Jessica Boynton
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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, please visit 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. Griffin, Georgia is a small town just outside Atlanta. No one knew this little town existed until April 2016.

Two high school sweethearts' fairytale life changed forever when gunshots rang from their apartment. Griffin police officers were called to the scene, but Officer Matthew Boynton couldn't participate in the investigation. The victim was his wife, Jessica. The police officer's wife reportedly committed suicide. But three weeks later, when she wakes up from her coma, she's got a different story.

This is Forensic Tales, episode number 158, the story of Jessica Boynton. ♪♪ ♪♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable 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. As a thank you for supporting the show, you'll get early ad-free access to weekly episodes, shout-outs and episodes, priority on case suggestions, and access to weekly bonus episodes.

To support Forensic Tales, please visit patreon.com slash Forensic Tales or simply click the link in the show notes. You can also support the show by leaving a positive rating with a review. Now let's get to this week's episode. Griffin, Georgia is a small town about an hour's drive outside Atlanta. It's a town where everyone knows each other. Griffin has become an excellent place to film movies and television shows.

For years, the popular television show The Walking Dead was filmed in Griffin. With only a little more than 20,000 people living there, Griffin isn't a place known for much crime. Violent crime is practically unheard of. But one Friday night, life dramatically changed for this small town. In April 2016, two of Griffin's residents were 19-year-old Jessica Boynton and her husband, 20-year-old Matthew Boynton.

Jessica and Matthew were your typical young couple from a small American town. When Jessica was just a toddler, she moved in with her grandparents who lived in Griffin. From then on, she was raised by her grandma and grandpa. Jessica and Matthew met and started dating in 2012 when they were both in 10th grade. They quickly became high school sweethearts.

But dating when she was a teenager wasn't easy for Jessica. Her grandparents were strict and wanted her to focus on school, not boys. So most of their dates were supervised at Jessica's grandparents' house. They were only allowed to have dates outside her grandparents' house if they went out with a group. This strict dating arrangement made it even more of a surprise when Jessica came home from high school one day with news for her grandparents.

While Jessica was still in high school, she discovered she was pregnant with Matthew's child. At first, her grandparents were furious. They were both young and still in high school. But Jessica was determined to both finish school and have the baby. And that's exactly what she did. When Jessica was 17, she gave birth to her first son, Tolan.

Two years later, they had a second son named Tyler when Jessica was 19 and Matthew was 20. After getting married and welcoming their second son, they moved into an apartment in Griffin, only a few blocks away from her grandparents' house. Jessica became a stay-at-home mom to their two young kids, and Matthew landed his dream job. He became a police officer with the Griffin Police Department. Ever since Matthew was a kid, he wanted to become a cop.

His grandfather was Wendell Beam, a longtime sheriff for Spalding County, Georgia. Matthew always knew he wanted to become a police officer just like his grandfather. And by the time he was 20, he made his dreams a reality. He seemed to achieve everything he wanted in life. He landed a job with the Griffin Police Department. He was married to his high school sweetheart and had two healthy sons.

But Jessica and Matthew's idyllic lifestyle didn't last long. At around 1 o'clock a.m. on Friday, April 15, 2016, Matthew went to the Waffle House fast food restaurant to meet up with a fellow police officer for a late dinner. On his way to the Waffle House, he called his own Griffin Police Department dispatch. He told Griffin Police dispatch that he had just received a disturbing text message from his wife, Jessica.

The text read, I can't do this anymore. Take care of Tolan and Tyler. Please tell them I love them every day. I have been suffering for a while now and no one has noticed. I lately have not been able to recognize the person I see in the mirror. This is not the first time I have had suicide thoughts. I love you and the boys. Matthew asked the dispatcher if they could send a police unit to his apartment to check on his wife.

She was having suicidal thoughts and was home alone with her two young children. The dispatcher asked if he knew about any weapons inside the apartment that Jessica could use to harm herself. Matthew said yes, his .40 caliber Glock service weapon. A few minutes after placing the call to police dispatch, Matthew returned to the apartment. According to Matthew, this is what he said happened when he got there.

He heard one of his children make a small whine, but he ignored it because he wanted to make sure his wife was okay. He said he went straight to the master bedroom but didn't see Jessica. He then tried opening the closet door but said it was locked. The master bedroom closet was locked from the inside. He continued calling Jessica's name, but she didn't respond. Seconds later, he said he heard two gunshots.

First, he ducked because he didn't know where the shots were coming from, and then he said he ran to the front door and ran outside the apartment. He also said he smelt gunpowder on the way out. According to Matthew, he didn't grab either of his two kids on the way out after hearing the two gunshots. After he ran out of the apartment, he made a second phone call to police dispatch.

This time, he said he had already arrived back at the apartment and heard the two gunshots, and Jessica wasn't answering him. A half dozen Griffin police officers arrived at the apartment complex. When they arrived, they told Matthew to stay outside. As a police officer himself, he couldn't investigate a case involving his own wife or children.

When the officers got inside the small apartment, they headed towards the master bedroom where Matthew said he heard the two gunshots. As they made their way inside, all the officers had their body cameras rolling, so the entire incident was captured on police body cams. Inside, they found the couple's youngest son crying in his crib, but the rest of the place was dead silent. There was no sign of Jessica or anyone else. The officers then headed towards the master bedroom.

When they got there, they tried opening the closet door, but it was locked. The closet was locked from the inside, and there wasn't a keyhole in the front. For several minutes, officers tried getting inside the closet by breaking down the lock. There was no other way for them to get inside. Finally, they were able to break down the lock and open the door for a few inches. But something was blocking the door. It was Jessica.

When the Griffin police officers finally got the locked closet open, they discovered Jessica lying on her side. Her head was resting on a bloody green and white pillow, and she appeared to be bleeding from the right side of her head. Officers quickly realized that she was still breathing, so they instructed paramedics and EMS to pull her out of the closet so that they could start working on her.

underneath Jessica's body they found a gun it was a police issued 40 caliber Glock the same type of service weapon Matthew used as a Griffin police officer EMS turned Jessica over from her stomach to her back so that they could assess her injuries one of the paramedics could be heard on the police body cam asking another paramedic if they knew what she used

As one paramedic put the blood pressure sleeve around her arm, another police officer shined a flashlight over her face, showing that her entire head and face were covered with blood. Police and EMS looked around Jessica's head and face to see if they could see a gunshot wound. But because her hair and head were soaked in blood, they weren't sure exactly where her injuries were or if there was in fact a gunshot wound.

While EMS worked on Jessica, Matthew was told to stay outside. None of the officers wanted him to see his wife that way. On the police body cam, he can be heard frantically calling out for his wife. At one point, he's heard saying, where did she shoot herself at? She would have never done this. I don't know why. If I could have been here sooner, maybe I could have stopped her.

Seconds later, he's heard saying, End quote. Jessica was taken by ambulance to a local fire station where she was airlifted to the nearest trauma center, Atlanta Medical Center.

Throughout the rest of the night, an intense investigation ensued into what happened inside that tiny apartment. From the outside, it looked like Jessica used Matthew's police weapon to shoot and kill herself. At 1.21 a.m., the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, or GBI, was notified about what happened.

Because Matthew was a police officer with the Griffin Police Department and his grandfather was the county sheriff, there was a huge conflict of interest for the police department or the sheriff's department to investigate. So the case was turned over to the GBI. Matthew was also placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the GBI's investigation. Chris DeMarco, GBI's assistant special agent, was assigned to oversee the investigation.

When he arrived on the scene, he was met by Griffin Police Chief Michael Yates, Griffin Police Captain Donald Britt, Lieutenant Daryl Dix, Lieutenant Keyes, and Spalding County Sheriff Weldon Beam, Matthew's grandfather. As soon as the GBI arrived, Sheriff Beam ordered a patrol car to go to Jessica's grandparents' house a few blocks away to notify them that their granddaughter was dead.

She had shot and killed herself. But Sheriff Wendell Beam was wrong. Jessica Boynton wasn't dead. 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. After Jessica was airlifted to Atlanta Medical Center, she was placed in a medically induced coma. She had suffered traumatic brain injuries, and for several days, emergency room doctors and nurses weren't sure she would survive. But after three weeks of being in a coma, she miraculously woke up. She had somehow managed to survive being shot in the head.

It was a miracle that almost no doctor at Atlanta Medical Center could explain. As soon as Jessica woke up, the GBI was anxiously awaiting to interview her. But their conversation was short. After spending three weeks in a coma, Jessica couldn't remember what had happened. She couldn't even remember shooting herself. Jessica said the last thing she remembered that night was around 10.45 p.m.,

She said her last memory was going into the closet to change her shoes so that she could go out and walk the dog. After that, she said she didn't remember a thing. Although Jessica's memory was fuzzy, she did say one thing to the GBI, and that was she didn't try to kill herself. She told investigators that she had never been suicidal, and there was no way that she could have shot herself.

She would have never left her two young sons behind without their mother. But if she didn't shoot herself, then who did? GBI Special Agent Chris DeMarco and his team began their investigation in the master bedroom closet where Jessica shot herself. One of the first things they noticed about this scene was that there wasn't much blood.

In fact, there was almost zero blood spatter anywhere throughout the small closet. There was no blood on the walls or door, and no blood was found on any of the clothes or other items in the closet. Initially, the lack of blood spatter was surprising for GBI agents.

If Jessica had shot herself in the head with a .40 caliber Glock inside a tiny apartment closet, you'd expect to find a decent amount of blood spatter. Some blood might be on the walls or the back of the door, but there wasn't any. However, there is a possible explanation here. Many self-inflicted gunshot wounds are from close range. A person will place the gun directly against their skin.

If the gun's muzzle is placed directly on the skin, this can create high-velocity blood spatter. High-velocity blood spatter are blood droplets with a diameter of less than one millimeter. And in some cases, they can be much smaller than that.

So if Jessica had shot herself, this would have created high-velocity blood spatter. And if the blood droplets were tiny enough, they might not be visible to the GBI agent's naked eye. They might not also be visible in photographs either. According to the GBI in their official report, since they didn't see any visible blood spatter in the closet, they didn't perform any additional tests to determine if there was any.

The GBI found two shell casings and two bullet holes in the closet wall. Based on the bullet holes, the GBI determined the two bullets went through two different walls inside the closet. One of the bullets went through the roof and the other went through the closet's back wall and traveled across the apartment to Tyler's bedroom.

One of the bullets went upward at a 54-degree angle, and the second bullet went up at a 25-degree angle, much closer to the ground. Jessica and Matthew's apartment had three bedrooms. After entering the place through the front door, the master bedroom where Jessica shot herself was on the left. The living room, dining room, and kitchen were on the right.

Going past the living room was Tyler's bedroom on the left and Toland's bedroom on the right. This meant one of the bullets traveled through the back of the closet and across the living room, eventually hitting a wall in Tyler's bedroom. The other bullet went in the other direction and through the closet's side wall facing the inside of the master bedroom.

One of the first things the GBI tried to explain was why two shots were fired and why they were fired from two different angles and two different directions. It's believed that Jessica went inside the closet, closed the door, locked it, and then shot herself. But how exactly Jessica shot herself isn't clear. And what is the explanation behind two gunshots?

If Jessica shot herself in the head, how could she fire off a second round? Well, the answer might be hard to explain, but not entirely impossible. Two gunshots and suicides aren't totally uncommon. This event is sometimes referred to as multiple gunshot suicides. They're considered rare, but they are possible. In other words, the person has to shoot themselves twice.

In a suicide by firearm, someone can become instantly incapacitated if the bullet hits their brain stem tissue. Rapid incapacitation can also happen if the bullet directly enters the heart in a certain way or if the person's pulmonary artery is struck. In cases involving headshot wounds, immediate or rapid incapacitation usually happens because the brain stem tissue is damaged.

and this type of injury causes the person to die. But if you're shot in the head, do you automatically die or become immediately incapacitated? The answer to that can be complicated. In one study, 158 gunshot suicides were examined. The study found that in five cases of the 158 that were studied, the person shot themselves in the head twice.

That's because the first shot failed to incapacitate them. Now, five cases are only 3% of the total cases studied here involving gunshot suicides. So it is rare, but it's possible. Someone can inflict two head gunshot wounds if the first one fails. But there could be other possible explanations for two gunshots.

Another possible reason is that Jessica could have fired a test shot before shooting herself. In some instances involving multiple gunshot suicides, the person will fire the gun like a test shot. It might be to make sure the gun is working or they do it to gain confidence in pulling the trigger.

It's not uncommon in cases involving gunshot suicides to see a test shot, or sometimes called a hesitation shot, before the real one. It's also possible Jessica fired the first shot to make sure she knew how to use it. According to her own grandmother, she didn't think that she had ever fired a gun before.

When Jessica was a kid growing up, her grandfather would often go to the shooting range and Jessica would never want to go. So it's unclear if she had ever fired a gun before that day. The two bullets didn't tell the GBI Jessica didn't kill herself. It just meant they needed to do more investigating.

Word about what happened to Jessica and Matthew spread quickly throughout the town. Griffin is a small place, so when they saw dozens of police officers and the GBI at the apartment complex, they were surprised. It wasn't common to see that much police activity. On the surface, this appeared to be an open and shut case. People throughout Griffin quickly heard that Jessica shot herself inside the master bedroom closet.

But something about the story seemed strange to some people. Like the fact Jessica was found inside a locked closet. A closet that could only be locked from the inside and didn't have a keyhole on the outside. Jessica and Matthew lived in an apartment complex. They had the same design, but none of the apartments had a closet that locked from the inside, except for Jessica and Matthew's unit.

Then there were the statements by Jessica and Matthew's neighbors. As soon as the GBI was assigned to the case, they canvassed the complex and interviewed neighbors. During their investigation, they found two neighbors who said that they heard gunshots that night, but both neighbors said it wasn't around 1 a.m. when Matthew said he returned to the apartment and heard the gunshots.

According to one of the neighbors, at around 10.45 p.m., he thought he heard a gunshot while lying in bed. When the police questioned him whether he was sure it was in fact a gunshot, he said yes. He's a former member of the military, so he knew exactly what a gunshot sounded like.

A second neighbor also said that she heard a gunshot sometime between 10.45 p.m. and 11 o'clock p.m., much earlier than when Matthew called dispatch a little after 1 a.m. She said she heard the first one, and then about 15-20 minutes later, she heard a second one. She said she was sure it was gunfire, but she wasn't sure that it came from the apartment complex.

There was a factory and a gun range not too far from the complex, so initially she thought that the sound might have come from there. Now, despite two neighbors claiming to have heard gunshots both around 1045 to 11 o'clock p.m. that night, neither one of them called the police. The GBI dug deep into Jessica and Matthew's marriage throughout their investigation.

They discovered that not everything was as happy as great as it might have appeared. The night Jessica allegedly shot herself, she and Matthew got into an argument. Jessica had recently discovered her husband was cheating on her and having an affair with someone he worked with at the police department. Although Jessica doesn't remember everything from the night of April 15th,

She does remember getting into a fight about seeing a photo of Matthew's girlfriend on his cell phone. She had found a photo on Snapchat of the woman wearing nothing but a towel with the caption, Jessica also told the GBI in the hospital when they interviewed her that she didn't remember texting Matthew the suicide text that night. And when she read the text message, she didn't even think that she had written it.

She pointed to several key details in the message that suggest she wasn't the one who sent it to Matthew. She first pointed out the grammar and language used in the message. She said there were several words or phrases that she just wouldn't use. For instance, the text read that she was having, quote, suicide thoughts. Now, according to Jessica, she doesn't talk like that.

She says if she had written the message, she would have said, quote, she was having suicidal thoughts. She also told the GBI that she wouldn't have said I love you to Matthew at the end of the message. In the text, it ends by saying I love you and the boys. But Jessica is confident that she just wouldn't have said that because she had just found out he was cheating on her.

Although Jessica can't remember anything past around 1045 that night, she maintains that she didn't send that suicide text to her husband. A search of Matthew's cell phone records also confirmed Jessica's suspicions that he was having an affair. On the night of the shooting, Matthew and his girlfriend exchanged a total of 68 text messages. About a minute after Jessica allegedly sent the text about killing herself,

Matthew sent his girlfriend a text that read, So instead of driving straight home after getting a text message from his wife saying that she was about to kill herself, he texted his girlfriend. Cell phone records also showed that Matthew sent his girlfriend another text only minutes after he radioed to his fellow police officers that he heard two gunshots from his apartment.

The text read, give me a few to text back. Long story, I'll tell you later. The GBI also searched Jessica's cell phone records. Her cell phone further suggested Jessica had just discovered the affair on the night of the shooting. In one text, Jessica wrote Matthew, you are cheating on me with Courtney. Courtney was Matthew's girlfriend and a police dispatcher with the Griffin Police Department.

But Matthew wasn't the only one unfaithful in the marriage. Just months before they were married, Jessica went on a trip to see wedding venues. During the trip, she had car problems and the car broke down. So she called an auto mechanic to help her get her car started. But instead of only fixing the car, she slept with the mechanic. And a few weeks later, she found out she was pregnant with the mechanic's baby.

Jessica told Matthew about the affair and the pregnancy, and they decided to stay together and make things work. So Jessica's second son, Tyler, wasn't biologically related to Matthew, but he stepped in and agreed to raise him as his own. Since the one-night stand, the mechanic hasn't been in Jessica or the baby's life.

The GBI also uncovered evidence that Jessica and Matthew were considering divorce around the time of the shooting. Despite only being married for six months, they were both unhappy. Matthew had a girlfriend on the side, and all they did was fight and argue. Investigators learned from Jessica's friends and neighbors that she kept a journal. Inside the journal, she talked about divorcing Matthew.

In several entries, she documented fights they had, even a few incidents that involved physical violence. By all accounts, the journal indicated that Jessica intended to divorce Matthew in April of 2016. A few hours before the shooting, a fellow Griffin police officer and co-worker of Matthew's responded to an incident at the apartment.

At 11.33 p.m., Matthew called Lieutenant Curtis Keyes, the supervisor on duty that night, on his personal cell phone. Because the call was placed from his personal cell phone and not over the police radio, it's unclear exactly what was said. But several minutes later, at 11.49, Lieutenant Keyes sent Matthew a text that read, A few seconds later, Matthew responded,

Officer Trammell is another police officer with Griffin. He and Matthew joined the department around the same time and were friends. On the night of the shooting, Officer Trammell went to Matthew and Jessica's apartment and made an official police report about them having a physical altercation earlier that night. But Officer Trammell said he never went inside the apartment.

His report said Matthew told him he was in the shower using his cell phone when Jessica walked into the bathroom. He said she pulled the curtain back and grabbed his cell phone from his hands. He asked for his cell phone back several times, but she wouldn't give it back to him. He then said she started hitting him in the chest, demanding that he admit to the cheating.

Matthew said that after the argument in the bathroom, they went to Walmart together around 10.15 p.m. that night, but they got into another fight at the store. Matthew said Jessica refused to get into the car with him to go home since she told him that she would find another ride home and walked back into the Walmart. According to Matthew, he left Jessica at the Walmart store alone and went home.

But when the GBI obtained surveillance footage from the Walmart's parking lot, it showed Matthew, Jessica, and their two boys leaving together. Matthew didn't leave Jessica at the Walmart like he told his friend, Officer Tramall. The officer made the report, but he never went inside the apartment to check on Jessica. In fact, he never reported seeing her when he went there. The GBI investigated the case for four and a half months.

They studied the forensic evidence and conducted hundreds of interviews throughout their investigation. Once their investigation wrapped up, the GBI concluded Jessica shot herself and Matthew wasn't responsible, and neither was anyone else. According to the GBI, the forensic evidence, witness statements, and interviews all support the finding that Jessica shot herself in a suicide attempt. Case closed.

But not everyone agrees with the GBI's findings. Dr. Vernon Henderson, chief of trauma and critical care at Atlanta Medical Center, was on call the night Jessica came in. In a written report he submitted to Jessica's attorney, he said Jessica was admitted to the emergency room at 2.48 a.m. And as the trauma physician on call that night, he was responsible for her care.

He said paramedics reported that she was the victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. She was alone in the closet when her husband heard two gunshots. But according to Dr. Henderson, Jessica's injuries were inconsistent with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. In his letter to Jessica's attorney, he wrote, quote, First of all, the wound that she suffered was towards the vertex of her skull on the right side of her head.

This wound would imply that she shot herself with a gun pointed downward near the top of her skull. This would be a very unusual direction in which to point the gun at oneself with the intention of committing suicide. The second striking observation made by me while assessing Jessica was that it's reported that she was right-handed and shot herself with her right hand.

Remarkably, neither of her hands had any evidence of any gunpowder. Literally both of her hands were pristine and unmarked. End quote. His statement went on to say this, quote, End quote.

This statement suggests the GBI didn't perform any gunshot residue test on Jessica's hands to see if she in fact had fired a gun. But according to Dr. Henderson from Atlanta Medical Center, he didn't think Jessica shot herself. He doesn't believe the angle of the bullet wound is consistent with a self-inflicted wound.

He thinks that there should have been evidence of gunpowder on Jessica's hands if, in fact, she had recently fired a firearm. If Jessica had shot herself, she would have had to hold the weapon over the top of her head, on top of her skull, and pointed it directly downward. During Jessica's 31st day at Atlanta Medical Center, the GBI collected a DNA sample from her.

They compared it to DNA collected from Matthew's service weapon, the gun Jessica had allegedly shot herself with. According to the GBI, Jessica's DNA was found in several places on the gun, including the trigger. The GBI suggests this DNA evidence proves that Jessica fired the gun, but Jessica herself disagrees. According to her, she remembered picking up his duty belt from the bathroom floor that night.

that's why her DNA was on the gun because she picked it up from the bathroom floor and put it on the counter. She said she never took the gun out of the duty belt. But the GBI says that the amount of Jessica's DNA on the gun is more than just, quote, casual contact. The amount of DNA on the gun suggests that she fired it. But once again, Jessica disagrees. She claims she's never handled Matthew's service weapon and she's never fired it.

According to her, she doesn't even know how to get it out of the duty belt, let alone know how to use it. This claim is also supported by Jessica's grandmother who raised her. The grandmother says she was always afraid of guns growing up. Although Jessica doesn't remember much about the night of April 15, 2016, she maintains she didn't shoot herself and she's never been suicidal. She points to several key details.

Number one, the suicide text she allegedly sent Matthew that night. According to Jessica, she never sent that message. She points to several grammatical errors in the message, and she doesn't think the text sounded like something she would say. She specifically points out to how the text read, quote, I'm having suicide thoughts instead of I'm having suicidal thoughts. She also points out the ending where she says, I love you to Matthew.

She had just found out that he was cheating on her with someone at work. So she doesn't think that she would have ended the message by saying I love you to him at that point. Number two, she claims she's never been suicidal and has had never thought about killing herself. She maintains that she loves her two boys and that she would have never done anything to leave them without her.

When the GBI interviewed Jessica's family, neighbors, and friends, none of them reported her ever talking about harming herself. Sure, she might have been a little depressed about the status of her marriage to Matthew, but that was it. No one in Jessica's life reported her expressing any suicidal thoughts.

On the contrary, many of Jessica's friends and neighbors who were close with her said that she was looking forward to her future. She knew her marriage with Matthew wasn't going to work out, but she was looking forward to starting a new life with her boys without Matthew. And then number three, the gun. Jessica has always maintained she's never handled her husband's service weapon.

Even when the GBI confronted her about her DNA found on the gun, she said it was because she picked it up from the bathroom floor that night. She claims she's never fired a gun and didn't even know how to get it out of the service belt. If Jessica didn't shoot herself like she claims, then who did? When she was in the hospital, the GBI asked if she thought Matthew could have shot her.

Her answer sort of surprised investigators. She said she wasn't sure. She said that he had never physically hurt her before, so she didn't know. All she knows for sure is that she didn't try to kill herself. When the GBI officially closed the case and ruled that Jessica shot herself, Matthew was cleared of any criminal charges related to the case, but he was still fired from the Griffin Police Department.

On July 28, 2017, Matthew was arrested for providing a false statement to his department about a gym bag. During the GBI's investigation, Matthew was asked about a missing gym bag that belonged to Jessica. According to Jessica, the bag contained clothes for both her and the boys. It was a bag that she was planning to take with her when she left Matthew.

but the bag mysteriously disappeared after the shooting. The GBI questioned Matthew about the missing gym bag. Initially, he denied having it. He said he had no idea where it was. But several months later, it was discovered Matthew had lied about the gym bag. He had taken it with him after the shooting. So in July 2017, he was arrested for lying and agreed to turn the bag over.

Criminal charges were eventually dropped, but he was fired from the police department. He is no longer a police officer with the Griffin Police Department. But it's not because of anything related to the shooting. It's for lying about what he did with some of Jessica's belongings afterward. Although the official investigation into Jessica's case is officially closed, not everyone agrees with the GBI's findings.

Many people, including Jessica herself, don't think that this was an attempted suicide. Not even the emergency room physician who treated her that night believes that this was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. There is plenty of forensic and physical evidence in this case. Some of the evidence suggests suicide, while other pieces of evidence aren't so clear. Did Jessica shoot herself like the GBI claims, or is someone else involved?

Was it Matthew? Or was he simply guilty of just being a bad husband? Which side do you believe? To share your thoughts on the story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales. After each episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions about the case.

You'll want to listen to this one because I'm going to share with you what I think happened to Jessica. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday. If you love the show, consider leaving us a positive review or tell friends and family about us. You can also help support the show through Patreon. Thank you so much for joining me this week.

Please join me next week. We'll have a brand new case and a brand new story to talk about. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.

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Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.