Angel Bumpass
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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. In 2019, Angel Bumpus was charged with first-degree murder for a crime she committed when she was only a teenager. Prosecutors alleged that her fingerprints at the crime scene proved she was the killer.

Is Angel Bumpus a cold-blooded killer? Or did someone set her up? This is Forensic Tales, episode number 166, The Angel Bumpus Story.

Thank you.

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. In January 2009, 13-year-old Angel Bumpus lived with her grandparents in Tennessee.

Born on March 3, 1996, she had already faced many challenges in her life, from her mom being incarcerated to having an absent father. By the time Angel was in middle school, most of her close family members, including siblings and uncles, were either incarcerated or dead. After her mom was imprisoned, Angel started living with her grandma, Shirley Bumpus, in Tennessee.

Despite her challenges at home, she was a good eighth grader. She maintained good grades. She never got in trouble with her teachers or the cops. But every attempt to stay out of trouble eventually caught up to her when she was charged with first-degree felony murder.

On January 16, 2009, Linda Balmer returned to her Chattanooga, Tennessee home to find her husband, 68-year-old Franklin Bonner, duct taped to a chair and kitchen table with duct tape covering his nose and mouth. He also had duct tape wrapped around his feet, arms, and head.

At first glance, she thought her husband was having a, quote, spell. He had recently been experiencing some inner ear trouble. But once she got closer, she realized he was in serious trouble. She tried to cut the tape off his face with a knife to see if he was breathing, but he wasn't. He was completely unresponsive.

She then ran to the phone and dialed 911. But Linda and the paramedics were too late. Franklin Bonner, a man who went by the nickname Cookie, was already dead. Franklin and Linda Bonner had lived in their Chattanooga home on Enterprise Lane since 1975.

Besides getting the nickname Cookie, Franklin was also known around the town as the Lottery Man, a telling nickname that might have led to his death. Franklin, a.k.a. Cookie, a.k.a. the Lottery Man, was known to always have large amounts of cash on him. It wouldn't be uncommon for him to have hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in his pockets or inside the house.

Most of the cash came from the small-town marijuana business that he and Linda owned. The Bonners were known around this part of Chattanooga for being reasonable and reliable weed dealers. So a lot of cash was from the marijuana deals.

Now, to be clear, the Bonners didn't operate some large-scale marijuana business. They only sold to a few people that they knew and trusted. On the scale of drug businesses, this was a tiny operation. It was a husband and a wife. But still, the business meant that the Bonners made a little extra money each month, and it also meant that they often had a large amount of cash on them.

On the day of Franklin's murder, his wife, Linda, had gone to work like every other morning. On her lunch break that day, she picked up some steak sandwiches from a local restaurant and took them back to the house to have lunch with Franklin around 1.15. She stayed at the house for about 15 minutes while they ate the sandwiches together, and then she left to go back to work. She said that when she left the house, Franklin had already gone to the back room of the house.

She didn't get to say goodbye to him because she was already running a little bit late. She also said that they had plans to go out for a birthday party that night. At Franklin's autopsy, the Hamilton County medical examiner, Dr. James Metcalf, found significant blunt force trauma to almost his entire body. He had been clearly badly beaten. But the blunt force trauma isn't what killed him.

He somehow managed to survive the beating, but ultimately died of suffocation. The duct tape found wrapped around his nose and face had caused him to suffocate to death before his wife came home. Based on the evidence gathered inside the home and what investigators learned about the Bonners, they theorized his death resulted from a robbery gone wrong, a robbery that turned into a murder.

They thought someone around town knew about the Bonners' small-town marijuana business and went to the house to rob him. He might have even put up a fight, which caused his attackers or attacker to beat him and then tie him up with a duct tape. Once the robbers took the cash and left, Franklin eventually suffocated to death.

So it was pretty clear that this was a robbery turned homicide case and that Franklin's lifestyle of carrying around a large amount of cash made him a target in the community. But his lifestyle wasn't the only piece of evidence that led investigators to suspect a robbery.

The Bonner's house had been completely ransacked. The furniture was turned over. Every drawer in the house was pulled out. Many items from the drawers had just been thrown down on the ground. And investigators didn't find any signs of forced entry. None of the windows were broken and the front door was unlocked.

This led some of the detectives to wonder if Franklin had let his killer or killers inside. Maybe they were there to buy some weed and something went wrong. Or perhaps he knew them. The lead detective assigned to the case was Chattanooga Detective Carl Fields. Detective Fields and his team collected evidence from the Bonner's house.

Because this was likely a robbery and Franklin had been tied up, there was a good chance at finding plenty of forensic evidence. So they looked for things like blood, DNA, and fingerprints. And in this case, the investigators found a lot. After searching the entire house, they found several unknown fingerprints in multiple places.

The fingerprints didn't belong to either Franklin or his wife. But besides the fingerprints, they also found several strands of hair that didn't belong to either one of them either. The most promising forensic evidence came from the murder weapon itself. The duct tape wrapped around Franklin's nose and mouth.

On the sticky side of the tape, investigators recovered two fingerprints that didn't belong to Franklin or Linda. This location is really significant because the prints were found on the sticky side of the tape. This means whoever left the prints was the one who unraveled the tape to wrap it around Franklin's face. It also meant that they belonged to the suspect.

All the fingerprints found throughout the house were submitted to all available databases for comparison. They were compared against local databases as well as national databases. But nothing came back. The prints didn't match anyone in the system. Whoever the killer was, they had never been in contact with law enforcement.

The case was turning cold despite the amount of forensic evidence recovered from the house. The fingerprints didn't match anyone in the system, and they couldn't identify who the hair belonged to. They also couldn't figure out who went to the Bonner's house that afternoon.

When Linda went home for about 15 minutes during her lunch break, she said no one besides her husband was there. And Franklin never mentioned anything about anyone coming to the house or coming over to buy marijuana that afternoon. So without any leads from the forensic evidence, the murder of 68-year-old Franklin Cookie Bonner went cold.

Nine years after the murder, Chattanooga investigators got the break they needed. In 2018, Tennessee authorities were alerted about a possible fingerprint match to their Franklin Bonner investigation. A Kentucky woman was arrested on an open warrant for failing to appear for a traffic ticket in court.

When the cops pulled her over, they saw the warrant and brought her in for the active warrant. Then, once she was under arrest, she was required to submit her fingerprints. Her prints were then submitted to the national database where authorities got an alert. The prints matched a pair of unknown fingerprints collected at the Franklin Bonner house. The prints belonged to Angel Bumpus.

By 2018, Angel was 22 years old. But at the time of Franklin's murder in 2009, she was only 5 feet, 80 pounds, and 13 years old. But despite only being a teenager, authorities finally felt they had their suspect, Angel Bumpus. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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Although investigators were confident they had identified Franklin's killer, they couldn't shake the fact that Angel was only 13 at the time. How did a 13-year-old girl, 80-pound middle schooler, subdue and attacked a grown man? Sure, Franklin was almost 70 years old and not in the greatest shape of his life, but could a teenage girl really pull this off by herself?

That's the moment Mallory Vaughn popped up. A federal prison inmate had come forward and said that someone had confessed to killing Franklin. The inmate, Nicholas Cheaton, said that Mallory Vaughn had confessed to everything. According to this prison informant, Mallory Vaughn told him he was going to, quote, put a lick on someone named the Lottery Man.

When the informant told investigators about this, he was in federal prison. But when Mallory Vaughn made this confession, they were both out of prison. And according to this informant, he picked Mallory up from a hotel, and that's when he allegedly confessed to the murder.

Now, this prison informant said that Mallory told him he messed up. He said he put duct tape over someone's mouth like a quote-unquote mummy and that it went wrong. The informant and Mallory knew each other because Mallory Vaughn sometimes cut his grass and did some random chores around his house for a little extra money now and again. And the two could be considered casual friends.

Now, once the investigators heard this story from the prison informant, everything started to make sense. At the time of the murder back in 2009, Mallory Vaughn was 26. He's also a relatively big guy. So police theorized Angel didn't commit the murder on her own. She had an accomplice, Mallory Vaughn.

She's only 13 and weighs 80 pounds, so she can't do everything alone, or at least that's the theory. But the authorities knew that she was there because her fingerprints were on the duct tape. That's where Mallory came into play. She couldn't have been able to do this without help.

But the investigators were faced with two big problems. Number one, they didn't have any forensic evidence against Mallory Vaughn. And number two, they couldn't figure out exactly how Mallory and Angel knew each other.

Crime scene investigators discovered several fingerprints and unknown strands of hair inside the Bonner's home. Two of the fingerprints found on the duct tape belonged to Angel, but they also found at least seven other sets of fingerprints that didn't belong to either Angel or Mallory.

They also didn't belong to Franklin or his wife, Linda. They were completely unknown fingerprints left on key places throughout the home, including the kitchen table and the chair next to Franklin's body. So at least nine fingerprints around the crime scene didn't match anyone. The only evidence the police had against Mallory was the prison informant, the guy who said that Mallory had confessed to him. That was it.

They also couldn't figure out why or how a 13-year-old girl knew or was hanging out with a 26-year-old. After digging deep into both of them, they still couldn't find a connection. Angel said that she had never met Mallory before, and he said the same thing.

But that information isn't needed to bring forward felony murder charges. The investigators felt confident they had enough evidence against both Mallory and Angel to charge them both. Angel Bumpus and Mallory Vaughn were both charged with felony murder. Under Tennessee law, a person can be charged with felony murder if someone dies during the commission of a violent felony.

So if someone is robbed or assaulted and eventually dies, the person responsible can be charged with felony murder. You can't cause the death of someone else for doing something terrible. So the prosecutors argued that while Mallory and Angel probably only intended to rob Franklin, he died during the robbery's commission, which meant they were eligible to be charged with first-degree felony murder.

Now, if convicted of these charges, they both looked at facing decades behind bars. Although Angel was only 13 years old when prosecutors alleged that she committed the robbery, she was still charged as an adult when she was arrested at 22. When Angel was arrested in 2018, she was the mother of two young children and a student at Jefferson Community and Technical College.

She said on the television show Accused, Guilty or Innocent, a show that followed her trial, that she wasn't abused while living with her grandparents, but she never really felt loved either. She was never close to her mom because she was sent to prison when she was young, and she never knew her biological father because he was never in the picture. So the only people she truly knew were her grandparents, and they weren't even that close.

After Angel was arrested, she claimed that she had never met Franklin Bonner, the victim, and didn't know who he was until she found out that she was being arrested for his murder. She told investigators she had never met him, not now at 22 years old and not when she was 13. She also said she had never met Mallory Vaughn, her alleged sidekick, but investigators had something up their sleeves.

Angel might have said she didn't know the victim, but they weren't too sure about that. In the early days of the investigation, back in 2009, the police considered Angel's grandmother surely as a possible suspect.

She became a suspect after the police had searched Franklin's phone records and learned Shirley had called him on the morning of the murder. In fact, she was probably the last person to speak with him other than his wife. Shirley Bumpus, her husband, and Angel lived together in a house about two miles from the Bonners. And it wasn't just that they lived nearby.

Shirley also regularly purchased marijuana from Franklin. And on the day of the murder, the day that he was killed, that's why she was calling him. She wanted to buy some weed.

But when investigators confronted Angel about this, she stuck to her story that she had never met him. Although they only lived two miles away and her grandma regularly purchased marijuana from him, she said she had never met him and had never been inside his house. She said that she didn't even know her grandma called him that day.

In 2009, Shirley was eventually cleared of the murder because no physical evidence pointed towards her. She was simply just the last person or presumably the last person to speak with him. And the case ultimately turned cold. It wasn't until nine years later that the police matched the fingerprints on the duct tape to her granddaughter, Angel.

But when Angel was arrested in 2018, Shirley seemed to not remember what happened nine years earlier. After Angel's arrest, Shirley Bumpus said that she didn't remember if she called Franklin that day or not. She said it had been so many years and she just simply couldn't recall if she called him that day and was asking to buy some marijuana. She might have, but she said she can't be so sure. She just doesn't remember.

So besides the fingerprints, this is another problem for Angel's defense. Her grandma can't remember if she spoke to the victim that day, which made her the last person to talk to him besides his wife. Angel and her co-defendant, Mallory Vaughn, were tried together in Hamilton County a year after they were arrested in 2019.

The prosecution's biggest piece of evidence at trial was the two sets of fingerprints they found on the sticky side of the duct tape that matched Angel's prints. This particular evidence was essentially their smoke and gun in the case. Since Angel's prints were on the sticky side of the tape, she had to have touched the tape around the victim's face.

An angel herself could never offer another explanation for why her prints would be on the tape. She said she had never been inside the Bonner's house or met him before. So how does or how do her fingerprints get on the murder weapon? According to the prosecution, the only way those prints could be on the sticky side of the duct tape is if she was present at the time of the robbery and at the time of the murder.

When it came time for Angel's defense attorneys to talk about the fingerprints, they argued that many more prints were found at the crime scene that didn't belong to Angel. At least nine other sets of fingerprints were found in the house around Franklin's body that didn't match Angel or Mallory.

Many other prints were also found on the duct tape itself. The police were only able to find two prints that belonged to Angel. The rest of them didn't match anyone, not the victims and not the two suspects. So who could have possibly left the prints? Well, no one can say for sure.

But the defense wanted the jury to know that more prints were found that didn't belong to Angel than prints that did. According to them, this suggested that others were present inside the house. To try and explain the fingerprints, Angel's grandfather testified that sometimes she helped him in the garage and played around with rolls of duct tape.

He testified that he often did handyman work for Franklin, meaning he had been inside the house before. And because he worked inside the Bonner's house, he might have left duct tape there. A roll of duct tape that Angel may have played with and touched in the past. So that could explain why or how her prints were found on it.

But the prosecution wasn't going to let this slide by the jury. The prosecution grilled him about whether he remembered leaving duct tape inside the house right before the murder. And Angel's grandfather couldn't remember. He only said it was possible because he had done a lot of work there and his work required him to bring tools like duct tape. But he couldn't say for sure whether it was there sometime before the robbery.

Unfortunately for both the prosecution and defense, the role of duct tape in question was destroyed in the years the case was cold and before Angel's arrest, so it wasn't able to be retested with new fingerprint technology. As a result, the only evidence the defense and prosecution could rely on is what was tested and done 10 years earlier.

Angel's defense also argued that she was at school the day the robbery and murder occurred. In 2009, she was in middle school, and school records confirmed that she was in class that day. Records also confirmed that she took the bus home from school like she did every day and got home around 3 o'clock p.m. that afternoon.

This meant that she only had two hours from when she got dropped off by the school bus to walk the two miles to Franklin's house and commit the murder. According to the medical examiner, they believed Franklin was killed sometime between 4 and 5 o'clock p.m. And Linda Bonner arrived home from work around 5 o'clock that evening.

So Angel and Mallory Vaughn would have had to commit the robbery sometime between 3 o'clock p.m. when she got off the school bus and 5 o'clock p.m. when Linda returned home. But Angel's defense argued that was impossible. They said Angel couldn't have gotten off the bus at 3, walked two miles to Franklin's house, commit the robbery, and get home before Linda arrived around 5 p.m.

They said the prosecution had no evidence suggesting Angel got a ride to the house. And if she didn't get a ride from Mallory or anyone else, she must have walked there because she wasn't old enough to drive and she didn't have a car. Throughout the trial, the jury heard extensive testimony about the fingerprint evidence. But they couldn't hear one piece of evidence that the defense thought was important.

A jail phone call between two of Angel's brothers. Shortly after her arrest, a phone call was recorded between two of her brothers when one of them was incarcerated. On the call, the brothers talked about Angel being arrested for something that happened in 2009. When one of them asked about what Angel was arrested for, the other brother said, think about it.

The other brother pressed on like, what are you talking about? Angel was just a kid. But the other brother simply kept saying, think about it. When Angel's defense attorneys got their hands on this phone call, they thought it was a crucial piece to her defense. According to them, the conversation insinuates that her brothers knew something about the robbery.

Whether they were involved or not, Angel's attorneys thought the conversation at least raised suspicions. Maybe the brothers knew something, or perhaps this was even bigger than that. Maybe they had something to do with the robbery and were part of setting Angel up.

But that was pure speculation on the defense's part. Neither brother admitted to knowing anything throughout that phone call about the robbery, but they just kept making vague comments about it. As soon as the defense lawyers obtained the recorded phone call, they asked the court to present it as evidence. They thought the conversation pointed towards a possible cover-up from Angel's family.

But when it came time for the call to be played in front of the jury, the judge denied it. The judge wouldn't admit the conversation into evidence or play it during trial. So the jury never heard about it. Before Angel's defense and the prosecution rested, she had the opportunity to take the stand in her defense.

According to the television show Accused Guilty or Innocent, Angel genuinely wanted to take the stand. She wanted the jury to hear her side of the story, but her attorneys advised her against it. They didn't want her to be subjected to the prosecution's cross-examination for one big reason. Angel couldn't explain why her fingerprints were on the sticky side of the duct tape.

If she had a good explanation, her attorneys would have let her testify. But they knew the prosecution was going to grill her about the fingerprints, and she didn't have an explanation for it. So Angel didn't testify, and the prosecution and defense rested without hearing from her.

On October 3rd, 2019, the jury reached verdicts against both Angel Bumpus and her co-defendant Mallory Vaughn, but they didn't come to the same conclusions.

The ruling for Mallory Vaughn came first. Mallory was only connected to the robbery and murder through a jailhouse informant. There wasn't any forensic evidence linking him to the case. So in Mallory's case, the jury found him not guilty and he was completely exonerated. Angel, on the other hand, wasn't.

Unlike her co-defendant, she was found guilty of all charges against her. Felony first-degree murder and aggravated robbery. And she was sentenced to almost life in prison. She won't be eligible for parole until at least 2078, when she will be in her 80s. Angel and her attorneys appealed her conviction immediately following her sentencing.

But the beginning of the appeal process was significantly delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The court only heard necessary cases, and Angel's didn't qualify as necessary. While Angel waited for an appeal hearing, many people who heard about her case started supporting her innocence. She gained even more public support after an episode of the TV show Accused, Guilty or Innocent aired.

The show did an entire episode on the case and followed Angel's story in the weeks and months leading up to her original trial. And once this episode aired, many people doubted whether she had any involvement in the crime. While Angel waited for her appeal, a change.org petition was set up. The petition now has over 900,000 signatures and argues that she's been falsely convicted of murder.

Angel's supporters and the petition point out several things about the case and trial pointing towards her innocence. Number one, Angel was only 13 at the time. Her supporters want to know how a 13-year-old girl who weighed 80 pounds and was only 5 feet tall committed a robbery and murder on her own. Number two, the fingerprints.

The police said they found two of Angel's prints on the duct tape, but at least nine other unidentified prints were also found that didn't belong to Angel or the victim. The fingerprints also didn't belong to Angel's co-defendant. And then number three, the hair found inside the house. Angel's supporters say that the unknown hair was never tested and doesn't belong to Angel.

The petition also raises concerns about Angel's defense at trial. It claims that her two defense attorneys, quote, End quote.

They also argued that her lawyers violated her constitutional rights by not properly and thoroughly investigating her defense. All of this helped Angel and her new lawyers to file a motion with the court to get her a new trial.

In July 2022, Angel's new lawyer, William Massey, filed a motion for a new trial arguing that, quote, unfair prejudice was allowed during her original criminal trial.

This also included, quote, unnecessary testimony and notes submitted into evidence by the state written by the detective who was under investigation for misconduct in a separate case, end quote. Angel's lawyer is referring to Detective Carl Fields. When Franklin Bonner was killed in 2009, the original detective assigned to the case was Detective Carl Fields.

Well, in 2016, he was accused of sexually harassing a rape victim, tampering with evidence, and gross misconduct. As a result, criminal charges were filed against him, and he was fired from the Chattanooga Police Department. But the charges were eventually dropped due to lack of evidence. Angel's new lawyers argued that because the head detective in the Franklin Bonner case was charged with tampering with evidence,

Any case he led that secured a conviction should be considered for a new trial. And Angel was one of those cases. A few weeks after William Macy filed the motion, a Hamilton County criminal court issued a ruling on it. And in late August 2022, they ruled in Angel's favor.

The judge who oversaw the appeal found several errors in Angel's original criminal trial, and he believed the errors were big enough to warrant a new trial. But the errors weren't big enough to overturn her conviction entirely. Judge Tom Greenhut's, the judge who oversaw the appeal, said in part, quote,

The court reaffirms its findings that the evidence is legally sufficient to support the defendant's convictions. However, the court agrees that the cumulative effect of error by the court and the parties support the granting of a new trial. Accordingly, the court grants the defendant's motion for a new trial. End quote. So what exactly did the court find as errors in the original trial?

The first problem was with some issues the jury heard in open court that her defense attorney didn't object to. For instance, in one part of Angel's family member's testimony, she said the evidence against Angel didn't look good, but her defense attorneys never objected.

The appellate court found that this testimony might have insinuated that even her family believed she was guilty. And the appellate court judge said the jury should have been given special instructions about that statement, but they didn't. Another problem was how Angel's yearbook photo was presented in court.

After a lot of back and forth between the defense and prosecution, jurors were finally allowed to see it, Angel's yearbook photo, but it was never treated as an official exhibit in the case. In the ruling, the appellate judge said, quote,

End quote.

Angel's yearbook photo was a big deal for the defense. They wanted the jurors to see just how small and just how young she was at the time of the murder. But the photo was never admitted into evidence or considered an exhibit. So the jurors saw the picture in open court, but it wasn't seen again because it wasn't considered an official exhibit in the case.

Now, another problem was the prosecution asking an investigator whether, in the court's words, quote, the defense had requested DNA analysis on a hair follicle found near the defendant's fingerprint, end quote.

In other words, the court found that the prosecution asked a loaded question, and they asked it despite the co-defendant's own attorney objecting to a substantially similar question just minutes before. For this error, the appellate court said, quote,

No further objection was raised by the defendant to this question, but the court believes that the question, particularly in retrospect, elicited information that the court ruled was inadmissible. The court does not find that this line of inquiry by itself would have affected the outcome of the trial.

But the conclusion suggested by the inquiry, along with arguments on different but related issues, tended to suggest that the defendant had a burden to prove her innocence. End quote. The judge then listed several other errors in the original trial, which added to enough concern to warrant a new trial.

The judge wrapped up these issues by saying, quote, the state was not able to establish any direct connection between the defendant and Mallory Vaughn or, for that matter, any other person who may also have been involved in the robbery.

Rather, the principle, if not only link between these two persons, consists of a Facebook connection between Mr. Vaughn and a neutral third-party acquaintance, Cardinal Bumpus, that existed some 10 years later. Thus, while this third-party connection existed, in fact, this weak connection to the defendant herself diminishes the weight of the evidence supporting the defendant's convictions.

In a similar manner, the state also was unable to establish any direct link between the defendant and the victim, Mr. Bonner. The victim's wife denied knowing or seeing the defendant previously, and although the state linked the defendant's aunt to the victim, Ms. Bonner denied ever seeing the defendant and when the aunt came to the Bonner's house.

The link through Shirley Bumpus was certainly not substantial and it may have been excluded altogether had other objections been made and advanced by defense counsel. Thus, the proof showed that others had a direct connection to Mr. Bonner and it did not show that the defendant did.

Again, this weak connection to the defendant herself diminishes the weight of evidence supporting the defendant's convictions. End quote. As soon as the judge granted Angel a new trial, she was released from prison on bond. But the money didn't come from Angel or anyone in her family. Instead, in a strange twist of paying it forward, a complete stranger paid it.

A Chattanooga businessman, Kenneth Adams, who said that he had been following the case for years, volunteered to pay the required 10% of her $100,000 bond after he found out that she was granted a new trial. In an article published by the Chattanooga Times Free Press, Kenneth Adams said, quote, end quote.

As of November 2nd, 2022, Angel Bumpus is released on bond and awaiting her second murder trial. Since her initial arrest, she has always maintained her innocence. Angel claims to have never met the victim or his wife, and she doesn't know why her fingerprints were found on the duct tape.

Although there have been several court hearings on her case, it's unclear when the new trial will begin or if another co-defendant will also be charged alongside Angel. It's also unclear what type of forensic evidence the state will present against Angel in the second trial. Will the prosecution have new evidence in the case? Will they test the nine other unidentified fingerprints found on the duct tape?

Or will the two prints they found belonging to Angel Bumpus be enough evidence to convict her again? 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 what I think about Angel's case. Patreon is also where I'll be posting any updates to her new trial. 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 telling friends and family about us. You can also 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 story and a brand new case to talk about. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.

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