Health
The Fall (LeeAnn Fletcher)
In this episode of 'The Fall,' host Anna Siga-Nikolasi delves into the mysterious and tragic story of Leanne Fletcher, a beloved member of her tight-knit community in North Carolina. As her ...
The Fall (LeeAnn Fletcher)
Health •
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Interactive Transcript
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He said, I don't care. I'm not a resident of everybody. I'm not doing this. I'm not doing that.
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If the Pope himself came down, came here and told me to arrest him, I wouldn't.
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I was got wine burger, investigate of journalists and former deputy sheriff.
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I'm Anna Siga-Nikolasi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of investigation discoveries to conviction.
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And this is an out of me of murder.
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Life-threatening danger does not always come with warning signs, but when it strikes, as a result of an accident or the ill will of a bad actor,
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we hope the people closest to us will not hesitate to come to our aid.
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But there are times when the very folks we expect to show up don't.
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Maybe clues were there that weren't recognized or perhaps ignored.
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And in those moments we realize that help isn't always as certain as we thought.
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Today's story is about a suspicious death and the uncertainty about who, if anyone, is to blame.
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But it is also about the strength and determination of a family and a community who refused to give up on the fight for justice.
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And the fight to hold responsible anyone who stood in the way of the truth.
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My name is Trishika Hoon and I grew up in a little town called Kilkeny North Carolina.
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It's about an hour outside of where we're actually currently live now.
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Trishika Hoon was born and raised in the outer banks of North Carolina, which is probably best known for its wide, pristine beaches, laid back lifestyle.
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And there's a lot of people who are out in large numbers of seasonal tourists.
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You have the beaches and people are running around barefoot without shirts on.
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Everybody's on beach time. Here it's not like a city life.
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It's like this is the place that you come to get away from that life.
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You know, you can walk the beach as supposed to be safe.
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And you just feel like you can leave your doors unlocked, your cars unlocked.
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You don't have to worry about the crime. It's very low crime here.
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It's also a tight-knit community of locals, many of whom like Trish's large family,
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have been here for generations, working as teachers, nurses, contractors and bartenders,
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serving the throngs of thirsty tourists that descend on the outer banks every summer for a taste of fun and sun.
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People go to the same churches. They go to the same schools.
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They play to the ball games and the kids cheer together. They have dance together.
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Even though there's like over 250,000 people here at a given point in the summer,
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everybody still knows everybody.
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Trish's cousin, Leanne Fletcher, grew up not too far away in Kitty Hawk.
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And from the time they were kids playing at their grandmother's house to their teenage years running around the beach,
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Leanne and Trish were thickest thieves.
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Leanne was born in 81. I was born in 77.
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So we were four years apart.
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But as we got older, like in high school and like right directly out of high school,
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it was more of like a bond, like a sisterly bond.
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We did a lot more things together, had a lot of the same friend group.
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And so we were always with each other, always.
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Growing up, Leanne worked at her grandparents' service station.
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And between them, she and Trish felt like they knew just about everyone and everything
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that went on in the outer banks.
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To hear Trisha describe it, Leanne was just a real salt of the earth, beach person,
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fun, outgoing and most of all, full of love for her hometown,
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and the people of her community.
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She was like really outgoing.
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She definitely, you know, was one that didn't take any s***, excuse my French,
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but she would give the start off her back.
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Like she would do anything in the world for you and help you in any way possible
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She was one of those people that if you had as a friend, like she was like a sister to you,
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but the bond was like unseparable and she would do anything for you.
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If she had a fault, it was that Leanne could sometimes be over generous.
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She was someone who loved deeply and without judgment.
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She was always trying to help, like someone that maybe had like a disease of like addiction
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or someone that maybe, you know, lost their job and needed extra cash and needed to find a job.
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She would help with that.
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So it was like an all aspects.
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She was, you know, if like there was someone that didn't have a lot of money
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and their child had a birthday coming up, she would literally buy birthday presents,
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wrap them and give them anonymously.
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So she didn't want the credit for it.
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So she wasn't one to take the credit for things like that.
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That's just the type person she was.
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But as you'll hear later in today's episode, that kindness would be taken advantage of.
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But before we get there, let's get to know a bit more about Leanne.
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Leanne graduated high school and married her high school sweetheart.
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They lived in a little house over in Kitty Hogg.
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Leanne's husband Justin was a local contractor and Leanne, as we said, worked at her family service station.
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Then she baked cakes on the side for like weddings and birthday parties and things like that.
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She went hunting with Justin and fishing and Justin was her true love of her life.
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But early in their marriage, the couple suffered a terrible tragedy.
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The devastating loss of a son laid in Leanne's pregnancy.
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That really took a major toll.
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He died in her arms, basically.
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So that was really devastating for Justin and Leanne.
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After that, there was like a strain that was like a bond that was like broken.
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Something just wasn't there.
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There was like a wall between them.
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Years later, the couple would welcome another child, a daughter, but their once perfect marriage couldn't seem to get back on track.
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A fate all too common among couples who experienced the trauma of losing a child.
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I don't know. Like Justin and Leanne grew apart and it put a really bad strain on their relationship.
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Leanne and Justin eventually separated.
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But any hopes that they might reconcile were dashed when Leanne later became pregnant.
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I think that it really, really hurt Justin that she was ended up pregnant with another man's child.
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Because in his eyes, at the end of the day, at some point they would be back together.
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And I really believe Leanne felt the same way.
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Ultimately, the fighting with Justin coupled with the dispute over custody of her new son started to take its toll on the 38-year-old mom.
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It really took Leanne down like a dark road.
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Because she was very motherly. She was all about her children.
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I mean, she just was that kind of mom.
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She made sure that they had the right vegetables and fruits on their plate.
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And they ate the right food. They had the right clothes. They were dressed right for the season.
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There was always controversy. There was always halloween yelling, tug of war with their son.
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Leanne started drinking more. It was a real struggle for her.
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She just started hanging out with like, just people that she did what normally hang out with her bring into her home.
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And one of those people was a man named John Tolson who went by the nickname J.
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Their friendship started harmlessly enough over a few beers at an island bar.
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He was kind of the boys that him and his girl had broke up.
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And she kind of like, again, began the nurturing person that she is.
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And caring person that she is, you know, she started talking to him about, you know, like her problems and what she was going through.
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And conversation kind of started.
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And he was saying that he didn't have a place to live that his girlfriend had kicked him out.
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And, you know, she was like, well, you know, if you need a place to stay.
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I have a three bad dream, two bad dream house and it's in a kitty hog.
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But, you know, you're more than welcome to stay until you can find another place to stay.
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With her children now away for the summer, Leanne had the space and being the kind person she was, she invited Tolson into her home.
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And Tolson didn't hesitate to take her up on her hospitality, showing up at her front door with a duffel bag of his belongings.
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Leanne explained it to him like, you know, hey, this is just a temporary thing, right?
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But their friendship eventually turned romantic.
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Nothing more than a nice summer romance for two adults seeking a little companionship.
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But that innocent summer romance quickly hit a snag as Leanne started to realize that Jay wasn't all he was cracked up to be.
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She started realizing that he wasn't a completely honest person.
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Like, he told her that he was like the head chef of a restaurant.
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And then come to find out he was like the dishwasher there.
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And then, you know, he told her that he owned a construction company and he didn't own a construction company.
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He was actually working for another individual that owned the construction company.
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What was worse, Leanne suspected he was hiding something else too.
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Leanne had the sixth sense that he was seeing someone else.
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And so she actually put on her Facebook that she was in a relationship with John Tolson, you know, Jay Tolson.
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So when she did that, it was like a publicized it.
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Everybody could see her social media.
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So it was like if he was doing something with another girl that was not aware of Leanne, then it would all come out.
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That's when the problems really started.
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Leanne was never want to put up with the nonsense.
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So when she learned he was stepping out, she sent him a clear message.
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She was not welcome back at her home by depositing his stuff on her front porch.
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She knew what was going on and she told him she said you're going to get your stuff and you're going to get out of my house.
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That was the afternoon of July 21st, 2020.
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Leanne made a couple of posts on Facebook and then it was like silence, complete silence.
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Nobody ever heard anything else from her after that.
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Then it approximately 9.30 a.m. on the morning of July 22nd.
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A 911 call was made from inside Leanne's home, the caller, Jay Tolson.
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911, what's the address of your emergency?
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990 Kitty, what's Kitty all grown?
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What's your name?
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Jay.
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Jay told the dispatcher that he had just found Leanne undressed and unresponsive in the bathtub.
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My friend, she's laying in the tub, she won't wake up.
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I think she fell last night.
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I'm not sure there's blood coming out of her nose, but I can't get her to wake up.
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Firefighters were the first to respond and they found this scene pretty much as Jay described it.
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Leanne was unresponsive in the bathtub.
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She wasn't wearing anything and bleeding from her nose and mouth.
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She was still breathing, but barely.
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The firefighters go in first and the firefighters find her leaned up against the side of the tub.
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And she's dry, she's not wet.
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Her hair's a little damp, but she's basically completely dry.
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So they drag her out of the bathtub to get her flat on the floor to be able to start helping her with her aspirations.
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And then the paramedics get there after the firefighters, as soon as they pull her out of the tub, then the paramedics go in.
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But immediately, the paramedics realized that Leanne's injuries were much more severe than what they might have expected from just an accidental fall in the tub.
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They said that this is more than a fall.
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Like there's something not right here.
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She was very jaundice.
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Her head was extremely swollen, but there was no visible blood or trauma.
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There was like a few like bruises and like some scratches.
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But her head was the main thing.
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They just, her head was huge.
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And they were like, this is not good.
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This is not good.
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So they immediately called med flight.
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Leanne was airlifted to Santara, Norfolk General Hospital in Virginia and admitted to the ICU, where she was placed on a ventilator.
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A shunt was inserted in her skull to relieve the dangerous pressure from the swelling of her brain.
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They contacted her mother, her mother, and returned.
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And I get this call that, hey, Leanne's in the hospital.
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And she's on a ventilator.
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And I'm like, what?
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She's on a ventilator.
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My first thoughts are like COVID.
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She got COVID.
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Because there is COVID.
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So I call Mary and I'm like, what in the world's going on?
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And then she proceeds to tell me that Leanne was found at the house, supposedly found at the house by Jay.
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And she called 911 and said that she fell and that she was drunk.
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And I was like, where did she fall from?
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The roof?
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How is she has this severe of a head injury?
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And she fell in the bathtub.
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She said, I don't know if she's something special.
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I don't know.
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Leanne's family rushed to her bedside, hoping for the best, but fearing the worst.
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She didn't even look like her.
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They had shaved her head.
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And then she's intubated.
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So she's got the tube coming out of her mouth.
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And then she's got all these other lines that in a critical care setting that you would have.
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She's really super jaundice.
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And she's like swollen.
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To Trisha, who was a registered nurse, Leanne appeared to have signs of not one but multiple injuries.
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Injuries that looked a lot like she had been physically assaulted.
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I went up there and I took pictures.
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I was not supposed to do that.
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But I did it anyways.
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I took pictures.
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It's on her wrist she had bruises.
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On her face she had bruises.
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The emergency room doctors had been told Leanne had fallen and hit her head.
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But when the trauma surgeon examined her, he too had his doubts.
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They've had surgeon, trauma surgeon at Norfolk was like, there's no way that this came from a fall
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unless she fell from like 20 story building.
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This was not a fall from the bathtub.
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I said, you need to call the police and you need to call the police right now.
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On July 22nd, 2020, 38-year-old Leanne Fletcher was rushed to a hospital in Norfolk, Virginia after suffering a catastrophic brain injury.
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Less than 24 hours later, it was unlikely she would ever regain consciousness.
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With Leanne when she was in the hospital, Leanne there, like, is she going to survive?
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Is she not going to survive?
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What are the odds and being able to deal with that emotionally and going through that day today?
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That's hard.
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It's really hard.
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For three days, Leanne clung to life on a ventilator while her family grappled with a horrible possibility
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that her injury was not from an accidental fall, but rather that someone had intentionally heard her.
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On July 25th, Leanne's family made the devastating decision to remove her from life support just three days shy of her 39th birthday.
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But Trisha says there were still so many questions surrounding Leanne's death.
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Questions that they believe were not being answered when the family contacted police.
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According to Trisha, Leanne's family was told that her death was not being investigated as suspicious.
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She says that according to Kitty Hawk PD, they had talked to Jay Tulson at the scene and that they were satisfied from what they saw that Leanne's death was likely the result of a tragic accident.
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They're like she found. She was drunk and she fell. I mean, what do you want us to do?
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Blame a guy for murder? That was kind of their attitude.
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We also meant that the initial police response may have treated the scene as a medical emergency.
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Not a crime scene. Leanne's home had not been sealed. No photographs were taken. No evidence collected.
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This is insane. Where is this guy? Where is this Jay? How do we get up with this guy? Like, do they even have a phone number for him?
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Do we even know where he's even at?
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Much of the family's pain and frustration immediately following Leanne's death was directed at the local police chief who they believed should be treating Leanne's boyfriend Jay as a possible homicide suspect.
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So I'm freaking out. I'm like, you need to call him and have that take off and he needs to bring him in. He needs to interview him. Like, this is bad. This is really, really bad.
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Trisha and Leanne's mother rushed back towards Leanne's home in Kitty Hawk and on the way, they called the local police chief to demand answers. It did not go well.
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It's family member mode, mom mode, nurse mode, like every mode possible kicked in. Marry on her mother starts screaming. I mean, like hysterically, like I had to get off the road.
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And I see get in this situation families have every right to question law enforcement how they're handling a case.
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You know, there are public servants who are tasked with investigating events surrounding a death to confirm or not, whether foul play may be a factor.
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I don't think anyone will dispute that, right? Some agencies handle it better than others. And when a breakdown occurs between investigators and a family, it benefits nobody.
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And I'll also say this, there were some obvious red flags that foul play may be involved in the death of Leanne.
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And the family wanted answers and I could clearly understand Leanne's family feeling like investigators just let them down. I can completely understand that.
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And, you know, look, I've definitely seen it both ways. I've seen it that families were reacting justifiably or other times that they were, you know, reading the room in a way that really wasn't necessarily fair to the police, right?
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But, you know, here, obviously, if what the family is seeing is that they're not even looking at the possibility that it's a homicide.
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Well, obviously based on some of the red flags that just put it, Scott, they should at least be doing that too early to say right now, you know, where it's going to turn out.
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But again, this is coming from Trisha's perspective, but we can clearly see why it was at the family. It was very, very upset.
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So we drive from Norfolk straight to the house. We get there and we don't want to touch anything. When we went to the door, I said you have to be don't touch anything.
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Like, open the door and just don't touch anything. And we start looking and the house is like in total deseret.
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According to Trisha, Leanne's house was littered with trash and dirty dishes, which was totally out of character for Leanne who was known to keep it tidy home.
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There was like beer cans and like paper bags filled with like like, she was recycling beer cans and there's like dishes all in the sink.
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And there's like little sections that are like really clean like the sofa. The cushions are off the sofa and they're like propped up against like the coffee table.
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There was just things that weren't matching up were adding up.
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However, there were no immediate signs of violence, no broken furniture, no signs of a break in and no visible blood.
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Not even in the bathroom where Jay had supposedly found her unconscious and bleeding.
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When you walked in there and you looked it literally you could not see anything that looked abnormal to the naked eyes as far as blood splatter or any kind of blood.
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Like the bathtub was dry. There was no blood, no nothing like zero.
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Which just didn't seem possible if what Jay had told the 911 operator and the police was true.
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On the 911 call, he made the comment that she had blood coming out of her nose. And so I'm like, where's the blood?
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Why is there no blood? There was trauma and she fell and hit her head to the point of this extent of an injury.
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Where is the blood?
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By this time Trisha and Leanne's mom had been joined by a Kitty Hawk police officer and so far they had found little to indicate that the house was indeed a scene of a crime.
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Then they entered the bedroom and...
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The beds made completely made like perfect. Mariana told them she was like pull back the bed spread.
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And he pulled the bed spread and it was like no sheet and the bed was completely covered in blood.
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And that's when they were like, oh literally there's like a moment of silence.
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He told her, get out of the bed dream. Get out of the house.
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A short time later a blood soap shirt was discovered under Leanne's bed.
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I mean it was literally a cream colored blouse that was red.
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I mean like cool laid red.
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But despite this shocking discovery of what they can only assume is a large amount of Leanne's blood according to Trisha, the Kitty Hawk PD was still hesitant to jump to any conclusions.
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They were determined to wait for an autopsy and the MEE's exam to give an official cause of death.
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There was no pictures taken. There was no crime scene taped off.
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They're still trying to say that she died from a fall in the bathtub.
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And so frustrated by what they perceived as police in action, Leanne's family retained a private investigator to document the condition of the home and preserve potential evidence.
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And some of you may be thinking is this really a good idea?
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There is a lot of risk of potentially contaminating evidence or breaking the chain of custody of evidence which is very important in the prosecution of a case if we get to that point.
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I'm sure I'm thinking you may have an opinion about that.
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To your point Scott, you never know where it's going to lead which is why you have to always assume you're going to need it in that pristine condition.
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You're going to need to worry about things like chain of custody so you can already see where things are getting potentially at least a bit dicey right here.
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But you know, obviously we can understand or imagine how frustrated this family was and how determined they were just to figure out what happened.
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You know, timing as you know, Scott is obviously critical.
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You know, if Leanne was murdered, they just can't afford to sit idly by.
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So they on their own said, hey, we have to hire this private investigator as our best option because they just they didn't know what else to do.
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He was retired homicide detective. His number one thing was is like getting down here spastic he could because he said the scene being processed evidence and like what condition is J and like does he have any scrapes bruises and all this is like major that needs to be done like immediately like that should have already have been done.
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Have the police collected any evidence from the hospital has her nails been clipped has this been done has anybody asked for a rape kit to been done and like he's starting to go through all these things in my mind is like this guy did this and he's going to get by with it.
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So on July 31st more than a week after Leanne's death, Leanne's family decided to take the investigation into their own hands.
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What they found would completely change their understanding of what had happened to Leanne on that fateful night.
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Trisha and the investigator entered Leanne's home only this time they came with the secret weapon, a chemical agent called Blue Star Forensic Reagent.
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It had the power to reveal what police had apparently not yet found.
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So when our investigator came in and sprayed the house and flipped the lights off, it was just like a Christmas tree lit up.
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There was just blue everywhere. There was light without light. There's not even words to describe what that house looked like when he turned those lights off after he sprayed.
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They used a video camera to document their discovery of blood evidence in multiple rooms on dozens of surfaces creating a 41 minute recording that showed handprints, blood smears and spatter patterns throughout the house.
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Now we have that audio for you. Listen for yourself.
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This is the kitchen. A significant amount of blood was found in a weird shape here on the floor.
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Blood was found on the couch, on the floor in front of the couch.
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Blood was found on both sides of this cushion as well as blood was found in the fireplace.
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In the bathroom, you could see the smears where they had tried to clean up and on the mirror and the walls of the shower and the floor in the kitchen.
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A significant amount of blood was found on the wall on the side of the sink. A significant amount of blood was found on the behind the handles as well as in a portion of the tub.
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It was everywhere. The bed, the walls in the bedroom, the nightstand, the doors, there was smears going down the hallway.
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According to Trisha, it was like a scene out of a horror movie. Clearly a violent assault had occurred all over the house and she could only imagine the violence that could have left blood spatter on not just the floors but the walls and even the ceiling.
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How was she even still alive with that amount of blood walls?
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How was she even still breathing?
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According to the retired homicide detective, the pattern of evidence told a horrifying story.
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It appeared that Leanne had been attacked in the kitchen and then moved from room to room before being left in the bathroom.
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It also appeared now assuming this was a crime that the perpetrator spent considerable time cleaning up the scene, trying to remove any visible blood from the kitchen, the bathroom, the hallway, even the living room.
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That was just mind boggling that there was actually that much blood and to me how long did he spend and who did he have any or help him clean this up.
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To both the former homicide detective and Leanne's family, this was clear evidence that Leanne had been murdered, that whoever killed her had stayed to clean the scene and whoever it was, might not have acted alone.
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Days after Leanne Fletcher was found dying of a head injury in her home in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, her family returned to the house with a private investigator.
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Their discovery of blood convinced them that Leanne had not been injured in an accidental fall. She had been brutally murdered.
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And whoever killed her not only took the time to stage her injuries as an accident but spent hours meticulously cleaning the crime scene, all while Leanne was still dying in the bathtub.
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Which begs the question, was Leanne still conscious and aware of the entire time her attacker was cleaning up around her? Was she a witness to the attempted cover-up of her own murder?
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Did she know what was going on? What could she hear? The commotion of like the cleanup and like him saying, do I get rid of her? What was he saying that she could hear?
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As you'd expect, Leanne's family went straight to local police with the evidence that they had found, but they were left frustrated with what they saw as a lack of urgency from law enforcement.
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We're still actively trying to get them involved to really understand that there has been a crime here.
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And look, maybe local police felt that hiring the private investigator was overstepping or that could potentially be problematic if there would end up being a case.
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You know, maybe you are still waiting for autopsy results, but for whatever reason Leanne's family was not having any luck making their case that Leanne had been murdered and that her killer was still at large, or at least not getting the quick results.
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They were hoping for the investigator had been in the house had called Kitty Hought police department tried to get them on board.
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They were not even returning his calls like he called several times and they never returned our private investigators call.
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He said we're just going to have to take this into our own hands.
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And so that's exactly what they did. Leanne's family turned to social media to share Leanne's story and to air their grievances against local law enforcement.
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I went on there as this is what's happened. This is what's going on and the police aren't doing anything, kind of like a cry for help on social media.
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The family also shared the video footage taken from Leanne's house showing the bloodstained bedding, the blood spattered walls and other potential evidence that had not been collected by police in the immediate aftermath of Leanne's so-called accident.
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The family says the public's response, especially in the outer banks community, was immediate and overwhelming with many people who knew Leanne rallying to her family's demands for justice.
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Then my private investigator who was also a former homicide detective says to me, are they doing anything right now?
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I said no. He said then you have no other option. And that's how I looked at it. I had no other option. And I just started going to the news.
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The story soon gained national attention with concerned citizens and domestic violence advocates rallying around Leanne's case.
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The hashtag Justice for Leanne was soon trending all across the country.
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Then the DA causes. And he's like, we need to have a meeting. We sure do, don't we?
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According to Trisha, things were said in the room that alluded to some troubled history between the family and law enforcement that perhaps they believe was now factoring into the divide.
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And also then feeling they were still getting nowhere, the family decided to again appeal to the public.
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And they say that at that point the case went viral.
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So Scott here, look, I mean, there's obviously so much that you can unpack here.
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But I think the obvious question too is about creating a public campaign.
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I mean, is it a public pressure campaign? I think Trisha would tell you like, absolutely yes. Like that was their motivation.
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Because whether it was they felt they weren't getting any investigation or the investigation wasn't fast enough.
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And again, law enforcement did put out statements that they had been investigating the case, but that it wasn't happening in the timeline that the family was happy with.
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But Trisha says it wasn't happening at all. But look, public pressure campaigns or public campaigns can be helpful sometimes to highlight cases that are otherwise potentially at least being ignored.
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But they also can cause you know, other factors or other.
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I'm trying to think of like the right words here, but factors that could be problematic later if the case isn't allowed to take its natural course.
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You can look at it both ways.
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Yeah, I mean, they're well within their rights to air their grievances, whether it's on the steps of the police department or on social media.
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I mean, that's within their rights.
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But also you have to think about when they start giving information out that may have been given to them, whether through their private investigator, things that you may want to hold close to the vest if you're investigators to determine that if you get somebody in custody and start questioning them about certain things, they may be giving relevant information out that you may not as an investigator one out there.
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So there's both sides of the story, but certainly it's clear how this family feels on a seagull.
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I mean, there's no doubt about it. They feel they weren't getting the attention that they felt like they deserved.
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So it's a difficult pull and push here or push and pull however you want to put it was certainly what's most important as I think both parties wanted the investigation to move as quickly as they could.
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But one was being more careful and the other was just being out there to get the word out.
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And also, Anisega, as part of the information posted on social media, they viewed Jay Tolson as their prime suspect. And remember, the Outer Banks, it's a small community and with Leanne's story on everyone's lips, Tolson himself being named, he was feeling the pressure.
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People are literally shunning him, asking him like what happened and what did you do to her and he's like basically hide it out.
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In the face of growing public pressure, the District Attorney's Office announced they were coordinating with the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation to investigate Leanne's suspicious death.
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At this point, the DA finally said we're going to get the FBI involved. We're going to let them come in.
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But there was still the issue of the autopsy. Investigators had stated that they needed to await for the Ames official cause of death before Leanne's death could be determined whether it was an accident or an actual death.
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But unfortunately, that report, it just further complicated things because it listed Leanne's cause of death as complications of blunt force trauma to the head with hepatic cirrhosis contributing and the manner of death remained undetermined.
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Which likely sounds pretty confusing as it did for Leanne's family. So let's unpack it for a little bit.
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At the center of the uncertainty about the manner of death was the fact that Leanne's body at the time of being transported to the hospital appeared jaundiced.
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A condition that the skin appears to be yellow as a result of a liver failure.
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Now when talking about adults, the most commonly known cause of jaundice is cirrhosis, a liver disease caused by long-term alcohol abuse, which was a detail that Trisha says the police seemed stuck on.
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They were trying to say that that's what caused her death was her alcoholism that she was dying from liver failure and then she fell and that's why she blood out.
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But according to Trisha while Leanne did drink alcohol, she showed no signs of liver failure in the weeks leading up to her death.
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Leanne was seen by a physician and actually had a procedure scheduled for cataract surgery and had had a knee procedure six months prior to that and had labs done and had no signs of any hepatic failure, no signs of jaundice.
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The week that she died she was scheduled for cataract surgery. One of the first signs of jaundice where you mainly see is in the eyes.
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The white of your eye will actually start giving a hint of yellow and she had none of that, zero.
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But according to Leanne's doctor, there was another possible reason why Leanne's skin had appeared jaundice from hepatic failure.
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After sustaining her fatal head injury, she had been left to die possibly from much longer than even Trisha had imagined.
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The trauma surgeon said this did not just happen in the last 12 hours.
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This takes time for this amount of swelling with this injury. The jaundice was from her organs starting to actually shut down because she had laid there for so long.
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So just how long did Leanne lie in the bathtub with a fatal head injury? Was it a couple of hours as Tulsa had claimed or wasn't much longer?
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It was critical to establish a timeline of her movements on that day and his.
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And one way to do that was with the help of witnesses starting with a coworker of Tulsa's who claimed he had overheard Tulsa on the phone with Leanne the morning of July 21st.
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More than 24 hours before Tulsa's call to 911.
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This guy comes to us after and reaches out to me on social media and heard the threats and heard him threateningly and saying he was going to go home and beat her ass.
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But the most damning witness account came from Tulsa's boss who claimed he had spoken to him just hours after Tulsa had called 911.
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Jay had went to his boss and said that him and Leanne had gotten into a fight and it got out of hand.
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He was very emotional and he was crying and his boss actually left the job site with him and said what do you mean?
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And he's like it got out of control. She's in the hospital. This was after he had called 911. He actually went to work and told his boss.
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Tulsa's boss at the time suspected that there had been a violent domestic dispute.
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He was like I mean like how bad is it? He's like it's pretty bad.
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All of this of course contradicted what Tulsa had told both the 911 operator and first responders who arrived at the scene.
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He calls 911 basically in just the short minutes of the 911 call. He basically tells them three or four different stories that she was really drunk last night.
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He thinks she took some pills. She fell in the kitchen. Then she fell in the bathroom in the tub.
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She had been sick. I mean there was like multiple stories just on the 911 call.
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But Leanne's family and a growing circle of friends and concerned citizens were convinced they knew the real story.
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That Tulsa must have returned to Leanne's house found his belongings on the porch and confronted Leanne with violence.
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The blood evidence that showed up after spraying the house with the chemical reagent showed that the attack likely started in the kitchen.
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Where his attack caused blood to pool on the floor and spatter on the walls, ceiling and even the sofa.
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Now again presuming it's Tulsa that he would have then likely dragged her body upstairs to stage the fall in the bathroom by undressing her and putting her unconscious body in the tub.
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Now it's hard to know just when the attack took place. But what we do know is that he waited until after 9 a.m. to dial 911.
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So what did he do for the hours that Leanne was fighting for her life? Trisha believes he called for help to clean the house and destroy the evidence of the murder.
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So then who did he call? According to Trisha, phone records subpoenaed by SBI show he called who she says was his other girlfriend.
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So he actually called her the night prior. He called her on 721 late night like between 930 and midnight and basically called her that entire night and that entire next morning until she responded around 430 in the morning.
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She responds to his phone calls and his text messages and he's telling her that him and Leanne got into a fight and that Leanne was unconscious and that she had woke up from the fight and that he didn't know what to do.
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And now she says that she told him, I don't know why you're calling me. You should be calling 911. Why I'm not a doctor.
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So did those phone records suggest that Tulsa had succeeded in convincing her to help him cover up the crime? Well Trisha thinks so.
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So from 430 in the morning until like 930, there was no communication between these two individuals. Like it went from blowing the phone up to like dead silence.
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And what was Jay doing from 430 in the morning until 930 when he called 911. So what was going on in those 5 hours. We all know later that the house had been cleaned up. All the blood was cleaned up. There was clothes washed. There was fans going in the house directed towards the sofa where they sofa had been scrubbed.
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There is blood splattered everywhere that you can't see visible naked to the eye because it had been cleaned up.
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Armed with the phone records and the growing circumstantial evidence that Tulsa had indeed lied to police. The case was presented to a grand jury.
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In October 26, 2020, that grand jury returned an indictment and a warrant was issued for Tulsa's arrest.
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But there was just one problem. Tulsa had been tipped off about the indictment and he was now on the run.
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A phone call from an individual that said, Jay's skipping town. He's got on a boat and he's heading towards Maine and he's heading towards Canada.
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He knew he was being indicted. Someone had told him, you're going down for the crime.
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On October 26, 2020, a major storm was hitting the outer banks and the suspect in the murder of Leanne Fletcher was in the wind.
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But this was the outer banks and as she told us, nothing happened here without Trisha finding out about it.
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He gets Jay on a boat during a storm. So my SBIA agent is like, there's no way that he's on a boat and he's heading to bunker Maine because like, there's a freaking storm.
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Trisha, I said he's on a boat on the way to Maine. I'm telling you, he is going. So he calls me and he's like, we're on it. We're going to find him. Don't freak out.
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I can tell when I agent's voice that he is gone and he is missing. He is gone.
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After this huge campaign to finally get justice for Leanne's murder, it's hard to imagine what Leanne's family must have been going through.
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The man you always suspected was her killer was now potentially about to get away.
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The guy got on a boat in the middle of a storm and sailed to Maine. I mean, that is completely like something out of a movie in a secret.
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And with that, you've also heard the saying, the long arm of the law? Well, the same can be said of social media because even in Maine, Tosin could not outrun his notoriety.
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He actually was found by a local officer in a ditch passed out on the side of the road and someone called and said, hey, there's this guy that's apparently intoxicated and he's in a ditch.
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So they go pick him up and they start by his name and his date of birth and the police there, smart enough, something's fishy about the situation.
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And that police department starts doing their job and looks on social media and they're like, this is the guy that committed this murder that's publicized all over social media all the way to the UK.
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And this guy is literally here in Maine. This is crazy. And so they contact our shares department and the shares department contacts the FBI and it's like, hey, your guys in Maine.
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Trisha remembers getting the call from an SBI agent within 16 hours. I get a phone call and he said, I cannot tell you where I'm at and what's going on, but that I had Jay and I'm about to get on a plane.
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After what had turned into a grueling saga for Leanne's family, law enforcement had finally made an arrest.
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Jay Tulson was charged with second degree murder of Leanne Fletcher.
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Tulson was ex-redated to North Carolina and held at the Deir County Detention Center on a million dollar bond.
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They didn't die at him. They did charge him with second degree murder.
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After numerous delays, Tulson's trial began in late August of 2023, more than three years after Leanne's murder.
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It was important to Leanne's family that not only was the cause of death blunt force trauma, but that Leanne's apparent liver failure was not a result of alcoholism, but the direct result of being left to die.
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And the Emmy has our back on it. She's like, that's true. This is 100 percent. This is something that was brought up when the Emmy actually was on the stand was, could this happen to someone that laid there for multiple hours and their organs started shutting down and she said, absolutely.
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But despite what seemed like overwhelming evidence, the prosecution still faced hurdles. Most importantly, defense claims that Leanne's family's decision to hire a private investigator and collect evidence on their own had tainted the crime scene and the chain of custody.
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And in fact, the judge threw out some of the evidence collected at Leanne's home for that very reason.
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All the stuff that our private investigators had collected, like the sheets and the bedding and the recordings of the interviews.
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And that's why they talked us into asking for him to take a plea deal.
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On August 31st, 2023, four days into the trial and after two days of testimony, Tulson pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter.
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At the sentencing hearing, Leanne's cousin Trisha gave an emotional statement condemning Tulson's decision to delay calling 911 and his attempt to clean up the crime scene.
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She told the court that had he sought immediate help, Leanne might have survived, but instead he robbed her children of their mother.
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She was a good person. She would not harm a fly and the fact that someone was going to go without punishment.
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And Leanne basically was not going to have justice and she was just going to be another statistic. There was no way.
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There was no possible way. I was letting her go down like that. There was no way.
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The court acknowledged the pain of the family but accepted Tulson's plea in part to avoid further trauma from an extended trial.
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In the end, the judge sentenced Tulson to 56 to 80 months in prison.
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They said he'll probably get 20 to 25 years. When we heard five to seven, it took the breath right out of us.
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Tulson was credited with nearly three years of time already served. He was released in May of 2025.
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He spent exactly four years and eight months to the day.
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No charges were ever filed against anyone else.
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This case was about a woman, a mother of two, who was brutally attacked and left to die in her own home.
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But this was also about one family's quest for justice and their fight against what seemed like impossible odds.
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I think that the most justice for Leanne was holding not just J. Accountable but the police department, the mayor, the DAs, and all of them accountable.
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And hoping that with this in the future that they'll handle other cases differently.
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But the fight for justice, it goes on even after the trial.
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Leanne's family has remained active in raising awareness and advocating for procedural reform and investigative practices.
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She will never be forgotten, as long as I can keep her alive, she'll stay alive.
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And just know that if this happens, ever happens to your family member, that it is a war.
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It is a war and it's a process but don't give up and fight.
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And fight, don't give up.
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Leanne's story is a tragic reminder of how domestic violence can escalate quickly, especially when the victim tries to end a relationship.
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Leanne Fletcher was a devoted mother, a caring friend, and a generous soul who opened her home and her heart to someone in need.
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And he repaid that kindness with violence.
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Her story also reminds us that every life matters, every victim deserves justice and about the unwavering love of family to make sure the truth comes to light.
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But tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder.
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Anatomy of Murder is an audio chuck original.
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Produced and created by Weinberger Media and Fracetti Media.
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Ashley Flowers is executive producer.
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This episode was written and produced by Walker Lamond, researched by Kate Cooper, edited by Ali Siroa and Phil Zhanggrande.
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I think Chuck would approve.