Picture-Perfect Family Slaughtered Inside Houston Home

Hey guys, it's T-Mitchell from Tyler's Cart, a beautiful and successful mother, owner of two Houston hotspots and designer of a major fashion brand is gunned down in her own home. Her two young children also killed at the hands of the man They thought they could trust the most, and it's a cryptic social media post that could hold the key to the motiveless crime. This is Scandal, presented by Lawn Crime. I'm Sierra Gillespie. It's truly terrifying that we now have a term for the killer in today's case, family annihilator. The fact that we have to have a description for someone who completes those actions, I mean, it happens far too often, but in the case we're covering today, it seemingly happened out of nowhere. This family looks like the American dream, a beautiful wife and mother, raising an eight-year-old daughter and a four-year-old. Son, alongside who appeared to be a loving husband, and they had everything they were successful, owning and operating two restaurants in the Houston area. They also collaborated on a fashion brand that took off back in 2023 and have even appeared on national TV shows like Guy Theories, Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. On the surface, they were picture perfect. But behind the scenes, there must have been some sort of trouble brewing. I mean, how else do you explain the terror that police discovered early this week? Today's scandal takes us to Houston, Texas, home to the Mitchell family. There's the father, 52-year-old Matthew, or Matt Mitchell, the mother, 39-year-old T-Mitchell, and their two children, eight-year-old daughter Maya, and four-year-old son Max. Now the family lived together in Houston and really made their mark on the city. Back in October of 2019, they opened the Traveller's Table, a popular restaurant that puts a modern spin on global dishes like Pad Thai and Jamaican jerk pork. In 2024, they opened a second restaurant, the Traveller's Cart. Hey guys, it's T-Mitchell from Traveller's Cart. These restaurants became major hot spots in Houston, true institutions of the city, especially after they were featured on the Guy Fieri show, Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. T and Matt talk about all this in an October 2024 episode of the podcast called What's Eating Eric. At the time, it had been about three years since the episode filmed and originally aired. But we'll still get new customers from that show because they do the reruns every few months, and so we'll get people that mention that show every few months when I think it's like pretty much after a rerun, they'll get like a different flood of people coming in from the show. A lot of times, people traveling in Houston, so people will Google, they look out for all the places he's been. Exactly, and then you'll come to the Houston restaurant that Guy went to. T told lifestyle blog The Morning Honey in 2024, quote, "Together with my husband, Matt, we started Traveller's Table and Traveller's Cart, restaurants that curate cuisines from around the world and offer global street food. Exploring the world through food was one of our favorite ways to experience cultures, and we loved bringing that experience to our hometown of Houston. As our restaurants found success, we wanted to explore other ways to help others see the world. But the couple's business ventures expanded beyond just the restaurant world, in 2023 they formed the Fashion Brand Foreign Fair. According to its website, Foreign Ferris founded on the idea that exploring the world is enriching and life affirming that living and traveling well are worthy ideals to pursue, and that being prepared for the journey can make all the difference. These beliefs are reasons why we've created a collection of travel clothing that we hope will not only allow you to arrive in style, but will inspire the journey in the first place. T spoke to The Morning Honey about this business venture, saying, quote, "As I began traveling more for business, and still for pleasure, I started seeing gaps in the way I was packing, for example. If I had an early morning flight, I wanted to be able to land and go straight to a meeting, so I needed an outfit that was comfortable but polished. Foreign Ferris was born out of necessity, as I've had one too many travel disasters where my checked bag didn't make it for a few days, and I had to make do with the clothes on my back. From afar, the couple's professional life seemed to be blossoming. They seemed really successful, and their personal life seemed successful too. Take a look at this post from T's Instagram, made on August 11th of last year, she wrote, "Happy birthday to the man who can juggle kids, street markets, snack adventures, and business meetings like a pro. Life's never dull with you, and we wouldn't trade it for the world, heart emoji." Fun facts about Matt, he is zero social media. When we first met, I was convinced he was a con artist, or a married dad of five in the suburbs, with an apartment in the city. But no, just a guy who prefers reading books and newspapers, #Still Suspicious. Passlives includes scuba diving instructor and bike messenger, puts his creative streak to work by naming every cocktail on our restaurant menus. Now just more recently, 10 days before her murder in fact, T made a more cryptic post. On April 24th, T posted to her Instagram. The video has the caption, "He thinks we will grow old together, and the caption of the post reads, "I didn't have the heart to correct him." And that does seem terrifying, from the offset. The post happens to be a video though, and when you play it in full it says, "He thinks we will grow old together, he will, but I am Asian." And this was likely a joke referencing the couple's age difference, but in the wake of T's brutal murder, it's troubling. It's almost as if the post four shadows, what would soon come to be. According to the Houston Police Department authorities were called to the Mitchell home at about 5.25 pm on Monday, May 4th. A family babysitter and relative requested a welfare check, reporting that the family hadn't been heard from or seen since the day before, Sunday, May 3rd. When first responders arrived to the scene, they made a gruesome discovery. According to a Houston Police Department press release, "Officers entered the residence and located four unresponsive individuals with gunshot wounds." Investigators noted each family member had died of a gunshot wound, and soon determined it was Matthew, the father and husband of the family, who pulled the trigger. And here's where the answers stop and the questions begin. For instance, we still don't know where each family member was shot, where in the body, where in the home, or how many times. We don't have an approximate time of the murders either, but perhaps the biggest question here is why? A picture perfect family from the outside. Dies, when a seemingly loving father systematically murders them one by one, it just doesn't add up. In the research I've done, on this case so far, the reaction has largely been shock. From people like me, just learning about the story and researching, and also from those closest to the Mitchell family. T.Sister took to Facebook to write about this tragic loss, saying, "We are heartbroken to share that my sister, T, and her beloved children, Mayan Max, passed away last night. Our family is grieving deeply and asks for privacy during this incredibly difficult time. Funeral arrangements will be shared when they are available." Thank you for your understanding and support. Another friend posted about their shock to the news, writing on Instagram, quote, "There are truly no words. T. was not only a client, but a great friend. She was a devoted mother and businesswoman, and we are completely devastated and heartbroken a million times over again." If there was one thing about T, it's that she was always on her own journey. Always looking for the next adventure, and we had a blast doing it together. She will be dearly missed by many, including our team, who's had the privilege of telling her story the last few years. I will cherish these memories of her and hold onto my faith when nothing makes sense. Young and innocent lives gone from this world way too soon. Hug your children, hold your family, remind the people who mean the most to you that you love them, and thank God for all the things you have right now in this moment in time. Sending you a big hug, my friend. I hate this for you. And she ends the post with five heartbreak emojis. Houston Police say the investigation is still ongoing and open, and so too are the Mitchell Family Restaurants, a post from their social media reads, "To our community. As travelers, table and travelers cart remain open for business, we want to thank our loyal staff who have shown up and worked through these difficult circumstances, ensuring that we continue to serve our community. We are asking for unity and respect for our privacy as we navigate this immense loss. Hospitality comes from within, and to honor the traveler's legacy, we will continue to welcome you into our restaurants." But even with all of these facts laid out, I still don't understand exactly what happened or why. So let's bring on today's guys to hopefully work through some of our questions. It's Texas-based trial attorney, Bridget Williams. Bridget, great to have you on, and thanks for coming on and talking about this really, really sad case. And I guess let's start with that, the fact that going through, looking at this family's photos, their Instagram social media, they look like a beautiful family, they look happy, they look great on social media, their life is enviable. And yet something like this would happen, does it show that behind closed doors things aren't really what they seem? That could be the case, but also what I've always kept in mind is that just what someone presents, does it mean that's always the case. And so it's always important to dig a little deeper. People present what they want you to see, especially on social media. And even as an attorney in the criminal defense case or personal injury case, it's so important to dig a little deeper than what people just want to present. That's a really good point because is when I post on Instagram, if I think I look ugly in a photo, I don't post that, I keep it to myself, or if I'm in a fight with my family or my husband, I'm not posting about it, not even putting it on a story, I keep it to myself, so I only post, you know, I'm on vacation, here's a highlight for work, it looks like maybe from afar, my life is amazing, whereas at home, that's where I can break down in silence and you know, not have it out there for the world. So I guess I'm wondering after something like this comes out, would investigators then look into, you know, her history and see if there's any sort of domestic violence situation or warning signs? Domestic violence is always something that police officers and investigators are going to look at, how many times have the police been called out to the home before? Has there been any type of family assault charges that have been filed previously? Has there been anything that has been upsetting that has gone on that neighbors have recognized? So speaking with neighbors or family members, that's always going to be something that they look into as well. And then also, if there has been some type of domestic violence situation that has come up, that would be taken to consideration for motive and things like that that are going on here. - And you know what gets really tricky is with domestic violence. I've had experience with this, with not myself personally, thankfully, but some very close friends of mine and family members who were in these domestic violence situations, and I had literally no idea. Could see these people all the time, text them, meet up with them, go on vacations. Everything seemed normal, they kind of closed it off and didn't tell anyone about it, you know, based on the shame which they should not have, but that's something that happened. So is it possible, in this case, Tee is her name, the mother here, that she kept all of this in. I mean, maybe hopefully confided in, you know, a good friend, I know she had a sister. A lot of people were reaching out and saying they were close to her, but is it possible that she just never told anyone if there was actually domestic violence going on? - That's very much so a possibility. A lot of times when individuals are experiencing domestic violence, it's not something they're going shot in from the rooftops. A lot of times, they might not even call the police. A lot of cities in the state of Texas, if someone calls the police for a domestic violence situation, they have a policy that someone will be arrested or giving a ticket for a family assault class C. So they know, especially if it's happened before, that someone will be arrested or charged with a family assault situation. And that sometimes prevents individuals from calling the police if they're experiencing it going forward. And so that can be a deterrent sometimes, 'cause they don't want the person to actually get arrested or get in trouble, they just want it to stop. And so that can be really disheartening when they're experiencing that. And I'm sure it can be lonely as well. - Yeah, and I think something we have to remember too is you and I work with police a lot, the fact that you work in law, I work in true crime. We see them a lot or see body cam, whatever. For a lot of people, police are scary. Calling 911 is one of the scariest things you can do. I mean, when my phone accidentally calls 911, I'm like, oh my god, oh my god, turn it off. Like, no, sorry, this is not an emergency. Oh my god. And so for people, when they're actually in those moments, sometimes they think, no, is it really that bad? Do I really need to call 911? I'm not blaming these people at all. This is something that a lot of us go through. And I guess I jumped right to domestic violence because I can't wrap my brain around how you can go from a happy family, owning two restaurants, have a great life, to the husband shooting and killing the mother, his wife, and two kids. So that's why I'm kind of thinking domestic violence. What is your thoughts about that? - It could be such a plethora of things that we don't know about. You never know. Sometimes we could say it's domestic violence. It could be mental disorders. It could be a series of things, right? That we have no clue about until things are revealed when investigators actually do thorough research, talk with family members, look through past criminal history when they look through just a number of things. So we could make assumptions of what could be going gone, but you just never, ever know. You never know. - Yeah, it's only the people who are really there who know all of the truth. And actually, as I'm researching this case, going through with the Houston Police Department, have released the information that they've kind of given us, they did tell us, you know, they've been identified, the mother and the two children, they died by gunshot wounds. But that's kind of all they said. We don't have a timeline of, we believe it was this time when the gunshots went off. We don't have number of gunshots where they were killed, meaning like, was it upstairs? Was it downstairs? Were they shot in the head? Were they shot, you know? And I hate to just say this so crassly, but there's so many different, I guess, questions that we still have. Do you have any idea why the Houston Police wouldn't have released all that info yet? - Well, the case is still so new. I believe this has only happened a couple of days ago as of today's state. And so this means that it's still under investigation, right? So there's still probably speaking with individuals in the neighborhood, they're still speaking with family members and coworkers or people at church. You just don't know, they could be doing so many things to still try to figure out what really happened at that home on that day. What really was going on before that day amongst this family? And so while it's still under an active investigation, they typically are not going to release all of the details that something that's going to be released later on. - Yeah, I can understand that too, because to your point, we're recording this on Thursday. Their bodies were found 525 in the evening on Monday. So it's still really early. It hasn't even been a week since all of this was kind of brought to light. So of course, they're still doing the investigation. And as you brought up talking to co-workers, I know that the husband and wife owned multiple restaurants in Houston. Of course, I'm sure that they were very active in all of that. So they're probably talking to their employees, their friends, their family, things like that. But also I'm wondering, do you think investigators are looking through their phones? That's really a window into our soul. You know, when I wake up in the morning, I'm on my phone right away before I go to bed. I'm right on my phone. It has everything, it's my entire world. I hate to say that I wish it wasn't. But so many of us are like that. So do you think that investigators would want to take a look at their phones? Absolutely. Looking through their phone records, who they've called, their search history on their browsers. You know, what exactly have you been looking at on your phones? What have you been looking at on social media? What have you been looking at in your search history? What, who have you been having communications with? What text message conversations have you been doing? What podcasts have you been listening to? And so those are all things that go into consideration and for the investigation. So the investigators are going to be looking through their phone records, who they've been texting, who they've been calling. And a lot of times, the social media is a huge, huge portion of it. Because so often, and this is a speculation on my part, because again, as you pointed out, there's still a lot of question marks we have about this case. But just in past cases that I've covered, sometimes we see a motive of something like infidelity. If one partner is cheating, social media might be a good window and to see, you know, did they have somebody on the side where they're having an affair, whatever. Another motive that we see oftentimes is financial turmoil. You know, if there is a life insurance policy, obviously likely wouldn't be the case here. But if the bank account was, you know, running low and one person was hiding it from the other, I mean, sometimes in families we have, like, just traditionally, the husband will be the one to focus on the finances, the wife might not even know. So is that something to investigators might look out their bank account? I think there's nothing off limits for these investigators to look at when trying to figure out what happened and something so tragic is this. And so they have the opportunity to loop through, looking in the phones, bank accounts, anything that could show a motive. The thing here is so whenever proving a case, motive is not an element for murder. So they don't have to prove murder, but they don't have to prove a motive in order to prove murder. But it's good to know, right? It's good for them to be able to share that story. If this case were ever to go to a jury trial or just to discuss or figure out what happened, but murder or murder motive is not an element. Yeah, that's so crazy to me because I can understand, I mean, prosecutors don't need it to bring the charges. They don't need it to yield a conviction. But for a jury, if this ever went to a jury trial, let's say, I would want to know a motive if I'm a juror. And additionally, if I'm their family members or their friends who we went to bed Sunday night, woke up and all of a sudden, Monday morning things are completely different or afternoon, rather, 'cause that's when we found out. That's horrifying. I would want to know what a motive is, what an explanation is here. And another thing too is, first of all, shooting and killing your wife is the worst crime. You can commit, right? I mean, it's terrible. It would be the highest charge somebody could face would be murder like that. But also in my opinion, the husband here took it a step further, not only murdering the wife, but the two kids too. I mean, what are your thoughts on that part? - Like you said, taking a step further and murdering two children is heartbreaking, it's tragic. The thing is here in the state of Texas, if you murder a child, now you have crossed the barrier from just murder to now capital murder. And so he could have faced the death penalty for killing children. And so that escalates it even more. So taking to the life of any person, right, is going to be just completely tragic heartbreaking. But then taking the life of a child, innocent child, is going to raise that bar even further to where he could have been facing the death penalty. - Yeah, because you think about it. I mean, to your point, no one should be murdered. All of this is 100% preventable. They should be, you know, going to work, going to school. It's almost summer break. You know, it should be all of those things that they're looking forward to. And yet, mother's life was cut short. and the two kids ages eight and four, the little boy, was four years old. I mean, I can't even wrap my brain around it, but to your point, he could have faced capital murder charges, too, because of the kids and murder, because of the wife. But instead, this husband turned the gun on himself and died by suicide. I mean, that to me, it's so hard because we won't have an answer. We can interrogate him. We can't take him to trial. I mean, are there any possibilities of any criminal charges being filed at all because the perpetrator here is dead? And there's no one to hold accountable. He took that liberty himself to say, okay, well, I'm going to take the lives of all these innocent people who are in my home, my wife, my children. And now I'm going to take my own life. And so there's no one to hold accountable. And so I think that's the most frightening thing ever when someone does that, because again, you feel just empowered enough to take the life of someone else and be turned back around and then take your own. It's so it's really hard to think about, because I mean, we call it the justice system for a reason. It doesn't mean everyone always feels like they get 100% justice, but that's, you know, the goal, right? If somebody kills someone else, we want to seek justice. We want punishment. We want, you know, some sort of retribution. And here, we can't have that. We can't have a trial. We can't have answers for any of the family members. And I think that's just so hard to wrap my head around. And I guess if we can't have, you know, criminal charges, obviously this person is deceased. So we can, you know, file charges against him. But I'm wondering if maybe there could be any other charges filed in the way of. I know that this happened that he shot and killed them. So let's say, and I'm just making this up, this is just speculation. But if investigators were to find this, that he illegally purchased the weapons. Let's say that the guns were unregistered or he went to Mexico to get them, or you know, it wasn't done by the book. Is it possible that somebody could face charges for all that? It would be, it would need to have more facts that would be added to what you said. But based off of you, he, you know, bought a gun that was illegal. If he just the facts that you just presented, bought it in another country, that doesn't rise to a criminal charge for someone else. The only time that someone else could possibly be charged if they were what's called a co-conspirator. Let's say that he was incahoots with, I don't know, a cousin who, and they were planning on doing all of these things. And there was an action that was taken in furtherance of the crime by the cousin. So maybe the cousin, they had conversations about it, right? We'll go back to their phone calls, right? Go back to the phone records where they have conversations about it. And then after that, did the cousin maybe go buy the gun for him, right? Now there's an action. So that conversation and action. Now, whoever the person is that is a co-conspirator can also be responsible for the murder of the wife and also capital murder of the children. Oh, that's, that's interesting. And actually, as you were talking about that, I was working on another case for a different show that I have. It's called "Crimes of Passion." And it was the murder of Lorenzo and Wright. And it's very similar. There was a cousin that was helped, you know, help with the murder carry out because it was the, you know, so that, it wouldn't be the first time that we'd seen a co-conspirator situation. I don't know that it's the case here necessarily, but it is possible, and that's why investigators are still kind of going through and getting their ducks in a row, trying to zoom out and see the big picture of everything here. And I guess my last question for you is, it doesn't seem likely at this time that there would be any sort of criminal charges, which is gotta be a hard pill to swallow for the family. But what about civil? Is there anything? I mean, I know that, um, T's sister has been outspoken. You know, I can't believe she lost her sister and her niece and nephew and one fell swoop. I mean, the damage that that causes to a person, is there any possibility of civil litigation? Based off of the facts that we have now, I don't see anything that could be a possibility for civil litigation. Whenever we talk about civil litigation on something that passes away, it's what's called wrongful death. And was there any negligence-based issues that happened that caused the death of another person? And in this situation, this was an intentional action that led to this person passing away the wife and also the two children, right? He intentionally shot them. There's also not anywhere that could file against. There's no insurance, technically, policy that would be responsible for him. That wouldn't be the homeowners policy. That wouldn't be a car policy, right? That wouldn't even be their restaurant policy. So there wouldn't necessarily be based off of the facts that we have right now. I don't see where there would be somewhere we're feeling that could collect from. It's so sad because not that they would want that or any monetary value would bring back these three lives lost, but at least it would be something. And instead, it's just a senseless crime that at the time of this recording, we don't know a motive. We don't know anything. We don't know why it happened just that the family has to live with tragedy. I mean, it's a really tough case to have to talk about. So Bridget Williams, I do thank you for coming on Scandal with us today and talking about the case. Thank you so much for having me. And that's where today's episode of Scandal leaves us for now. If you like what you saw and you want to see more or connect with me on social media, you can find me on places like Instagram at Sierra Gillespie. Thanks for watching today's episode of Scandal. As always, I'm your host Sierra Gillespie, and I'll see you next time.