we need you to wait ougd of the house. the detective was soon on coachside lane. he still had only a garbled account from the 91 1 call. who had shot who? your son was trying to protect you? yes. it looked like it was what we would call a domestic murder. it was something that just occurred. on arrival the first deputies on the scene saw a young man who would turn out to be 19-year-old charlie tan, standing in the driveway with his mother. they re outside the house. outside of the house. it s a safety thing for the deputies. no reason to go in so those people come out. they asked who was in the house? in the next moments the deputies heard the son tell a story that sounded like self-defense. he had to shoot, he said, to save his mother. he used a shotgun. charlie said my dad is in there. he is dead. i had to do it. he was going to hurt my mom. father was shot because the boy feels his mother is in
jeopardy. yes. it was getting late on a frigid february night. the deputies put the son and the mother in a patrol car. they asked where the shotgun was. there was mention of it still being in the garage. after securing the weapon the deputies made their way on to the home. in the home office they found the victim. the husband, the father, is behind the desk. spent shotgun shells are all right there in that doorway. the detective would quickly learn more about jim tan, father, husband, and businessman. the owned his own company. they had lived in canada and then moved to the united states some years earlier. successful executive? by all accounts, yes. but was this successful businessman also an abusive husband? detective peglo looked around the household as crime scene techs processed a shotgun killing upstairs. they came upon an appointment card for gene tan to appear at domestic violence court. so the working theory, justifiable homicide made some
attention that, hang on, there might be more, but let s make sure we re on the right path. there were other observations that set their timeline back. on jim tan s desk computer he had apparently been working when he was killed, there were unopened emails going back before the weekend. jim is trading emails with an employee, and then at some point after that he clearly stops using his computer. he had no longer sent emails or no longer opened emails. as detectives poked around that office monday night. how many days prior is the last e-mail? four. four days. that was really a big thing for me. this was a guy that ran his own company. you know, with employees and with activity. going back four days. that put the shooting back to that thursday night charlie came home from cornell and a four-day-old crime scene would also explain what had been plainly obvious to the seasoned detecti detective s nose. the odor of decomposition was very strong. the detective now believed
close friend anna had a hard time wrapping her head around charlie doing anything violent. charlie she knew was a thoughtful kid who did things no ordinary teenager did. my mom went through cancer, and he was always there. he brought her, like, gifts and stuff. he was always there supporting anybody. so anna, too, would be there supporting charlie through this difficult time. a friend to the end. neither she nor anyone else could have guessed where the investigation was going next. the detective who examined the scene that night was wondering if there was more to the story. it was all obvious right away that something was off with the working theory of the crime. a heat of passion self-defense homicide. we were there for hours, obviously, searching every bit. one of the things that was noticed by one of the investigators is just the dried blood that was all over. dried blood. the timeline of the whole story demanded a closer look. it s certainly one of the things that start
he had been upset. i asked him to call me when he got home just soy knew he was okay. and that very evening back in pittsford, new york, charlie spent time at an old friend s house where he seemed to his pal deeply derespondent, sad, possibly depressed. after charlie left, the friend and his mother were so concerned they called 911. was charlie suicidal. he didn t give us a lot of details. i am just worried that he might do something at his house. i don t know if anything is going to happen, but i just can t take a chance. all right. i m going to have to go to the house and check on him. and a deputy did just that. detective steve peglo of the monroe county slev s office. charlie told the deputy that he was upset over some things. he had come home to talk to people and that he was just working out some things and he would be okay. it was now late thursday night, almost the weekend.