Criminal Discourse Podcast
Welcome to our true crime podcast, where we explore intriguing cases with the same passion as true crime enthusiasts like you. With each episode, we delve deep into the facts, theories, and mysteries of each case, offering a riveting discourse that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Tune in for a criminally good time!
Criminal Discourse Podcast
The Enigmatic Life and Mysterious Death of Teleka Patrick
As we piece together the life and untimely passing of Dr. Teleka Patrick, a story emerges that challenges our understanding of the intersection of mental health, online personas, and real-world consequences. The enigma of Teleka's existence, from a high-achieving psychiatrist to a woman ensnared by her own mind's illusions, casts a haunting light on the secrets we keep and the facades we maintain. Our journey through her world uncovers a labyrinth of tweets to an elusive love, the unheeded warnings of her mental struggles, and the paradox of her outward success against an inner turmoil that would ultimately lead to a tragic end.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Criminal Discourse Podcast. I'm Wendy and I'm Trish and I'm going to be doing an all new episode for you today. No crime updates, no shout outs, so we're going to get right into it, right?
Trish:So we know that there are so many true crime podcasts out there to choose from and only so many hours in the day, and we want to take a moment to say we truly appreciate you choosing to listen to us today. If you want to join the discourse, you can reach out to us on our website, criminaldiscoursepodcastcom, or on social media. We're on Facebook, instagram and YouTube at Criminal Dispod and Criminal Discourse Podcast. And one last thing the views and opinions discussed on Criminal Discourse Podcast are just that Our views and opinions, and everyone is presumed innocent until convicted in a court of law.
Wendi:Now. We've dealt with a lot of missing person cases on our podcast, and sometimes finding a missing person leads to more questions than answers, and that was the case when 30 year old doctor Tleika Patrick accidentally drowned in a lake 100 miles from her home. Tleika's social media posts revealed a shocking secret side to her life she was stalking a popular gospel singer and experiencing serious mental health problems, even as she successfully pursued a career in psychiatry. Though her case is officially closed, some believe her death wasn't accidental. But one thing is indisputable Whatever happened to Tleika is both terrifying and tragic.
Wendi:Tleika Patrick was born to parents Irene and Mathias, a reverend, on September 18, 1983. The Patrick's lived in Hyattville, maryland, which is a suburb of Washington DC, until about 1985 when they relocated to Queens, new York. Now they move a lot. We're going to cover a lot of locations, so we're not going to go super in depth with any of them here today. Tleika's parents. Once they moved to New York, they had another daughter, tanisha, and a son also named Mathias being. Tleika was an avid reader, outstanding student and talented violinist. Tleika grew into a caring young woman who loved people and seems like she uplifted everyone she met. Her academic accomplishments were so impressive that she was accepted into the Bronx High School of Science, which counts nine Nobel Prize winners among its alumni, and I believe that's the most of any secondary school in the entire world. Tleika graduated with high honors and multiple achievement awards.
Wendi:The Patrick's are also active members of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. It's a Christian denomination that believes the week begins on a Sunday and ends on Saturday, the Sabbath, a day of rest, which mirrors the Bible's description of creation. Adventists are also known for their health consciousness, and Tleika followed those lifestyle choices by, for example, being a vegetarian and studying for career in healthcare. In 2004, tleika graduated from Oakwood University in Huntsville, alabama. She was in Adventist College with a bachelor's degree in theology and biology. That summer, tleika enrolled in California's Loma Linda University, another Adventist college located in an area where about half of the population are also Adventists. She earned her master's and PhD degrees in biochemistry there. Her research focus was survival disparity among African American women with breast cancer. One of Tleika's professors said she's not just intelligent, she's brilliant. Tleika's performance consistently impressed her classmates, colleagues and educators, who called her bright, talented and goal-oriented.
Wendi:Now, in 2006, when Tleika Patrick was attending Loma Linda University, she married a man named Ismail Kaldaron. Unfortunately, I couldn't find out any information about how they met, who he is, how old he is, anything like that. Ismail would later reveal, though, to the media that Tleika heard voices and attributed them to God. He said he quote begged her to seek treatment for auditory hallucinations. According to Ismail, tleika refused to get help, believing that it would ruin her career prospects. He said these arguments about Tleika's recurring paranoia and delusions those are words he used eventually resulted in the couple's divorce in 2012. The lawyer who handled their divorce proceedings said the mental health issues were never mentioned. That would make sense to me, too, if it didn't come up. If she was trying to protect her career, she wanted to become a psychiatrist and also for Ismail, if he was still trying to protect her as well and follow her wishes. That it might not have come up in the divorce proceedings Makes sense.
Wendi:After graduating from Loma Linda in the spring of 2013, tleika was accepted to Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo where she planned to study child psychiatry. She told university staff that she relocated quote for her fiance and grand rapids. Tleika was referring to Marvin Sapp, a Grammy nominated gospel singer. She had never met but had started contacting after her divorce. Marvin was the pastor at Lighthouse Full Life Center Church in Grand Rapids, michigan, which is also where he was born and raised. Tleka's sister remembered she mentioned Marvin to family members, saying she planned to marry him, but not everyone took her seriously.
Wendi:It's not clear if any of Tleka's family found her infatuation concerning or if they knew about the mental health problems that her ex-husband said led to their divorce. Tleka's mother firmly denies quote allegations of mental instability. She insists that if she had known Tleka needed help quote I would have sought care for her. Tleka's online activities painted a different and far more worrying portrait than what she presented to her family. From April 2013 until her disappearance that December, tleka Patrick created five Twitter accounts and posted more than 20,000 tweets from them, dozens every day. Virtually all of them are addressed to a singular, unnamed love interest, presumably Marvin's sap.
Trish:Were any of her family members connected to her on social media to see these posts.
Wendi:No, there were a couple accounts that used her first name, but it seems that, at least at the time, there were no engagement, no views other than Tleka herself, so they would have been unaware. In some of these tweets Tleka talked about her daily life or promoted Marvin's work. She often referred to what she called the telepathic or psychic connection she felt she had with her love, tweeting messages like I started hearing feeling you again around 10 am. The signals went haywire for a while and then they reset themselves. But Tleka would also post about her doubts, questioning whether the relationship was real or imagined. On April 15, tleka tweeted that quote when I get to you, things will start to make a lot more sense, I promise. She moved to Kalamazoo and started her four-year residency of psychiatry a gorgeous medical center. That summer Tleka moved over 2,000 miles from California to be in the same state as Marvin's sap, just 50 miles south of his church and home. They still had never met in person. On June 2nd she tweeted I have just relocated to be with you, so I really hope you want me.
Wendi:Aside from her previous marriage, it seems that Tleka was successful keeping her intensifying mental and emotional problems private or at least confined to social media, but on July 7th, a month after moving, tleka flagged down an officer on campus claiming that someone was after her. That officer reported Tleka's behavior to university staff concerned that she was suffering from mental health issues. She agreed to take a drug test, which came back negative. Otherwise, by all accounts, it seemed that Tleka was happy with school and work, earning praise from her peers and educators, just as she always had. Two weeks later, on July 21st, tleka posted a series of tweets showing how she was questioning her actions and state of mind.
Wendi:Quote if I am not directly, personally and explicitly invited into your life, I will assume that I am unwanted. I need to deal in realities, understand, or else I won't be sure if what I'm thinking is correct or not. How will I know if I'm right if nothing I've communicated to you has ever been validated Ever Exactly? This makes no sense. So clearly she's not getting any messages back from Marvin, and I think what's also remarkable here is she's very aware that this is one-sided, and I guess another thing too that a lot of people point out is the immaculate spelling and grammar that she has through all of these messages on social media Tleka presents, even here, in the midst of this kind of mental health issue as a very educated, put-together person.
Trish:Did any of the people respond to what she was posting out regarding this individual? No, no one. She's just posting out Mm-hmm.
Wendi:Now, on August 4th, Tleka tweeted. I began to think that this entire time I had been messaging you, that it was all in my head the entire seven months that you never cared about me, that the experiences I thought we were sharing we never did After all. I could not prove any of it. You never messaged me back directly. You only sent these non-specific messages and there was no way that I could be sure that any of it was intended for me. Now, by non-specific messages, tleka bent secret messages and codes that she believed Marvin Sapp directed to her through his sermons and social media posts. Later, that same day, tleka added quote I can't be believing things that aren't true. I'm trying to become a psychiatrist, not be in need of one.
Trish:When she would put out these posts. I take it she would tag Marvin Sapp.
Wendi:Not necessarily. She usually only tagged Marvin when she was directly promoting his work, complimenting his sermons, things like that. Posts like this she just referred to love baby you. She didn't name him directly. She was actually quite careful to keep his name out of posts like that. And do we know how many followers?
Trish:she had None, so she's just putting this out to the universe, to no one.
Wendi:Correct Now. Attendees at Marvin Sapp's August 25th service recalled him admonishing a woman in the congregation who had entered his home uninvited when he was out of town. Marvin's three children, who were ages 19 to 22 at the time. They were at his house and talked to the woman until she left. It's not been officially confirmed that this woman was Tleka Patrick, but Tleka had reached out to his children on social media before and shown up at his home before too. Tleka tweeted later that day about Marvin's strange sermon, acting like he was talking about someone else, and she referred to quote the rest of them, those other women. Did she go to his church? She did. She attended services, and this would be about an hour's drive, 45 minutes to an hour from her home, and she did that on a regular basis.
Wendi:I'm not sure if it was regular or not, but at least on the August 25th she did, and several other occasions Now. A week after that, tleka took to Twitter to complain. That quote I'm tired of hoping and imagining. Please, baby, I want it to be real. This town is small as hell. Not much happens here. It's boring, and when I have free time I get depressed and lonely.
Wendi:Then on September 17th, marvin's app obtained a personal protection order against Tleka, producing more than 400 pages of unsolicited correspondence. Tleka sent him that. He never answered. Now I can't find details of exactly what this correspondence was, but I don't think it was the Twitter accounts. These were maybe things she sent him in the mail. She was sending things to him over his Facebook page. On the same day she was served that PPO from Marvin's app. Tleka tweeted quote when God told me about you, I thought about it for a quick minute. Then I jumped on it mad quick. You know why? Because when you don't hear a word from God for eight long years, you start to get desperate. So, yeah, I hopped on it mad quick, no questions asked. God said jump. I said how high? So, love, tell me, why are you so scared of us being together?
Trish:Interesting. What are the eight long years Like when she first got baptized to when she first started hearing these voices, when she was married to her first husband?
Wendi:Well, actually I hadn't thought about that, but yeah, eight years before this would have been 2005. That's when she was at Loma Linda University out in California. And, yeah, she married her husband in 2006. So, you know, then she's with her husband and starts talking about you know, she thinks she's hearing voices from God. So maybe that's an indication that around 2005 is when she started to have these problems. Also interesting, just given our own knowledge of mental health issues, that would put her what? Early to mid-20s, and that's a lot of time when some of these symptoms schizophrenia, bipolar, things like that start to present themselves.
Wendi:Tileka's cycle of questioning and confirming this relationship continued over Twitter. On October 2nd. She posted why do I carry you in my heart every day? And how do I know for a fact that you carry me in your heart every day? You long for me so much that it is palpable. Everything within you cries out and somehow I can feel it. But then, two days later, she tweeted you've made it abundantly clear that, for whatever reason, you are not ready to pursue a love relationship. A PPO will tell you that it sure will, and I think this is the. It's starting to increase now, right, the intensity of the feelings and how quickly she's going back and forth from one to the other.
Wendi:On October 24th, her tweets showed just how much she was starting to suffer from this. She said I have to leave you alone so you don't hurt me anymore. I have spent the last 10 months like that. It's not healthy. I am not eating right, I am not sleeping right, I am not taking care of myself the way I'm supposed to, and my excitement about life is way down. I feel emotionally, spiritually and mentally drained, and I am a fun, loving and sociable person. I'm not supposed to be like this.
Trish:I don't like it During this time and she's in this intense psychiatric program that she's studying to be a psychiatrist as anyone she's working with I know you said peers and professors still found her very brilliant and engaging. No one in her life saw this obsession. Because tweeting out that much, that often you can't be focused on anything else. It takes a lot of time.
Wendi:I think that the tweets served as kind of like a journal, like a dumping ground for all of this that was going on in her, because it does seem shocking to me that no one who saw Tileq on a daily basis would notice any. She wouldn't say anything odd. They knew she liked Marvin's sap, they were aware of that, they knew she was religious, but they had no idea that there was all of this underneath her. She presented as completely normal. She was still getting excellent grades, she was still showing up to every shift at work, doing excellent work, pulling you know the residencies you pulled 12, 16 hour shifts, no problem.
Trish:Now, I know her family wasn't close by during this time, so I get it, though, that her family's saying, like her mom said, if I knew this I would have gotten help.
Wendi:We never saw this Right. Yeah, when she went to, I guess it would have been Oakwood University in Alabama, like since then she went to Alabama, then California, now she's in Michigan. So she does. She's not around her family very much at all. On November 6th, tileqa created a YouTube channel and she posted the first of nine videos, all addressed to an unnamed love interest. Just like her tweets, she dressed up for the videos like she was going on a date, even cooking meals for two. But again it's just her living by herself. The meal is going on eaten. In one video, tileqa points her camera to the food while saying if you were here, this would be your plate. In another video, as Tileqa pans her camera along the ingredients on her counter, including a large pack of chicken breasts, she explains I don't even eat chicken, I'm a vegetarian, but I want that for you. One video is several minutes of Tileqa sitting in front of the camera while talking and singing along to background music. At one point in the video, she suddenly pauses, touches her chest and smiles, saying baby, I felt that. So again, this telepathic, psychic connection she thinks is happening. She posted her last YouTube video on November 10. Like her tweets, tileqa's videos didn't receive any views or engagement at that time.
Wendi:That same month, tileqa tweeted that she was going to stop taking in Vega. Now, that's a prescription drug used to treat schizophrenia. However, there is no publicly available information about Tileqa seeking or receiving treatment. Her tweets reveal rapidly changing and intensifying emotions around this time as well. On November 16, she tweeted I hate that. I still have feelings for you. I hate it.
Wendi:Five days later, I'm going to marry you and you want to marry me too. I have to be with you. I need you. Two days after that, I changed my life for what I thought it would be. Since then, I have had painful surprise after painful surprise. Are you a demon possessed? The next day, november 24, tileqa tweeted you are not being rushed. I have been messaging you for almost a year. I think we should at least give a chance. You already know I am not vindictive and irrational. I basically got papers in the mail which were a whole bunch of lies. I chose not to fight anything. If I was really guilty, I would have just started spreading lies about you or the truth. That's just as bad, but I'm not that type of person. I answered to God. That's why I protect you.
Trish:I take it the papers she received were the DPO?
Wendi:Yeah, and I don't know that was back in September, so I don't know if there was more and updated or right you know it?
Trish:or maybe court summons?
Wendi:That could be two. Now, throughout several posts during that fall of 2013, tileqa indicated that her love interest was sharing what she called dark secrets, although she never mentioned specific details. This would have been you know things that she was receiving through that psychic connection. Through her tweets, tileqa was actively counseling him through those troubles that he was communicating. At some point, she started believing that these confessions were actually from manipulative and demonic energies, not the real person with whom she thought she had been communicating. The Thanksgiving holiday was the last time that Tileqa's parents talked with her. Less than a week later, on December 4th, tileqa called her friend, james Davis, who was living in St Louis Missouri. James said she sounded distraught and that she quote feared for her life, believing someone connected to Marvin Sapp or his security team was after her. He said I don't think she was delusional. Now Tileqa asked James to visit her and he promised he wouldn't in a few days, but he couldn't drop everything and make the 400 mile trip right away. It was a Wednesday night. He wanted to come out to her, but he just couldn't. That same day, tileqa tweeted love, you are hurting me. Stop reaching out to me in that manner. Stop it, please leave me alone. I want to be a pure vessel for God. Until you can pick up the phone and call me, my Twitter goes down and you do not exist to me. If I don't protect myself spiritually then I can't even help you. Now, the next day, a Thursday, december 5th, tileqa tweeted I can't take much more of this. There are normal ways to contact people. You know you reach me through a demonic power that gives demons power over me and dilutes my spiritual authority, because you are using a demon to contact me. When I turn my heart towards you, it passes through a demonic power. When I say I love you, I am also saying I love you to a demon, because that is how you made me fall for you. Now Tileqa posted her final tweets later that same day. One was my authority in the spirit realm and my ability to cover will be markedly decreased. Please understand, I must protect myself spiritually. The other was I just activated at tweet delete on my account to automatically delete my old tweets. We can only speculate with the finality of Tileqa's tweets meant to her Now, december 25th.
Wendi:That day at work, tileqa told some of her coworkers that she was going to visit a relative in Chicago and she did have a cousin who lived there. After her shift ended around 7 30 pm, tileqa asked a coworker to give her a ride to a nearby hotel in downtown Kalamazoo, telling him she was going to meet a man there. The co-worker, who was a fellow doctor in residency, said that Taleeka spoke in a high-pitched voice and her eyes were blinking rapidly. The co-worker said Taleeka was acting scared, nervous and off, but he agreed to help her, even giving her $100 cash when she realized she forgot her wallet. Although Taleeka appeared confused and asked her co-worker on the way if he believed in demons, he simply dropped her off outside the hotel lobby and drove away. This really bothers me that he just left her with nothing but $100 cash in that kind of estate downtown. I don't know if he went back to work, told anybody else. I don't know the whole situation, but that part does bother me a little bit. Now, once she was at the hotel, taleeka did try to get a hotel room but she wasn't able to because she didn't have a credit card to cover incidentals. A hotel shuttle returned her to Borges Medical Center at about 8 pm and when she got out she told the driver quote not to tell anyone. We did this, and then she just kind of disappeared between cars in the parking lot, acting like she was trying to run away and not be seen. The shuttle driver is the last known person to see Taleeka Patrick alive.
Wendi:Less than two hours later, indiana State Police received reports of an erratic driver in a gold Lexus traveling westbound on Interstate 94. At 10.02 pm Taleeka's vehicle, a light gold Lexus, was reported abandoned in a ditch along the same roadway in Porter, indiana, about 100 miles southwest of Kalamazoo. Police arrived on the scene by 10.20 pm. The front left tire of Taleeka's car had burst and gone flat. A receipt from a repair shop found inside the car listed it as unsafe to drive, citing a nail in the tire. The car's keys were gone, but Taleeka's wallet and some of her clothing were still inside the vehicle. The next day, taleeka's residency program coordinator filed a missing persons report after Taleeka didn't show up for her scheduled work shift. Her cell phone and some other personal belongings were still on campus.
Trish:So when she left that night to go to the hotel. She didn't take her cell phone with her.
Wendi:No, it was like she was just trying to leave. She didn't take her wallet, she didn't take her phone, nothing. She just wanted to get away as quick as possible to the hotel. On the ground, search efforts began that same day so this would be December 6th focusing on the wooded area between the highway and nearby Lake Charles, which had already started freezing over. Taleeka's family was frustrated because police were quick to state that there were no signs of foul play, so they hired a private investigator. Police said they activated and exhausted all their resources searching for Taleeka early on because she had quote no reason to be missing.
Wendi:Within the first few days of Taleeka's disappearance, police interviewed and cleared Marvin Sapp, calling him quote an innocent victim of an apparent stalking, and this is when they realized for the first time that she had that personal protection order against her and had been stalking him. Her ex-husband, ismail Kaldaron, was also cleared. Taleeka's friend, james Davis, had a solid alibi and although police were a little suspicious of him at first, they considered him just a concerned friend. Investigators discovered through interviews of different witnesses and people who knew Taleeka that she would sometimes quote check into motels for short stints, a claim that her family, however, denied as assumptions made without proof. They just don't agree with it. Taleeka's computer and other communication devices were searched and that revealed her concerning social media posts, taleeka's family said they had no idea who she was trying to communicate with because, as far as they knew, she was single. A week after she disappeared, a bloodhound track Taleeka sent from the ditch where her car was found back up to the highway, leading to theories that she was abducted along the road or got into another vehicle. Several weeks later, on January 29th, police drilled several holes in the ice covering the lake that was just a few yards from her abandoned vehicle. They placed sonar over the holes, but they didn't get any indication of a body in the freezing water below.
Wendi:On April 1st, once most of the snow had melted, investigators returned to the area to conduct more searches. They had to skip the lake, though, since it was still iced over. In the entire time, she had been missing. Taleeka never accessed her bank accounts, credit cards or social media. After a four-month multi-state search, a fisherman finally recovered Taleeka Patrick's body from Lake Charles on April 6th 2014. When dental records confirmed Taleeka's identity, her family was devastated. They thanked supporters from around the world who had prayed for her safe return and asked them to continue helping them in their fight for answers.
Wendi:An autopsy determined that Taleeka asphyxiated by drowning and once again there was no evidence of foul play. The keys to her broken down Lexus were still in her pocket. Her toxicology report took four more long months to come back, but when it did, it indicated nothing suspicious or out of the ordinary. With these results, police announced that Taleeka's death was an accidental drowning. They theorized that she was suffering from a manic episode. On the night she disappeared and inadvertently fell into the freezing lake while she was running, believing that she was being followed by someone who meant to harm her. Taleeka's family was unsatisfied with the investigator's conclusion and demanded a second autopsy, insisting that quote she can't speak and most of these things are unfounded, referring to what the police were reporting. A second autopsy found water in Taleeka's nasal cavity and confirmed that she died of accidental drowning.
Wendi:Now it's unclear where Taleeka was headed in those final moments, why she was on the move and exactly what happened to her before she drowned. Taleeka traveled almost all of the 100 or so miles of her journey from her work to the ditch where she had been in her car, on the same highway in the same direction. Now, if Taleeka had made it just a little farther, she could have connected with Interstate 90 and drove another 50 or so miles more northwest to Chicago, and that's what she told her co-workers she planned to do earlier that day. Taleeka's friend, james Davis, believes that she was going to head south instead, traveling another 300 miles to St Louis to see him, since he couldn't visit her as she had requested the day before. We do know that Taleeka couldn't drive her vehicle any farther on that blown out tire, so investigators believe Taleeka fell into the semi-frozen Lake Charles while she was running away from her vehicle in a manic state, fleeing an imaginary pursuer. It could have also happened, though. If she was just trying to get help for her flat tire. Taleeka might have seen the lights of a truck stop that's nearby, on the other side of the lake, and took the shorter direct path through the wooded area by her car, rather than walking back up to and along the busy Interstate to get there. The lake did freeze over that night, so perhaps Taleeka stepped on ice, thinking that it was just more. Snow covered solid ground, and the water was cold enough to shock her system and prevent her from swimming to safety. Regardless of how she ended up in it, taleeka's parents and others who were close to her, like her friend James Davis, believe there's more to her case than what police concluded, and they do have many supporters. Taleeka's tragic death, no matter how or why it occurred, is even harder to accept, considering how hard she worked, how talented she was and the bright future she had ahead of her.
Wendi:Although he was officially cleared, some are still suspicious of pastor and gospel singer Marvin Sapp, the apparent object of Taleeka's obsession. No one's saying Marvin did it, but people still have questions, I guess is the best way to put it. To begin with, tleika was not his only stalker. In 2014, a 45-year-old woman named Gladys Gaines stole an SUV from a dealership in Florida, claiming that Marvin told her she could have it as a birthday present. In 2016, marvin publicly denounced another woman claiming to be his wife on Facebook. And these are just two examples, but that doesn't mean that Marvin is inviting this kind of behavior, and churchgoers stalking their pastors is common enough occurrence that they even have a moniker for it they're called biting sheep.
Wendi:It's not hard to find recent cases following similar patterns to Tleika, patrick and Marvin Sapp's experience In 2012,. For example, 55-year-old Lydia Kuznar was arrested for stalking her pastor in Chicago, claiming it was God's plan for them to be together. 2014, we have Kegan Forge. She was a Texas teacher in her early 30s. She was arrested after stalking her pastor for more than four years. That same year, same state, 31-year-old Carly Shatarva was arrested after stalking her pastor for three years, but those charges were dropped after she was deemed not competent to stand trial.
Trish:Did Tleika's family ever find out, or through the police investigation, who prescribed her that medication? Someone had to prescribe it for her.
Wendi:I have not seen from the police, from the family, any official source about the in Vega. The only mention I find of it is in Tleika's tweet.
Trish:Maybe she wasn't taking that. They didn't find anything in her. I know some time had passed so it might not have been there in her toxicology report.
Wendi:Well, and even the toxicology report. We don't know what all they found, just that nothing was suspicious. I guess the worst case scenario would be that, okay, the speculative worst case scenario is that Tleika knows she's having these issues. She doesn't want to get in trouble and lose her career. So maybe she I hate to say it, but maybe she took some medications from work. Maybe she's experimenting with some different medications to see if it helps.
Wendi:Wrote of prescription yeah to try to help herself without it being on the record, but then again you would think she wouldn't tweet about it if she did that. So I'm not sure Nobody's really mentioned that. And again, her family flatly denies that she had any kind of mental health problems, even after all of these social media posts came to light.
Trish:Yeah, that was my next question. What did they think, once they discovered she had all of these Twitter accounts, that she was using it, as you said, as a way to like a diary, almost a social diary. And then the YouTube channels are.
Wendi:Everybody and their mom has one, and they post weird stuff. I get that they post weird stuff.
Trish:But after seeing that and not knowing about it in the day, of social media too. Like, did she have regular accounts, like you said had her name on it, that she posted Sunrise, whatever normal things. That you post out thoughts, whatever, or reaching out to people happy birthday? Like, did she have those social media accounts that she was also active on?
Wendi:She did have a Facebook and that was, I think, mostly her public like you're referring to, kind of like her normal. I'm Tileka Patrick and this is the normal stuff I do that I'm okay with everybody seeing, and that's how she communicated back and forth with Marvin and tagged onto his sermons, watched his live streams and things like that. So I would think that was also how she kept her family updated in that way. But no, I think, if anything, the family and also her friend James Davis none of them are saying we think Marvin Sapp did it, but I think when they saw all of the social media posts revolving around Marvin in this relationship, they find it hard to believe that he didn't engage with her at all, that it was purely one-sided. So again, they're not saying he did it, he's responsible, but I guess in their minds maybe they think that there was more to it than just Tileka having delusions. Now, on that same topic, a man named Bob Corolla. He's a spokesperson for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. When he was interviewed about Tileka Patrick's case, he said quote it's not unusual for a person not to be aware of their own disorders or symptoms and equally, until there's a crisis, people around them, don't pick up on symptoms. Not everyone knows enough about mental illness, knows what to look for, so they think everything is fine until everything falls apart.
Wendi:Now it's remarkable that Tileka managed to be the woman she was considering what she must have been struggling with, almost entirely by herself. By all accounts, she protected her friends and family from whatever she was experiencing as much as she could, and it does seem like she was really aware of what she was going through. But sometime after that divorce in 2012, it appears that that's when Tileka experienced her crisis. In about a year, she fell in love with a celebrity. She sent him hundreds of messages, she moved thousands of miles to stalk him and she spent her free time on social media documenting the relationship that appeared to only exist within her mind. Just as her psychological and emotional tension reached a breaking point, tileka made a run for parts unknown and tragically drowned under what some still believe are mysterious circumstances.
Wendi:So, unfortunately, there may never be answers to all of the questions we have in Tileka Patrick's case, but there's still a lot to learn from it. We can't say whether someone should have seen the warning sign sooner, and we can't reverse time and make Tileka take her symptoms more seriously. But if you or someone you know needs help or more information right now, you can start by visiting the National Alliance on Mental Illness' website that's N-A-M-I dot org or reaching out to someone you trust to talk about it. I think for me, tleeka's case I learned about it about a year ago it sticks with me because I think about it in myself. Like you can be such a good student, such a good career person, so intelligent, so educated, so with it she was religious, all of these wonderful things like you would want to be, tleeka Patrick. There are probably so many people she knew who looked up to her and yet still have your life fall apart in this way.
Wendi:That's very scary.
Trish:Did you ever find anything on if she was the woman that had come to his house that night and talked to his adult children Like? Was there any confirmation of that by police?
Wendi:No, and actually that only comes out because when the media got hold of the story, one of the members of his congregation came forward to talk about the sermon that day. They were like, oh my gosh, I remember this. I remember, you know, on August 25th he had this sermon where he mentioned a woman coming to his home I wonder if that was Tleeka. And then she did have a post on the same day where she talked about him having a sermon, where he talked about that, but she made it seem like it was not her. But then, you know, two and a half weeks later, three weeks later, she's getting the PPO. So I think when you connect all the dots it does seem like that was Tleeka. But the police have never said and Marvin Sapa has been very distant from the event Like he talked to police, he did what he had to do with police when he was interviewed, but he hasn't really come out publicly and talked about it very much. He, you know.
Wendi:But in all, fairness, he didn't really know this woman and apparently, he has other stalkers, yeah, and this is a case where I feel like Tleeka did some things wrong for sure, but at the same time, this is a lot of victims in this case as well, and Marvin is definitely one of them. She's a very beautiful woman. She is very beautiful. She's beautiful, educated, religious. She's a very good cook by her YouTube videos, very good writer, excellent writer, flawless 20,000 tweets, no typos, grammatical errors. It's incredible.
Wendi:While she's going through this, we have links in the show notes I. It's really hard to find now all of the different. I mean, I don't think the accounts are active on Twitter anymore. They've all been deleted, but you can find archives of it. And I did link in the show notes to a video by a YouTuber named Nick Crowley. He has clips of her YouTube videos in a little summary that he did. But the original YouTube videos are also kind of hard to find. When this first came out, they were on the news. Everybody saw them, sure, but now they're gone. But it's I mean, it's sad, it's I. My entrance to it was this is this creepy, like what happened with these weird YouTube videos? And then, as you kind of unpack the case, it's actually very tragic, it is.
Trish:And it's interesting that even after all this came out the two autopsies, all of that, from what you're saying, nobody that she worked closely with at the medical center, even patients that she may have dealt with, have come back and said, oh, you know that secondhand site like, oh, that would explain that, or that would explain that weird statement she made or how she was acting, Except for that one night, the night she she died really from the fellow resident that dropped her off at the hotel. There's nothing that people are coming out after the fact saying, oh, I wish I would have addressed it or wish I would have directed her or told someone, or nothing.
Wendi:Yeah, that's what's so unique about to leak is case. It's not even just that people didn't see the warning signs she was in, there weren't any, and she was in a workplace, in a school area, a campus where if anyone's going to see that, it's them. Yes, they still didn't see it. So it's like. Then I go back to what her ex husband said of you know her, whether he's being truthful or not or just trying to cover up. You know his own feelings of guilt, but you know he said she was terrified that if anyone knew what she was experiencing it would ruin her career and that meant so much to her. Right, okay.
Trish:Well, if you want to learn more about today's case, head over to our website, criminaldiscoursepodcastcom. On there, you will find all of the resources Wendy put together for you and detailed show notes, and we invite you to join the discourse and let us know your thoughts on today's or any other case we've covered, through our website contact page or by messaging us on social media. Reach out anytime you know, tell us about yourself or suggest a new case for us to cover, and if you've enjoyed today's episode, then don't forget to subscribe on whatever platform you're listening to us on, leave us a five star review and tell a friend so they can join the discourse too. And, as always, if you see something, know something, say something. You might have that missing piece of the puzzle it takes to solve a crime.
Trish:I think we've already talked about this that there were pieces missing. There was nothing to report, the people that interacted with her daily, it's just one. I think that's why this case is so mysterious. Yeah, I'd agree. And before we go, remember we want you to stay safe out there. Let's be kind to one another and watch out for one another.
Trish:So until next time, guys, bye.