Filtered Out | Forensic Files | S14 E10 | FULL EPISODE | Forensic Files

[Music] up next a teenage girl goes missing this child had walked away into the darkness and
disappeared was she the victim of foul play or did she run off to be with a friend
it was horrible you know people just didn't know what to make of it for weeks there were many questions but
no answers something's not right you know it's just too weird until police find evidence of an
encounter gone wrong she would have put up a tremendous fight this is good science this is
absolute good stuff [Music] teenage love affairs are notoriously passionate so when sixteen-year-old tara muncie
fell in love with her high school classmate nick zaroba she expected it to last forever
terry and nick was the strongest love that you could imagine but it was like the car show
fast and furious it was sometimes it was really great sometimes it was really furious
when nick graduated he joined the navy and was stationed at the great lakes naval base in illinois
tara stayed in virginia to finish her last years in high school she was in love with him and she talked
about him constantly they planned on getting married on the night of january 25 2000
tara didn't return home after her shift at a local fast food restaurant it wasn't like tara to do that tara
would always call in check in tara's parents called the local sheriff's office but this was a story they'd heard a
hundred times before the team missing for a couple of hours is a very routine call
typically a teenager or any missing person turns up within 24 hours her last known location was the fast
food restaurant where she was seen leaving alone at seven o'clock carrying a container of food
her car was still in the lot the car was unlocked and the food and hat was sitting on the
front driver's seat like she had placed it there there was no purse nor keys found at the
scene the main question is why wouldn't she have her car and now who she is with or where she is
at is it someone that she doesn't want her parents to know she's with it was as if tara had dumped her
belongings and just left but it was freezing outside so it didn't seem likely she would simply
walk away but by the next morning tara still hadn't returned home both of us tara's mom and myself both
knew deep down that something wasn't right some people thought she'd run off to be with nick
if she headed for illinois and she headed for to meet the boyfriend there was no evidence of her purchasing
a ticket at a bus station there was no evidence she had purchased an airline ticket
investigators contacted nick at the naval base he said he hadn't had any contact with
her he hadn't seen her she hasn't called him his commanding officer was able to confirm that he had
been on the base the entire time 24 hours after tara disappeared police received some alarming
information a co-worker said that the night before tara was working the drive-through
window and got into an argument with two young male customers she had had a wordy conversation or a
confrontation maybe with a couple of young men that came through the drive-through we're thinking that
those are two potential suspects normally there would be video to identify these men
[Music] but not this time big disappointment the restaurant i didn't have any video
surveillance of any kind this also meant there was no video surveillance of the parking lot and none of the customers or
tara's co-workers saw anything suspicious they didn't really pay attention who she left with
or you know what transpired out in the parking lot this left terrace family and police
without answers we knew absolutely nothing we had nothing the case was completely clueless from the start
when tara muncie disappeared her friends thought she had run away to be with her
boyfriend nick in illinois her parents however didn't believe it i think maybe one time
tara decided she was going to run away i think she was gone for an hour she would not run away no
when media outlets reported the story of tara's disappearance hundreds of volunteers joined the search
everyone wanted to help find tara muncie it was cold there was snow on the ground
and it didn't stop people they came out people poured out and searched neighborhoods searched parks
looked everywhere they could for her in the snow in the cold i miss her so much i just i just want her back somebody's
got her i don't know why but she just wouldn't run so something's not right you know
it's just too weird tara's friends told police that the last time they saw her was after school on the day she went
missing from there tara went to work at the fast food restaurant two long weeks passed and still there
was no trace of tara the pressure at that time was extreme and it was all fueled by the
thought that this child had walked away into the darkness and disappeared and it could happen to yours or mine
then 17 days after tara went missing a hiker found a body near an isolated railroad track
seven miles from tara's house my first thought is you know how fast can we get there is it tara
or is it or is it something else you know the body was at the bottom of a 70-foot
wooded ravine almost completely hidden from sight it's just a surreal feeling when you're
standing out in the middle of the outdoors and you can see that it was a violent
death the victim was naked from the waist up and had been shot to death some injuries were consistent with the
body being rolled down the ravine post-mortem a driver's license in her back pocket
confirmed everyone's worst fears it was terra muncie tara was quite a girl one of a kind
and it's just too bad she never got to live to fight for all this to find out her full
potential fortunately near freezing temperatures help forensic investigators her body
appeared to be fairly well preserved i remember thinking at the time that i hope that means that we're going to have
some some good evidence but the crime scene itself was another matter it was a dumping ground it was a ravine
where people dumped their tires their stoves it was very difficult for investigators to separate out what
was perhaps related to the crime and what was not at the top of the ravine was a single
22-caliber shell casing as well as tara's car keys and parts of a cigarette the cigarette
filter was right in the middle of the crime scene the filter was found separately from the cigarette very few
people ever pull a filter off of a cigarette to smoke it in a bundle thrown to the side
investigators found tara's t-shirt and on it a potential clue you could see a faint outline of an
outsole of an athletic shoe on the front of the shirt you can make a positive identification
of a footwear impression just like you can make a positive identification of a fingerprint but finding the shoe
wouldn't be easy tara munsey's autopsy showed she was most likely killed the day she went missing she'd
been shot four times at close range this child was executed i firmly believe that she was shot in the chest
and while she was on the ground i think that the rifle was held next to her head and three shots were
fired blood found under tara's fingernails showed she had fought her attacker what we had learned about tara muncie is
that she would have put up a tremendous fight she would have resisted any type of assault
there's many hours of crying just thinking how she felt what was going on in her mind it was
hard to deal with yes it was very hard it was very hard to deal with even though tara's rape kit came up
negative investigators found seminal fluid on her body all of the biological evidence was sent for dna testing
the ballistic evidence provided a surprising clue the murder weapon left an unusual
combination of lands and grooves on the fatal bullets only three types of 22-caliber rifles
could have fired those shots you're looking for a sears a marlin or revelation and by
the way marlin manufactures force years and revelation so it's only one manufacturer doing all
three when you're talking hundreds of different firearms to narrow it down to three
that's pretty unique and good information tara's ripped shirt also provided a possible clue
using alternate light sources forensic analysts found a partial muddy shoe print on the front
of her shirt investigators searched their database of thousands of known outsole
designs and found the one they were looking for we were able to tell the police that we
they need to look for an individual that has a pair of nike brand running shoes with a herringbone outsole design
the print wasn't large enough to identify the shoe size but it was valuable information
nonetheless then tara's friends told police something they had been reluctant to reveal earlier
on the day tara went missing tara and her friends were smoking marijuana after school
and an older man was with them the man who had provided the marijuana 30 year old
jeff thomas it struck me out at that time that there was a 30 year old male there
smoking marijuana with these teenagers after school we didn't have a regular employment and
we're not even sure that he really had a had a regular place to live he stayed at times in his girlfriend's
basement tara and jeff thomas knew one another tara often babysat for jeff's six-year-old daughter
a background check revealed thomas had a criminal record eight years earlier thomas attacked a neighbor with a
baseball bat and served two years in prison when questioned by police jeff thomas
denied any involvement in tara's murder and said he had an alibi thank you for coming in today we found
that there had been some holes in his alibi particularly where he'd spent the night
jeff thomas denied owning a 22-caliber rifle but said his friend kevin williams of 32-year-old
bricklayer owned one police converged on kevin williams house hoping to question williams and examine
his gun but willian's story was significantly different from that of jeff thomas kevin williams
told us that he owned a 22 caliber rifle and that he left it in the possession of
jeff thomas and he has not seen that rifle or firearm since williams admitted he sometimes used the
rifle for target practice in his backyard investigators knew this was their chance
to find out whether kevin williams rifle was the murder weapon after williams had told us that he had
fired this weapon off his back off the rear deck of his home it was a long shot to think that we would find any casings
in the yard incredibly investigators found two shell casings under the porch ballistics
matched the shell casing found near tara's body this is absolute good stuff this is good
science which tells you you've just recovered cartridge cases from the murder weapon but
where was the rifle and which man was telling the truth at this point we didn't really know who
to believe we've got two different people telling us they gave the gun to somebody else
the prime suspect in terra muncie's murder was jeff thomas the man who was seen smoking marijuana with tara on the
afternoon of her murder but the murder weapon belonged to kevin williams a friend of thomas's both claimed
the other was in possession of the gun at the time of tara's murder then something strange happened an
unlikely witness came forward with a story of her own ma'am stop if you're going through a
stop sign back there there was a lady who was in a vehicle that had been stopped for a traffic violation and
she knew something about the case her name was barbara helton and when she was with police she told
them something she had kept to herself for the past several weeks she said she knew jeff thomas and he'd
been staying at her house at the time of tara muncie's murder on the night of the murder thomas
returned home visibly agitated he was dirty he was muddy he was upset and he told her that he had messed up
he said i wouldn't have heard her if she would have gave me what i wanted i asked him what he was
talking about and he said that she wouldn't have sex with me he said she wouldn't have sex
with him and she says that he told me i shot you know i shot her three times in the head he
called it the execution crown whatever that question the number of shots fired was inside
information police hadn't released those details to the media for these very situations
no one knew but us the killer and the medical examiner but if helton's story were true
why hadn't she gone to the police sooner she was scared of jeff thomas she was scared for her own safety
it was only when she actually was face to face with a police officer at the traffic stop
that she was willing to talk with the information barbara helton provided to police
they now had enough evidence to get a want to search thomas's car in the trunk they found a pair of
sneakers with a herringbone tread pattern transparencies of the treads compared to
photographs from the partial prince on the front of tara's shirt we were able to say
that the right shoe submitted by the police department could have made the two fragmentary
footwear impressions present on the shirt collected from the crime scene also in thomas's car were three strands
of blonde hair with the roots intact forcibly removed hairs this means they had a good
chance of having dna material in the root of the hair it was determined that all three hairs
from the car were consistent with terra muncie by dna and investigators also compared
thomas's dna to the biological evidence on tara's body his dna was all over her it was on her clothes
it was on her body it was on her inner thigh it was on the bottom of her shoe it was underneath her fingernails and it
was on the cigarette that was found at the crime scene and so that was really the nail in the
coffin prosecutors believe jeff thomas stopped at the taco restaurant as tara got off from work
he may have suggested they go somewhere to smoke marijuana as they did earlier that afternoon
[Music] once there thomas made a sexual advance tara refused there was a fight tara's shirt was torn she scratched his
face at some point thomas dragged tara out of the car shot her once in the chest
and three times in the head leaving his shoe impression on her t-shirt he pushed her body down the ravine
then smoked a cigarette after ripping the filter off you always break the photos off the
cigarettes [Music] it's just a habit i've always done it three of tara's hairs forcibly removed
during the fight fell into his trunk as he was getting rid of the evidence the rifle was never
recovered in march of 2001 jeff thomas was tried and convicted of capital murder
and was sentenced to death to hear the clerk of court say not all are you guilty but you are
sentenced to death death death it sends chills of us by literally but tara's mother opposed the death
penalty and asked that thomas's sentence be commuted to life in prison in 2002 the virginia supreme court gave him life
without parole tara's family realizes that without science her case might never have been solved
in the beginning you know we thought how in the world you gonna solve a case like
this and i don't think it ever been if if it hadn't been the pedestrian police force
i don't think it ever solved at the end of the day we had a lot of circumstantial evidence but it was the
forensic evidence that was the most powerful young high school student just uh taken such a short time in life
here it's tragic it's tragic and if we can help find the truth and justice in that
that's what we're here for you

In 2000, when teenager Tara Munsey goes missing after a work shift at a Virginia restaurant, it is unknown if she ran away or if she was the victim of foul play.

Brief Summary

Tara Muncie, 16, was murdered in 2000; Jeff Thomas was convicted after DNA evidence linked him to the crime.

Key points

The Disappearance of Tara Muncie. A teenage girl goes missing under mysterious circumstances, leaving her family and friends desperate for answers.
The Discovery of a Body. Seventeen days after Tara's disappearance, a hiker finds a body near a railroad track, confirming everyone's worst fears.
The Arrest of Jeff Thomas. Jeff Thomas, a man seen with Tara before her murder, becomes a prime suspect after incriminating evidence surfaces.
The Trial and Sentencing. Jeff Thomas is convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death, though Tara's mother opposes the death penalty.
The Role of Forensic Evidence. Forensic science plays a crucial role in solving Tara's case, providing evidence that leads to a conviction.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's just too weird.

A recurring sentiment about the mysterious circumstances of Tara's disappearance.

5:35WatchMar 13, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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