Tanner Washington charged w/ murder of missing Pauls Valley, Oklahoma teen girl, Faith Lindsey. Arrest follows obstruction charges in November.
The boyfriend of a missing Pauls Valley, Oklahoma teen girl has been arrested in connection with her murder.
Tanner Washington, 24, was on Thursday charged with first-degree murder in connection with the case of missing 17-year-old Faith Lindsey.
The boyfriend’s arrest follows Washington previously having ‘admitted to lying to police that she had been shot’.
Lindsey was last seen on October 28, 2019, and was reported missing on November 4 by her relatives.
‘She was misspelling a lot of things that night, and and that just wasn’t her,’
Her sister, Justice, told Dateline in early December that she was living with Tanner at the time of her ‘abrupt’ disappearance.
Told Justice at the time: ‘He texted me Monday night saying that he can’t find her, she’s missing, freaking out. She’s always contacted me. She knows my number by heart.’
Justice said that she began getting strange texts from her sister and grew more alarmed.
Messages sent from her sister’s phone claimed she was with an individual who refused to take her home.
‘She was misspelling a lot of things that night, and Faith [Lindsey], she has very good punctuation and spelling, and that just wasn’t her,’ Justice said, according to Dateline. ‘She kept trying to call me a lot, but hang up as soon as I answered.’
Officials arrested Washington after he allegedly lied about how she went missing.
According to KFOR, he allegedly told someone that Faith went missing as she had been been shot at the end of October.
‘He reported that he had received a text message that she had been shot,’ Seminole County Undersheriff Matt Haley told the outlet.
17-year-old Faith Lindsey of Ada, Oklahoma went missing from Seminole County in late October. Faith’s boyfriend, Tanner Washington, told an acquaintance he received a text message saying that she had been shot in Sasakwa. At first the acquaintance didn’t contact police because pic.twitter.com/fePLYE2ypg
— Missing Persons Planet (@Home4theMissing) December 18, 2019
Boyfriend’s version of events continued to change:
Court documents state that he told officers he dropped her off to work at a Sonic restaurant on a Sunday. However workers claim that she did not appear for work at all on the day in question.
Haley claimed that Washington’s version of events surrounding her disappearance were changing all the time.
‘The more we spoke with him, the more his story began to fall apart as far as what had happened,’ Haley said.
Officials said Washington then said that he had lied about telling them that she had been shot by someone.
The murder charges follow the boyfriend having been charged in November with false reporting of a crime and obstruction of an officer.
It remains unclear what may have motivated Washington in allegedly killing Lindsey.
The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) has offered a $5,000 reward for information that leads to her being found. Anyone with information is asked to contact the OSBI at (800) 522-8017.
