Vanished: The Night Tyarra Williams Disappeared

On January 7, 2016, nineteen-year-old Tyarra Williams stepped out of her apartment in Greensboro, North Carolina to visit a friend nearby. It was supposed to be a quick visit — just a short walk across the apartment complex. She told her boyfriend and brother she’d be back within an hour.

She never returned.

What should have been a routine walk home turned into a mystery that has haunted her family and investigators for years. Tyarra’s phone activity suddenly stopped. No confirmed sightings have ever been reported. And early in the investigation, police said the circumstances surrounding her disappearance appeared suspicious.

In this episode, we take a deep dive into Tyarra’s story — who she was before that night, the timeline of her final known movements, and the investigation that followed. We examine what investigators know, what remains unanswered, and the narrow window of time in which Tyarra disappeared.

How does someone vanish inside their own apartment complex?

Was she targeted by someone she knew?
Did something happen during the short walk back home?
Or did someone encounter her in those final moments?

Now, over a decade later, Tyarra Williams is still missing — and her family is still searching for answers.

If you have any information about Tyarra’s disappearance, please contact the Greensboro Police Department at 336-373-2222, Greensboro/Guilford Crime Stoppers at 336-373-1000, or the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST.

Someone knows what happened that night.

And it’s time the truth came to light.

To see more about this case, as well as the sources used to create this episode, visit our Blog Here.

If you would like to contact the podcast, please do so at vanishedvoicespod@gmail.com. If you have contacted us in the past, please know we are so grateful for you, but can not respond through the link, it is a one way route. We would ALWAYS prefer to respond, and hope providing our email here, will help!

Thank you so much for listening to Vanished Voices. We truly appreciate you!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Hi, welcome to Vanished Voices. We're your hosts. I'm Jenna. And I'm Shannon. All right, we're gonna go back a decade to January 7th, 2016. It's a cold winter night in Greensboro, North Carolina. Inside an apartment complex called Stony Brook, a 19-year-old woman is getting ready to step outside for what should be a quick visit with a friend. She isn't leaving town. She isn't heading across the city. She's just walking across her own apartment complex. Before she leaves, she tells her boyfriend and her younger brother where she's going. She's just meeting a friend who lives nearby. And she says something that, in hindsight, has become chillingly familiar in missing person cases. She says, I'll be back in an hour. But that hour comes and goes, and then another. Her phone suddenly stops responding. No texts, no social media, no calls answered. And somewhere between one apartment door and another, Tiara Williams disappears. Police would later describe the circumstances of her disappearance as suspicious, even raising the possibility of foul play. But now, a decade later, investigators still don't have a public answer to one basic question. What happened to Tiera Williams that night? She was born on June 18th, 1996. She was someone who was bubbly, spunky. She made the space she was in feel brighter. Her parents had divorced, and she was the always protective big sister of her younger brother. She was incredibly kind and always nurturing, which is why during her junior year of high school, when she told her mom she was thinking about a specific career path, her mom knew she would be perfect for it. She wanted to go into education, specifically working with children with special needs. Her mom, Danielle, knew to fill that role, someone had to be loving and compassionate, which was exactly who Tiera was. Tierra was friendly and outgoing. She made friends easily. She was an excellent student. And her mom was an involved parent. She says that Tiera described her as a strict mom, but they had a good relationship. Thiara had graduated from Dudley High School in Greensboro in 2014. She planned to take a gap year to save money and get ready for college, also to make sure that this was the exact path she wanted to go down without wasting money and time doing a different career path before starting out. Smart. Mm-hmm. Her mom lived in the Stony Brook apartment complex, as did her grandma. And she moved in with her grandma towards the end of her senior year to gain a little bit of independence and also to help out. And so her grandma wasn't alone. By winter of 2015, she was ready to start making her dreams a reality. She registered at Guildford Technical Community College in their early childhood development and education program and was planning to begin classes in January of 2016. And like a lot of people, in their late teens, she was standing right at the edge of adulthood. She was excited for the next chapter of life, and that detail matters. Because when investigators look at whether someone might have left voluntarily, one of the first things they examine is future planning. Were they preparing for school? Were they making long-term plans? Were they talking about what came next? And in Tierra's case, the answer to all these questions is yes. Her family had described her as someone who was always thinking about the future. And she really was just about to start classes the next week, actually. Oh yeah, that's close. Yeah. On January 7th, 2016, Tierra was making sure everything was in order for those classes to start. She had gone to the college that day to get her student ID, finish registering for everything, and make sure her financial aid was all in order so she could start classes. She was back later in the day excitedly telling her mom about how everything had gone. She was happy. She had gotten all of these things done that feel like really big things. Her mom said she was beaming. She was obviously happy. The two made plans to go back to school shopping, and they planned to get all of Tierra's textbooks for her classes the next day. Thiara, her brother, and her mom spent some time taking down the Christmas tree. And Thiara's case was actually featured on Investigation Discovery on their Disappeared series in season nine. And in that episode, her mom said that she didn't want to put up a tree that year. It was a lot of work. But Tiera convinced her, saying, I promise I'll help take it down. Interesting. And true to her word, she did. After they got it down, her boyfriend Aaron came by and they all had dinner together. This feels like such a normal, ordinary day. After dinner, they hung out, they watched TV. Around 8:30 p.m., Tiara, her boyfriend Aaron and her brother all left Danielle's apartment. Aaron and her brother hung out occasionally. She hadn't been dating Aaron that long, but the two got along well. And they were planning to go to Aaron's. He also lived in the same complex to play video games. Tiara told the two that she was going to walk over to see a friend named Travis who lived in the same complex, but she would meet Erin back at her place, like at her grandmother's, in an hour. She wasn't headed down the street, not across town, literally just inside the same apartment community. She's planning this short visit, only an hour. As she walks away that moment, nothing feels unusual.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

So I'm just gonna jump right into Travis. Did he ever acknowledge that she got there? He did. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Not at first. Oh. Which feels a little off. Yeah. There were messages between Tiara and him that her mom was able to find on her Facebook that showed they were planning to meet up. Yeah. And he actually ends up being an ex-boyfriend of hers. Okay. Okay. So that's not his real name, and his real name has actually never been released. Did she know that it was the ex?

SPEAKER_01 7:08

No. Oh, so he was catfishing under the name.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Oh, sorry. Sierra knew, nobody else knew. Okay. Yes. So neither Aaron or her brother recognized that name.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Okay. Does Aaron live in the same apartment complex? He does. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

He also lives in Stony Brook.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

And their apartments or are they like townhomes?

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Their apartments. Okay. Aaron says that he doesn't want to be nosy or one of those boyfriends. They hadn't been dating all that long. Understandable. Mm-hmm. So he didn't ask who Travis was or why.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Well, and especially when she's like, I'm going to be back in like an hour. I mean, that's it's short.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Right. Running over maybe he has a textbook that she can borrow, or there's a lot of different, very innocent explanations.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Well, and she could be doing the whole, let me like do closure, have one last conversation with this dude, because now I'm with a new person. And sometimes, especially at that age, you feel like it's the adult thing to have the conversation in person, even though that's sometimes ridiculous. Yeah, and not need it. Right. But you're especially you're doing all these adult things, like, oh, let me do one more adult thing and have a potential conversation face to face. Right. I'm no, I'm surmising, but it seems plausible.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

They've never really.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Especially when they we now know that he is the ex. Right. But interesting that she's choosing to use the fake name as well with her brother. And I get with the new boyfriend, but so that makes me think her family may not have liked him.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

I couldn't really tell. Okay. I didn't get the feeling one way or the other. All right. We know that she made it where she was headed, but this is where the timeline becomes less precise.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

So does this complex have cameras in their outside area?

SPEAKER_00 9:07

Not that they've ever released. Okay. So I don't know if they do and they didn't find anything, or because they do get on top of it pretty quickly. And they actually do have CC TV from other places where tips were called in that they reviewed and they put that information out. So my guess is maybe no. Okay. They find out later when they talk to Travis that they only talked in his car. Travis doesn't live at the apartment complex.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

And so that makes more sense that she's saying I'm gonna go visit a friend, but reality, she's just meeting him in a car because it's not who she's telling people it is. Right. So, okay, wait. So how do they know she left from talking to him?

SPEAKER_00 9:54

I don't love the answer, but when he is talking to police later, he says they met at 8:30. Uh-huh. They talked for 20 to 30 minutes in his car, and then he watched her walk away. They did search his car. Yeah. They didn't find anything. Okay. And nothing about his story was odd. They didn't see anything from the messages that made it seem like it was anything other than just a normal friendly chat. So he's never been named a person of interest, Stephen. That's basically the last confirmed sighting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

So I don't love it. No. But there's no of course how long between her disappearing before they talked to him. Because I'm like, is it enough time for the car to get detailed?

SPEAKER_00 10:49

It was a few days, maybe a week.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

And I guess I guess if they knew, you can tell if a car's been cleaned.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

For whatever reason, when they examined the car, they said there was no evidence that anything happened in the car. Right. But again, to me, that doesn't mean they didn't leave in the car together. Yeah. And something might have happened elsewhere. I don't know. Erin returned to Tiara's place around 9:30, like they had planned, and Tiara isn't back yet. Did her brother go back to their mom's house? He did. Okay. She also hasn't texted to say that she's taking longer. He tries to call and text her. And at this point, the call goes straight to voicemail.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

So someone's already turned her phone off.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Real fast. He didn't get a response the rest of the night. Every call went straight to voicemail. Now, the reporting is a little bit weird on this next part. At 7 a.m. the next morning, they said Aaron had a prescheduled appointment. And I can't tell if he got home from that appointment at seven or if he went at seven because they say it was a couple hours. But they also say that he woke up her grandma at that point to ask her if Tiara was home.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

What appointment could she possibly? I mean, I don't I mean maybe getting labs done, but could maybe but that wouldn't take a couple hours either. Maybe a dentist appointment they tend to open up.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

Oh, that's true. A dentist would go early. Maybe before work, yeah. Type thing. Tiara's grandma was confused when she had gone to bed and Tiara hadn't been there. She just assumed that she was with Aaron at his place. And I can't find if Aaron lived with parents. Mm-hmm. Or lived on his own. Right. In the complex. Right. Her brother was with him. I want to say 19 or 20, right around age. Yeah. Okay. Her grandma's name is Vanessa. Vanessa checks Tiara's room. Tiara isn't there. She does notice Tiara's purse and cell phone charger are there. She tries to call Tiara as well, straight to voicemail.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Cell phone charger, fine. Purse, I'm like, but if you're just going over to your mom's, then going over to visit, I guess you're not coming to the case. But especially, yeah. If you're going and plus you're telling people you're visiting somebody in the complex, you don't really need your purse for that. So that's that's I guess understandable too that she didn't have a purse on her because she wasn't planning on leaving. I do wonder if she had a key on her or probably had a key. Yeah. I I know some apartments now have the the code. Oh yeah. Right. But I don't know if that I don't really think in 2016 they did. I feel like that's newer.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Maybe we had that by then, but that is different because that's something garage well for our front door. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

But that was something we put in our cells. Right. Then maybe some apartments were doing that by then. Yeah. I mean, Erin was-I didn't even realize they were until somebody like recently mentioned it. And I was like, oh, like a hotel. That's weird. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

Aaron was able to get in though.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

Oh, in fact, I think it was wait one of the people we know that does property management. They were she was explaining that they it's what they do at their properties. That's nice. And I was like, oh. And then my Airbnb had that. Yeah. But yeah, these are not even Airbnbs. This is like apartments. And granted, I don't know how long it's been going on, but I guess it is plausible that it could have been rather than keys at this point. So they're not always having to re-key everything. They just change the code. It seems easier. It completely does. Yeah. And she even said that because then it's like, okay, what if because I'm like, I'm thinking in hotels, how many times I've been locked out. She says, Oh, that is like on a 24-hour like emergency loop where it can be reset from externally. Oh. And then so yeah, so that people don't get locked out of their house.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

I hate being locked out of a hotel room.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Yeah. So I'm like, can you imagine if it's your little house, like you're gonna be angry? Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

Agreed. At this point, Vanessa contacted Danielle to ask if she'd heard from Tiara. She's immediately alarmed. Tiara isn't someone who ever lets her phone die. She never turns it off. It's completely out of character for her to not answer. The phone's not ringing, and she hasn't responded to any of the text messages from anyone checking on her. Danielle reached out to Erin, who fills her in on the timeline and what happened the night before. Danielle doesn't recognize the name Travis. So she starts digging through Tiara's Facebook. No one stands out as having that name, but she notices that a lot of Tiara's friends have nicknames on Facebook. She is able to log into Tiara's Facebook, which I find impressive. I can barely log into my own mostly.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Well, I'm guessing it was probably on like a computer that they all used or something. Maybe. You just pop it in. But I'm more impressed that at a 19-year-old has Facebook. But I'm like 2016, yeah, that's more likely then because Snap is still new. Yeah. And same with Instagram. Instagram.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

She hadn't been allowed to have one for a while. And then when her mom did allow her to have one, her mom did have access to it. Or she said we have to be Facebook friends. Yeah. And you know, if I find out you have a private one, we're done. Part of the mom knew. Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. As she's in Tiara's. So then she probably just had the pass full-on password. She might have. And you probably didn't have to do it on a phone with a circulating code at that point. She discovers that Tiara had been messaging with her ex for the last week or two leading up to January 7th. And she also sees they had met up once or twice and were planning to meet the night of the 7th. By 8 p.m., Danielle is beside herself with worry. Nothing about the situation is normal. She reaches out and reports TRM missing. And she explained the things that we've talked about that help investigators decide to act quickly. One of them being the timing. She's on this verge of starting the next phase of life, getting ready for college, making plans, looking forward to what comes next. And also the fact that she doesn't let her phone go dead. She always responds. Also, there's no record that she's ever left or run away in the past. And so all of those things combined tell them that this isn't normal. Even though TR is technically an adult, she's still technically a teenager. Right. She's still not really an adult. But sometimes they make those 19-year-olds be adults who can choose to do what they want. Right. And so I'm glad they didn't in this instance.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Yeah. So let me jump to Aaron. Was there any evidence that his because he said that he started calling and texting her at 9 30 when they were supposed to converge again? Did his phone logs or did their her phone logs show that he did continually try to text and call her? They can see it. Corroborate his version?

SPEAKER_00 18:24

They can see it on his. Okay. They're never able to get texts or call logs from hers. Okay. They're able to get the ping and they see that she was in the apartment complex at 8 30. Okay. And from what the police report says, it looks like it stayed there until it was either turned off or died, but they've never released the exact time that that happened, but somewhere between 8 30 and 9 30. Has he been named a person of interest? He hasn't. And for a while, Danielle thought that maybe he did have something to do with it. Right. And on that episode of Disappeared, he said he was mad about that at first because he says he knew he didn't. He was worried about her. He's the one that told her grandma, told her mom, sounded the alarm. But then he says, I thought about it. And if I were in their shoes, I would think the exact same thing. Yeah. And they were hurting. They were, I mean, they still are. Yeah. And I don't blame them at all. Yeah. For making sure that I was as thoroughly checked out as anyone else. Right. That's a mature answer.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Yeah, agreed. And that's reassuring. I mean, unless you're a complete sociopath and you're just that good at charm. But yes, I do wonder if he somehow became aware of where she actually was or who she was actually with, or maybe she just confessed it to him and it went awry.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

Possibly because it doesn't seem like anybody saw her after she left the car.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Plus, for him to have the foresight though to continue. Because so many times you see cases where the significant other stops calling and texting. And it's like kind of like yet you were calling 40 times up to that moment. And then all of a sudden you just called turkey stop. That means you obviously know there's no one there to answer the call. So yeah, you like telling yourself that way. Right. So the fact that he at 1920 already was like, oh, let me keep calling this phone. One to turn it off, two then to keep calling it on his end to make it look like he's concerned and I'm using quotes.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

To then call the grandma to say, hey, is she there? Because she never I never met back up with her. And then yeah, again, very smart that I wouldn't necessarily think a 19-year-old can quite grasp at that point. Totally. And be that planned out, I should say.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

And where her grandma's like, oh, I just assumed she was with you. That would have been a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Which means she probably had more time hanging out overnight already to where they weren't concerned that she didn't come home at some point.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

Right. Even falling asleep on the couch watching a movie because you're in the same general area. Right, right. Just a building over. Exactly. Stony Brook is surrounded by Webster Road, which is near Randallman Road. There are also a lot of parking lots, other apartment buildings, people coming and going constantly, neighbors passing each other on sidewalks. And granted, in January, it is dark by 8:30 to 9:30, but you've got people pulling in and out of parking spaces, working at all, different times of day and night. It's not some remote wooded area. Yeah, Parma Complex never really sleeps. Exactly. And that's what makes it harder. To understand. That's what is so confusing about this. There were possibly dozens of people around at any given moment. Hundreds of people would have been nearby, but nobody heard anything. Nobody saw anything. And really, if we want to say for sure that she got out of the car by 8:50 or 9, it would have been a really short walk, a couple of minutes tops to get back to where she was going.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

Yeah, I feel like even in the biggest complex I ever lived in, it never took more than five minutes to walk from one end to the other.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Exactly. That's why her GPS signal stops in the apartment complex. It's either a very small window or something.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

So could they prove that Aaron stayed in well, he was wait, did he end up staying at her apartment then? Since he was meeting. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

He went back to his. So I don't know if it was because he had an early morning or say he didn't have a key to get in.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

So then he knocked on the door, no one answered.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

It seemed like he went in, and I don't know if her brother went over with him for a bit. And then her brother went, so he went. I almost get the feeling that might have been.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

But I'm like, who's locking her door? I don't know. Unless it again, it's one of those keypad ones, then which gives more credence to that it was, because otherwise you need a key to lock it. And maybe her brother had one. Could be. Because it is grandma's house. It is grandma, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

And he's not that much younger. I don't know if he was 15, 16, 17. Well, even then, all family, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Right. Keys to mine.

SPEAKER_00 23:44

And so it would that would make sense. So he might have left when her brother left, and he says he thought she could have sat down to watch a movie and fallen asleep. She had a big day. She was at the school by 8 a.m. that morning. Well, or even just delayed. Yeah. That's like, well, I'm sure she has a good reason and maybe her phone died. I'll catch up with her tomorrow. She'll explain everything. That type of thing. It is interesting that by 9:30, though, texts weren't being delivered and the calls were going straight to voicemail, not even ringing unanswered. So either turned off, it had to be turned off or died because the ping never left the apartment complex. See, according to both family statements and later reporting, none of the attempts to call her went through. Her phone went straight to voicemail and no digital activity either. So that's the other part of it where her family knows even if her phone died, she would have connected on social media to contact them or send them a message or let them know if she was at all able to. If something didn't happen and she didn't have a phone. That's what had happened in the past. After her mom contacted police investigators, began what would become a years-long search for answers. And for police, the first hours of a missing person investigation usually follow a similar pattern. Interview the last people who saw her, establish a timeline, search the immediate area, all of those things. In Tiara's case, detectives quickly started leaning towards suspicious circumstances and possible foul play. Within the first week of the investigation, detectives began speaking publicly about the case. Local news outlets reported that investigators had conducted interviews and were canvassing the area near the apartment complex. And canvassing in this instance meant detectives going door to door, talking to neighbors, asking if anyone saw something unusual, a person running, a car leaving quickly. Did you hear an argument? Did you hear a scream? Anything that might help reconstruct what happened during that small window of time. When something like this happens in an apartment, witnesses are often nearby. They just may not realize what they saw was important. So I am really glad that detectives were going door to door asking. Right. Because you could easily have seen that or thought that was odd without Then how long had that family lived in that complex?

SPEAKER_01 26:37

Where had it been a while? So they like probably knew their neighbors and knew people.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

Yes. It seemed you know, and in apartments, people come and go.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

Right. But you like still kind of know like the especially the ones right around you. And you learn their schedule and Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

Police, for some reason, pretty quickly did say they thought foul play was possible. It seems like they treated the situation like a criminal investigation. And first up was talking to Travis, like we talked about. They brought him in for an interview. And like I kind of mentioned, at first he said, Nope, we broke up. I haven't talked to her and I haven't seen her. And the police had already seen all of the messages. Danielle was smart, screenshot them, had it all. Here you go. And they pretty quickly let Travis know that they knew he was lying. And his story then shifted. He did tell police that the two had been messaging and that he did meet up with her that night. He said that it was at 8:30, and the two of them just sat in his car for 20 to 30 minutes. After they talked, he said she got out of the car and walked back towards her apartment. How long ago had they allegedly broken up? That I'm not a hundred percent sure on if it was two months or six weeks. That's kind of the range that I get. Okay. So very new. New, yeah. She had another ex that they interviewed that we'll talk about that was still in her orbit as well. And so I don't I'm not even sure that this Travis guy was a very long relationship. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

Because I'm curious to know if he also like texted or called her or texted or at least after this conversation. Or did his phone messaging also go silent?

SPEAKER_00 28:41

I wonder that too. Part of me wonders, I don't believe they were talking every day or even every other day. And I also wonder if Danielle had reached out to him as she's looking at the messages, seeing, you know, did you see her anything? Because we have that window from 12:30 when they let Danielle know, till eight when she contacted police. Yeah. And you don't want to have to make that report. No, you don't. You really don't. He did voluntarily let police search his car, and they publicly said they didn't find any evidence that anything had happened to Tiara in there. I'm also curious, like you said, if it had been recently detailed, but I feel like they wouldn't have publicly said exactly.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

Almost like don't mess, like he's not it.

SPEAKER_00 29:40

Right. And we're not even releasing his name. Right. Nothing. As the days passed and Tiara still hadn't been found. The community began organizing search efforts. Volunteers gathered to look through areas around Greensboro. Local churches helped coordinate search groups. Did he help with any of that? Aaron did. But I don't know about Travis. Travis didn't, okay. Since we don't even know who he is, he's not included like a yes or a no in a lot of these things. Yeah. The other boyfriend did help with that, but he also hadn't seen her that day. But so did Scott Peterson, so exactly. And didn't Chris Watts too?

SPEAKER_01 30:25

Yes. Oh yeah, he was even more so than Scott. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

Scott seemed like he was there begrudgingly. Yeah, kinda. Yeah. They handed out missing person flyers, hoping that seeing a picture of Tiara would help spark a memory for anyone that lived in the apartment complex or in the surrounding area. By the end of the first few weeks, though, one pattern was becoming clear. There were very few confirmed movements of Tiara, even after getting in the car and talking to Travis. I mean, there's no, aside from police searching the car, there's no public confirmed sighting of her afternoon.

SPEAKER_01 31:12

Had she ever mentioned to her family that there was people in the complex bothering her? Not that I found. Okay. I mean, and her brother. She was so close with her mom and her brother. Yeah, say I would think something like that you would tell your brother about. Yeah. Maybe even more so than your mom. Or Aaron. She would have mentioned it to Aaron. Maybe, maybe not. He's new. I would I could see the brother. Especially since she's being described as very protective of her brother. That's kind of like a two-way street when it's just the two of you. Like I was my brother, I'm the older sister, and I was very protective of him, but he was also very protective of me.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

And if someone was making you uneasy, you would want them to be keeping an eye out.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

Yeah, like that. That is that's why I'm like, I wonder if she told the brother about, because that's something I absolutely would have told my brother about, just because we were just that close. Yeah. And then not with the intention of him doing something, but just because like you could almost say, well, he's a best friend. So I'm gonna tell him what's something made me feel odd.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

Right. Especially where you're spending so much time together all the time. That sounds fun.

SPEAKER_01 32:21

Yeah, because when you're still young like that and you're you're always around your sibling, like that's just natural.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

And I feel like especially to that year after high school, because your built-in friend group has kind of somewhat dispersed, or at least where you don't see each other every day. Or you have to get jobs, you have to do that. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

Is this complex by any like forest or wooded area or any trails that lead somewhere else?

SPEAKER_00 32:51

There are some. And those were some of the first places that search groups, volunteers, and police looked through. I guess there was some snow, some ice on the ground, even though it is North Carolina. Oh, okay. That's not North Carolina. In January. There was mention that when they go out in the spring, some of the places that they were checking had been like iced over the first time through. So they did go back in March and they went back in April. There were like roadside ditches, and they went through all of that. They even end up going through some of those places where tips then later come in with cadaver dogs and other equipment to try, and they didn't find anything. Okay. Not even like a piece of clothing or anything. We mentioned her other ex. There was another ex-boyfriend. They had had a really good relationship. Even in some of the reporting, they were described as still loving each other, like in a friend or respect type of way, where their relationship had been really good throughout. And really they ended it because they both realized they wanted different things in life. He was cooperative right from the beginning. And Danielle has said that she didn't think he was involved at all. He seemed as distraught as the family was over Tiara going missing. So I get the feeling that the two of them had a much longer relationship and he was still in communication with her family here and there. I think Danielle had reached out to him that first day to see if he'd heard from Tiara. It seems like he jumped right into the search. Okay. Police worked on timeline reconstruction, which included pulling all of her phone data. And unfortunately, really the only thing they got was the phone ping in the apartment complex around 8:30. It didn't show any other pings until it was either turned off or the battery died.

SPEAKER_01 35:22

Since Aaron was new, did he have an ex that maybe wasn't letting go? That is a good question. I'm not sure. Or does Rotation Travis have a new person that could have followed him there?

SPEAKER_00 35:40

Oh, that's a good idea. You could see that because you could see her getting out of the car, maybe this person calling out to Tiara.

SPEAKER_01 35:50

Well, that or spying and then just going at yeah, and going to Travis drives away and then going after her. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

It could be fast and you know in that parking lot with people coming and going, and you're sitting there having a conversation. I don't know that you would notice the cars around you. No. There's no reason to be.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

There's people having friends over all the time. Just you're not. I never paid attention. No. Like I not to that. Paid attention, but not when you just see two people having a conversation. Right.

SPEAKER_00 36:22

When you're having the conversation, seeing other people.

SPEAKER_01 36:27

Unless you're really trying to hide, you might be a little bit more observant, but I'm just wondering if maybe one of them got followed, if Travis got followed, and or Aaron had a more recent ex too.

SPEAKER_00 36:43

I like that line of thinking with Travis, though. Because it could have been something somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 36:49

But it seems again more likely if they're already having these secret conversations unbeknownst to the new people. And while Aaron seems was trying to not quote unquote be that boyfriend, maybe Travis's new person was not.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

Right. Or was trying to, but that's why she's following. Right. To see if yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:13

Because his stories aren't making sense to them.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

I wish that there was a way, because without any information on him, it's so, but I do like that idea. That makes more sense than any of the other theories that are out there. They did get some media attention. There isn't a lot on this case. And part of it is because there's never been any named persons of interest, certainly no suspects. There have been tips. We'll talk about a few of them. None of them have panned out. They've all been either mistaken identity or I don't, I don't even know what. And I think that's because they just didn't know where else to look.

SPEAKER_01 38:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:13

They did interview everyone in Tiara's life, like going back a few boyfriends to talk to the other one. But they put up billboards with Tiara's picture all around the community. They started a Facebook page that was help find Tiara Kasique Williams. The family also set up a hotline that some sources say Tiara's uncle, some say her grandpa ran for the family. Police received some tips in those first months. Two came in that reported that they had seen Tiara on the street in Greensboro looking disoriented. Both tips came right around the same like exact time, and both said 20 minutes from the apartment, only in opposite directions. So police spread out, investigated both. Neither of those sightings were Tiara.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:12

Towards the end of March, a couple disturbing tips that Tiara was deceased and had been dumped in a tractor trailer lot right across from the Stony Brook apartment complex.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

They thoroughly searched the area. So, okay, there's a tractor trailer complex next door, as in where trailers sit empty, trailers get loaded, trailers are constantly in and out and leaving with their tractors. Let me see if it shows it on this map. Because that is a very easy way to get a body out immediately and away from an area.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

Don't love that. There is this map. Okay. This was it doesn't look like that one's where her mom lives, that one's where her grandma lives. But it doesn't necessarily look like there's a tractor place like right next door. This seems like a pretty big apartment complex area. Like all of these are like apartments.

SPEAKER_01 40:21

Yeah, it's probably not gonna show that if that's the apartment area locations, but that's just another interesting avenue because that is very much an easy wave. I don't like the whole just kidnapping stranger, snatch, whatever, because it's so rare. And even, you know, I know we're gonna I know human trafficking will come up into play. And again, it it's generally that's human trafficking occurs when you've been groomed and it's somebody you know and somebody that's been establishing a relationship with you to get you to trust them to leave. So it's again, very rare that somebody is truly just snatched up out of the blue.

SPEAKER_00 41:03

So there are parks and things like that, but we've got a bank, a gas station, a grocery store, a Dollar General. Okay, those are all highly trafficked areas. Like all street over.

SPEAKER_01 41:18

So that Webster Road seems Yeah, that's gonna be so again, going with the theory of snatching her to get away in a tractor trailer, highly unlikely.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:28

And I bet that tractor trailer area has cameras because who knows what that type of load is in those trucks.

SPEAKER_00 41:36

And the cadaver dogs didn't alert on anything in the area. Right. So police interviewed Erin a few times over the course of six months to a year. And every time he didn't say or do anything that perked up their suspicious radar or whatever. Over the years, investigators and Tiara's family have received numerous tips. Some suggested that she might have been in other states. Some suggested she may have been abducted, but none of the tips have ever panned out to be her. There was one from a credit union parking lot, and they were so certain that it was her, but because she showed up on camera or her the person that called in the tips. So then when they looked at the CCTV, it wasn't her. Yeah. Yeah. Some of them they've been able to rule out because of that way. Yeah. There aren't a lot of theories really about what happened. Really, either someone she knew, whether that is somebody who managed to stay off the radar.

SPEAKER_01 42:49

It feels since the two obvious men who are likely candidates appear to be ruled out by police. That's why I have to go to somebody that's in their orbit that is not happy that they are no longer the chosen person.

SPEAKER_00 43:09

Or jealous, or especially when you get to that 17 to 19. Right. You're still everything is its first love, everything's big and big, big emotions, jealous, not making the best decisions without that because fully formed frontal lobe.

SPEAKER_01 43:30

Because why? We're 19. Yeah, exactly. But we're still trying to have fun. Yes. So yeah, it seems like she, because it's the one ex and her amicably parted and he became concerned. The next ex, you know, yes, they're still doing the whole back and forth. I mean, I the person I dated in high school, I think I ended up talking for like four years after we broke up. Just because, again, first love, everything's big, and we were still friendly. So that doesn't shock me either. I mean, I married men, so well, yeah, there you go. So it's like yeah, I have to I feel like they have to look at who was in their orbit.

SPEAKER_00 44:13

Agreed.

SPEAKER_01 44:14

And you can really, really hope they did, but they've never put it out. Well, of course not. And that I think this is one of those that they're waiting on. Just the right one more tip. Right. The right tip, the right level of information, somebody finally coming forward.

SPEAKER_00 44:33

Alliances being broken that weren't before.

SPEAKER_01 44:37

I think that would be a obvious line of questioning when they're questioning the two men. Hey, is there anyone that you have dealt with that may not be accepting of you being with this new person or absolutely is mad that you're still talking to them when you're now talking to them.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

I wonder if they were able to look at their phones or Oh, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_01 44:59

I'm sure because it you either voluntarily give it or they get a warrant. Right. And if you're trying to clear your name, you're probably going to voluntarily provide that information. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:08

If you had nothing to do with it, here you go. Whatever you need.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

Because it is, again, very telling that Travis has never been truly identified. It's interesting that she used that name. Like, where did that come from?

SPEAKER_00 45:20

But and maybe you're happy with Aaron, you like where things are going. You don't want to rock the boat, but like you said, you want this closure or closure or one more conversation. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:33

Or even just again, at that age, you don't really have the maturity to cut things off. Right. And so you're still trying to be nice, especially girls. Yeah. We've been trained to be nice. Yeah, stop it. Right. Stop being nice. And so I could see him still trying to potentially get back with her by keeping lines of communication open and she's being nice by agreeing to continue talking to him and meeting him instead of just blocking him on everything. And plus, I don't even think did Block even exist in 2016? I don't remember. I don't even know.

SPEAKER_00 46:10

But he could have come to her saying, I started dating this girl, and I just well, like maybe I'm trying to make you jealous with it, but she doesn't care because she's got errand, like, or even I just need some advice. And it's nothing other than platonic, like, help me out with this new girl I'm dating. I'm happy you're with someone else. And something that way where the conversation really is nothing, but your other relationship is so new. You don't want to make it work. Oh, right. You don't want to like mess it up before it's even started. Right. So I could see using a different name, I suppose.

SPEAKER_01 46:51

Oh yeah. I'm just gonna go run over. I'm surprised she didn't use a female name. But then of course, that could have led to, well, let me just come with you. True. You know, because it's not, but when you clearly put a male's name in there, it's like, oh, okay, let me let me let you handle that.

SPEAKER_00 47:08

Well, and also if they're walking between the different apartments, yeah. If they happen to walk by and see her talking to a guy compared to a girl. Right, right, right. That throws up red flags. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So someone she knew. The next possibility they talk about is opportunistic. There are constant movement in apartment complexes. It would have had to be really opportunistic. Yeah, I just I don't buy that. It's such a short window. Yeah. And they would have had to turn her phone off immediately. They would have had to count on her not screaming, not making a sound.

SPEAKER_01 47:48

Even opportunistic, like you, I just, it's not possible in that location. Even if she'd had a stalker and, you know, the how did they know she just happened to go talk to this person? Again, like that would have been the opportunity, but it would have still been somebody who had been watching her. That's why I just I don't buy the opportunistic theory. Yeah. It's really hard to imagine. I think it's more I'm angry, somebody coming up on the situation and being angry and losing control. True. And, you know, and not really taking your anger out on the correct person.

SPEAKER_00 48:28

Uh yeah, that is a very good point with that one. And the opportunistic one kind of to me encompasses the human trafficking angle, which has been discussed a lot in this case. I mean, I think that's always on the table. And that was a lot of the investigation discovery one because her grandpa or her uncle, I'm pretty sure it's her grandpa, but some of the reporting outside of the investigation discovery says uncle. They talk about him following these leads early on. A tip came in from Georgia. There was a server at a Waffle House there. And they said that a group of girls came in often and they were certain that one of the girls was Tiara. Her grandpa went to check, but the group had stopped coming in. So this person gave them other places to check and even specific people to check that might be running some of the sex work in the area. Uh police checked. She wasn't found in any of those places, none of the motels or anything that they said. And there have been others from around the country, and he has checked every single one of them. And nothing has come of that.

SPEAKER_01 49:48

Well, and uh again, she doesn't really fit that profile. She comes from a good family. She has future plans, like she's not doing things that could lead her into an environment that she could then be turned out. Right. Like that she just doesn't fit who a human trafficker would normally target. Right.

SPEAKER_00 50:10

And there's no indication that any of that was Yeah. I don't buy that theory.

unknown 50:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:17

And then the last one is voluntary. Yeah, come on now.

SPEAKER_01 50:22

Not when you're literally gonna go buy school books the next day. Like and your mom sees how excited you are. Yeah, ridiculous. That shouldn't even be on the table either.

SPEAKER_00 50:31

Agreed. And I am very glad that police didn't seem to have that on the table, like at the beginning. Yeah. And then wait to see what happens.

SPEAKER_01 50:41

Yeah. I think they recognized what like again, good family, very involved, helping with grandma. I mean, come on. Yeah. Ready to start school, has been working, saving up money. Like these are not high-risk lifestyle at all.

SPEAKER_00 51:00

And not I'm wanting to disappear.

SPEAKER_01 51:03

Yeah, no. No. I'm going to go buy textbooks. I mean, how boring is that?

unknown 51:07

I know.

SPEAKER_00 51:08

But she's excited.

SPEAKER_01 51:09

Well, yeah, you are the first time, and then you walk in and see how much they are, and then you're not excited anymore. Uh no. And then you're like, oh, I never thought I'd want a used book, but here I am buying used because my goodness, new is way too expensive.

SPEAKER_00 51:21

So then way too long later, your office closet has college textbooks in it because it cost a fortune.

SPEAKER_01 51:30

Yes. Oh no, I always sold mine back. I was like, I don't want these things, not keeping them. Like, let me get my little five dollars per book so I can go apply it towards the next batch.

SPEAKER_00 51:39

Although I did do that for the ones that weren't in my degree. The ones that they were like, you're gonna need this study for your please licensing exam. I was like, no. But here we are. Yeah. The problem though is that really those are the only theories out there. And now, over a decade later, we still don't know what happened. We don't know. I mean, we can say she got out of the car. What happened after that? It should have only been a couple minutes. It should have been home before Aaron got back from playing video games. Right.

SPEAKER_01 52:17

And yeah, especially, yeah, if Travis's story is correct and she was only there for 20, 30 minutes, she easily should have been there a full 30 before he hopped by again.

SPEAKER_00 52:27

So was there someone else that she planned to meet?

SPEAKER_01 52:31

No.

SPEAKER_00 52:32

I don't think so. She was looking forward to spending time. It still, though, would shock me if someone could have a chaotic encounter like that that they weren't planning on. Right. That nobody's evidence. Right. No evidence, no screaming heard. Right. And they managed to where is she? Yeah. Because they've never found her phone. Put her where? They've never found anything. No trace of her.

SPEAKER_01 53:04

Again, and to turn so again, somebody turned the phone off right away, which is incredibly smart.

SPEAKER_00 53:09

And if you're not planning on it.

SPEAKER_01 53:11

Well, yeah, spur of the moment, you really wouldn't, you wouldn't think of that.

SPEAKER_00 53:16

Unless they got lucky and she really was about out of battery. Right. And she wasn't planning on right back home and plug it in. Charge it in. Charge it. Yeah. Right. So maybe they got lucky, but also it's never been found. I don't know. It's very odd because it it doesn't make sense that it was opportunistic from someone who knew what they were doing. Right. It doesn't make sense that it's chaotic and rage from someone that had absolutely no idea.

SPEAKER_01 53:48

And then you're out of I mean, or again, confronted with a gun. And so they tell you to get in the car and you go. And that's plausible. And that's how you make it less obvious to your surroundings. And then you leave.

SPEAKER_00 54:02

She could have gotten out of the car and been checking messages, distracted, and then confronted just like that. And maybe they had pulled up in front of her and she hadn't noticed.

SPEAKER_01 54:14

Well, yeah, if a girl approach like pulls up and says, Who are you to Travis? And then pulls a weapon on you, that seems again a way to get again less suspicious, more fear. So you just get, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 54:30

I'm like pulling strings here, but right, because nothing really makes sense makes sense on this one. They really hoped that by having disappeared highlight her case that the other leads would come in from people that maybe hadn't heard about it. Most of the news coverage that I can find is very limited to very local stations. As of the most recent public reporting, which was for the 10-year anniversary last month. Well, I guess in January, not last month now. Tiara Williams is still missing. The case remains open. Investigators continue to encourage anyone with information to come forward. For Tiara's family, the passage of time hasn't made any of these questions easier. Every year brings another anniversary. Another reminder that Tiara is still missing. And like so many families in similar situations, they are stuck waiting for answers. Tiara is a black woman with brown hair and brown eyes. At the time of her disappearance, she was 5'5 and weighed 120 pounds. She had pierced ears, a nose stud in her left nostril, and a small burned scar on her right wrist, about the size of a nickel. Today she would be 29 years old. She was last seen wearing a pink shirt, a black north base jacket, dark blue Levi's jeans, white Jordans sneakers with blue and green trim, and a royal blue knit cap. If you know anything about the disappearance of Tiara Williams, even if it seems small, investigators would love to hear from you. You can contact the Greensboro Police Department at 336-373-2222. You can also submit an anonymous tip through Greensboro Crime Stoppers, and we will list that number in the show notes. And you can also contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is 1-800 the Lost. Even the smallest detail could help investigators understand what happened that night. Someone out there has to know something. A person seen walking, a vehicle in the parking lot, an argument, a conversation, something that didn't seem important at the time, but could be key to finding answers in Tiara's case and to bringing Tiara home. If you found this episode meaningful, please share Tiara's story. Awareness can sometimes do what time alone cannot. It can bring new witnesses forward, new memories to the surface, and sometimes the answer that a family has been waiting for.

SPEAKER_01 57:21

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Vanished Voices. We are grateful you've chosen to spend your time with us as we bring attention to these stories that too often go unheard. If you'd like to learn more about the resources and sources we used in today's episode, visit our blog, link through our website at vanished voicespodcast.com. Be sure to connect with us on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Just search for at Vanished Voices Pod. We'd love to hear your thoughts, feedback, and reflections, and to continue building this community with you. If you found value in today's episode, please take a moment to rate, review, and share the podcast. Your support not only helps us reach more listeners, but also helps amplify the voices of those who can no longer speak for themselves. You can find Vanished Voices on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, and all other major streaming platforms. And as always, refuse to let these voices vanish. Bye. Bye.