dawn told the investigators she phoned teresa over and over and each time the phone went to a recording. just to be sure of all this, they pulled teresa s cell phone records and plotted out a timeline of her whereabouts. but the picture the records painted wasn t quite what they expected. that morning call to scott, the one he couldn t hear, teresa did not call from moundville. cell tower shows it s pinging from up in tuscaloosa. wait a minute. how could it be pinging from tuscaloosa? that s miles and miles away. right. there s no way she could have made the call and been back to the location where she was murdered at. courtesy of the cell towers, you were able to show that teresa could not have made that call. it had to be somebody else using her phone and what do you know? her phone is missing from the crime scene. correct. so the person who very likely killed teresa mayfield must have used teresa s cell phone to call
sheriff ellis and corporal boyd picked apart the early interview with a suspicious eye. they pulled her phone records and there it was plain as day. dawn s lies caught by cell phone technology. it painted a clearer picture that dawn was in the location of teresa the morning that she was murdered. why in heaven s name would a woman who claimed to be teresa s friend want to kill her? good question, which perhaps they d get answered once they accused dawn lavender of murder, which they did. she, however, had but one thing to say to police. she just kept saying that it was wrong that we made a mistake. coming up. as far as physical evidence. we really didn t have any. but they did have a plan. an undercover sting could get the evidence they need.
do you still love me? yes, i do. if you do have anything do with her dying, was it because you love me? i didn t have nothing to do with it, no, no, no. i had nothing. my hands are clean as they can be. so infidelity? yes. murder? didn t sound like it. we could prove that he was an adulterer. but we was trying to prove the murder. guess there s no crime against being a lying sack of you know what. it s not against the law to have a mistress. so now the corporal and the sheriff reverted to standard procedure and followed up every tip and tracked down every tenuous lead and knocked down rumors. somebody called scott from teresa s cell phone that morning, whether he heard it or not. the investigation dragged on. weeks and months went by and there was nothing. we had no idea how that anger
will get the best of you, not knowing who done this and you want the person that done this to be punished for it. kelsey took on the most difficult job of her life. at 17 she stepped into her mother s shoes defended her father, tried to maintain something of a normal life for her little brothers. me trying to fill my mother s shoes. those are some big shoes to fill. i felt like it was my responsibility to help my dad take care of my family. so you were able to continue to have a relationship of trust with your father. right. he was there for you guys? yeah. he tried to be strong for us so we wouldn t have a breakdown. by the first anniversary of teresa s death, there was still no arrest and the story was old news. so teresa s mother plastered this poster on doors and windows
murder for hire scheme. but who did the hiring? here s keith morrison with the conclusion to secrets in a small town. . dawn lavender sounded for all the world like she was boasting as she confessed to her cell mate that she murdered theresa mayfield in cold blood. in fact, in recorded conversations with her cell mate dawn not only admitted to shooting teresa, but said that she had tried once before. that strange night at the casino when teresa came home stumbling that was her first attempt at murder. i had everything you could think of. she wouldn t die. she woke up. but why? why would she want to kill her