The Death of Tamla Horsford

On November 3, 2018, 40-year-old Tamla Horsford spent the evening and late night drinking with her girlfriends and celebrating one of the friend’s birthdays at a home in Cumming, Georgia. Despite the night of good food, friends, and drinking, the party ultimately ended in tragedy. Early the next morning, Tamla, the only black person at the party, was found lying face down in the backyard, dead. The case was closed and the mom of five’s death was ruled a tragic accident, however her friends and family believe she was the victim of homicide.

Tamla Iana St. Jour was born on October 10, 1978 in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, an island country in the Caribbean. She lived there with her family until 1989 when they moved to the Bronx. Tamla eventually relocated to Florida where she met Leander “Lee” Horsford. Leander had been married once before and had a daughter from the marriage. Leander and Tamla married and had five sons together. There isn’t a lot of information available about Tamla’s personal life, but during interviews, her friends and family described her as charismatic, loving, and caring.

Tamla was very involved with her sons’ schools and loved being a “football mom.” Her boys enjoyed playing sports and she loved supporting them. Often referred to by loved ones as Tam, Tamla was someone that you could always count on. She was just an all-around fun person to be around. At the time of her death, her youngest son was just four years old. Her husband said that if there were three things you needed to know about Tamla, these were it: 1. She loved her family, 2. She loved life, and 3. She loved YOU! She never met a stranger and always made everyone feel included.

A Little History on Cumming Georgia

Around 2012, the Horsfords moved to Cumming, Georgia, in Forsyth County. It’s about 40 miles northeast of Atlanta. Forsyth County is a heavily white area, with certain events in its history that were fueled by heavy racism. In 1912, Forsyth’s white residents forced all 1,098 black residents out of the county, with threats of violence and murder. After a white woman was murdered and another white woman was raped, it was rumored that the white residents forced the black residents out in order to “protect the women.”

There were several public lynchings of black men in the town square, where residents fired bullets into their corpses. Forsyth’s residents continued to enforce their borders as “whites-only” well into the 1980’s. In 1987, black and white allies held a Civil Rights March in Forsyth. The white residents responded by throwing rocks at them. A former resident of Forsyth said that many other communities in Atlanta attempted to force the black residents out of their towns, but Forsyth was uniquely successful. As of 2019, the county’s black population was still very small, at only 3.6%.

Despite the history of Forsyth County, Tamla and her family were happy. They had wonderful neighbors and friends. The five and a half years that the Horsfords resided in Cumming were great, until everything changed one night.

The Day of the Party

On Saturday, November 3, 2018, Jeanne Meyers was having a party at her house on Woodlet Court in Cumming. It was her 45th birthday and she’d decided that instead of going out to celebrate, she’d rather spend the evening at home with her girlfriends. That way, they could drink and enjoy themselves without having to worry about getting home safely. Her friend Stacy had arranged an all girls sleepover at Jeanne’s house. In addition to celebrating Jeanne’s birthday, the ladies were celebrating making it through another football season successfully with their children. Not all of the women were super close, but they were familiar with one another and friendly. In fact, many of them had been at a Halloween party the weekend before at Jeanne.

The party started between 6:30 and 7PM. In typical Tamla fashion, she had made sure that her family was taken care of before she headed to the party. She made them dinner, and even made them a breakfast casserole for the morning. Once her children and husband were all settled, Tamla left for Jeanne’s house, arriving around 8 or 8:30PM. Tamla was especially excited for the party. With five children, she didn’t always have time to enjoy herself or spend time with other women. She brought a bottle of her favorite tequila and showed up in her white onesie pajama with black paw prints, ready for a fun night. In the group of women there, Tamla was the only black person at the party. Around 10PM, Tamla called her husband to check in, and make sure that the boys were doing okay. Lee said that his wife was in a good mood and seemed to be having fun. Around 12:30PM, she Facetimed her stepdaughter to show her off to the ladies at the party, as she was pregnant with Tamla’s first grandchild. Her step-daughter also said that Tamla was in a great mood, and that nothing seemed off. It seemed like everyone was having a great time.

The next morning, Sunday November 4th, Madeline Lombardi, Jeanne’s aunt, who lived in Jeanne’s basement, woke up around 8:30AM. She’d turned her Bose sound machine on loud the prior night to drown out the noise from the party. She remembered laying in bed for a bit before getting up to start her coffee maker that she kept in the basement area. As she passed by the window, she saw Tamla laying face down in the backyard, still in her pajama onesie. In a statement made later to police, Madeline said that after seeing Tamla, she didn’t start the coffee (well that’s good), got on her knees, said a prayer, then ran upstairs to the room where Jeanne and her 27-year-old boyfriend, Jose Barrera slept. Madeline said that she heard water running, and thought maybe it was her niece taking a shower. She then went back downstairs and looked out of the window again. Madeline said, “I couldn’t believe my eyes, I was saying inside my head, she’s not moving, she’s not moving…” Madeline then went back upstairs and knocked on Jeanne’s door louder. Jeanne told her to come in. Madeline said that she told her and Jeanne that their “friend from the islands” was laying in the backyard and she wasn’t moving.

At 8:59AM, Jeanne had called 911. **There have been discrepancies in the reported time that 911 was called and the time that Tamla was found…this has been verified by authorities to be due to the daylight savings time change that occurred that morning. They said there was no lapse between Madeline’s reported discovery and the call to 911.

Jose said that they found Tamla laying face down on the ground in the backyard and that she wasn’t breathing or moving. He said that she was stiff. Corporal Miller from the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office was the first officer to arrive on scene at 9:07AM. He said that it was very obvious that Tamla was deceased when he arrived. He cancelled EMS and the Fire Department who were responding.

Police directed the partygoers who were still there to stay in one room. They contacted the remaining party goers who had left before Tamla was found and told them to return. They were separated from those on scene and kept outside. The crime scene was marked off and police began to process the scene and talk to the witnesses. Officers drove to the Horsford house to inform them that Tamla had been found deceased.

Well, What in the World Happened?

Tamla’s body was found face down in the grass in Jeanne’s backyard. Her face wasn’t turned to either side, it was pointed straight down into the grass. Her legs were straight out and down, with her feet pointed out. Her left arm was up and bent, as though she were waving, and her right arm was straight down by her side. There was an obvious injury to her right wrist, with a small amount of blood coming from a laceration. There wasn’t any other obvious blood or injury immediately noticeable. She reportedly had rigor mortis and lividity that confirmed she’d been laying in the position for several hours.

From the front side, Jeanne’s house showed two stories: the main level and the upstairs. From the back, the home sat on a slope which allowed the house to include a basement underneath the main level. On the backside of the main level, there was a porch with railing that was almost the entire length of the backside of the home. There were several chairs, tables, and fans out there. Just outside of the basement was a ground patio with more chairs. The edge of Tamla’s feet were approximately 1 foot, 10 inches from the edge of the bottom patio. She pointed straight out from the patio, with her head towards the back of the yard. The ground was just about 14 feet, 10 inches from the top of the railing on the main level porch. Once they concluded their investigation of the crime scene, they sent Tamla’s body off to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) for further analysis and an autopsy. Tamla’s family was understandably devastated, and were even more heartbroken by the fact that they had no idea what happened to their bright, fun-loving mom and wife.

The police who responded to the scene had a theory of what they believed happened to Tamla. They theorized that Tamla had tripped and fallen over the balcony and had a “medical event.” They didn’t elaborate any further.

Investigators’ next step was to find out who was at the party, what they saw, and the exact events that transpired leading up to Tamla’s death. In addition to Jeanne, her boyfriend Jose, and Jeanne’s aunt Madeline, the other attendees were Paula Seals, Jennifer Morrell, Marcy Hardin, Sara Cockerham, Stacy Smith, her husband, Thomas, Michael Pallerino, Nichole Lawson, and Bridget Fuller. While some interviews were conducted at the police station, officers interviewed both Jeanne and Madeline at their home, while other witnesses from the party were present, or on the phone. (Seemed super weird)

Jeanne told police that Stacy arranged the party and that most of the guests showed up between 6:30 and 7PM, and that Tamla arrived a bit later. Though they were supposed to have an all girls night, Jeanne’s boyfriend, Jose, said he wasn’t feeling well and asked if he and Stacy’s husband, Tom, could watch football in the basement. The girls stayed on the main level, watching the LSU vs. Alabama football game, eating appetizers, and drinking. During the game’s halftime, the boys came upstairs, saw there was food, and hung out with the girls, eating, and playing Cards Against Humanity.

The party began winding down around 1AM. Jeanne said that Tamla tried to convince everyone to stay up late, saying that she never got to spend time with just the girls. Everyone else was ready for bed though. Jeanne said that she last saw Tamla in the living room. She said she was going to smoke a cigarette and that she’d be back inside afterwards. Jeanne said that Tamla had been drinking the tequila she’d brought all night. She said that Tamla drank almost the entire bottle.

When she last saw Tamla around 1:30AM, she didn’t seem to be extremely intoxicated. During Madeline’s interview at Jeanne’s home, Jeanne interrupted and told police that she’d brought them Dunkin’ Donuts gift cards. The officers told her that that was inappropriate and they couldn’t accept them. At another point, she asked police if they were done with her so she could go get ready for “this funeral” referring to Tamla’s funeral.

Sara and Nichole were the first to leave the party, both around 10:30PM. Sara said that the party had been the first night she’d met Tamla, and that she’d been bubbly and excited throughout the night. She didn’t recall too much about the night, saying that she had a few glasses of wine, watched football on the couch, then left. Nichole also met Tamla for the first time that evening. She said that the night was low-key and there wasn’t any drama. She remembered that Tamla had been on the porch at some point smoking cigarettes. She recalled someone saying that Tamla had also smoked marijuana. Nichole left early because she had a dog at home that she had to take care of.

The next person to leave was Bridget, around 1:47AM. This is particularly important because it is around the time that the coroner listed Tamla’s time of death. Bridget repeats multiple times that she is the “mother hen” of the group, and that no matter how much she drank, she could always keep her “faculties” about her. This was Bridget’s second time meeting Tamla. She’d first met her the prior weekend at Jeanne’s pumping carving party.

Bridget’s interview gets very off track many times. She deflected questions and appeared very nervous by oversharing unnecessary information. Bridget called her husband to come pick her up as everyone started going to bed that night. She said that she and Tamla were the last ones up and in the kitchen while Bridget waited for her husband to come pick her up. Tamla ate a bowl of gumbo while the two chatted and waited. Finally, Bridget’s husband arrived and Tamla walked her to the door, giving her a big hug and kiss on the cheek. Bridget said that she and Tamla were the only ones in the kitchen from 1:30-1:47PM. She said that Tamla wasn’t stumbling or slurring her words, and that she didn’t seem drunk at all.

Bridget continued elaborating however, on how drunk that Jennifer “Jen” was. She said that when Tamla said goodbye to her, she told her she was going to finish her gumbo, have another cigarette, then go to bed. Finally, Bridget adds that she believed that Tamla walked out back around 1:55AM and the door was never shut. When investigators asked how she knew that, she said that Jose told her that he found an unlit cigarette and a lighter on the back porch prior to finding Tamla’s body. He also said that there was a propane tank on the porch that she might’ve used as a stepstool.

At 4:10AM, Marcy left. She’d spent most of the night at Jeanne’s house. Like many of the women, it was her first time meeting Tamla that night. Around 12:30/12:45AM, she and Jen put a movie in the guest bedroom, watched it for a bit and fell asleep. She set her alarm to wake herself up for work in the morning and didn’t notice anything abnormal.

At 7:45AM, Paula left. She said that everything seemed normal at the party. She had met Tamla once or twice at a football game before the party, but wasn’t very familiar with her. She said that Tamla was very engaging and in a great mood, dancing with everybody. Paula said that she was the first to go to bed in a room upstairs. She last remembered texting Stacy around 1:45, that she was in the room by her, but didn’t get a response, so she assumed she was already asleep. She woke up and left, not noticing anything out of the ordinary, but recall that she did see Stacy and Tamla’s phone right next to each other in the living room.

At 8:30AM, Tom and Stacy left, just fifteen minutes before Tamla’s body was found. She said that she and Tom went to bed around 1:30AM, despite that Tamla wanted her to stay up and hang out. She said that she told her she was going to go outside, have one more cigarette, then go to bed. Tamla was sad that Tom insisted that his wife sleep with him, instead of letting her share a bed with Tamla. Stacy left their phones downstairs together and told Tamla that at least their phones could sleep together! She and Tom woke up around 8AM and she was glad to see that Tamla’s car was still out front. She said that Tamla had driven home from Stacy’s house once before after a few glasses of wine, and she didn’t want her to do it again. They didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary and left Jeanne’s home.

The 911 Call

After discovering Tamla’s body, Jeanne called 911. She told the dispatcher that she’d had people over the night prior, everyone was drinking, and that one person stayed on the balcony drinking. She said they went outside this morning and found one of her guests laying face down in the backyard. She told the dispatcher that she guessed that she may have fallen off the balcony, and she didn’t know if she was breathing. After this, Jeanne’s boyfriend, Jose, got on the phone. Jose, at the time, was a pretrial officer at the local courthouse. He identified himself and told the dispatcher that the woman wasn’t moving one bit, not breathing, and that she was stiff.

At some point, Jose told the dispatcher that he could see a cut on her right wrist. The dispatcher asks if he knew if she was suicidal at all to which Jose responds, “I have no clue.” He said that she was the last one in the kitchen after the party, that she was either waiting around for a ride or for morning. He said that he last saw her around 1AM when she was in the kitchen before he went to bed. Jose said it was hard to tell if she fell from the balcony or if she was already down on the ground. He told her that his girlfriend has cameras on the deck, which would’ve caught the incident if she’d fallen. He also said that she was the only smoker there, and reiterated this multiple times. Jose reportedly felt her back to see if she was breathing and tried to move her leg, but found that her body was in rigor.

Inconsistencies, Autopsies, and Other Weird Shit

The autopsy results came back on November 6th and disproved police’s theory of death from a medical event. Tamla had several superficial abrasions to her face, along with a subdural hemorrhage to the right cerebral hemisphere of her brain. She was also found to have a fracture to her 2nd cervical vertebrae. Tamla had a laceration on the right ventricle of her heart, which allowed bleeding into the sack surrounding the heart. Her right wrist was dislocated with a small laceration on the inside of the wrist.

There were also other scattered superficial abrasions on her extremities. She was found to have a small amount of THC in her system, along with a blood alcohol content of 0.238, almost 3 times the legal driving limit, and a small amount of Alprazolam, a generic version of Xanax. The medical examiner said that Tamla’s injuries were consistent with a fall. He ruled the cause of her death as multiple blunt force injuries and the manner of her death was accidental. THERE WERE NO PHOTOS TAKEN DURING HER AUTOPSY.

Several things were concerning about Tamla’s autopsy findings. A fracture of the C2 vertebrae is commonly known as the Hangman’s Fracture due to it being commonly found in hanging victims. It’s caused by a sudden snap of the head up and back. Though common in hangings, it is also seen in car accidents and falls. Many times, the injury is fatal.

Despite how high Tamla’s blood alcohol content was, every single partygoer reported that she did not seem overly intoxicated. Some said that they recalled her smoking marijuana, and that she was the only one who smoked it that night. Also, Tamla did not have a prescription for Xanax, nor was she known to take the medication recreationally. The police did not test the tequila bottle that Tamla had been seen drinking out of for traces of Xanax. They also never collected cigarette butts from the scene to determine who was smoking.

Jeanne was adamant about telling investigators that she had the alerts on her phone that recorded when doors in her home were open and closed. Based on her system, the back door that led to the porch was opened at 1:49AM, just after Bridget left out of the front door, then closed at 1:50AM. The back door opened again at 1:57AM and never closed. Jeanne also said that they should have camera footage from cameras around the outside of the house. HOWEVER, when she sent her files to police, there was no footage from the night of the party or the few days surrounding it. In an email to police, she told them that she must’ve accidentally deleted it or the battery had died. She gave police her username and password and told them they could try to recover the files.

Kurt, Tamla’s father, quickly made an appointment with investigators to discuss inconsistencies he found in his daughter’s death. He said that the partygoers’ stories didn’t make sense and didn’t sound like his daughter. That November night, the temperature was around 35-40 degrees fahrenheit. Tamla was from the Caribbean and was used to warm weather. She got cold easily and her father felt it was very strange that she would’ve gone outside without shoes or a jacket. Even though Tamla was intoxicated, Kurt felt that something was wrong.

The railing on the porch was measured to be just over 3 foot tall. Tamla was 5’5. It seems odd that if she fell over the railing, that she would land the way she was found. Jeanne was insistent that when she first saw Tamla’s body, both of her arms were down by her side, which contradicts what police found upon their arrival. They recorded her left arm being up and bent. Jeanne said that she was positive that her arms were down, because she recalled thinking how strange it was for someone who’d fallen to land like that. No one has ever admitted to moving the body.

Police on scene also said that they had to lean pretty far over the railing before they started to feel unsteady. There was no vomit found on the ground, which means that Tamla wasn’t likely leaning over the balcony to vomit. It has also been noted that it was odd that Tamla’s face was straight down into the ground, particularly because there was no damage to the facial bones, or injuries noted inside of her mouth or nose.

Stacey, Tom, and Bridget all said that at some point during the party, Tamla said that she wanted to drive herself home. Though she ultimately didn’t end up driving home, Tamla’s friends and family wonder what caused her to want to go home that night. Was it just a drunken thought, wanting to sleep in her own bed, or had something happened? There were also reportedly two types of cigarettes found on the back porch and two lighters, however neither were tested. There is conflicting information out about whether Tamla was a smoker. Many of the partygoers repeated the fact multiple times that Tamla was the only smoker at the party, and went out on the porch to smoke frequently. There is also information that states Tamla was not a smoker.

Shady AF

In mid-Decmeber, one of Tamla’s good friends, Michelle Graves, began to make it publicly known how concerned she was with her friend’s death and the investigation. Michelle publicly posted things on her Facebook page, which reportedly included the names of other partygoers. Soon after, Michelle filed a police report believing that Jose had accessed her private information at his job and given her personal information to the partygoers. The Sheriff’s Office alerted Jose’s superiors, where he was put on leaving pending an investigation. On the 20th, he was fired from his job, citing that they had lost confidence in his work. It was found that on November 7th, just days after Tamla’s death, he accessed her incident report and again on November 20th.

Though this was public information, it was still considered inappropriate given his involvement in the case. On November 28th, he accessed information regarding a restraining order that Jeanne possibly had against Michelle. In February, Michelle completed a 9 page statement about the incident with Jose, and FINALLY, the media began paying attention to the entire case. A month after the media picked up the case and began to run with it, police closed the case, calling Tamla’s death an accident. On February 20, 2019, Major Joe Perkins with the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Department held a press conference where he announced that the case was closed and that there was no evidence of foul play. They alerted Tamla’s family just an hour prior to the press conference that they were closing the case.

It was later found that Corporal Mike Christian, who was heavily involved in the interviews of witnesses and the investigation, leaked sensitive information and crime scene photos, including photos of Tamla’s body, to two women. Both women believe he was doing this as a way to keep them interested in him.

In December of 2020, Jeanne Meyers posted a photo to her Facbeook of her and three other women wearing Dunkin Donuts face masks with the caption “The best masks! EVER! #iykyk” (if you know, you know). This is believed to be referencing her attempt to give investigators the DD gift cards.

In 2020, the case was reportedly re-opened due to public outcry, however I was not able to find any updated information or investigation. The Horsford family attorney wrote the following letter to Tamla’s husband after his investigation into her death: