Teen Murders His Neighbor Before School

"I'm investigating the homicide, a murder." "Whoa!" "I just found my sister in her house and she's dead." On the morning of January 25th, 2018, police in Sumter County, Florida respond to a report of a deceased person inside a home along County Road 625. The victim is Melody Victoria Bennett. Her body is discovered by her brother just one day after what would have been her 33rd birthday. That same morning, 16-year-old Tyler Hirsch notices several patrol cars along County Road 625 as he steps onto the school bus. When class starts, the teacher notices that Hirsch is having a hard time focusing, but that wasn't too out of the ordinary. "So, your teacher here at the school?" "Yes." "He was almost always goofing around talking to other people I was instructing." Tyler Hirsch was raised in the foster care system and struggles with managing his emotions. On Monday, January 22nd, Hirsch had asked to see the school nurse. He had a noticeable cut on his left hand and several smaller scratches. "He was at my desk asking me for a band-aid and I said for what, he showed me his hand and it was at least twice the size of what it normally was." "Did they look fresh like newer injuries or. " "They were within a couple days." When his teacher asked him about what happened, Hirsch wouldn't say. "I asked what happened and he said it's personal." On Tuesday, the 23rd, Hirsch stayed home sick from school. Later that night, the Sumter County police were searching his bedroom for narcotics. Hirsch's foster father had called the cops to report that his son had been smoking marijuana and sneaking out of his bedroom window at night. The search came up empty, but police did learn that Hirsch has a secret second phone and he has been sneaking around. Just before school on the morning of January 25th, Hirsch tells his bus driver about something else he's been dealing with. "He gets on Friday morning. We notice there's two deputies sitting down the road a little bit. As we're going by, he tells us that his neighbor had been murdered." He told the bus driver that his neighbor, Melody Victoria Bennett, had been stabbed to death. During an initial neighborhood canvas, police spoke with Tyler Hirsch. He says he knew Bennett, she was his mentor and a family friend, but he doesn't know anything about her death. "I mean, I'm up here through trial and meth over when it is the art or just being held for a half. So what?" "You rehab some stuff in common, both of you are on the job." "I guess I do that one step up into, I get some of the H.S. people." "Specially when I was a big heart, I was the charada." The area along County Road 625 is rural and densely wooded. There are only a few homes and neighbors know one another. And police documents officer state that Bennett's home wasn't visible from the street, leading them away from the theory that this could be a random home invasion. Police believe her killer was likely someone she knew. "How could you describe her life to her good, not great? She helped her in water, the reviews, and in water, because I see what they do." "She's a really good girl, I really wanted to help her help me, she went to history and stuff." Melody Bennett was a friend of Hirsch's foster family, but Bennett and 16-year-old Hirsch also spent one-on-one time together. She mentored him in art, and Bennett's family has nothing but positive things to say about him when they speak to law enforcement. "I love you, girl, love you, and do it, I love you, I love you, I love you." "I thought you were ready to go after this event, and that's all we talked about, this would be longer than the neighbors, visit their parents' names, this is if she'd got a long word, Tyler, she'd like to mentor him, do it so they had a connection or something, or the kind of stuff that she thought, like faces student color TVs, and then put them in like makes them out of it, like, "What would she do with this world?" "Easily I was like, like Syria was a part of the world, it was a part of the world, I mean time lives here, like New York's, I don't know the part of it, and I don't know if she liked it, she's just in the house, I don't know if she really liked it." "I think you told me yesterday that you'd never been inside the house, your parents were inside the house, okay, if you never were." "I wouldn't like, not in the house, I didn't know how, there's a back door, I didn't know if that area where she goes, there's a back door, I didn't know." The back door, according to Bennett's family, was regularly unlocked, a detail only someone who's been inside her home before might know. When Bennett's brother arrived at her home, on the day he discovered her body, the back door was still unlocked. The position of her clothing and underwear indicated that Bennett had been sexually assaulted. "It may just end, nobody knew what was supposed to happen." "You're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're not, you're not the better of not." "I'm not really, I'm seeing a march, she says some nice day, she was like, I hope they catch, I'm seeing you there." "When I really, I think we catch the person there?" "Do you know what happened? What happened? How should I say if you did?" But Hersh knows more than he's letting on. What he told the bus driver on the day Bennett's body was discovered was true. "Is that words that we heard him say that was that his neighbor had been murdered and that she had been stabbed to death?" "What time was that on Friday, 5 after 540 in the morning?" Police believe the bus driver's statement, but there's one detail that isn't adding up. When Hersh got on the bus, it was far too early in the investigation for police to have publicized any information on the crime. Let alone Bennett's cause of death. "It was like he was in a day, anything else that sticks in your mind about that?" Detectives know Hersh is either connected to the crime or had some inside knowledge about Bennett's death. But that doesn't necessarily make him a suspect. "I'm not going to lie to you. I don't know if I've heard you or you've heard about it or not. My mom, they had the cops come because I was looking at me." "Yeah, I heard that story." When police speak with Hersh's foster parents, they don't know any reason why Hersh would be worried about them or anyone. But they are concerned about his deception and disobedience. "You seem like you're great here. But my case is the same one. It's the same one. The bigger room is like, hang on, did I fail? I remember when you feel that a little bit. But it's a lot of love. There's only room where you can go." Hersh's foster parents knew something was troubling him. They just didn't know what. Nor did they know that several yards away inside a home just down the road. They're quiet and kind neighborly, lifeless, in her own bed. Now detectives need to take a closer look at Hersh's timeline and at that cut on his hand, the one he told his teacher was personal. "I think you guys said there's always room. Can you stay home tonight?" I woke up on him two and mom came and she was like, "Games don't use their fence. He needs fence to fence." And she made me feel it up to her. So I went to there and ate something. I went out and went, "What are we going to do?" She went and showed me what I did and did stuff like that. "Do you know what I'm going to do? Sorry I don't remember the hate themselves that." The fence was barbed wire. Hersh tells investigators he didn't bring the right tools, so he used his bare hands to work on it. He says, "That's how he injured himself." "I don't agree. My pie is really mean so I used my hand to twist it wrapped in my own twist and connected it to make a lot of work so I have to cut it more hard." "Let's see, twist if you want to." "Can you tell me in the next year or so?" Yeah. "You're probably going to buy a lot of the money." I found you said that. "We can go to something like that." I mean, a week, a week, a pie, a week, and she and me, we made me do it. It was like a special day for me. She was like, "Oh, you can check in." And she was like, "You're going to do it right?" So Tuesday I didn't go to school. Right. And all the things I took to do, I went back out of there. I can screen it the whole thing. Hirsch tells investigators he initially worked on the fence on Sunday the 21st that he went back to fix it on Tuesday when he stayed home from school. The same day police later searched his room for drugs and paraphernalia. Why do I have to go to school? Well, somebody said, dumb like you would have done. I would have to go to school in one way. I schooled in one way and had to go to school. We see a nurse in there. But yeah, I had asked her a very good thing with me on his hand. I was on this room and I had to go to the car right here. Well, that's the very day. It was on the right hand. Yeah. How did you get to that? Just the same thing. Barbar from day four. On Sunday. Yeah. OK. It was strange that Hirsch refused to tell teachers about what happened to his hand, but it wasn't surprising. Hirsch had a reputation at school for being troubled and dishonest. I like it when it better term. He's very sneaky. So he likes to lie. Oh, trust me. He pretty much has it all together when you talk to him. OK. Tyler stands about, it's his three, and he's solid weight. And he uses it to his advantage. Also has a pretty violent temper. But investigators have to wonder, if the injury really was from his grandma's barbed wire fence, why was he keeping that information so close to the chest? [INAUDIBLE] What's going on there? Are you going to London? You go to school. Where were you going to be the best one today? He was back then. When the school came home with the grandma's house, worked on a lot, worked on the fence. Is that the symbol of gingerbread on Monday or Sunday? What? Gingerbread on Monday were on the fence, so it was Monday or Thursday, so if that's not Sunday. OK. And then you're going to be on Monday? I'm going to say the other day. The second day is Tuesday. Monday is Tuesday. And just both of them-- I got the scratches. I got the scratches and those are all here and gone. And I got this on Tuesday, I think this one right here on the budget. So where's the rest of you going to school to homework on the fence? And how the homework that we're going to do is go to sleep. The more investigators talk to Tyler Hirsch, the messier his timeline seems to get. In addition to multiple stab wounds, Bennett also suffered from various defensive wounds on her hands, a clear sign that she fought her attacker. The medical examiner quickly determines that her wounds are a result of homicidal violence, not personal injury. And DNA analysis confirms that Bennett was sexually assaulted before her death. And with that detected, there's certain that if anything in this story is personal, it was the attack on Melody Victoria Bennett's life. I'm here to ask you to talk to you about Tyler. Tyler? Yeah. Do you understand you guys are friends? Not really. I understand you dated Tyler. No. Okay. So here's where we're at. When's the last time that you saw him or talked to him? Uh, two weeks ago. The girl tells police that she and Hirsch did have sex, but not at his house. They were in a friend's car parked on her property. She said Hirsch tried to use a condom, but he put it on incorrectly. So they stopped and he tried again with a second one. Do you know what happened to those condoms? Okay. So you never saw him move him? No. Okay. But detectives saw a used condom in a trash can at Hirsch's home. It doesn't take a seasoned investigator to do the math. I got a question. What did that condom do? You took out a garbage deal. Yeah. It's no more. Do you use condoms in your world? No. I have to be used condoms there's two. There's two. There's two. There's two condoms. One of the garbage. So they were using condoms on a garbage can? Where did that go? Because they stopped the garbage can and all of a sudden it's not the garbage can. Which means someone got a garbage can. And all of that. So I had a blitz over the house. I was like, "What are you doing?" I was like, "What are you doing?" I was like, "What are you doing?" I don't know if I'm coming down or something. Detectives know that more telling than the search of Hirsch's bedroom is the search of Bennett's home. If Hirsch has reason for concern, it's what officers find there that should worry him. "What would it have been if that were his home?" "So if Hirsch'd been approached with DNA and so on and so on, what would you say if it was?" What would it have said if it was? I would have said if it was. Hirsh's statement seems to be the only evidence of that alleged sexual encounter with Bennett, but there is other evidence of a much more recent encounter. A forensic analysis determines that Tyler Hirsh's DNA is a match for the DNA found on Bennett's clothing and underwear she was wearing when she died. They now have all the physical evidence they need to tie Hirsh to the crime. Over the next year investigators continue to build their case. To the public, so much time passing without an arrest could have given the impression that the case had stalled but that couldn't be further from the truth. In January 2019, Tyler Hirsh sits down with investigators for one final interview. Do you remember the day after the body was found? The day after her body was found by us and we got called. Remember seeing all the cops out there? You went to school the next day. You read the bus and you got a long distance and travel so you got to get on the bus kind of early. There's a bus driver and there's an aid on the bus. You remember? When you got on the bus, they asked you what all the noise was about. What was everywhere is the cops here? What we didn't tell you then, because they came to us immediately, was that you told them information that nobody else knew that had not been released by the law enforcement. How she died? Like how she died, Tyler. Tyler, you're being your enemy as well. You're trying to deny something that didn't happen. And Tyler, you need to understand that this evidence is 700 billion times that it already tells us. You did. And it's okay. You've got to understand that part of it is done. I don't think you're the monster. I told him the whole write-up. Just get us not a monster. Something took over and caused this to happen. What did you do? Tell us. Get it off your chest. It's so hard to have a family. Tyler, you still have family. I don't. I knew someone was up in my family and people were calling me. Tyler, they didn't know anything about that. Look at them. We, today, we said, "Detect us just today." I have a lot of time when those guys came to bring you over to talk to us. After a year-long investigation and support from detectives, Tyler Hirsch is finally ready to talk. Kind of. We did it. We are left. And we went to sleep in the next morning. I had on my clothes a lot. Like the next morning, I woke up. And I knew where I was when I went to sleep. As before, I went to sleep in the next morning. And then after that, I'm happy. Did you go back to her house? What she did when you left her house? She was not. Tyler, look at me. Look at me, son. Okay. We didn't have all of this. We're done questioning that. The investigation is finally over. But for now 17-year-old Tyler Hirsch, a life sentence is just about to begin. On January 17, 2019, Tyler Hirsch is arrested for homicide, sexual assault with a weapon and armed burglary. Come on. Don't mess with that book. Tyler Hirsch spends the next several years behind bars awaiting trial. In January 2025, seven years after the murder of Melody Victoria Bennett, an officer finds now 24-year-old Hirsch crying on the floor of his jail cell, his knees are pulled to his chest and his neck appears grayish blue in color. On the floor beside him, a bedsheet tied into a noose and a piece of paper with writing on it. Hirsch tells the officer he's tired and doesn't want to live any longer. Tortured by the memory of the murder he committed, Hirsch takes an open plea deal and is sentenced to life at the Florida Department of Corrections. One life taken, two lives lost and two families forever marred by tragedy. For long crime investigates, I'm Kristen Thorn.