Felicia Tang
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To enjoy this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out on Patreon. Patreon.com/ForensicTales Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. Actress and model Felicia Tang was found dead inside her Monrovia, California apartment in September of 2009.

Not long after that, the police arrested a former reality TV contestant and pastor for the crime. But when the case went to trial, the prosecution and defense couldn't agree on what the forensic evidence meant or what caused Felicia's death. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 237, The Death of Felicia Tang.

Thank you.

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast with a forensic science twist. Each episode features real stories highlighting how forensic science was used, from fingerprinting to criminal profiling to DNA. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned colds.

Every story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings. As a one-woman show, your support helps me find new compelling cases, conduct in-depth fact-based research, and produce and edit this weekly show. You can support my work in two simple ways. Become a valued patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales and leave a positive review.

Before we get to the episode, we've got a couple new Patreon supporters to thank this week. Isabel S., Hillary G., and Rachel R. Now, let's get to this week's episode. Her name was Felicia Lee, a Singapore-born, Australia-raised 31-year-old who eventually became known as Felicia Tang. On top of having small, unaccredited parts in the movies Rush Hour 2 and The Fast and the Furious,

She also made appearances on Playboy TV and in adult films like Hotel Decadence and Asian Fever. She came to the United States when she was a teenager to pursue her own American dream. She wanted to make it big in Hollywood, but in September 2009, she became famous for something else. Felicia was found dead with over 300 wounds inside her boyfriend's Monrovia, California apartment. Within hours, her boyfriend was put in handcuffs and arrested for her death.

Let's jump into the case and see what the forensic evidence says happened to Felicia. Long before all of this happened, Felicia was born in Singapore on October 22, 1977. Her real name was Felicia Lee, but she eventually started going by Felicia Tang. When she was young, she moved with her parents to Perth, Australia, where she went to a private all-girls school. And when she turned 13, the family moved to Los Angeles, California.

Felicia was naturally very beautiful, so it's no surprise that by the time she turned 19, she started landing modeling gigs. She got her start in 2002, and her first jobs were as a car and calendar model. She also started doing a few fashion magazines and bikini catalogs, while at the same time taking college classes for her marketing and business degree.

Those modeling jobs eventually led to small appearances in the adult film industry. Starting around 19, Felicia appeared in different adult films like Asian Fever and Sugar Daddy Wanted. And probably not to anyone's surprise, there's a lot of money in the adult film industry. So she started making a lot of money from that on top of her small-time modeling gigs.

But besides modeling and everything else, she dreamed of making it big in Hollywood. She wanted to become a big-time, successful actress and was starting to make it happen. In 2001, she played a small and unaccredited role in the movie Rush Hour 2, side-by-side with Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker.

She also appeared in the first Fast and the Furious movie, again, as an unaccredited background actress, but hey, it was a start. By 2002, Felicia was fully aware of the kind of money that she could make, so she started her own website, FeliciaTang.com, where she put up a webcam and regularly posted some nude photos of herself. And just like the films she was doing, there was a lot of money in these types of websites as well.

Now, I know a lot of reports described her as a quote-unquote porn star, but her actual career in this space isn't really that big. Yes, she posted nude photos online and ran this website, but she didn't want to do that forever. It was just her way of making a lot of money really fast. But there was also another side of her, according to her friends.

Outside of the adult films and webcams, she was a completely normal girl. Her friends said she had a goofy side and loved to make jokes. Even one of her best friends said that, besides her looks, she really loved to cook and could be what she described as domestic. Her friends even jokingly called her Betty Homemaker because she loved to do things around the house so much.

By 2008, Felicia was done with the modeling and she was done with the webcams. So at this point, she announced on her site that she was shutting it down to go back to school to get her real estate license. So later that year, all of her content online was shut down and the new Felicia Tang was starting to emerge. Almost at the exact same time that she was moving away from one kind of lifestyle, she was quickly starting another.

In April 2009, she met Brian Randoni, a highly successful salesman and born-again Christian. The two of them met at a pool party in Las Vegas and started dating almost instantly. And within just a few months of dating, they moved in together and talked about getting engaged.

They seemed to meet at the perfect moment. Felicia was looking to begin a career in real estate, but she also wanted to settle down. She saw herself finding a husband, getting married and having kids. And as it turned out, Brian was looking for pretty much the same thing. So when they met in 2009, both of them had their feet on the gas pedal.

Felicia moved into Brian's LA apartment just two months after dating, and by their third month together, they were talking about getting engaged. When they went to go visit Brian's parents for the 4th of July that same year, they announced their plans to get married. So who exactly is Brian Brandoni?

Well, he was definitely what you would describe as an interesting character and had a lot of things in common with Felicia, at least initially. He grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, one of four siblings, where he played football for Ryan High School, a Catholic school in Omaha. While in his senior year of high school, Brian became a born-again Christian, really getting into his new faith.

He eventually got a bachelor's degree from the Moody Bible Institute, as well as a Master's of Divinity degree. After high school, Brian started doing a little modeling. He got some small gigs in a few Omaha-based catalogs, but nothing major. And just like Felicia, he moved to LA in 2000 to pursue his dream of making it as an actor.

By that point, he had already been selected as Mr. Nebraska for the Fox reality show America's Sexiest Bachelor, which aired in 2000. But what Brian was really known for and what he became known for was being the Bible mime. After going to Bible school in Dallas, Texas, he started performing as a traditional mime, acting out stories and lessons from the Bible.

So he would essentially paint his face white, grab a Bible, and hit the streets all over the world as a mime acting out scenes from the Bible. Brian would call it, quote, religious performance art, and it ended up drawing a pretty large crowd. He eventually got a lot of followers for this so-called Bible miming. He also had a radio show in Dallas called Single Time about staying celibate before marriage.

So that's what I mean when I say he really got into his new faith. He eventually started his whole life and made a career out of it. He turned himself into this very popular religious figure with a pretty large following.

Now, I think you can see why I said that Brian was a pretty interesting guy. He was a model. He was a Hollywood hopeful actor. He was a preacher. He was this Bible mime who performed all over the world. And he was also a businessman who found a way to make a lot of money really fast. Not long after moving to Los Angeles, he transitioned from acting to business.

He eventually started a successful small business selling phone and internet services, which was beginning to get really big at the time. Strangely enough, the preacher and now business owner also loved Las Vegas. That's where he met Felicia in April 2009 at that MGM Grand Pool Party. But besides church and Vegas pool parties, he might have also had a different side to him.

According to an article by The Sun, one of Brian's ex-girlfriends said that he had a pretty bad temper and could be violent. Suzanne Davis told The Sun newspaper that she dated and worked with Brian for about six years.

And during that time together, she said the money he was making from his phone and internet business seemed to transform him from this good pastor into a drinker, gambler, and violently jealous boyfriend. Suzanne, who was also a small-time actress, met Brian in 2002.

But when she didn't have much money coming in from the acting jobs, she started working for him, selling Verizon contracts for his phone and internet business. But when the company began to really take off and Brian was making a ton of money, that's when she said he began to change.

He started spending more and more time in Las Vegas. And according to Suzanne Davis, he also started to become verbally abusive towards her. So the two eventually broke things off. And Brian met Felicia not long after that. But I think we should only take that with a grain of salt here. This is all coming from an ex-girlfriend. And Brian himself has completely denied basically everything that she has said about him.

So it's hard to say exactly where the truth is. But now let's move on. Let's talk about what happened later after Brian met Felicia. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are some of your self-care non-negotiables? Maybe you never skip leg day or therapy day. When your schedule is packed with kids' activities, big work projects, or podcasting like me, it's easy to let your priorities slip.

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That's betterhelp.com. On September 11, 2009, Brian called 911, saying that his girlfriend Felicia wasn't breathing. Police and paramedics arrived within minutes, but by the time they got there, there wasn't much that they could do, and Felicia was eventually pronounced dead. She was just 31 years old.

Detective Richard Doney from the Monrovia Police Department was the first cop on the scene that day. And this is what he told the show 48 Hours about what it was like inside of Brian's apartment. Quote, End quote.

The Monrovia police's first impression of the place was that there had to have been a fight. Someone beat Felicia to death. The king-sized bed in the middle of Brian's room had two large bloodstains on it, one near the head of the bed and the other toward the middle. The bedroom door had been knocked off the wall, and there was what the police described as hundreds of blood spots and smears on the walls.

It almost looked like someone had been crouched down in the corner of the bedroom while bleeding. The next strange thing was that there were signs of a possible cleanup. When the cops got there, the dryer was on like someone was doing laundry. And inside of the dryer, there were bedsheets and pillowcases that seemed to belong to the king-sized bed in the master bedroom, the same bed where all the blood was.

So to the cops investigating, this looked pretty obvious that someone was trying to clean things up. They were trying to get rid of all the blood. Then there was Felicia's body. Everything about that screamed murder.

When the cops got there, they found her lying on the bathroom floor naked, covered in blood and bruises. She was lying on her back, her eyes wide open, just staring straight up toward the ceiling. Again, it had murder written all over it, at least according to the police. And Brian's demeanor when the cops got there also stood out to them. To them, Brian seemed distant and unemotional. He was just sitting there with his arms on his legs with his head down.

He wasn't crying. He wasn't emotional. He was basically just sitting there pretty much like nothing had happened, which turned out to be a pretty big red flag for investigators because you would think he would be pretty emotional after just finding his girlfriend dead like that. But according to the police, he wasn't. He also had some strange unexplained marks on his hands and arms.

When the police asked him what happened earlier that day, he had a pretty interesting story. He said they both used GHB and had rough sex. He thought Felicia had probably taken too much of the drug and now had overdosed.

So first off, GHB or liquid ecstasy or the date rape drug has become a pretty popular party drug in the last couple of decades. From what people say who use it, it's supposed to make you feel, quote, sleepy and sexy at the same time. Now, it's usually only sipped by the capful because of how strong it can be.

But some people actually combine it with other drugs to sort of create this euphoric effect. Now, Brian told investigators that day that his girlfriend, Felicia, drank it like water. That's how he described it. He said she even kept a bottle of it next to her on the bedside table. So for them two to drink it together wasn't anything new. This is something that she did and this is something that he said she got him into.

Now, before I move on to the next part, that's what the police said that Brian said happened. Later on, Brian completely denied saying that. He said they didn't have rough sex and the police basically made that part up. I'm not sure why the police would lie about something like that in their reports, but either way, Brian completely denied saying that's what happened. Or that's at least he denied the rough sex part. He didn't deny the drugs.

So how exactly did the apartment get to be such a mess if Felicia simply overdosed? And how do you explain all of the blood and the broken doors? Well, Brian claimed that while Felicia was high on GHB, she became completely out of control. She was falling off the bed, running into things, hitting her head on the door and walls.

So he said he accidentally broke the closet door while he was trying to simply restrain Felicia so that she wouldn't continue hurting herself. And when it came to all of the blood, he said she probably injured herself while basically falling all over the place. He said she eventually became unresponsive, which he figured was a sign that she was overdosing from the drugs.

So he tried doing CPR and splashing water on her face before calling 911. And that's how he got the scratches on his arms and why his clothes were wet when the cops showed up. Well, if the police weren't suspicious of Brian and his story at the apartment, they definitely were at Felicia's autopsy.

In total, there were 320 wounds to her body that were all described by the medical examiner as, quote, blunt force trauma wounds. Yes, you heard that right. 320 injuries. She had cuts and abrasions almost everywhere. Her forehead, both of her eyes, the bridge of her nose, her upper and lower lips, and her right breast. She had even bitten through her tongue.

There were what the medical examiner described as bruises on top of bruises, almost making it impossible to say just how many there were. Then there were some strange parallel lines all over both of her legs. What was really important about the autopsy was how the medical examiner thought she got those 320 wounds. The medical examiner didn't say they were bruises. He actually said pretty much the exact opposite.

He said they were blunt force trauma injuries that could have only been caused if someone beat Felicia. Now, those injuries might sound pretty bad, but it wasn't what the medical examiner believed killed her. He concluded she'd been smothered, forcefully suffocated by someone covering her nose and mouth.

He thought that the deep bruising on her face and the bite mark on her tongue was a result of her desperate struggle to breathe. When it came to her toxicology report, Felicia had at least two drugs in her system at the time that she died. She had high levels of GHB and a small amount of cocaine. So at least that part of Brian's story seemed to add up.

But it didn't add up enough so that the police didn't suspect him. Just hours after the medical examiner's report came out, Brian was arrested and charged with Felicia's murder. But prosecutors didn't stop there. Given the amount of injuries, 320, and the evidence suggesting that Felicia died slowly, they added another charge, torture.

So two years later, November 14th, 2011, the case went to trial. And it was quickly dubbed the Preacher and the Porn Star, which seems a little unfair on both sides, but that's what the media called it. And to no surprise, with a name like that, the Preacher and the Porn Star, making headlines, it's no wonder that people wanted to follow it.

So Brian was in jail on a $2 million bond and everything came down to the GHB and the interpretation of the forensic evidence. Did Felicia die from a GHB overdose and the wounds were self-inflicted? Like she was physically out of control like Brian said that she was, running into things and hitting her head against the walls.

Or did he beat, choke, and murder her? And that's how she got all those injuries, including the ones to her face. That's really what the prosecution and Brian's defense were arguing. The state said that she was smothered and killed, while Brian's defense argued this was simply a drug overdose. And all of those 320 injuries were caused by her falling and running into things around the apartment. So what side do you believe?

Let's start with the defense. Brian was represented by a pretty well-known LA lawyer named Mark Overland, and their strategy at the trial was simple. They wanted the jury to understand that this was no murder case at all. This was simply a case of a drug overdose. Let's go back to Brian's story. He said he and Felicia fought that night before he got back to the apartment late.

He said when he got to his car to head home sometime around 12.05 a.m., he said he saw a bunch of text messages from her. They said things like, quote, you're the hurtful one, end quote. I don't like the fact that you effing disrespect me by hanging up and I'm freaking out, end quote.

He said that as soon as he stepped foot inside the apartment, she started coming at him in what he described as a tornado. She was angry. She was upset. And it wasn't until about 3 o'clock in the morning that she calmed down and everything seemed okay. He said they both drank some GHB together, but Felicia drank a lot more than him. He said he only drank a few sips, but she was downing it like he had never seen before.

According to Brian, that's when Felicia started getting out of control and freaking out. She fell off the bed, she started jumping and thrashing around, and at one point she even went headfirst into the closet. He claimed that after that, he passed out and didn't wake up until about 6.30 a.m.,

He said Felicia was still sort of thrashing around the bedroom, so he said he got a bunch of pillows and put them on the floor so that if she basically fell on the ground, at least she would land on the bunch of pillows. After that, and a few hours later, around 8 a.m., Brian claimed that Felicia seemed fine. He thought she was coming down from the drugs and everything was all right again. He said she didn't have any blood or bruises on her either.

He said he went downstairs to start his work day because it was a payroll day and his sales team needed to get paid. So he went downstairs and didn't go back to the bedroom until around 1130. And that's when he said he realized just how bad Felicia was. He said her arms and legs were all bruised up and she was bleeding pretty badly from the cuts and the scrapes. So he went to the bathroom to get some hydrogen peroxide to help clean them up.

He said he told her that it was probably going to sting pretty bad. But when he put the peroxide on one of her legs, she didn't seem to react at all, which was a little strange because normally that stuff makes your cuts sting pretty bad. So that's when he said he noticed that she wasn't responding. He waited another 5-10 minutes and then eventually called 911.

Now, when Brian gets on the phone with 911, there seems to be some confusion on whether she's still breathing or not. So here's part of that phone call. 911 operator. Is she conscious right now? Brian. No, she's like half conscious and I'm giving her mouth to mouth. 911 operator. Is she breathing? Back to Brian. She's breathing. Yes.

911 operator. Okay, if she's breathing, do not give her mouth to mouth. Brian. You know, when I breathe into her, she's breathing, but... 911 operator. So she's not breathing. You're breathing for her. Brian. Yeah. So we know Brian and Felicia did drugs together that night, and Brian claimed the drugs made her physically out of control, and that's how she got all those cuts and bruises. Yeah.

But what about the evidence of suffocation that the medical examiner found? Well, Brian's main defense was that the GHB caused Felicia's respiratory system to fail, and that's what ultimately killed her and made it look like a suffocation at her autopsy.

Dr. Cyrus Ragan, an expert on the effects of the drug, testified that it's not uncommon for people on GHB to die from respiratory issues, or respiratory depression as he described it. But this particular doctor couldn't say whether or not that Felicia ingested enough GHB for that to happen. One of the reasons why was because we really don't know how much Felicia usually took.

Brian claimed that she drank it like water, but we don't really know. According to this professional, people who use GHB a lot typically develop a pretty strong tolerance to it, just like any other drug. So just because Felicia might have had a lot of it in her system when she died doesn't mean that's what killed her. A large amount of it may kill someone just trying it for the first time.

But that same amount might have little to no effect on someone who takes it all the time. Now again, we don't know exactly how much Felicia was using GHB, cocaine, or any other drugs at the time. We only know what was found in her system at the time of her death. But it wasn't just Brian who witnessed Felicia using drugs firsthand.

Two of Felicia's close friends testified about weekend-long parties in which she took the drug 30 to 50 times. One of those friends, Christina Galvez, said, quote, Usually we were running around, dancing and putting on different outfits and partying and just, you know, dancing and changing the music. We would just stay home and have fun. End quote.

Christina Galvez was originally called to testify for the prosecution. I think they wanted her to basically show the jury that Felicia would have a pretty high tolerance for this drug. And when she took it, she was usually just a fun person who liked to dance and whatnot. But it seemed like her testimony only helped the defense.

because in part of her testimony, she admitted that she once saw Felicia, quote, flailing her limbs uncontrollably on the drug, end quote. So this seemed to support Brian's story that she was falling and knocking things over inside the apartment, again, causing all of the injuries. It also helped the defense's story that Felicia was a regular drug user, and sometimes she took it a little too far.

The jury heard about text messages Felicia sent Brian just hours before she died, and some of them suggested she knew that she had taken too much. In one of them, she told Brian, quote, Okay, so I think we know Felicia was high.

But I think the bigger question becomes, does being high on GHB actually cause someone to physically lose control and just start running into things like closet doors? Well, according to Trinka Parada, a retired Los Angeles Police Department narcotics officer hired to testify for the defense, the answer is yes.

Since retiring from the LAPD, she's become an expert on GHB and its effects. So she was just the kind of expert that the defense needed to say that this was definitely a GHB-related death. According to this expert, one sip of GHB is like drinking six beers with a touch of PCP on top.

So even drinking the smallest amounts of it is likely to have some immediate effects on the person who's taking it. She testified that a lot of people under the influence of GHB violently bang themselves into things, and she gave the jury plenty of examples of this. She talked about a guy who broke his bathroom mirror six times by running his head into it while on GHB.

She also showed the jury a series of home videos, which she said showed the extreme loss of control a GHB user might show. In one of them, a man falls down repeatedly during a traffic stop, hitting his head several times against the car door. In another one of these videos, a guy is crumpled nearly in half as he tries to navigate around his own home while his head is snapping back and forth over and over again.

So that's what she believed Felicia was doing. She was high on GHB and threw herself violently around the apartment. She thought that all of her injuries were consistent with the kinds of self-inflicted wounds that she had seen before. And she wasn't alone in saying that, because right after she was done testifying, another doctor said pretty much the same exact thing.

Former medical examiner Dr. Harry Bonnell testified that a certain electrical heart signal called pulseless electrical activity, or PEA, was present in Felicia's heart when paramedics tended to her after her death. So you have the heart's electrical system working, but the heart itself isn't pumping.

This was pretty important to Brian's defense because, according to this retired medical examiner, the only possible cause of a PEA was a drug overdose. There was virtually no other way to have it happen. On top of that, he also told the jury there was no PEA in cases of smothering. Again, it had to have come from a drug overdose. Now let's talk about this suffocation theory.

If you recall, the medical examiner who did Felicia's autopsy said that she had been, quote, forcibly smothered. Yes, she was definitely high on drugs at the time of her death, but that's not what killed her, according to the prosecution. She had been smothered by Brian, most likely with a pillow. So even if Felicia was physically out of control, just bumping into things around her, causing all of those bruises and cuts,

Then how do you explain the evidence of suffocation? Well, the defense had an expert for that part of the story too. According to Dr. Joe Dyer, a specialist with the California Poison Control System and professor at Cal State San Francisco, GHB can definitely cause asphyxiation as well. GHB can cause brain depression to the point of respiratory depression, and that's when a person can stop breathing.

So if Felicia showed signs of suffocation at her autopsy, it wasn't because Brian choked her or put a pillow over her face. It was again because of the drugs. When the cops first showed up at the apartment, they thought Brian was trying to clean things up. That's because they saw what they thought were blood-stained bedsheets and pillowcases in his dryer.

Well, according to the defense, the sheets were tested by a lab and came back negative for blood. There was no blood on them like the cops thought. So the defense argued there was no attempt to clean anything up.

So that's the defense's story. This wasn't a murder case. Brian didn't beat Felicia or choke her to death in a fit of rage. It was all an accidental overdose and a classic case of someone under the influence of GHB becoming physically out of control and injuring themselves to the point of death. Simply put, Felicia caused all those 320 injuries to herself.

Plus, the defense argued that Brian loved Felicia. They were talking about getting engaged and eventually married to each other. They had trips planned for Houston and Las Vegas for a concert in just a couple of weeks. After that, they wanted to go to Brian's parents' 51st wedding anniversary party. So what motive did he have to want to kill her?

Something I thought was interesting was that Brian claimed he didn't know much about Felicia's past until just a couple weeks before she died. He said he had no idea about the adult films or the website that she ran where she did webcams and put up nude photographs of herself. He said she never told him about it and he basically only found out about it just weeks before she died and before all of this happened.

Then there were the drugs. Brian claimed that it was Felicia who introduced him to GHB and other drugs. Before meeting her, he said he had never done drugs before. Later on, Brian himself told the show 48 Hours, quote, She pretty much introduced me to the drug, the terrible drug GHB. She goes, look, I do this all of the time. I know what I'm doing with it.

But, she said, if I ever do too much of it, don't ever call 911. End quote. When it came time for the prosecution to present, they had an entirely different explanation for what the forensic evidence meant. Starting with the fight Brian and Felicia had earlier that night, the defense tried to show that their text messages basically proved that Felicia was angry that night and high on drugs.

But the prosecution tried to say that those text messages actually show a possible motive for murder. If Felicia and Brian had been arguing about him coming home late that night, and the fight continued when he got home, then there was a possible motive to murder. They fought, they did drugs together, and in a fit of rage, Brian beat and choked her to death.

According to the prosecution, it wouldn't be the first time that Brian lost his temper. If you remember, his ex-girlfriend, Suzanne Davis, claimed he'd become verbally and physically abusive during their relationship. So this established a pattern of behavior. Brian was violent and abusive, according to the prosecution. The prosecution also relied heavily on what the first responding officers saw at the apartment, signs of a fight.

Right when the cops got there, they noticed that blood was everywhere. There were two large bloodstains on the bed, and the bedroom and closet doors were off the rails. The main door was actually completely broken through. If you believed the defense's story, you would have to believe that Felicia rammed her head through the wall. But if you believed the prosecution, then you'd assume it broke during a struggle between the two of them.

The prosecution believed the bloodstains in the room told a story. This is what one of the police officers told the show 48 Hours about it. Quote, End quote.

So essentially what they were saying was that Felicia was the one crouched down on the ground against the wall, probably trying to protect herself from Brian, who was attacking her. And while she was crouched down on the ground, she was smearing her own blood on the wall. Of course, the prosecution couldn't leave out their interpretation of Brian's behavior when the cops showed up.

According to them, he seemed completely unemotional about the fact that his live-in girlfriend had just died minutes earlier. Phone records suggested that besides calling 911, Brian received other phone calls during the time he said Felicia was unresponsive. One of those phone calls came from his business's payroll company.

So the prosecution told the jury that while Brian was supposedly waiting to call 911 for his unresponsive girlfriend, he was also taking calls from his payroll company for work. Now, the injuries, all 320 of them. Well, the prosecution said those injuries came from Brian beating Felicia. They weren't from her running around the apartment, bumping into things and acting crazy on drugs.

They, of course, said they were blunt force trauma type injuries that could have only been caused by Brian himself. I mentioned earlier that the medical examiner noticed some strange parallel marks on both of her legs. Well, the prosecution said those probably got there while Brian was beating Felicia with some type of instrument.

If Felicia had been bent down in a defensive type position on the floor, they believed the weapon would have caused those odd shaped marks. They even showed the jury a photograph of the injuries and had someone on the prosecution team demonstrate how they would have gotten there just as they described it. And the two patterns seem to line up perfectly. So what kind of instrument do they think that Brian used?

Well, the police thought that it could have been something as simple as a wire hanger. I think the most important injuries for the state's case were the ones to Felicia's face. According to the medical examiner, she had dark bruises, abrasions, and scrapes all over her face and forehead.

And he believed that the bruising and the bite mark on her tongue were all proof that Felicia was smothered and struggled to breathe. And that's how she got all those injuries on her face. The medical examiner was so sure that Felicia had been smothered, he even admitted at trial that he concluded it was smothering before even seeing the toxicology report.

Of course, this was something the defense said was just bad science. The defense argued that smothering is something you reach when you basically have no other medical explanation for how someone died. It's kind of a catch-all statement when you don't know, you don't look at all the reports, and you just sort of say, hey, this person was probably smothered to death.

The prosecution wanted the jury to believe that Brian's story about Felicia's behavior while on GHB were completely not true. The effects of the drug wouldn't be that strong to cause her to injure herself like that. They had experts testify that drug overdoses are a lot quieter than this.

They said most people will just fall straight down where they're at and have a heart attack, or their heart simply just stops beating. Or they wake up in the morning not breathing and they're dead. They don't go around for hours hurting themselves. So what is it? Torture and murder, like the prosecution said? Or a tragic fatal overdose of drugs, like the defense wanted the jury to believe?

What does the forensic evidence say happened? The entire trial lasted four weeks, and during that time, it became a complete media sensation. The porn star versus the pastor. Brian's parents had come all the way from Nebraska to Los Angeles to be there every day of the trial. They completely supported their son and never thought for a moment that he was capable of killing someone in the way the prosecution said.

Brian didn't end up taking the stand, so the jury never heard from him about his version of what happened. They only heard about his brief statements to the police that day and the 911 call. Now, would it have benefited Brian's defense if he took the stand and testified? Who knows? Sometimes it does help, but sometimes it only makes the case harder for the defense.

But in this case, Bryant decided to stay quiet. The entire case was handed over to the jury on a Thursday morning, and by Friday afternoon, they had reached a verdict. The verdict? Not guilty of torture, not guilty of murder. The jury found Bryant innocent of every single charge against him. One of the biggest arguments for murder was Felicia's injuries, all 320 of them.

That is the part of the story that the prosecution thought would easily get a guilty verdict. But as it turned out, it was the exact opposite. Two of the jurors spoke to 48 hours after the case was over, and one of them said, quote, first picture that they put up on the screen across the room was her face all bruised. And I'm a nurse, but it shocked me. I remember almost jumping in my chair.

But when we were actually in the juror's room and saw them up close, it became obvious to me that they were more like scratches with scabs on them, almost like what a drug addict does when they pick, end quote. So it didn't seem like they were even bothered by the amount of injuries that she had. When it came to suffocation, the other part of the prosecution's case, the jury didn't believe that either.

A lot of testimony was given that Felicia used drugs a lot during her life. Some people even described her as a drug addict. So for some of the people on the jury, that was all they needed to hear. Death simply comes with the territory of using drugs on a regular basis. Something that the prosecution was highly critical about the trial was the PEA evidence.

Remember, an expert for the defense, Dr. Bonnell, said that paramedics found PEA in Felicia's body, and they said that there is no PEA in cases of smothering. Well, when the prosecution asked the judge for an opportunity to basically call a rebuttal witness, the judge said no, he wouldn't let them do it.

So, in the end, the jury never got to hear from another expert witness who might have taken the stand and said that that's simply not true. And they were completely unaware of that until the trial was over. According to the prosecution, several medical examiners were willing to testify that Dr. Bonnell was wrong. They say PEA is possible in cases of smothering.

Another juror told 48 Hours that they didn't think Brian was completely innocent of Felicia's death, but they didn't think the prosecution proved their case. So they basically had no choice but to say not guilty, even though they weren't too sure he was actually innocent. So now what? Well, the police and prosecutors still believe that Felicia was murdered and Brian was the guy who did it.

But as far as Brian Randoni is concerned, Justice was served with that not guilty verdict. He believes the cops had tunnel vision from the moment they walked in that day and never considered any other possibilities. In a strange twist, six months after the trial, Brian was asked to come back by the same people who had accused him of murder.

This time, he was coming back, spreading the word of God, in different Los Angeles County jails, to inmates. What do you think happened to Felicia Tang inside of that apartment? Was it really an overdose, and she caused all those injuries to herself? Or do you believe a guilty person got away? And what do you make of the forensic evidence? To share your thoughts on the story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook.

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If you'd like to become a producer of this show, head over to our Patreon page or email me at Courtney at ForensicTales.com to find out how you can become involved. For a complete list of sources used in this episode, please visit ForensicTales.com. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.