
than not. Uh, and you have that opportunity, but you
know when you're forced back into a role that at
(05:41):
some point in tom you know, you thought, well those
days are over with for me. And listen, you know,
life happens. You never know, you know what's waiting for
you around any one corner. You have to have somebody
that's going to step in as a surrogate. And listen,
I think that many times it's probably better for the
kids to be with a grandparent as opposed to being
(06:04):
pushed off on the state and they be fostered and
all those sort of things. And not that there's anything
wrong with foster parents, God bless them what they do. However, Listen,
it wasn't that many generations ago that the grandparents still
lived in the house with their children as they grew older,
and the grandkids would grow up around them. It's just
many times that the parents are missing. Now that element
(06:26):
is missing, and it's very sad and you never know
what kind of damage is going to be done. And
we've had a lot of stories like this day where
we've had grandchildren that have turned on grandparents, and they
are the grandchildren are afflicted with something, you know, who knows.
You know, there's a laundry list of things they can
(06:48):
be afflicted with. But unfortunately, many times these afflictions wind
up with a grandparent paying the ultimate price, which is
their life. And that's the tragedy of all of this
is that you live long in the life, you try
to be a decent person, you know, along the way,
you try to be bud benevolent right, and many times
that dog will bite your hand and rip it off.
(07:11):
And I think that that's probably what has in fact
happened with Tammy King here, who is the subject of
our story today.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Well, you know, in this scenario where Tammy King is
the victim, sixty one year old grandma who raises her granddaughter,
Tara King, in this story, there is no mention of
Tara King's biological mother and father. Did I spend a
little bit of time trying to find out, and I thought,
that's not the subject I blame. I blame a lot
(07:40):
of people for a lot of problems. Mom and dad
are usually the cause of most of them. And when
you relegate responsibility of raising your child to somebody else,
it's on you. So Karay King is the granddaughter. But
Kara King is seventeen years old. Joe, at seventeen, you're
old enough to know what's going on in your world
and what's going on around you, and you're old enough
(08:01):
to have a boyfriend, as Tara did. Her boyfriend is
a guy named Uriah Urick. You're Yah Urick. He's eighteen,
he's a year older than she is. And Tara King
is having problems with her grandma because Tammy King wants
Tara to go to school and finish school and Tara
(08:22):
just doesn't want to go doesn't want to go to school.
And by the way, she wants Uriah to be able
to spend the night at the house. He's over there
a lot. She wants him to spend the night, and
Grandma is saying, no, you need to go to school.
And he's too loud. Nor Tammy's boyfriend. She's not married,
(08:43):
she's dating. And Tammy's boyfriend said that the reason she
didn't particularly care for Uriah is he was too loud.
Now I don't know exactly what that means, because I'm
the loud person, so I don't know what it's you know,
loud means because I know I am. I guess if
it's worse than me, bless your heart. But that was
(09:05):
why Tammy didn't particularly care for your riot. I kind
of think it might have been related to consumption of
alcohol and drugs, probably drugs.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah, and there there's hints, there's hints of this, uh
throughout you know, throughout this story. Uh that there is
not just and we're not talking about somebody sitting around
smoking weed, all right, Uh, We're we're talking pretty heavy
duty serious drugs as a matter of fact. Uh, the
drug dealer for this couple, this young couple comes into
(09:39):
play in a story in a significant way. And uh,
you know when when whenever I hear drug dealer, you know,
I'm thinking, well, yeah, that's that's the one on one
contact that they have, say, for instance, in this couple,
how many other people are potentially involved or in this
individual's grasp or or reach. And this individual is older
(10:02):
than them, the subjects I think here is almost Yeah, yeah,
he's up in his thirties, if I'm not mistaken, And
what kind of influence can he have, you know, because
he's actually you know, I guess he's the cool guy
in this story. And of course grandma is she wants
peace in her house. I want peace in my house.
(10:22):
I know that you want peace in your house. And
if you've got some stranger that, by the way, your
granddaughter is begging that he be allowed to come into
her home and spend the night, you know what's the
story with that? You know, why would you put that
on your grandma to make that decision. She has her
(10:43):
own home that she's earned. At this point in time
in her Life's sixty one years old there in Galveston,
Galson County, Texas. You know, why should she allow this
individual to have access not just to her home but
also to her granddaughter because her granddaughter is still not
of age. She's seventeen years old. So that's almost can
(11:06):
you imagine, Dave, that's almost like insult to injury. Not
only do I want to be involved in your granddaughter's life,
I want to be involved in her life in your
home under your roof, and I'm not going to respect you.
I'm going to be loud, I'm going to do whatever
in the hell it is that I want to do.
I wonder why it was that they chose to be
(11:28):
at Tammy's home as opposed to this kid's home. Why
didn't they go to his house? Why was it? You
know what was so great about Tammy's house? Did his
parents or a parent, did they not allow him to
do things at his home that he thought that he
could get away with it? Tammy And I got to
tell you, Dave, this winds up. This winds up I
(11:49):
think the crux of the stories. It winds up in
uber violence.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Here you've mentioned the key players. We have sixty one
year old Tammy King, she's the victim. We have our
two suspects, Terry King, seventeen year old granddaughter and her boyfriend,
eighteen year old you're Riyah Urick. And then we have
thirty six year old Travis Hodge, who is the known
drug dealer. Okay, he's the guy that everybody knows. You
(12:16):
need meth, that's where you go guns. That's the guy.
He's your connection. So those are our players, and what
we do start with a welfare check. Neighbors hadn't seen
Tammy King for a couple of days, and they were
used to seeing King around and they didn't see her. So, hey,
you know, in a neighborhood people know what's going on
(12:39):
pretty much. I mean, not the ins and outs of
everybody's world. But you know, when you're used to seeing
somebody and all of a sudden you don't see them
and you don't see other activity, it does spring up that, hey,
maybe we should do something here. And so you got
two choices. You can go knock on the door, intrude
or Colin do welfair check, would you? And that way
(13:02):
police show up. We're just checking to make sure. Okay,
that's all we're doing is king.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
You know.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
A friend was concerned and that's what they did. But
when police got there, Joseph Scott Morgan, things were not good.
This welfare check turned out in the worst way possible.
They walk in the door and it's been ransacked. The
house is empty, there's nobody else in there. They can't
nobody's answering the Hey, you know, Sheriff's department, make yourself known.
(13:33):
Nobody's making themselves known, Joe, and they look around and
the place. You know, there's a difference between a mess
and a ransacked home. For those of us who have
been victim of a home robbery, the ransacking is different
than a mess. I had this twice in my life.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
And you know, that's one of the things that we
have to contend with the scenes and people don't think
about that. There are some people that live their lives
in a state of dishevel, if you will, where you've
got crap, you know, laying all over the place. Clothes
aren't put away, they're not folded, the bed is never made,
it's in disarray. You might have clothing piled up on
(14:12):
a dress or somewhere, there's dirty dishes in the sink.
And for an investigator, one of the difficult things that
you have to do when you go into a dwelling
like this is try to try to understand where, you know,
what is you know normal, what's abnormal? You know, like,
(14:33):
is this is this the standard way in which they
conduct themselves day to day? You know? You know, do
they leave piles of dirty clothes around? Because you know,
if if you're talking about something being ransacked, most of
the time with a an individual that goes into a
home and they begin to you know, and I've seen them,
(14:55):
I've seen where this happens, where they'll literally destroy furniture.
I've seen draw that have been pulled off, pulled out
and tossed across the room. And you know, Dave, I
found in a couple of these cases where they're trying
to mask something. I found that many times the ransacking
goes over the top in order to paint this picture,
(15:18):
you know, to kind of sell it, you know what.
I wow, like, Yeah, Well, they'll they'll break items up
that probably you know, wouldn't there would be if you're
trying to imitate, say a burglary gone wrong, why would
you break furniture? You know it because it's not necessarily
like why would you break a coffee table? We'll put
(15:39):
it to that way, or an end table, or why
would you I've walked into one house one time where
a toilet had been torn away from the floor. Yeah,
and it's so over the top that one or two
things is going on. Either they're trying to mask what
they're doing, or this person was psychotic that went in
(15:59):
there and just began to you know, to try to
destroy the environment. But I think that a true pro right,
somebody that's a true professional thief, is not going to
do that. They're not going to go in if they're
going to ransack something and pull out drawers, they're only
going to do those things that are necessary for them
(16:20):
to get what they need. You know, so you couple
that with say, an unkempt environment, and you're a stranger
to this if you're an investigator, and that's a major
line that you have to draw to try to to
try to understand what is it that is going to
separate filth from pure evil? Now, you know, Dave, they're
(17:00):
My understanding is that if you were going to in
fact rob someone, tam M King would probably be at
the top of your list, because the investigation has revealed
(17:21):
that this is not some person that didn't have means.
She had a bounty of items inside of her house,
including Now get this, this is kind of interesting, a
sixty one year old woman, she's got rare weapons. That
was one of the things that popped up in the descriptor.
(17:43):
So it's one thing if you've got, you know, your
Grandpappy's old squirrel gun. But when they start talking about
rare weapons, you know, what exactly does that mean? Well,
they're not very clear about it, but rare weapons can
produce one thing other than violence, That can produce money.
(18:03):
Because if you have a weapon that you can sell
to somebody that might have an interest in it, and
no legitimate weapons collector is going to buy a weapon
from somebody that's a known drug dealer, and certainly not
from a teenager, because you know that you don't move around.
(18:24):
I've been around, I've been in the atmosphere with people
that do, in fact collect rare weapons. These are not
individuals that are kind of fly by night. They're very
thoughtful about what they do. They see this as an
investment and you're going to have to provide the necessary paperwork.
You're going to have to authenticate, and you're going to
have to go to the provenance of the weapon and
(18:47):
or demonstrate. You know, my lord, not only do you
have one, two, three, you've got five weapons here or
whatever the number it is. How did you come across these?
Because I've moved in these circles. I've never seen you before.
I've never seen you, And so you have somebody that
shows up with this and it's not just weapons day.
From what I understand, there was a considerable amount of
(19:07):
cash found at the house as well, or there was
she had been known to have a considerable amount of cash.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
And you know that was the part that you're I'm
so glad you pointed that out, because you know, they
they can't kind of cagy in reporting on some of this.
Whenever the whenever reporting on an incident talks about safe
plural guns, safes, that indicates to me that we're past
and you've got a senior citizen. Well, sixty one is
(19:34):
not a senior citizen, but you've got a sixty one
year old woman head of the household here. It's not
like we have locked up our hunting guns, you know,
or our civil civil war re enactment stuff. This is
they're guns that are kept for a reason. So when
they use the plural of safe, that tells me that
(19:54):
these mean something and probably are valuable. We know there's
cash and jewelry that is in this house that it's
also being kept in safes, even referred to it as
a lock box, and things like that that are in
the home.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
There was one one thing here that I wanted to
point out. We've talked about that there's evidence that the
house has been ransacked. Another term I like to use
that doesn't get used enough is a term of rifling.
We hear about rifling as it goes to as it
goes to forensics, we talk about ballistics and we talk
(20:32):
about rifling and all that, but I love the term
of rifling. That's an old term, you know, where people
are going through papers and all that sort of stuff,
and they're rifling through it, and they'll throw things about,
and then you have ransacking, which I always think means
bigger pieces, and they're destroying them and breaking them apart.
I love language, man, as you can tell, I'm not
real good at it, but I love language. I love
(20:53):
listening to people that know what they're talking about when
they use good language. And I just screwed that comment up,
So there you go. You can pillary me over that.
But one thing that we don't need to get away
from here, Dave, is that Tammy when she is found
in her home, and this is a big, big piece here.
(21:17):
Tammy is found nude and she lives with her seventeen
year old granddaughter, and her seventeen year old granddaughter has
allowed an eighteen year old man eighteen he goes sign
up for the draft, right, babah, yeah, buddy, eighteen, he's
(21:42):
allowed to be in this house. Why's sixty one year
old grandma going to be naked? All right? And granted
she's covered with the sheet that's another part to this.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
I was going to ask you for fact that she
is something interesting.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah, the fact that she's unclothed underneath that sheet is significant.
I've often thought two things relatively anytime, particularly females, anytime
I'd go on a scene and they're absent clothing, I
think they're being sexualized in some way. Okay, I think
(22:16):
that kind of goes about saying it. You you can
catch people unaware and they're not going to have clothes on.
But why else would she not have her garments on? Okay?
It can be either through sexualization or I think that
there is a bit of humiliation going on. You know.
(22:38):
It's kind of like the you know, the dream that
people have where they wake up there in front of
a big crowd and are there in the midst of
a dream rather than their teaching, you know, like you
know you I've had that dream before actually, where I
was completely laid bare, you know, before a crowd of
people and I'm teaching. I'm naked, and other other than
(23:00):
people you know in my dream throwing up at the
view of me naked and their eyes beginning to bleed.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
It was.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
It's a scary proposition. You know, for for someone to
be in that in that in that position. So I'm wondering,
was she compelled think about this? Was she compelled to
take her clothing off? Was it used as a point
of leverage with this woman, you know, so that she
(23:29):
can be humiliated, debased, whatever the case might be. I
don't know if. I mean, for all, I know she sleeps,
she sleeps nude, and she happened to be awakened, you
know that. I guess that that could happen, but it
just there's something about the fact that she's new. And
then and then of course this goes to the old
(23:50):
uh you know that that that one bit of investigative
information we always look at, no pun intended coming up,
that the body is covered so that they cannot look
at them. And you know that that goes to things
like face covering, you know where many times because if
(24:11):
the person has value, if the person hang on, if
the person does not have value to you, okay, where
are you going to take the trouble? Cover the body?
They mean nothing to you. They're nothing but a means
to an end. And so you've got her lying there
on the floor completely nude. I think that that's certainly
something I know from me in practice. If I walked
(24:33):
into a house and I had someone who was covered
with a sheet, and I look around at the cops
that are there, the EMTs that are there, the firefighters
say hey, did you get it? Did you get a
sheet off your truck and cover the body? And they
say no, we didn't. Did the finder that came into
the house. Maybe in another case did they feel horrible
(24:54):
about this person being naked and they wouldn't grab a
sheet because that does happen. There's people great blankets out
of cars at car accidents, and you've got people laying
there and they don't have to be new, they'll cover
the body just out of respect. But in a home,
you've got sixty one year old female that is lying
on the floor without a stitch of clothes on her,
(25:14):
and someone takes a sheet and covers the body. So,
you know, with the face covering most of the time
face covering, and also the rest of the body, you
feel shame. You feel shame for what maybe you've done.
You're familiar with the individual, they say that specific face covering,
because you know not all people you know close their
(25:36):
eyes and death. Matter of fact, you know, Dave, I've
had more the deaths that I've worked, I've had more
people with their eyes open than closed over the years,
and some cases would give me, I don't know what
they call it, the willies, and I would there are
those cases and I would literally take my gloved hand
and close the eyes because I didn't want them their
(25:57):
eyes staring back at me. And I'm a total stranger.
How much more so if you're related to him, Dave.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Well, you know this case because a welfare check leads
to finding a sixty one year old woman nude in
her own bedroom on the floor with a gunshot wound
to the head. The homes ransacked, and the granddaughter who
lives in the home with her is gone. Her boyfriend
is also gone. So it was pretty soon that based
(26:26):
on physical evidence of what they had and by talking
to others involved, they had persons of interest within the
first twenty four hours. It's the grand the granddaughter and
her boyfriend. They already had that going on. So February
fifth they find the body. By February sixth, they're looking
for Tara and her boyfriend Urick. Right, So they talked
(26:47):
to and this is the interesting part of all this
because investigations work like you have the physical evidence there
on the scene, then you have interviews with relatives and
people friends, close to the perpetrator or the victims, all
of them. You know, you want to find out what's
(27:08):
going on. You've got a dead person. Was this person evil?
Was she the type of person who terrorized her granddaughter?
And you know they're trying to find out what really happened.
And what they find out is that, well, apparently the
eighteen year old boyfriend here, he uses methamphetamine on a
regular basis and has for a while. According to his stepfather,
(27:28):
he's violent, violent tendencies. And when the police will do
you think do you think he could kill? Oh? Absolutely
So when somebody close to he says, oh yeah, Dave
could kill without a doubt. Yeah he could have done this,
that immediately says, Okay, what else do we know? Well,
we do know that Tammy King, according to Euriyah Yurik's mother,
(27:50):
Kara King, hated Tammy. She hated the woman who raised her,
and that hate grew when Tammy King not allow your
Riyah Uric to spend the night. That was the breaking
point for Tara. Apparently, now I'm going to tell you
that in the mind of a teenager, some things can
(28:12):
be that breaking point. But I got a feeling, Joe,
there was a lot going on in that relationship with
drug sex, rock and roll. You know, you've got this
Bonnie and Clyde mentality. So it appears to me just
from the outside looking in, I'm thinking about the homeless
ransacked because they were trying to make it look like
a robbery, and because they went over the top, as
you mentioned that probably was also a tip to police,
(28:33):
going yeah, this isn't they knew right where to go
for the cash. You know, somebody knew where that lock
box with cash was. That had to been somebody inside.
And so we've got that going on, you know, right
off the right out of the gate.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Well here's the other thing too, I just having to
think about this just a second ago. I'm really wondering
going back to her unclosed status. Let's take this piece
by piece. We think about, Okay, Well, who would have
(29:09):
knowledge that she would have a large amount of cash coins,
which I think she did, oh and exotic weapons, Well,
somebody that's in her intimate circle. Well, I can't imagine
in any universe where you would give over the codes
(29:29):
to multiple because we're not talking about one safe, we're
talking about multiple saves and they're all open. Could that
be a point of leverage for taking her clothes off
and humiliating her. Just think about that just for a second.
You know, you take you know, strip down, strip down,
and you're you're laid naked, you know, you're bare before
(29:50):
the world at this point in time. We want the codes.
We want the codes. And if you're if you're so
drug addled in your mind, if you've got this kind
of demon of myth that's you know, kind of raging
through your veins in your brain, you'll say and do anything,
but this I do know. What did happen was that
(30:15):
not only was Tammy robbed of her life, and not
only were her possessions taken, but each one of those
possessions had a pathway indicated straight to the killer. I
(30:43):
can't get the smell of burning flesh out of my nose.
That is what the boyfriend, this eighteen year old Rick
had actually common and on he told someone that he
couldn't get the smell of burning flesh. I had to think.
(31:06):
I had to think about this because you know, I've
kind of been following this case. I've got friends that
were in the media that were at the courthouse that
were covering it, and I had to think back, was
her body burned? Well, I don't think the body was burned.
(31:28):
The only thing I can think of is that as
the trigger on a weapon is actuated and you're in
a closed space, you've got that propellant some people refer
to as gunpowder, but the propellant burning off and you'll
have this acrid odor that will arise in the air.
(31:51):
And maybe that's being associated by this individual with burning flesh.
I don't know, but that smell would leandre in the
air and it was interpreted I think as flesh being
on fire. Now what we do have and you've hold
you've heard, Dave, I'm sure the term powder burns. That's
(32:15):
a very confusing term for many people. There is one
of the things that was really cool about, you know,
being being in the military when I was very young.
If you went out to the firing range, and I
guess they still do this, I don't know, but if
you go to the firing range.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
You.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
The armory will literally give you x amount of live
ammunition to go to the firing range to qualify with
and generally you're out there all day long, and at
night they do something called the mad Minute, and it
was one of the coolest things I've ever seen in
my life. I saw it on multiple occasions, and it's
where everybody's lined up on the firing line and you've
(32:56):
got people out there with back in my day, the
original M sixteen's shoulder fired rifle, and they're all lying
prone on their belly and they're firing and you have
to burn up all the ammunition. You can't take it
back with you, and so you would see at night,
you'd see these these muzzles, you know, blowing out flame
(33:17):
out of the end of them. We had back in
my day they had M sixty still back then you
had the Maldus which was the fifty cow, and all
these weapons would be going off at the same time,
and these streaks of fire, not just the tracers going
down the rain, but you see the muzzle flashes, and
from a forensic standpoint, you understand the amount of heat
that is generated with that. So if you fire a
(33:38):
weapon and strike somebody with it, there is a bit
of searing that goes along with that. If the victim
is within range of that, so I don't know if
he perhaps smell this as he's pulling the trigger and
(34:00):
he's ending her life. There is interested One of the
reasons I've made mention of the M sixteen is that
the only caliber weapon that is really mentioned in this
story is five point five to six. Now five point
five to six is millimeter. That's actually the same round
that it's a NATO round. It's the round that most
(34:23):
of our weapons were platformed in. So the civilian version
of that is point two two three caliber, which that's
an Imperial measurement. So caliber is imperial five point five
to six, which is roughly the same thing is in millimeters,
So he's talking about five point five six. And Eric
(34:48):
also mentions the fact that are asked or ask a
question I can't remember, but he talks about the shredding,
the shredding flesh with this around what would a five
point five six do?
Speaker 2 (35:03):
They were? He actually they were just so y'all know
this this case from the moment her body was found
until now, it has been the fastest time from a
from an actual murder to a trial I've ever seen. Joe.
(35:24):
This took place in February of this year of this year.
We are now only in November. We're doing this show
in twenty twenty five to hear this three years from now.
But we're talking months here. And at trial they were
sharing text messages because the prosecution wants to show, hey man,
(35:46):
this isn't something that just started as a granny slapped her,
you know, her granddaughter and escalated into a fight that
led to her death, and it was, oh my gosh,
what did we do? This was planned out for a
long time, for at least several weeks. Text messages that
they showed in court included exchanges between the teenage couple
(36:07):
discussing kidnapping and killing Tammy. Okay, kidnapping, not just murder Joe,
but they planned to kidnap and kill her and rob
her of all of her money and firearms, and they
also had plans to pretend that Tammy, the victim, was
(36:31):
abusing both of them. Prosecution pointed out a very specific
message Joseph Scott Morgan in an attempt to prove that
the murder was premeditated. The two teens wrote that they
had ammunition that would quote shred through skin and that
they planned to kill her at four. They also wrote,
(36:54):
we ride at dawn, meaning they planned to kill her
at four in the morning and as the sun's coming
up there on down the road. That was their plan.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Well, I got to tell you, I love Ron White,
the comedian, always have, always will, and you know one
if he's from Texas, and he had a famous quote.
You know, you're talking about the amount of time and
of course he was talking about capital punishment when he
said this said, come to Texas and we've got an
express lane. And so you know, I was shocked too
(37:28):
when I read this. I was thinking, Wow, this is
this is pure. It's either Texas or Florida, one of
the two. Because the fact that this thing has been
adjudicated so quickly, it almost makes your head spend when
you look at other cases where you know that we
would cover. There's some cases out there that we that
you and I have wanted to cover, but they have
(37:49):
yet to be adjudicated, and they've been sitting on the
books for three years, you know, and they have true
forensic value, you know that we would like to explore.
But those cases are out there and it just moves
at such a you know, such a slow pace. But
this thing, oh my lord, Yeah, they had all of
the electronic data. And then not to mention, these two
(38:11):
actually gave gave the drug dealer, this fellow, this thirty
how old is he, David? He said thirty thirty seven
years old, gave him two of the weapons that they stole,
one of which was the weapon used in the commission
of a homicide. Yep, and he's been He was subsequently
(38:34):
charged and convicted as well. And that was, you know,
for hindering an investigation, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
Well, just to give you an idea of how people think. Okay,
they got to the point where we ride at dawn. Okay,
this romantic kind of thing they were doing. But when
they got to planning their getaway, they didn't really have
it planned. And so while they did kill and they
didn't have a real way of going wherever they needed
to go. So they contacted they contacted a number of
(39:03):
people asking and you get us to Laredo, we want
to go into Mexico. You know, we need to get
out of town.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Now.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
When you're telling people, hey, her grandma just died and
we need to get out of town, you're telling them
right off the bat, you know something, and most people
are going to say I'm not helping. Sorry, that could
be trouble for me. The only person who's going into
that is a drug dealer. Because well, that's how much
money you got. I got a thousand dollars cash and
a couple of guns. Okay, hop in. And that's what
(39:29):
they did. And when they when they stopped the drug dealer.
Because by the way, if you think for a minute,
your drug dealer is your buddy and your friend, he's not.
And when he gets pulled over and they find they're
going to find drugs on him because while he's a
drug dealer, they're going to find baggies on him. Because
while he's a drug dealer, they're going to find a
(39:51):
digital scale on him. Why because he's a drug dealer.
And when they're sitting there going hey, Billy, Bob, why
we have all this? Well, I just gave these two
kids that I think kill her grandma right to Laredo.
Let me tell you, here's a map of where I
dropped them off. You know, that's how this all goes down, Joe.
And that's what they did. They actually they use social
media kill them really needed a place to stay. Before
(40:13):
anybody knew Grandma was dead. They're asking friends on social media,
not people they knew. Friends on social media, Hey got
a place we can crash. Why can't you state your
grandma's Oh, I don't know. This is just ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Yeah, it is absolutely ridiculous that you would go to
these great links. And we're talking about planning that appears
to have taken place over over the course of at
least over a month, Dave, where they've been contemplating this.
They had to figure out a way to get their
hands on all these valuables if they were going to
try to, you know, go see the countryside after they
(40:49):
ended grandma's life and to be able to sustain themselves.
But how do you get to that point and you
haven't planned planned a man or in which to get away,
you know, go to the bus station, go the train station,
do anything that you need to do to get out,
and then walk across the border. I don't know, why
(41:10):
is it that you're you know, you're going to leave
this kind of a footprint behind and let everybody in
the world know this eighteen year old is actually bragging
about this. He's talking about this, and you use the
term just a few months ago this kind of romanticized
vision that he had. Well, now you know, his romanticized
(41:30):
vision is going to take place, you know, from within
the walls of Texas State Penitentiary. I don't know if
he's in Huntsville, but that's probably where he will wind
up if he's not there yet, And it's going to
be a long, hard road for him, you know, moving forward.
It really didn't think this out, you know. And also,
if he had a problem with meth, he's not going
(41:51):
to have a problem anymore because I know that you
can get drugs in prison. Myth might be more and
the more difficult drugs to get, maybe he can get
his hands on it. But his life has just become
precipitously more difficult along the way. But the one thing
I know is that a grandmother who may have had problems,
(42:14):
I don't know if she did or not, I know
that she did not deserve to wind up naked on
the floor with a five point five to six millimeter
defect in her head. She's gone any benevolence that she
might have afforded anyone else in her life, that opportunity
is now gone, and all that is left in the
(42:37):
wake is horror. Selfishness, and hell, I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is Bodybacks.
Body bats, but Joseph's gotten more. There are not too
many things in this old world that I can hold
forth on as an expert. But there is one area
that I'm very proud of, and it has absolutely nothing,
and I mean nothing to do with forensics. You know
(00:25):
what it is. It's being a grandparent. As a matter
of fact, I think that for me at least, it's
been one of those journeys that has been quite easy
and quite pleasurable to become an expert at There's nothing,
I don't think in this old world, except for maybe
(00:46):
my wife, that brings them more joy than being around
the grand babies. I love it. And you know the
problem with loving being around your grand babies is that
you always want to seem benevolent. You don't want to
be the one that is stern any longer those days
are passed for you. I love when my grandkids climb
(01:10):
up on my rat lap, and I love it when
they say can we go to the donut shop? Say,
of course, not only can we go, we can go
tomorrow as well. As long as you're here, will go
every morning, and darling, you can get anything you want.
That's the benefit or one of the benefits of being
a grandparent, but sometimes sometimes families are an absolute train wreck.
(01:36):
There's no denying that, and the grandparent many times has
to step in and no matter what their life was
like before with their kids, they have to take on
the mantle of once again being a parent, and many
(01:56):
times that ends with a brutal lesson. Now we're going
to talk about one such case today about a granddaughter
who received assistance from her grandmother along with a granddaughter's boyfriend,
and it ended in the death of a benevolent lady.
(02:23):
Coming to you from the beautiful campus of Jacksonville State University.
I'm Josephcott Morgan and this is Bodybacks. I loved hanging
out at my grandma's house. Dave couldn't help it, love it.
And it's because my mother was very hard work and
she worked outside of the home, and so when I
(02:44):
was little, I would be with my grandmother and of
course anything I wanted, including trips to TG and why
you remember too, Yeah, I do, wow, walking up and
down La Toya. It was just part of it. I
went to the grocery every day with her.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
You know, so you have the tip cool you had
the grandma, Grandpa thing going on when you were little,
so that there was a difference between mom and dad
and grandma and grandpa. I grew up the same way.
But you know what, my grandpa and I think about
this now, especially when I'm with my oldest grandson, Braylan,
(03:19):
because I can do things my grandfather couldn't do, but
he still looks at me like I'm an old guy,
and I don't feel like an old guy. Okay, but
today we're actually going to talk about the nightmare scenario
of grandma stepping in, as you mentioned, and becoming the
primary caregiver to a now seventeen year old daughter granddaughter.
(03:41):
This is a granddaughter now, not a daughter. Now. Grandma
is sixty one years old and she has been raising
her grandchild for her life. They live in the same
house and everything else. But as many teenagers want to do,
they can fall off to the side and go a
little wacky with the wrong We always loved to blame
(04:02):
the wrong crowd. I oftentimes wondered if I was the
ringleader of that crowd, if I was the one that
do not let her around him, you know that kind
of thing. But anyway, that is the scenario that we're
dealing with grandma raises grandchild. And I will tell you this,
my daughter Hannah, when she had Braylin, having him very young,
(04:23):
she was so hyper intense about not allowing me to
be the you know, to step in and take the
place of her. You know, she wanted to make sure
it my job be the mom, it's your dad, be
the grandpa, You be the grandpa. You know she didn't.
(04:43):
He was two and a half three years old before
she even let him go to the grocery store with me. Actually,
our first trip was a home depot where he actually
went with me by himself to home depot. And I'm
not kidding. That's how protective she was of her motherhood
and her responsibility. Se is like, that's a rare occurrence
nowadays when some of our young people have children, they
(05:05):
tend to drop said child off on granny and papa.
And granny and Papa don't get experience what you and
I get to experience being granny or papa. You know,
that is a wonderful thing to be is you can't
beat it, man, You.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Can know you can't. I can. I can say that
I can truly die die fulfilled man in that in
that sense. It's just you know, uh, it's when we
choose to have these kids, and which is more often
than not. Uh, and you have that opportunity, but you
know when you're forced back into a role that at
(05:41):
some point in tom you know, you thought, well those
days are over with for me. And listen, you know,
life happens. You never know, you know what's waiting for
you around any one corner. You have to have somebody
that's going to step in as a surrogate. And listen,
I think that many times it's probably better for the
kids to be with a grandparent as opposed to being
(06:04):
pushed off on the state and they be fostered and
all those sort of things. And not that there's anything
wrong with foster parents, God bless them what they do. However, Listen,
it wasn't that many generations ago that the grandparents still
lived in the house with their children as they grew older,
and the grandkids would grow up around them. It's just
many times that the parents are missing. Now that element
(06:26):
is missing, and it's very sad and you never know
what kind of damage is going to be done. And
we've had a lot of stories like this day where
we've had grandchildren that have turned on grandparents, and they
are the grandchildren are afflicted with something, you know, who knows.
You know, there's a laundry list of things they can
(06:48):
be afflicted with. But unfortunately, many times these afflictions wind
up with a grandparent paying the ultimate price, which is
their life. And that's the tragedy of all of this
is that you live long in the life, you try
to be a decent person, you know, along the way,
you try to be bud benevolent right, and many times
that dog will bite your hand and rip it off.
(07:11):
And I think that that's probably what has in fact
happened with Tammy King here, who is the subject of
our story today.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Well, you know, in this scenario where Tammy King is
the victim, sixty one year old grandma who raises her granddaughter,
Tara King, in this story, there is no mention of
Tara King's biological mother and father. Did I spend a
little bit of time trying to find out, and I thought,
that's not the subject I blame. I blame a lot
(07:40):
of people for a lot of problems. Mom and dad
are usually the cause of most of them. And when
you relegate responsibility of raising your child to somebody else,
it's on you. So Karay King is the granddaughter. But
Kara King is seventeen years old. Joe, at seventeen, you're
old enough to know what's going on in your world
and what's going on around you, and you're old enough
(08:01):
to have a boyfriend, as Tara did. Her boyfriend is
a guy named Uriah Urick. You're Yah Urick. He's eighteen,
he's a year older than she is. And Tara King
is having problems with her grandma because Tammy King wants
Tara to go to school and finish school and Tara
(08:22):
just doesn't want to go doesn't want to go to school.
And by the way, she wants Uriah to be able
to spend the night at the house. He's over there
a lot. She wants him to spend the night, and
Grandma is saying, no, you need to go to school.
And he's too loud. Nor Tammy's boyfriend. She's not married,
(08:43):
she's dating. And Tammy's boyfriend said that the reason she
didn't particularly care for Uriah is he was too loud.
Now I don't know exactly what that means, because I'm
the loud person, so I don't know what it's you know,
loud means because I know I am. I guess if
it's worse than me, bless your heart. But that was
(09:05):
why Tammy didn't particularly care for your riot. I kind
of think it might have been related to consumption of
alcohol and drugs, probably drugs.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah, and there there's hints, there's hints of this, uh
throughout you know, throughout this story. Uh that there is
not just and we're not talking about somebody sitting around
smoking weed, all right, Uh, We're we're talking pretty heavy
duty serious drugs as a matter of fact. Uh, the
drug dealer for this couple, this young couple comes into
(09:39):
play in a story in a significant way. And uh,
you know when when whenever I hear drug dealer, you know,
I'm thinking, well, yeah, that's that's the one on one
contact that they have, say, for instance, in this couple,
how many other people are potentially involved or in this
individual's grasp or or reach. And this individual is older
(10:02):
than them, the subjects I think here is almost Yeah, yeah,
he's up in his thirties, if I'm not mistaken, And
what kind of influence can he have, you know, because
he's actually you know, I guess he's the cool guy
in this story. And of course grandma is she wants
peace in her house. I want peace in my house.
(10:22):
I know that you want peace in your house. And
if you've got some stranger that, by the way, your
granddaughter is begging that he be allowed to come into
her home and spend the night, you know what's the
story with that? You know, why would you put that
on your grandma to make that decision. She has her
(10:43):
own home that she's earned. At this point in time
in her Life's sixty one years old there in Galveston,
Galson County, Texas. You know, why should she allow this
individual to have access not just to her home but
also to her granddaughter because her granddaughter is still not
of age. She's seventeen years old. So that's almost can
(11:06):
you imagine, Dave, that's almost like insult to injury. Not
only do I want to be involved in your granddaughter's life,
I want to be involved in her life in your
home under your roof, and I'm not going to respect you.
I'm going to be loud, I'm going to do whatever
in the hell it is that I want to do.
I wonder why it was that they chose to be
(11:28):
at Tammy's home as opposed to this kid's home. Why
didn't they go to his house? Why was it? You
know what was so great about Tammy's house? Did his
parents or a parent, did they not allow him to
do things at his home that he thought that he
could get away with it? Tammy And I got to
tell you, Dave, this winds up. This winds up I
(11:49):
think the crux of the stories. It winds up in
uber violence.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Here you've mentioned the key players. We have sixty one
year old Tammy King, she's the victim. We have our
two suspects, Terry King, seventeen year old granddaughter and her boyfriend,
eighteen year old you're Riyah Urick. And then we have
thirty six year old Travis Hodge, who is the known
drug dealer. Okay, he's the guy that everybody knows. You
(12:16):
need meth, that's where you go guns. That's the guy.
He's your connection. So those are our players, and what
we do start with a welfare check. Neighbors hadn't seen
Tammy King for a couple of days, and they were
used to seeing King around and they didn't see her. So, hey,
you know, in a neighborhood people know what's going on
(12:39):
pretty much. I mean, not the ins and outs of
everybody's world. But you know, when you're used to seeing
somebody and all of a sudden you don't see them
and you don't see other activity, it does spring up that, hey,
maybe we should do something here. And so you got
two choices. You can go knock on the door, intrude
or Colin do welfair check, would you? And that way
(13:02):
police show up. We're just checking to make sure. Okay,
that's all we're doing is king.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
You know.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
A friend was concerned and that's what they did. But
when police got there, Joseph Scott Morgan, things were not good.
This welfare check turned out in the worst way possible.
They walk in the door and it's been ransacked. The
house is empty, there's nobody else in there. They can't
nobody's answering the Hey, you know, Sheriff's department, make yourself known.
(13:33):
Nobody's making themselves known, Joe, and they look around and
the place. You know, there's a difference between a mess
and a ransacked home. For those of us who have
been victim of a home robbery, the ransacking is different
than a mess. I had this twice in my life.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
And you know, that's one of the things that we
have to contend with the scenes and people don't think
about that. There are some people that live their lives
in a state of dishevel, if you will, where you've
got crap, you know, laying all over the place. Clothes
aren't put away, they're not folded, the bed is never made,
it's in disarray. You might have clothing piled up on
(14:12):
a dress or somewhere, there's dirty dishes in the sink.
And for an investigator, one of the difficult things that
you have to do when you go into a dwelling
like this is try to try to understand where, you know,
what is you know normal, what's abnormal? You know, like,
(14:33):
is this is this the standard way in which they
conduct themselves day to day? You know? You know, do
they leave piles of dirty clothes around? Because you know,
if if you're talking about something being ransacked, most of
the time with a an individual that goes into a
home and they begin to you know, and I've seen them,
(14:55):
I've seen where this happens, where they'll literally destroy furniture.
I've seen draw that have been pulled off, pulled out
and tossed across the room. And you know, Dave, I
found in a couple of these cases where they're trying
to mask something. I found that many times the ransacking
goes over the top in order to paint this picture,
(15:18):
you know, to kind of sell it, you know what.
I wow, like, Yeah, Well, they'll they'll break items up
that probably you know, wouldn't there would be if you're
trying to imitate, say a burglary gone wrong, why would
you break furniture? You know it because it's not necessarily
like why would you break a coffee table? We'll put
(15:39):
it to that way, or an end table, or why
would you I've walked into one house one time where
a toilet had been torn away from the floor. Yeah,
and it's so over the top that one or two
things is going on. Either they're trying to mask what
they're doing, or this person was psychotic that went in
(15:59):
there and just began to you know, to try to
destroy the environment. But I think that a true pro right,
somebody that's a true professional thief, is not going to
do that. They're not going to go in if they're
going to ransack something and pull out drawers, they're only
going to do those things that are necessary for them
(16:20):
to get what they need. You know, so you couple
that with say, an unkempt environment, and you're a stranger
to this if you're an investigator, and that's a major
line that you have to draw to try to to
try to understand what is it that is going to
separate filth from pure evil? Now, you know, Dave, they're
(17:00):
My understanding is that if you were going to in
fact rob someone, tam M King would probably be at
the top of your list, because the investigation has revealed
(17:21):
that this is not some person that didn't have means.
She had a bounty of items inside of her house,
including Now get this, this is kind of interesting, a
sixty one year old woman, she's got rare weapons. That
was one of the things that popped up in the descriptor.
(17:43):
So it's one thing if you've got, you know, your
Grandpappy's old squirrel gun. But when they start talking about
rare weapons, you know, what exactly does that mean? Well,
they're not very clear about it, but rare weapons can
produce one thing other than violence, That can produce money.
(18:03):
Because if you have a weapon that you can sell
to somebody that might have an interest in it, and
no legitimate weapons collector is going to buy a weapon
from somebody that's a known drug dealer, and certainly not
from a teenager, because you know that you don't move around.
(18:24):
I've been around, I've been in the atmosphere with people
that do, in fact collect rare weapons. These are not
individuals that are kind of fly by night. They're very
thoughtful about what they do. They see this as an
investment and you're going to have to provide the necessary paperwork.
You're going to have to authenticate, and you're going to
have to go to the provenance of the weapon and
(18:47):
or demonstrate. You know, my lord, not only do you
have one, two, three, you've got five weapons here or
whatever the number it is. How did you come across these?
Because I've moved in these circles. I've never seen you before.
I've never seen you, And so you have somebody that
shows up with this and it's not just weapons day.
From what I understand, there was a considerable amount of
(19:07):
cash found at the house as well, or there was
she had been known to have a considerable amount of cash.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
And you know that was the part that you're I'm
so glad you pointed that out, because you know, they
they can't kind of cagy in reporting on some of this.
Whenever the whenever reporting on an incident talks about safe
plural guns, safes, that indicates to me that we're past
and you've got a senior citizen. Well, sixty one is
(19:34):
not a senior citizen, but you've got a sixty one
year old woman head of the household here. It's not
like we have locked up our hunting guns, you know,
or our civil civil war re enactment stuff. This is
they're guns that are kept for a reason. So when
they use the plural of safe, that tells me that
(19:54):
these mean something and probably are valuable. We know there's
cash and jewelry that is in this house that it's
also being kept in safes, even referred to it as
a lock box, and things like that that are in
the home.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
There was one one thing here that I wanted to
point out. We've talked about that there's evidence that the
house has been ransacked. Another term I like to use
that doesn't get used enough is a term of rifling.
We hear about rifling as it goes to as it
goes to forensics, we talk about ballistics and we talk
(20:32):
about rifling and all that, but I love the term
of rifling. That's an old term, you know, where people
are going through papers and all that sort of stuff,
and they're rifling through it, and they'll throw things about,
and then you have ransacking, which I always think means
bigger pieces, and they're destroying them and breaking them apart.
I love language, man, as you can tell, I'm not
real good at it, but I love language. I love
(20:53):
listening to people that know what they're talking about when
they use good language. And I just screwed that comment up,
So there you go. You can pillary me over that.
But one thing that we don't need to get away
from here, Dave, is that Tammy when she is found
in her home, and this is a big, big piece here.
(21:17):
Tammy is found nude and she lives with her seventeen
year old granddaughter, and her seventeen year old granddaughter has
allowed an eighteen year old man eighteen he goes sign
up for the draft, right, babah, yeah, buddy, eighteen, he's
(21:42):
allowed to be in this house. Why's sixty one year
old grandma going to be naked? All right? And granted
she's covered with the sheet that's another part to this.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
I was going to ask you for fact that she
is something interesting.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah, the fact that she's unclothed underneath that sheet is significant.
I've often thought two things relatively anytime, particularly females, anytime
I'd go on a scene and they're absent clothing, I
think they're being sexualized in some way. Okay, I think
(22:16):
that kind of goes about saying it. You you can
catch people unaware and they're not going to have clothes on.
But why else would she not have her garments on? Okay?
It can be either through sexualization or I think that
there is a bit of humiliation going on. You know.
(22:38):
It's kind of like the you know, the dream that
people have where they wake up there in front of
a big crowd and are there in the midst of
a dream rather than their teaching, you know, like you
know you I've had that dream before actually, where I
was completely laid bare, you know, before a crowd of
people and I'm teaching. I'm naked, and other other than
(23:00):
people you know in my dream throwing up at the
view of me naked and their eyes beginning to bleed.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
It was.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
It's a scary proposition. You know, for for someone to
be in that in that in that position. So I'm wondering,
was she compelled think about this? Was she compelled to
take her clothing off? Was it used as a point
of leverage with this woman, you know, so that she
(23:29):
can be humiliated, debased, whatever the case might be. I
don't know if. I mean, for all, I know she sleeps,
she sleeps nude, and she happened to be awakened, you
know that. I guess that that could happen, but it
just there's something about the fact that she's new. And
then and then of course this goes to the old
(23:50):
uh you know that that that one bit of investigative
information we always look at, no pun intended coming up,
that the body is covered so that they cannot look
at them. And you know that that goes to things
like face covering, you know where many times because if
(24:11):
the person has value, if the person hang on, if
the person does not have value to you, okay, where
are you going to take the trouble? Cover the body?
They mean nothing to you. They're nothing but a means
to an end. And so you've got her lying there
on the floor completely nude. I think that that's certainly
something I know from me in practice. If I walked
(24:33):
into a house and I had someone who was covered
with a sheet, and I look around at the cops
that are there, the EMTs that are there, the firefighters
say hey, did you get it? Did you get a
sheet off your truck and cover the body? And they
say no, we didn't. Did the finder that came into
the house. Maybe in another case did they feel horrible
(24:54):
about this person being naked and they wouldn't grab a
sheet because that does happen. There's people great blankets out
of cars at car accidents, and you've got people laying
there and they don't have to be new, they'll cover
the body just out of respect. But in a home,
you've got sixty one year old female that is lying
on the floor without a stitch of clothes on her,
(25:14):
and someone takes a sheet and covers the body. So,
you know, with the face covering most of the time
face covering, and also the rest of the body, you
feel shame. You feel shame for what maybe you've done.
You're familiar with the individual, they say that specific face covering,
because you know not all people you know close their
(25:36):
eyes and death. Matter of fact, you know, Dave, I've
had more the deaths that I've worked, I've had more
people with their eyes open than closed over the years,
and some cases would give me, I don't know what
they call it, the willies, and I would there are
those cases and I would literally take my gloved hand
and close the eyes because I didn't want them their
(25:57):
eyes staring back at me. And I'm a total stranger.
How much more so if you're related to him, Dave.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Well, you know this case because a welfare check leads
to finding a sixty one year old woman nude in
her own bedroom on the floor with a gunshot wound
to the head. The homes ransacked, and the granddaughter who
lives in the home with her is gone. Her boyfriend
is also gone. So it was pretty soon that based
(26:26):
on physical evidence of what they had and by talking
to others involved, they had persons of interest within the
first twenty four hours. It's the grand the granddaughter and
her boyfriend. They already had that going on. So February
fifth they find the body. By February sixth, they're looking
for Tara and her boyfriend Urick. Right, So they talked
(26:47):
to and this is the interesting part of all this
because investigations work like you have the physical evidence there
on the scene, then you have interviews with relatives and
people friends, close to the perpetrator or the victims, all
of them. You know, you want to find out what's
(27:08):
going on. You've got a dead person. Was this person evil?
Was she the type of person who terrorized her granddaughter?
And you know they're trying to find out what really happened.
And what they find out is that, well, apparently the
eighteen year old boyfriend here, he uses methamphetamine on a
regular basis and has for a while. According to his stepfather,
(27:28):
he's violent, violent tendencies. And when the police will do
you think do you think he could kill? Oh? Absolutely
So when somebody close to he says, oh yeah, Dave
could kill without a doubt. Yeah he could have done this,
that immediately says, Okay, what else do we know? Well,
we do know that Tammy King, according to Euriyah Yurik's mother,
(27:50):
Kara King, hated Tammy. She hated the woman who raised her,
and that hate grew when Tammy King not allow your
Riyah Uric to spend the night. That was the breaking
point for Tara. Apparently, now I'm going to tell you
that in the mind of a teenager, some things can
(28:12):
be that breaking point. But I got a feeling, Joe,
there was a lot going on in that relationship with
drug sex, rock and roll. You know, you've got this
Bonnie and Clyde mentality. So it appears to me just
from the outside looking in, I'm thinking about the homeless
ransacked because they were trying to make it look like
a robbery, and because they went over the top, as
you mentioned that probably was also a tip to police,
(28:33):
going yeah, this isn't they knew right where to go
for the cash. You know, somebody knew where that lock
box with cash was. That had to been somebody inside.
And so we've got that going on, you know, right
off the right out of the gate.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Well here's the other thing too, I just having to
think about this just a second ago. I'm really wondering
going back to her unclosed status. Let's take this piece
by piece. We think about, Okay, Well, who would have
(29:09):
knowledge that she would have a large amount of cash coins,
which I think she did, oh and exotic weapons, Well,
somebody that's in her intimate circle. Well, I can't imagine
in any universe where you would give over the codes
(29:29):
to multiple because we're not talking about one safe, we're
talking about multiple saves and they're all open. Could that
be a point of leverage for taking her clothes off
and humiliating her. Just think about that just for a second.
You know, you take you know, strip down, strip down,
and you're you're laid naked, you know, you're bare before
(29:50):
the world at this point in time. We want the codes.
We want the codes. And if you're if you're so
drug addled in your mind, if you've got this kind
of demon of myth that's you know, kind of raging
through your veins in your brain, you'll say and do anything,
but this I do know. What did happen was that
(30:15):
not only was Tammy robbed of her life, and not
only were her possessions taken, but each one of those
possessions had a pathway indicated straight to the killer. I
(30:43):
can't get the smell of burning flesh out of my nose.
That is what the boyfriend, this eighteen year old Rick
had actually common and on he told someone that he
couldn't get the smell of burning flesh. I had to think.
(31:06):
I had to think about this because you know, I've
kind of been following this case. I've got friends that
were in the media that were at the courthouse that
were covering it, and I had to think back, was
her body burned? Well, I don't think the body was burned.
(31:28):
The only thing I can think of is that as
the trigger on a weapon is actuated and you're in
a closed space, you've got that propellant some people refer
to as gunpowder, but the propellant burning off and you'll
have this acrid odor that will arise in the air.
(31:51):
And maybe that's being associated by this individual with burning flesh.
I don't know, but that smell would leandre in the
air and it was interpreted I think as flesh being
on fire. Now what we do have and you've hold
you've heard, Dave, I'm sure the term powder burns. That's
(32:15):
a very confusing term for many people. There is one
of the things that was really cool about, you know,
being being in the military when I was very young.
If you went out to the firing range, and I
guess they still do this, I don't know, but if
you go to the firing range.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
You.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
The armory will literally give you x amount of live
ammunition to go to the firing range to qualify with
and generally you're out there all day long, and at
night they do something called the mad Minute, and it
was one of the coolest things I've ever seen in
my life. I saw it on multiple occasions, and it's
where everybody's lined up on the firing line and you've
(32:56):
got people out there with back in my day, the
original M sixteen's shoulder fired rifle, and they're all lying
prone on their belly and they're firing and you have
to burn up all the ammunition. You can't take it
back with you, and so you would see at night,
you'd see these these muzzles, you know, blowing out flame
(33:17):
out of the end of them. We had back in
my day they had M sixty still back then you
had the Maldus which was the fifty cow, and all
these weapons would be going off at the same time,
and these streaks of fire, not just the tracers going
down the rain, but you see the muzzle flashes, and
from a forensic standpoint, you understand the amount of heat
that is generated with that. So if you fire a
(33:38):
weapon and strike somebody with it, there is a bit
of searing that goes along with that. If the victim
is within range of that, so I don't know if
he perhaps smell this as he's pulling the trigger and
(34:00):
he's ending her life. There is interested One of the
reasons I've made mention of the M sixteen is that
the only caliber weapon that is really mentioned in this
story is five point five to six. Now five point
five to six is millimeter. That's actually the same round
that it's a NATO round. It's the round that most
(34:23):
of our weapons were platformed in. So the civilian version
of that is point two two three caliber, which that's
an Imperial measurement. So caliber is imperial five point five
to six, which is roughly the same thing is in millimeters,
So he's talking about five point five six. And Eric
(34:48):
also mentions the fact that are asked or ask a
question I can't remember, but he talks about the shredding,
the shredding flesh with this around what would a five
point five six do?
Speaker 2 (35:03):
They were? He actually they were just so y'all know
this this case from the moment her body was found
until now, it has been the fastest time from a
from an actual murder to a trial I've ever seen. Joe.
(35:24):
This took place in February of this year of this year.
We are now only in November. We're doing this show
in twenty twenty five to hear this three years from now.
But we're talking months here. And at trial they were
sharing text messages because the prosecution wants to show, hey man,
(35:46):
this isn't something that just started as a granny slapped her,
you know, her granddaughter and escalated into a fight that
led to her death, and it was, oh my gosh,
what did we do? This was planned out for a
long time, for at least several weeks. Text messages that
they showed in court included exchanges between the teenage couple
(36:07):
discussing kidnapping and killing Tammy. Okay, kidnapping, not just murder Joe,
but they planned to kidnap and kill her and rob
her of all of her money and firearms, and they
also had plans to pretend that Tammy, the victim, was
(36:31):
abusing both of them. Prosecution pointed out a very specific
message Joseph Scott Morgan in an attempt to prove that
the murder was premeditated. The two teens wrote that they
had ammunition that would quote shred through skin and that
they planned to kill her at four. They also wrote,
(36:54):
we ride at dawn, meaning they planned to kill her
at four in the morning and as the sun's coming
up there on down the road. That was their plan.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Well, I got to tell you, I love Ron White,
the comedian, always have, always will, and you know one
if he's from Texas, and he had a famous quote.
You know, you're talking about the amount of time and
of course he was talking about capital punishment when he
said this said, come to Texas and we've got an
express lane. And so you know, I was shocked too
(37:28):
when I read this. I was thinking, Wow, this is
this is pure. It's either Texas or Florida, one of
the two. Because the fact that this thing has been
adjudicated so quickly, it almost makes your head spend when
you look at other cases where you know that we
would cover. There's some cases out there that we that
you and I have wanted to cover, but they have
(37:49):
yet to be adjudicated, and they've been sitting on the
books for three years, you know, and they have true
forensic value, you know that we would like to explore.
But those cases are out there and it just moves
at such a you know, such a slow pace. But
this thing, oh my lord, Yeah, they had all of
the electronic data. And then not to mention, these two
(38:11):
actually gave gave the drug dealer, this fellow, this thirty
how old is he, David? He said thirty thirty seven
years old, gave him two of the weapons that they stole,
one of which was the weapon used in the commission
of a homicide. Yep, and he's been He was subsequently
(38:34):
charged and convicted as well. And that was, you know,
for hindering an investigation, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
Well, just to give you an idea of how people think. Okay,
they got to the point where we ride at dawn. Okay,
this romantic kind of thing they were doing. But when
they got to planning their getaway, they didn't really have
it planned. And so while they did kill and they
didn't have a real way of going wherever they needed
to go. So they contacted they contacted a number of
(39:03):
people asking and you get us to Laredo, we want
to go into Mexico. You know, we need to get
out of town.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Now.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
When you're telling people, hey, her grandma just died and
we need to get out of town, you're telling them
right off the bat, you know something, and most people
are going to say I'm not helping. Sorry, that could
be trouble for me. The only person who's going into
that is a drug dealer. Because well, that's how much
money you got. I got a thousand dollars cash and
a couple of guns. Okay, hop in. And that's what
(39:29):
they did. And when they when they stopped the drug dealer.
Because by the way, if you think for a minute,
your drug dealer is your buddy and your friend, he's not.
And when he gets pulled over and they find they're
going to find drugs on him because while he's a
drug dealer, they're going to find baggies on him. Because
while he's a drug dealer, they're going to find a
(39:51):
digital scale on him. Why because he's a drug dealer.
And when they're sitting there going hey, Billy, Bob, why
we have all this? Well, I just gave these two
kids that I think kill her grandma right to Laredo.
Let me tell you, here's a map of where I
dropped them off. You know, that's how this all goes down, Joe.
And that's what they did. They actually they use social
media kill them really needed a place to stay. Before
(40:13):
anybody knew Grandma was dead. They're asking friends on social media,
not people they knew. Friends on social media, Hey got
a place we can crash. Why can't you state your
grandma's Oh, I don't know. This is just ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Yeah, it is absolutely ridiculous that you would go to
these great links. And we're talking about planning that appears
to have taken place over over the course of at
least over a month, Dave, where they've been contemplating this.
They had to figure out a way to get their
hands on all these valuables if they were going to
try to, you know, go see the countryside after they
(40:49):
ended grandma's life and to be able to sustain themselves.
But how do you get to that point and you
haven't planned planned a man or in which to get away,
you know, go to the bus station, go the train station,
do anything that you need to do to get out,
and then walk across the border. I don't know, why
(41:10):
is it that you're you know, you're going to leave
this kind of a footprint behind and let everybody in
the world know this eighteen year old is actually bragging
about this. He's talking about this, and you use the
term just a few months ago this kind of romanticized
vision that he had. Well, now you know, his romanticized
(41:30):
vision is going to take place, you know, from within
the walls of Texas State Penitentiary. I don't know if
he's in Huntsville, but that's probably where he will wind
up if he's not there yet, And it's going to
be a long, hard road for him, you know, moving forward.
It really didn't think this out, you know. And also,
if he had a problem with meth, he's not going
(41:51):
to have a problem anymore because I know that you
can get drugs in prison. Myth might be more and
the more difficult drugs to get, maybe he can get
his hands on it. But his life has just become
precipitously more difficult along the way. But the one thing
I know is that a grandmother who may have had problems,
(42:14):
I don't know if she did or not, I know
that she did not deserve to wind up naked on
the floor with a five point five to six millimeter
defect in her head. She's gone any benevolence that she
might have afforded anyone else in her life, that opportunity
is now gone, and all that is left in the
(42:37):
wake is horror. Selfishness, and hell, I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is Bodybacks.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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