Tiesh Rhue

A devoted family man suddenly disappears. He promised to come get the kids and he never came. She contacted his family, his friends. She was actively trying to find them. A search reveals evidence of a violent crime scene. There was blood on the floor, blood on the walls. It met a blood that we found in that room. I don't know how anybody could have walked out of there like that. At this point, it went from a missing person to, OK, we need to find his body. Detectives question both his wife and his girlfriend. They do not like each other. They have clashed in the past. He really thought he was going to top it in my [INAUDIBLE] because I made it to the pitch. There's sheep in the head and no one to it. But the investigation reveals a more tangled web of lives and a family who do anything for each other. Assist them, solve them, they do. Let us think they're the water. If they were going down, they were going down together. [MUSIC PLAYING] Georgetown, South Carolina is a small town where everyone seems to know each other's business. But on March 9, 2017, one resident somehow disappears without a trace. Britney Green came in to the Georgetown County Police Department to report a missing person. This man is Leon Harrison Jr. JR is everybody called him. Britney Green had dated JR. They were both in each other's past, but they had two children together. She says the last time she spoke to JR was on February 25, nearly two weeks ago. I told you the detective that he promised to come get the kids, and he never came. He didn't reach out and say, why? He was very, very concerned because we know that wasn't like him. She called JR multiple times. She was actively trying to find him through the community. However, no one close to JR has seen or heard from him in the last two weeks, either. The detective did ask why we took so long to come to the police about him. I told him because JR lost his phone one point of time, and it took him a couple of days to come to the house, to let us know. But I just thought that that could have been the case, or he got caught up with words. But as the days went by, we knew something had to go wrong. That's when we really started to get worried. Leon JR Harrison was born and raised in Georgetown, South Carolina. His early life was shaped by tragedy. JR lost his mom at an early age, and he lived with his father. He has like three brothers and a sister, and JR was close to all of his siblings. Most people would describe JR as joky. He got a funny, big personality. After high school, JR enlisted in the military. He did about three years in Korea, and then he did a year in Iraq. Between deployments, JR spent time with his family in Georgetown. On one of those visits, he met a young woman named Brittany Green. JR and I met through his cousin. His cousin told me that JR had a crush on me, and told JR that I had a crush on him. What attracted me to JR is his smile, his personality, the way that he loved, or his loved ones. The army sent JR back to Korea, but his heart stayed in South Carolina. When his four years of service were complete, he and Brittany picked up right where they left off. When he came home, that's when we got serious. It was the year 2005. And I found out that was pregnant. And he was excited. He was ready to be a father and build a family. After the birth of their son, they moved in together. Within the year, Brittany was pregnant with their second child. You always say he wanted a boy first, and then his girl. And that's what we got. So he was happy about that. In 2012, after 11 years together, JR decided to propose. But he didn't get the answer he was hoping for. That still felt like I was too young to be married. So it used to be OK. And gave me enough time, but we separated, because I stepped out on him. And then he found out. I knew he was heartbroken, but he just said that we had to go out several ways. And that he is still be there for me and the kids. He remained a good friend to Brittany, and a better father to the kids. By 2013, JR was looking for love again. He found it in 29-year-old Taisharu, a single mother of five working as a security guard at the Georgetown Steele Mall. Like JR, she wanted someone to build a life with. And within a year, they married. JR was definitely a family man. That's what he wanted, marriage, and stuff like that. I was happy with his life at the moment. Over the next three years, JR did his best to balance the responsibilities of two families. During that time, he was more so just focused on his kids and not really being friends with me, because he was married, and she didn't want a relationship with us. It was kind of like, I'm going to respect my wife, and she's just going to be about the kids. That devotion to his children is why loved ones are so troubled by his disappearance. I really had to like talk to my kids every day, and just pray with them, and give them hope. Maybe he's like out of town, you don't want a job, or something. It has been 12 full days since the last time anyone has seen or talked with JR. So that has got to have a real doom-like effect on anyone that's looking. As a part of the Missing Persons report, Brittany provides detectives with every detail she can think of. Brittany starts talking about JR's identifiable markings on his body, and one in particular is going to be a tattoo on his forearm that is a remembrance to his mother. We asked him, is he currently married? Does he see anybody? And she did tell us that he was married to Taish Roo. We looked up her information. She was actually at work as a security guard at the still mill. Police immediately contacted Taish to see if she knows where JR is. She says, I've been out of town. I had to go pick up my kids in DC. She did add that she was concerned about not hearing from JR. She said that she did reach out to JR several times by calls and text, but to no avail. Taish comes in after her work shift for a formal interview. She says she hasn't heard from JR since she left town 17 days ago. OK, why did you not come to the baseball room and call all the recording mission? Not just for some, but just for something else to do. According to her, they'd agreed to have an open marriage, but she recently caught him breaking the rules of their arrangement. Taish was OK with Leon having a relationship outside of their marriage. So long as it didn't become where he would call her his girlfriend. She says that she suspects that he is. is involved with another woman. According to Taish, his cheating caused them to separate about six weeks ago. But recently, they began to patch things up. They started to reconnect. They went back and forth, and she kept saying that she wanted him back in her life. Taish explains that on the night JR vanished, they'd made plans to try and reignite their romance. So on February the 25th, at about 10 o'clock at night, JR comes over to her house with her kids, her brother, and her dad there. Taish says she was working late that night, and raced home right after her shift was over. But when she got there, she found JR talking to someone else on the phone. I remember I said he was hoping to help me out. I was in a set, and I didn't get that. And the altercation ensues, and she tries to take the phone from him. After the argument, he goes inside, grabs his belongs, and he left down to sidewall, and that was the last time she's seen him. Oh, boom. Yeah, I told him he just told me to bite the ball. We had that pepper, and we'll serve it up. [MUSIC PLAYING] Coming up, investigators learned the details of a volatile romance. It was a wedding, and she thought it was something to be all [BLEEP] and a suspect emerges. Do you have any idea of anyone that would have wanted to do harm to JR? And immediately, she says, yes. 12 days after JR Harrison went missing, his wife, Taish Roo, explains to detectives that the last time she saw him, they'd argued about the terms of their open marriage, and he stormed off into the night. That is nothing because usually it's not getting me anywhere at all. If he's going to leave, he's going to leave. But if that's the case, if it happens so often, I'm just used to it. How much of a role they're going to end up hanging out with at night, is they leaving? Not that I know of. When this situation happened, both of them came in and asked me if I was OK. And I said, OK, fine. And I want to speak. Investigators asked Taish about the woman JR was speaking to on the phone. Rosario. I was hanging around at the time that he was still talking to us and he was doing. I've tried to reach out to this email once before when I first thought about her in June. She believed Rosario was a person who he was having a relationship with. And she even went into to describe her as the crazy, crazy girlfriend. She tells them that Rosario is jealous and that she believes that Rosario meant to harm JR. Detectives run a record search for Rosario's last known address. She agrees to come to the station and answer questions about JR's disappearance. She says I haven't seen JR either. But we were romantically involved and we're really hitting it off well. She was working as a cashier for McDonald's. And so he comes through the draft through 4 a.m. one morning. It was just star-struck. Rosario did seem very concerned, very heartbroken that he was missing and that she had not heard from him. Well, I think we don't come forward. But what we do, I think you just say, hey, something wrong. I don't know what we're going to do. Well, the one is because he's still married and I didn't want to get to be with him. And like I said, at first, I thought it would just need to be with embarrassed or trying to meditate on that because he knows his wife who might crown her on her. Rosario says the last time she saw JR was also Saturday the 25th. 12 days before he was reported missing. They spent the day together, then around 9 p.m. she dropped him off at his father's house. A short time later, she got a call from JR's phone, but he wasn't the one on the other end. I decided to have the 10th birthday now. And it was the right day. All I said was alone, and she started talking and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Taish was ranting and raving and cursing her, basically saying, you think you're going to have my man. And I can tell you that you're not. How long is she going to provide you? Well, we haven't had the day when I was pressing the evening break. I've been here for a month, so I said, at least so much. Tell me about what she found out about you, how long ago. Oh, if I'm not mistaken, you told her. Is this the first time you're talking with one? No, it's okay. And I hold up a phone, and then she called me, and I didn't even find my name. Those calls went to voicemail. So police were able to get those, and obviously, it shows Taish is very angry. You were really tall. You were the one top of the m-- in the world, right? The top of my head is a bitch. She says, you think I'm scared of you? And then uses a lot of expletives to explain how JR loves her and is staying with her. [MUSIC PLAYING] Rosario says she never heard from JR again. She had called him numerous times with no answer, which was, you know, one of the reasons why she believed they had just got back together, and she was going to respect that. As one of the last questions that they would have, is, do you have any idea of anyone that would have wanted to do harm to JR? He was once mentioned, that's why he says that, you know, that she couldn't have a no answer. According to Rosario, if Taish wanted to get rid of JR, there's one person who would happily do it for her. The buyer's father, Alex, did on to the loan, fit his own way, right? Clicking them with some bashing and then there it is. After concluding Rosario's interview, there is no evidence suggesting she was involved in the disappearance of her boyfriend, JR Harrison. Rosario is saying, no, I'm not the violent person that Taish makes me out to be. That's not me. You have Rosario throwing in Alex Jr. into the mix, also alleging that he and JR have an entire history of beef between each other. Hoping to gain neutral insight, detectives talk to the other woman in JR's life, the mother of his children, Brittany Green. Maybe there was anybody who was the biggest in it. Alex, who got them? They didn't get a long pet. Well, the father was going to send the ring soon, a couple of months last year. The thing was, his father had to balance the balance being with the grandma. They didn't do it with the father. That's not what we said. Police went and talked to a lot of the family members, sort of painting the same picture, a really volatile, terrible relationship between JR and Alex Jr. Investigators run a background check on Alex Jr. He's got a conspiracy charge and armed robbery charge, so he does have a violent tendency in his past. They really made the police want to talk to him. They also need to get a look inside the Rue family's home. It's the last place anyone saw JR, and one of the places he would occasionally stay before he disappeared. When he was in and out of the house, he also was living with Rosario at this point in time. Police obtained a search warrant, and on the evening of March 10, Alex Rue's senior, Taisha's father, grants them access to the residence. The rear of the house was actually Miss Taisha, Rue, and JR's bedroom. Immediately, what looked out of place is that there was a rug over carpeted area. They pulled up the rug and what the rug was covering was a space of carpet that had been cut out. On the carpet padding are these brownish reddish stains which is consistent with dry blood. So at this point we started looking everywhere. We pulled out all the bad landings, we checked the box springs, we checked the frame of the bed. On the mattress there's a ginormous pool of blood. It barely even looks like it's cleaned up. There's something called lumenol that reacts to blood that'll turn a different color if it's got the proteins of the blood in it. You start spraying around and you get the room lighting up like Christmas. There was blood on the floor, there was blood on the walls, on the bed. I mean it met a blood that we found in that room. It went from a missing person to okay we need to find this body because somebody did something very violent in it happening in that bedroom. The following day, March 11th, investigators re-interview Taish. Okay, so I think we found some stuff in the house that's really in the room. Okay. In the room we found two pieces of missing carpet and they had spots on and we had test spots and they had test spots in the room. Yeah, here is a lot. Those pieces of the carpet were a missing one before we knew. Man, I guess I'm not going to separate them. He cut it, I'll at least say this one replaced the carpet, couldn't he? Okay. But it was love and majesty, that's so far away. Yeah, from me being on the bed, it's my blood. But we go there so we can ask that out. That's what we found. Taish's statement doesn't explain the placement or amount of blood investigators found, but they decide not to confront her with that just yet. They go back to her brother, Alex Jr. They said, "Well, where is your brother at?" And she says, "I haven't seen my brother since March 8th." March 8th was three days ago and one day before JR was reported missing. Investigators suspect Taish might be covering for Alex Jr., so they return to the room home to talk with their father and see if he'll tell a different story. We know that Leon was there at the house around 10 o'clock. Did you see him on that night? No, sir. Okay. Was your son Alex near to? Yeah, because he didn't know how. Okay, he was getting ready to go out, did he say anything about seeing him? He looks at me, he's here. Okay. Does your son Alex and Leon get along? I don't think he got along really well. Just like Taish, he tells police he hasn't seen Alex Jr. in days. But detectives aren't buying his story. We didn't really know if he was telling us the truth, that he was possibly covering up for his children or given a false alibi was definitely an idea. Coming up, the discovery of a body confirms detectives' worst fears. Somebody just doesn't tie themselves up and throw themselves in the river, and a witness comes forward. On March 12, 2017, three days after JR Harrison was reported missing, investigators receive an urgent call. The police department received information that morning that a property owner located would appear to be a body floating in the black river right by his dock, which would have been probably about 10 to 15 miles from the city. The sheriff's office and DNR officers responded to the scene. They get a boat and they do a recovery. Rescuers find the body of a black male floating in the water. One feature immediately stands out. Brittany Green, she told the police about JR's tattoos. And one in particular, a tattoo on his forearm that is a remembrance to his mother. The tattoo was the way the body was identified. It's readily apparent by the decomposition of the body that this didn't happen yesterday, that this body has been here for a few days. The decomposition made it very difficult to zero in on the calls and manner of death. The pathologist is unable to identify a cause of death. But one thing is clear to detectives. This was no accident. His arms and his legs were both bound with speaker wire. Somebody just doesn't tie themselves up and throw themselves in the river. There's no reason to tie up a person that's already dead. It was our theory that he was still alive when he was tied up and they grabbed the knots to actually drag him and throw him over the highway into the river. It'd be bound up, thrown in the water. He was completely defense because he cut me his arms or his legs. I have never seen nothing as inhumane as this, but I hope I never see that everywhere again. Detectives have already gotten statements from Taish and Alex Senior. But so far, they've been unable to locate Alex Junior to question him. Now it was very important to talk out through Junior. We need to get alibi from him. We need to try to do it like now. Lo and behold, he is locked up in the Georgetown County Detention Center. He was arrested on a unrelated war for stealing some money from a gas station he worked at. In a strange coincidence, Alex Junior posted bail that very day. So detectives bring him in to finally get a statement. He got a body and spoiler and he was going to ask a person to probably be listening with you and your sister. I mean, I miss him. I hurt him even outside. Alex, do a system. Junior, where are you coming from? I never seen. I see the end of sex. Alex, how's it going? How's it going? I was sick to see. I felt sick. Michael, do you ever go outside and make sure that everything was okay? No. Obviously, this group has gotten their story together. His timeline, his dad's timeline, and Taisha's timeline are consistent, but there's small holes in it. When news of JR's murder spreads through the small town, a friend of Alex Junior and Juan comes forward with information that shatters the Brue family's claims. One day, in March, Antoine's brother asked if they could ride to Myrtle Beach to go get some furniture for his girlfriend. Antoine asked Alexander Rue, Junior, if he would go with them. On the way there, JR came up. He's totally exiled there. He's back near it 'cause he had no money, no ****ing it off. But it's out of here. But that **** was right. Antoine was absolutely dead set that that meant that Alexander, Junior, had killed JR. He told me, he told me, "It's just a minute. It's gone again." And they knew, "It's gone again. It took him for a ride." Antoine's statement gives investigators the probable cause they need to subpoena the Rue family's phone records. We started out with the victim's cell phone and mapped out the, what they suspected was the day of the crime. JR's GPS data shows him arriving at Taisha's house around 10 pm. At 10.55, he sends a final message. The last text message that is sent from JR's phone is actually too Rosario. And what that text message says is, "I don't love you. I can't be with you anymore." We had an expert come in and distinguish the texting patterns of JR and the actual punctuation and show that it's not typically the way that he texts. Despite what Taish told police, JR's phone never leaves the house, but around 1 a.m., others do. We have pings from Alex Sr. and Alex Jr., heading north on 701. After that one ping, we have a terminating event on almost all cell phones, leading us to believe that these phones are manually turned off at 2 a.m. There's a dead period that we are unable to see anything that's going on. The idea activation of all three phones at the exact same time can only mean one thing. They acted together and conspired to turn off their cell phones all at the same time so that their location could not be tracked. It tells us at that point that they're up to no good that they have something to hide. After analyzing all the evidence, detectives are convinced the murder of JR Harrison was a family affair. Taish Rui was not telling the truth about her brother's location or father's location and then the brother and father wouldn't tell him the truth about both of their locations. When lab results come in on the blood found in Taish and JR's bedroom, they're even more certain the murder occurred there. So investigators had to actually go and send this blood to a private lab and it came back as being JR's blood. On March 22nd, 2017, 25 days after JR's disappearance, authorities confront Taish with their discoveries. They are trying to get her to go ahead and come clean. We've got three messages and we've seen a message that we've been coming around. She's with me, with the candles and all that stuff and we're just curious if that was a war to get him over there. She is absolutely livid that that was not her intent at all that that's not what she did and so she really doesn't give us straight answer. During the interrogation, Taish is given multiple opportunities to change her story. She's not directly contradicts everything that she's saying. And when confronted with that evidence, she says it must be wrong. Also, and when we talk about National Police, it does seem as if you're going to go into the forensics lab or towards that bullet. Nothing at that point, she's starting to get very worried. The net is tightening and she sees that happening so she says, "I'm not going to give any other statements how I'm longer." Without a confession, detectives fear there won't be enough evidence to ensure a conviction so they review the cell phone data again. J.R.'s phone never left the tower that is closest to Taish's house. Taish never left the house. Yet, we have pings from Alex Sr. and Alex Jr. heading north on 701. And in that direction, we have a Walmart. Police intuition was, "Let's go see if they stopped at Walmart." You can say a lot of things about them, but they've got good camera systems. At 106 AM, on February 26th of 2017, we see Alex Sr. walk into Walmart. Investigators watch as Alex Jr. appears on camera with his father. He is then seen buying a peculiar item. This midnight run to Walmart was four, was not groceries or milk or even beer. It was for hydrogen peroxide. There's nothing that gets blood out of carpet, out of clothes, out of the back of a car, better than peroxide. And there's certainly at this point enough for a magistrate to sign arrest warrant on all three co-defendants. After a three-week investigation, South Carolina police arrest the Roo family and charge them with the murder of J.R. Harrison. By April 9th, 2017, Taish Roo, her father, Alex Sr. and her brother, Alex Jr. have all been placed under arrest for the murder of Taish's husband, J.R. Harrison. I learned that all three of them was arrested for the murder. I was angry. I was mad at the fact that they took my kids' father from them. Due to the complexity of trying three defendants at once, and delays due to COVID, the trial doesn't start until four years later, on October 11th, 2021. Almost everything that we had was circumstance. And it was really important to us to show what those circumstances were. Prosecutors argue that the text history between Taish and J.R. show her to be a woman desperately trying to win back her husband. And when she realized she was losing him to Rosario, she snapped. I do think it would have been different for her if he was going around and having relationships with multiple different women. But she saw the "I love yous." She saw "I can't live without you." And that's really what caused her jealousy to come to a head. She snapped, not because of love. She snapped because of control. She didn't want anybody else to have it. It's our belief that she lured him over there with the promise of sex. But the real purpose was much more sinister, and that was to exact revenge. She theorized that they got into a fight, Taish stabbed J.R. and that it wasn't that deep of a wound, but that at that point she feared that she was going to go to jail. And so her brother and her dad tied him up, and he started to bleed out at this point. They then wrapped him up and drove him to the bridge and threw his body over. There's no doubt that Mr. Harris was definitely killed in the most inhumane way possible. Taish put this emotion, and then her family really stepped up to help her. And our theme in the entire case is bloodest thicker than water. The defense argues that prosecutors have nothing more than speculation. The primary focus in the case in general was the lack of evidence, they couldn't even determine the cause of death, you would assume that the jury would want to know how a person died in order to determine whether he had been murdered. After nearly ten days, the case is handed to the jury to decide. The jury stayed out. For such a long time, it was the longest that I've ever had to wait for a jury to come back. The first verdict that they read out was Alex Senior's verdict. On the charge of murder, not guilty, and my heart absolutely dropped. Alex Senior was found guilty of obstruction of justice and got probation for his part in this hotel. There's no way to explain the way a jury's thinking, but I don't know, maybe he had to do with his age. It was shocking to us, but we were still waiting on the other two verdicts to be right. Alex is next, and on Alex, they find him guilty of murder and obstruction of justice. Tyeesh, they find her guilty of murder and obstruction of justice. Tyeesh Sharou is sentenced to 45 years in prison. Alex Rue Jr. receives the same 45-year sentence. They lost a son, a uncle, a father, a brother, a friend. He got a child out there just now going to have to go through her life without a father, and that ain't a whole day of her feels. We celebrate his birthday, we celebrate Father's Day, we got pictures of him around the house, pictures in their bedrooms, memories, we just pray, pray through it, talk through it, and remember the good times, just still celebrate him as if he was still here. [Music]