EP. 240 - FLORIDA: ABUSED AND KILLED BY HER OWN FATHER: THE SYSTEM FAILED 12-YEAR-OLD LORI PAIGE

Summary

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Murder In America EP. 240

FLORIDA: Abused and Killed By Her Own Father: The System Failed 12-Year-Old Lori Paige

Date: April 3, 2026
Hosts: Courtney Shannon & Colin Browen
Podcast: Murder in America (Bloody FM)

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EPISODE OVERVIEW

This harrowing episode investigates the tragic case of 12-year-old Lori Anneliese Paige, a Florida girl who vanished in June 2023 and was ultimately discovered murdered by her father, Andrew Wylie. With extensive original reporting and careful narrative reconstruction, hosts Courtney and Colin take listeners through Lori's tumultuous upbringing marked by relentless abuse, institutional failures, and chronic instability, leading to her horrifying end. The episode deeply explores cycles of trauma, systemic breakdowns in child protection, and the community’s desperate search for justice.

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KEY DISCUSSION POINTS & INSIGHTS

1. Lori’s Turbulent Early Life and Multi-Generational Abuse

Timestamps: 03:42 – 13:58

• Lori’s mother, Miranda Paige, grew up with severe sexual abuse, much of it instigated by her own mother, Brooklyn, and witnessed by other adults.
• Miranda herself became a mother at a young age, after being impregnated by Andrew Wylie, who later denied responsibility and was often absent (07:47–08:55).
• Repetitive institutional failings were evident: despite suspicions and brief removals from Miranda’s custody, Lori was repeatedly returned to unsafe environments.
• Quote—Miranda Paige: "You have to get to know your body," (11:36) describing how Brooklyn normalized abusive behavior.

2. Institutional & Family Failure

Timestamps: 10:05 – 14:47

• Child Protective Services frequently investigated but failed to protect Lori. Temporary placements (with Brooklyn, foster care, then Lori’s great-grandfather) were all fraught with allegations of abuse.
• Lori’s own allegations of sexual abuse at age 4 went unproven and unaddressed, largely due to inconsistent interviews and Miranda’s refusal to believe her daughter.
• Family and authorities failed to see (or act upon) recurring red flags.

3. Patterns of Neglect and Parental Instability

Timestamps: 14:47 – 21:04

• Miranda struggled with responsibility and stability, leaving parenting to Brooklyn and others.
• After moving to Nashville and starting a new family with Latonya White, Miranda’s attempts to “turn her life around” were undermined by persistent instability.
• Lori began showing signs of trauma: bedwetting, running away, and witnessing parental suicide attempts.

4. Lori’s Academic Life & Inner Strength

Timestamps: 21:04 – 23:50

• School became Lori’s refuge: she excelled academically, especially in art, and offered peer support despite her struggles.
• However, she internalized harmful words and showed marked signs of low self-worth.
• Her school social worker, Lisa Britt, noted Lori frequently described herself with negative terms.

Quote—Margaret Summers, school staff: "Laurie, you’re a great student and a great kid... Just come back." (54:37)

5. Relocation to Florida: Increasing Isolation & Red Flags

Timestamps: 23:50 – 35:32

• When Miranda faced a financial crisis, she left Lori with Andrew Wylie in Tallahassee.
• Andrew, ill-prepared and emotionally distant, left Lori unattended nightly due to work.
• Lori’s alienation and distress deepened; neighbors and school staff saw her as “lost,” often wearing baggy clothes and avoiding interaction.

6. Crying for Help Unheard

Timestamps: 35:32 – 43:57

• Witnesses recall Lori saying at the bus stop: “I can’t take this abuse,” but no one intervened (36:54).
• Andrew disciplined her harshly in public and isolated her further by taking away her phone.
• Multiple runaway attempts and school incidents signaled escalating distress.
• After a brief escape, Lori was forced to return to her father and refused further attempts to reconnect with her mother.

7. The System Collapses—Disappearance and Delayed Justice

Timestamps: 43:57 – 63:48

• Miranda, increasingly suspicious and alarmed, requested welfare checks.
• In June 2023, Andrew reported Lori missing. Police treated it as a runaway, hampered by the absence of digital clues and initially saw no foul play.
• For months, the community searched, but authorities made slow progress—Andrew began distancing himself, moved to Georgia, and disposed of or sanitized evidence.

8. The Break in the Case—Familial Evidence & Forensics

Timestamps: 63:48 – 81:54

• Investigators found Andrew’s behavior suspicious: wiped phones/computers, contradictory alibis, and a calculated attempt to erase Lori from his life.
• Forensic evidence mounted: Luminol revealed blood in Andrew’s car; his purchase of Plan B and an urgent care visit for STDs fit a chilling pattern (79:13–80:06).
• Device forensics traced Andrew’s movements to a remote plantation in Georgia.

9. The Horrific Motive: Incest, Abuse, and Murder

Timestamps: 80:06 – 90:50

• Detectives surmised that Andrew had been sexually abusing Lori and possibly impregnated her. Fear of discovery led him to kill her and hide the body.
• Quote—State Attorney Jack Campbell: "Those would be hard things to explain...if he had gotten her pregnant, if he had given her a venereal disease." (104:24)
• Andrew searched online for body disposal locations and disappearance strategies.

10. Recovery of Lori’s Remains and Community Grief

Timestamps: 87:07 – 97:56

• A controlled burn cleared the field where Lori’s remains were eventually found by a cadaver dog (April 2025).
• Only two bones were recovered, but it was enough for identification.
• Andrew was arrested for second-degree murder but died in jail two months later from a pulmonary embolism.

Quote—Margaret Summers: “That was really satisfying...for all the people that came out and said she mattered.” (98:51)

11. Aftermath: Justice Denied & Calls for Change

Timestamps: 97:03 – 106:44

• Community vigils honored Lori; teachers and pastors eulogized her strengths, resilience, and the tragedy of her short life.
• Andrew’s death meant he never stood trial; crucial answers about Lori’s final hours and the full extent of her suffering may never emerge.
• State Attorney and community leaders emphasize the persistent failures of the system and urge stronger vigilance to protect other vulnerable children.

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NOTABLE QUOTES & MEMORABLE MOMENTS

• Miranda Paige (Lori’s mother): "You don’t love me… you’re never going to bring me home. You don’t care about me." (46:34)
• Andrew Wylie: "I don’t really know what the fuck she’s into. I just know she’s bad and she’s here." (29:41)
• Lori at the bus stop (as overheard by peers): "I can’t take this abuse." (36:54)
• State Attorney Jack Campbell: “If he had gotten her pregnant, if he had given her a venereal disease, those would be hard things to explain.” (104:24)

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TIMESTAMPS FOR IMPORTANT SEGMENTS

• Background on Lori’s family & multigenerational abuse — 03:42–13:58
• Miranda & Andrew’s relationship, Lori’s birth — 07:47–09:00
• CPS involvement and repeated system failures — 10:05–14:47
• Lori’s time living with her father in Florida — 23:50–35:32
• Lori’s pleas for help & failed interventions — 36:54–43:57
• Lori’s disappearance and initial investigation — 43:57–63:48
• Detective confrontation, forensics, and crucial evidence — 63:48–81:54
• The final search and recovery of Lori’s remains — 87:07–90:50
• Community vigils and reflections — 95:21–99:36
• Andrew Wylie’s death before trial — 99:43–104:24
• Systemic lessons and advocacy for child protection — 106:44–end

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REFLECTIONS, IMPACT, & COMMUNITY RESPONSE

• The episode resonates with grief, outrage, and a call to action—emphasizing that systemic failures allowed abuse to continue unchecked for generations.
• The community’s deep investment in Lori’s case—teachers, pastors, and volunteers—enabled her story to remain in the public eye and eventually helped bring the truth to light.
• Community Advocate Rudy Ferguson: "We must do better...Getting back to that sense of your child is my child, you live in my community, you live next door to me. So we are a community, we are neighbors and we need to operate as a neighborhood." (97:03)
• The case is a grim but powerful reminder of the necessity for vigilance, responsiveness, and compassion for all children at risk.

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CONCLUSION

Hosts’ closing message

• Acknowledgement of Lori’s spirit and accomplishments, despite adversity: "[Lori] was a girl who taught herself to read before she was 4… she challenged boys to races at recess… she loved anime and Roblox… she made honor roll in a city she hadn’t chosen." (106:44)
• Hosts announce a donation to RAINN in Lori’s memory and urge listeners to be alert, involved, and compassionate, reaffirming their mission to give a voice to victims lost to the cracks of broken systems.

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Transcript

[Colin Brown]

Critics and audiences agree.

[Courtney Brown]

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[Colin Brown]

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[Courtney Brown]

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[Podcast Advertiser/Promoter]

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[Colin Brown]

How many of you are there?

[Podcast Advertiser/Promoter]

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[Courtney Brown]

Please remember to clean up the blood.

[Colin Brown]

Wow. They will kill you. Now playing only in theaters.

[Podcast Advertiser/Promoter]

Rated R Under 17 not admitted without

[Colin Brown]

parenting Today's episode is presented by the first trailer for A24's highly anticipated next horror event, Backrooms. A furniture store owner vanishes after discovering a mysterious doorway in his basement that leads to an endless network of interconnected rooms. From Kane Parsons, the preeminent creator of the Backrooms YouTube series, this tense psychological horror thriller explores the suffocating dread of liminal spaces and the unknown lurking behind them. Watch the the trailer now for Back Rooms and see it in theaters May 29th. Courtney and I have been doing a little bit of a spring reset with our closet lately, focusing more on quality over quantity, building a wardrobe of pieces that are well made, versatile and easy to reach for every day. Now, Courtney and I both love clothes. We own a lot of clothing and in our house we have to share one closet. So as you can imagine, it's usually pretty cluttered in there. And we have been trying to kind of clear the closet out, donate some of the clothing that we don't wear, and find pieces that are really high quality quality. And that's why we keep coming back to Quince. The fabrics feel elevated, the fits are thoughtful and the pricing actually makes sense to us. Quince makes beautiful everyday pieces using premium materials like 100 European linen, organic cotton and super soft denim with styles starting around $50. Their spring pieces are lightweight, breathable and effortless, the kind of things you can throw on and instantly look put together. And I know Courtney loves the accessories from Quince, like their leather bags, which are made from 100% hand woven Italian leather and honestly look way more expensive than they are. No joke. Courtney came in with one of those bags. I thought she had made some sort of a trip to the shopping mall. I thought it was an expensive purse, but no, it was just an item that we had received from Quince. Kind of a funny story between the two of us, but that's how high quality the stuff is and Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen. So you're paying for quality, not brand markup. Now my entire family has gotten aboard the Quints train. I know that Courtney's brother wears quints. Courtney wears quints, I wear quints, my mom and dad wear quints. And it's because their pieces are so unbelievably comfortable. They are soft, they are breathable, and they're really high quality. And best of all, they look really good. And those are the things that really matter. Are the clothes made of good materials? Are they high quality and do they look good? And yes, Quint's clothes. Check yes to all three of those. So refresh your spring wardrobe with quince. Go to quint.comamera for free shipping and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. Go to Quinc for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com America warning the following podcast is not suitable for all audiences. We go into great detail with every case that we cover and do our best to bring viewers even deeper into the stories by utilizing disturbing audio and sound effects.

[Courtney Brown]

Trigger warnings from the stories we cover may include violence, rape, murder, and offenses against children.

[Colin Brown]

This podcast is not for everyone. You have been warned.

[Courtney Brown]

It was April 5, 2025. A cadaver dog moved through a remote stretch of woods in Thomas County, Georgia. The brush that had covered this ground for years had recently been burned away, leaving nothing but flat, blackened earth. The dog's owner followed quietly behind, watching. The investigators watched too. And then the dog stopped, completely still. Right there in the dirt. One of the investigators stepped forward and beneath what had been nearly two years of thick Georgia brush were bones. Small bones belonging to a child. They had all been waiting for this moment for a long time, and they knew exactly whose bones they were. But finally, they found her. She had been right here the whole time. This is the story of 12 year old Lori Page.

[Colin Brown]

I'm Courtney Brown and I'm Colin Browen,

[Courtney Brown]

and you're listening to Murder in America.

[Miranda Paige]

Sa.

[Colin Brown]

Miranda Paige grew up in a house that looked like a home from the outside. Her mother was Brooklyn Page, but according to Miranda, what happened inside that house was something she spent years trying to forget. When Miranda was around 4 or 5 years old, Brooklyn brought a woman and her four children into their home. According to Miranda, three of those children, a girl and two boys, sexually abused her. She said that both mothers witnessed it happening. She said that men would come to the house and the children would be made to perform sexual acts in front of them. At some point, DCF came to check on Miranda, and Brooklyn hid her under the bed. Don't say anything, she told her. They're going to take you. Stay quiet Miranda did as she was told, and the officers left. But the abuse didn't stop there. Miranda said that when she was very young, her mother told her to go to the bathroom with a mirror and touch herself, saying, you have to get to know your body from a young age. Miranda said that Brooklyn would make her lie on her back on the bed, spread her legs, and she would touch her, examine her, look at her, presenting it as something normal, something a mother just does. Miranda said this continued until she was 12 to 14 years old. She didn't have the language for what it was at the time. She had been taught from the very beginning not to question it.

[Courtney Brown]

But from there, even though the sexual abuse at home came to an end, it continued outside of the home. Miranda was just 16 years old when 23 year old Andrew Wylie got her pregnant. The two had never been in a real relationship. They just kind of crossed paths. Miranda said that the first time they had sex, it felt consensual to her. But there was a second time. That time she said no, but he didn't stop. Shortly after this, Miranda found out she was pregnant. And Andrew, her baby's father, then enlisted in the military. They ended up going their separate ways. Here is Andrew Wylie himself talking about their relationship.

[Andrew Wylie]

Me and Miranda, relationship. We was never together. She was just a girl sleeping. Okay. So it's not like I was there.

[Detective]

How did you all meet?

[Andrew Wylie]

I don't. I don't even know. I know we met and we were talking, but we wasn't never together. She was just somebody I was sleeping with. She got pregnant.

[Podcast Advertiser/Promoter]

Okay.

[Detective]

I mean, this would have been a while ago. Yeah. 2000 ish.

[Colin Brown]

2010. Around 2010, 2011. Right before you went in the army?

[Andrew Wylie]

Yeah. Okay.

[Detective]

And I mean, did y'.

[Andrew Wylie]

All.

[Detective]

Did you first meet her at a bar or meet her?

[Podcast Advertiser/Promoter]

No.

[Andrew Wylie]

She was young. I really don't know because she was 17 and I think I was like 20.

[Detective]

Okay.

[Andrew Wylie]

And I was telling her, like, even then, I was like, I don't think we should be doing it. But Miranda was smart. She was like, oh, we can do this under the law or some crap.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Yeah.

[Courtney Brown]

16 to 24 is legal at home or to 5.

[Andrew Wylie]

Yeah. And then she got pregnant and I went to the military.

[Detective]

Okay.

[Courtney Brown]

While he was away, Miranda considered getting an abortion as late as six months in, but she didn't go through with it. And on April 14, 2011, Lori Anneliese Paige was born. Sadly, from that point forward, life for this little girl became anything but stable. Miranda was living with her mother, Brooklyn, when Laurie was born, but it was never a peaceful house. The two of them argued constantly. Miranda was young and irresponsible, and Brooklyn had no patience for it. Things were tense from the start, and when Laurie was just eight or nine months old, a fight between them came to a head. Brooklyn kicked them both out. A teenage mother and her baby with nowhere to go. Eventually, the state stepped in. Child Protective Services removed Laurie from Miranda's care. Miranda was ordered to undergo a mandatory mental health evaluation. After that, she got a place of her own. And once a few weeks passed, she claimed she had changed. She wanted to do better, and Lori was given back to her.

[Colin Brown]

With Laurie back in her arms, Miranda convinced her mother, Brooklyn, to move in to help. At first it seemed like a solution, but it quickly became clear that Miranda had no intention of being the one doing the parenting. While Brooklyn was there, Miranda would sleep until 2:30 in the afternoon. She would leave snacks on the low shelves for Laurie to reach on her own and go out with friends until the early hours of the morning, leaving Brooklyn to take care of her daughter. When Miranda was home, she complained that Lori talked too much, that she didn't have the patience for it. Brooklyn would confront her then more arguments would come. Now Child Protective Services didn't just walk away. After returning Laurie to Miranda, they continued to monitor the situation the way they do when a child has already been removed once. And when Laurie was three years old, something prompted another investigation into Miranda. We don't know exactly what triggered it, but during that investigation, authorities told Miranda she couldn't have Laurie spend the night with her. Not wanting to uproot her daughter, Miranda went to stay with the mother of a boyfriend named Maurice Jones, while Grandma Brooklyn stayed with Laurie. But sadly, behind closed doors, it was alleged that Brooklyn was doing to Laurie what she had done to her own daughter. Brooklyn allegedly told her to go to the bathroom with a mirror and touch herself, saying, you have to get to know your own body. And so it continued.

[Miranda Paige]

She would get like, for example, she would Laurie a mirror and like, send her to the bathroom, masturbate. And I'm like, right.

[Detective]

At what age?

[Miranda Paige]

Like four. And, and this, this is not. I don't know how sounding crazy to me because she did the same thing with me. Like, you have to get to know your body. Like, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[Andrew Wylie]

No, no.

[Miranda Paige]

Right.

[Colin Brown]

You don't encourage it.

[Miranda Paige]

Like they're gonna do it, but, you know, you don't encourage it.

[Detective]

Well, you know. Yeah. When you're older and closer to being in a. Yeah, I would imagine but not at 4.

[Miranda Paige]

And I mean, kids do it, but it's, it's more of. It's not like a sexual. They're just exploring.

[Detective]

Yeah, yeah.

[Colin Brown]

It's a curiosity.

[Miranda Paige]

Yeah, yeah.

[Courtney Brown]

But Brooklyn didn't want to be a full time caregiver. Eventually, she moved to North Carolina. And with no one left to care for her, Brooklyn 3 year old Laurie ended up in foster care. But Miranda's grandfather, Laurie's great grandfather, came down and took custody of Laurie to get her out of foster care. It seemed like a good situation. Laurie was living with a family member. But sadly, during this time in 2016, four year old Laurie told someone at school that her great grandfather had touched her inappropriately. When Miranda spoke to Laurie directly, Laurie told her something even worse. That her great grandpa had sex with her. Those were the words of a four year old little girl. Following this, a forensic interview was conducted. A child psychologist worked with Laurie through play therapy. But some of what Laurie said was inconsistent. The investigation was inconclusive. The records were sealed and no charges were ever filed. Because of that, her mother, Miranda, never believed it. She had grown up around this man. She couldn't imagine him doing that. But she also acknowledged she wasn't there. She didn't know what happened when Laurie was alone with him.

[Miranda Paige]

I don't know. So when she was 4.

[Detective]

Are you talking about the allegation?

[Colin Brown]

Yeah, and I wrote about that.

[Miranda Paige]

Yeah. And so I don't know if something happened to her in that time.

[Detective]

How do you feel about that?

[Miranda Paige]

My granddad, he didn't do that. He didn't tell me so.

[Andrew Wylie]

Not at all.

[Miranda Paige]

I grew up with him. He, he didn't do that.

[Detective]

Never had anything with you or any other kid.

[Colin Brown]

Okay.

[Detective]

It'd be kind of strange if, you know, it happened to one kid and not others. You know, it's.

[Miranda Paige]

But I don't know that nothing happened. Like when she, you know, all that time that I wasn't there, I can't. Like something could have happened to her and it. Those things get so deep that they can't.

[Detective]

Yeah.

[Miranda Paige]

Then it comes out, you know, when they're 30.

[Courtney Brown]

But after this, Lori ended up back in foster care. And this time, DCFS contacted Lori's father, Andrew Wylie. Andrew offered to take her in. A man she had never met. He was standing in a doorway in Miami when she arrived. She looked up at him. He looked down at her. A little girl, five years old, with brown eyes and a bag of belongings. She had no idea what came next. Neither did he.

[Colin Brown]

Andrew Wylie grew up in Miami, Florida. His father was violent and abusive and he had a brother, Antoine, and also a son, a boy believed to be named Keyshawn, about a year older than Lori, from another relationship. According to his brother Antoine, Andrew had no part in raising him either. Now, as we mentioned, Andrew enlisted in the army right around the time his son was born. And when Miranda found out she was pregnant with Lori, according to his family, this seemed like a good excuse to get out of being a present father. But during his time in the Army, Andrew was stationed in Colorado. It was there that he met a woman named Jeannie Abney. Jeannie had grown up in a dysfunctional, alcoholic household. She was trying to get out of it any way she could. And then Andrew showed up. He was charming, sweet. He listened to her. For the first time. She felt like someone was paying attention. And one day he came to her with an idea. Hey. He said, do you want to get married? If we get married, I'll get housing money and I can pay the bills. You won't have to worry about paying rent. I'll take care of you. Everything will be okay. Genie looked at him. They barely knew each other. But she also knew exactly what she was going back to if she said no. The toxic house, the drinking, the chaos. And here was a way out. She said yes. They went down to the courthouse and got married that day. Just like that, the military housing money came through and they got an apartment for Jeanie and her kids. He would stay on base. That was the arrangement. But she wasn't comfortable bringing a stranger into her children's lives. Not yet. They barely knew each other. He understood or said he did. But within weeks, everything changed. The warmth was gone. The listening was gone. Andrew had a drinking problem. And when he drank, the man Genie thought she had married disappeared completely. He moved himself into the apartment and didn't leave. Genie had three. A 12 year old daughter, a 10 year old son and a three year old. And he wasn't going anywhere.

[Courtney Brown]

One night, her 10 year old son was at the apartment when Andrew came home drunk. He went after Jeanie. He reportedly hit her. He got his hands around her throat and started strangling her. It was her 10 year old boy who stopped it. He grabbed a frying pan and stood over them. Get off of her, he said. Leave her alone. Andrew let go. Jeanie called the military police. When things settled down, Andrew turned to her. He said he was sorry. He said he had grown up watching his father do the same thing. He was going to get help. He promised her he was Going to stop drinking. So she let him back in. But a month later, he was drinking again. And this time, he was also using drugs. Soon enough, Andrew was throwing rocks at the windows, shattering the glass. Jeannie had had enough. She reported him to the Army. Their marriage was annulled, and from there, she was gone. Andrew left the army not long after he went back to Miami. And it was around that time when he learned that his daughter Laurie needed a temporary guardian. So for several months, he took her in. Laurie moved to Miami with her father. Now, we don't know what those months in Miami were like, but we do know that it didn't last long. Eventually, custody was returned to Miranda, but from that point forward, Andrew wanted to have a role in his daughter's life. During winter and summer school breaks, Laurie would travel to Florida to spend time with her dad, first in Miami and later in Tallahassee. After he moved there, it was the arrangement that had held for years. Things seemed to be as stable as they ever would be for Laurie. She finally had a relationship with her dad, and her mom, Miranda, seemed to be doing better as well. Eventually, Miranda even met a woman named Latonya White. She lived in Nashville, Tennessee. It was there that Miranda and Latonya fell in love. They built a life together In Nashville, they got married, with Miranda taking Latonya's last name. Now Latonya had a son of her own. So the four of them, Miranda, Latonya, Latonya's son, and Laurie, became a family.

[Colin Brown]

But Lori was struggling in ways that were hard to ignore. She had been wetting the bed, acting out. She had been in counseling. But one afternoon at Chadwell Elementary, Lori did something that got her in trouble at the after school program. And instead of waiting to face it, she ran. She bolted straight for the door and headed toward traffic. A school counselor tackled Lori to stop her. Miranda knew her daughter needed serious help. She took her to Vanderbilt Children's Hospital in Nashville. Laurie stayed there for three to four weeks. She was prescribed a blood pressure medication that can also be used for anxiety. But the hospitalization itself left a mark. Lori felt abandoned, like everyone in her life, kept leaving her in places and walking away. And now she was in a hospital, alone again. But eventually she came home, and for a while, things seemed more settled. But there were things Lori had already seen that a child should never have to see. At some point, while in Nashville, she had allegedly watched her mother attempt suicide with pills. She never talked about it, just carried it. But it did affect her. During this time, her grandma, Brooklyn Was granted temporary guardianship of Lori for a few weeks. It was then that she noticed something was wrong with her granddaughter. Lori had been put on medication after her incident at school, and Brooklyn felt that it was only making things worse for her. She said that one day, something triggered Laurie and she ran out of the house screaming. Brooklyn had to chase her down the street. Neighbors came outside to watch, and soon enough, Brooklyn got her back inside and calmed her down. But then she made a decision to wean Lori off the medication over a period of three days. According to Brooklyn, Lori was perfectly fine after that. Brooklyn never believed Lori needed any medication anyway. She believed Miranda was medicating her daughter to make her easier to deal with.

[Courtney Brown]

But there was something else that happened during that time. When Lori was around nine years old, she noticed a small spot in her underwear, her period just barely starting. According to Miranda, her mother, Brooklyn's response was to have Laurie lie on her back and examine her private parts. She even called Miranda in to look at it, too, presenting it as she always had, as something routine. A grandmother helping a little girl understand her body. Miranda, who had spent her whole life being taught that this was normal, didn't question it. Not then, at least now. From there, Laurie went to school. And school, as it turns out, was where Laurie came alive. She rarely missed a day. She made the AB honor roll consistently. If she ever did make a low grade, it would upset her. She was known to challenge the boys to foot races at recess. She usually won. She loved to play Roblox, and she loved art. She was obsessed with anime. She wanted to watch all the anime in the world. But more than anything, Laurie loved to learn. And she loved to help others learn as well. When a classmate was struggling in math, Laurie was the first one to offer help.

[Miranda Paige]

Lori is probably undiagnosed dyslexia.

[Detective]

Okay, that makes sense.

[Miranda Paige]

She's really, really smart, but she's all. She's had a tutor. Even in Tampa, she had a tutor to help her with her reading and her writing. She understands. She has a comprehension. She just can't spell.

[Detective]

That's a tough thing to get over and, and typically mislabeled. So I, I, she didn't want to be.

[Miranda Paige]

She didn't want to be like, because she's smart, so she didn't want to feel dumb.

[Colin Brown]

But Lori was also holding things that had no business being inside a child. A school social worker named Lisa Britt, who worked with Lori during those years, kept detailed notes from their sessions in exercises meant to identify how Laurie saw herself. She consistently applied the negative descriptors to herself and the positive ones to everyone else. She described herself as evil, disrespectful, lazy, hateful. Some of those words, Britt noted, were words Miranda had used about Lori. There was also a note that noted that Lori had been pondering what would happen if she died. By the summer of 2022, Lori was 11 years old, and like she had done every summer before, she packed her bags and headed to Florida to spend time with her father. Andrew was living in Tallahassee now, in a small quadruple apartment on Continental Court. It was the routine she had always known. So when she arrived that June, she had no reason to think this time would be any different. She was just visiting. Miranda would come get her before school started, like she always did back in Nashville.

[Courtney Brown]

Miranda was trying to turn her life around. She was even working towards her master's degree. But as the summer was coming to an end, things weren't going well. The financial aid that Miranda was supposed to get had been withheld. There was a problem with her account, some paperwork issue. She was trying to get it resolved. But weeks went by and it wasn't resolving. Her rent wasn't getting paid soon enough, eviction notices were starting to appear on her door, and Laurie was still in Tallahassee waiting to come home. Miranda said that given their situation, she had to make a decision. She didn't want her daughter to come home to a world where they were in jeopardy of losing their home. So she called Andrew on a Thursday night. She told him what was happening, and she asked if he could keep Laurie for a while while she figured things out. Andrew said he didn't mind, but he didn't want to be the one to tell Laurie the news. So Miranda agreed to call her daughter the following day. Eventually, that day came around. Miranda was in class when her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was Andrew. He was calling her over and over. Miranda gathered herself, pushed back her chair quietly, and stepped out into the hallway. She found a spot away from the classroom door and answered. It was Laurie. Hey, baby, miranda said, keeping her voice steady. I love you so much. You know that? Yeah, laurie said. Miranda took a breath. She told her about the financial aid, about the apartment, about the notice on the door. She said she didn't want Laurie to come home to that, to watch her lose another place, to go through all of it again. It's not going to be forever, she said. Just a little longer. Just until I get things sorted out. But the line was quiet. And then it wasn't quiet. Laurie just kept repeating the word no over and over again. She couldn't help it. It just came out. This was not what she wanted. Miranda stayed on the line, trying to convince her daughter that this is what was best for her. We're about to be homeless, she said. I don't want you to see that you are right where you're supposed to be right now. I need you to understand. Laurie didn't say anything, and at some point the call was over. Miranda walked back to class, and hundreds of miles away in Tallahassee, Laurie put down the phone and went back to whatever she had been doing, carrying it the way she had always carried things, quietly and completely alone. Laurie went to bed that night knowing that her mother wasn't coming back to get her. Not soon, at least, and maybe not ever. Nobody asked her. Nobody said, do you want to go back to Nashville first? Say goodbye to your friends. Get your things. It had just been decided the way most things in her life had just been decided without her. Her friends from Goodlettsville Middle Prep were probably at home right now doing homework, texting each other, living their normal lives with no idea that Laurie wasn't coming back. Tallahassee was her home now, whether she wanted it to be or not.

[Colin Brown]

Tallahassee, Florida, sits in the northern panhandle of the state, just a stone's throw away from the Georgia border. It's the state capital, but don't let that fool you. Despite having nearly 200,000 residents, people who live there will tell you it doesn't feel like a big city. It feels like a town. There are over 700 miles of trails winding through some of the most beautiful natural scenery in the South. On fall Saturdays, when Florida State and Florida A and M have home games, the whole city transforms. Fans pouring into the streets. School colors everywhere. It's a college town through and through, and for a lot of people, once they get there, they never want to leave. But the zip code where Lori now lived, 32304 hooking the west side of Florida State University, tells a different story. There were more than 160 registered sex offenders living in that zip code alone. And every night, while her father worked the overnight shift, Lori was alone in that apartment, a 12 year old girl in a city she hadn't chosen. Now, at the time, Andrew worked as a corrections officer at Jefferson Correctional Facility in Monticello. He had a girlfriend, a woman named Simone Robinson. They had met at work. She was around when she could be, but she wasn't living there. This was the neighborhood where Lori Page was going to grow up now. Andrew certainly wasn't ready for it. He was a man who had become a full time parent essentially overnight. And it showed.

[Courtney Brown]

Not long after Laurie arrived, Andrew picked up the phone and called his ex wife, Jeannie, the one he was married to while in the army. They hadn't spoken in a while, but every once in a while they would catch up. How are you? What are you up to? The usual. But this time Andrew mentioned something. He said that his daughter was living with him now. Well that's good, Jeanie said. Your daughter is with you?

[Colin Brown]

Yeah. Her mom ain't shit. We don't get along. She just sent her to me.

[Courtney Brown]

Genie paused. She thought about the little girl. 12 years old, dropped off with a father she barely knew. She chose her words carefully. Well, every little girl needs her dad in her life. Just be there for her.

[Colin Brown]

Yeah, whatever.

[Courtney Brown]

Genie tried again. Is she bad? Does she give you any problems?

[Colin Brown]

She's just fast.

[Courtney Brown]

Jeannie took that to mean boys. Like Laurie was boy crazy, flirtatious. So she's into boys or whatever the case may be. Andrew's response shocked her.

[Colin Brown]

I don't really know what the fuck she's into. I just know she's bad and she's here.

[Courtney Brown]

Jeanie didn't know what to say to that, so she changed the subject. She asked about Andrew's drinking, whether he still drank the way he used to.

[Colin Brown]

No, but I mean, you know, every now and again it is what it is.

[Courtney Brown]

The call wound down and they said their goodbyes. Jeanie sat with that conversation for a moment longer. She decided to let it go. It wasn't her place.

[Colin Brown]

Miranda had made sure Andrew had someone nearby to call if he ever needed help with Laurie. Daisy Garcia, Miranda's godmother, lived close by, someone Miranda loved like a mother and trusted completely. Call her if you need anything, miranda had told him. She's right there. But Andrew never called her. Not once. There was also Brooklyn, Miranda's mother, Lori's grandmother. She had since moved back to Tallahassee and lived just a few streets away. By this point, Miranda and Brooklyn had fallen out. Badly. Miranda said it took her years to fully remember what Brooklyn had done to her as a child. The abuse, the men, the things she had been taught were normal. When it finally came back, her PTSD got significantly worse. And then a realization came that shook her to her core. She had left her own daughter in that same woman's orbit. The person who was supposed to protect Miranda had been the one hurting her. She was adamant that Lori have no contact with her whatsoever. Andrew knew this, but Laurie knew where her grandmother lived, and she would visit from time to time.

[Courtney Brown]

In the fall of 2022, getting Laurie enrolled in a new school in a new state took some time. Her records were back in Nashville, and getting them transferred wasn't simple. By the time it was all sorted out, Lori Paige walked through the doors of Griffin Middle School three weeks behind her classmates. She didn't know anyone. She didn't have any friends. She had a backpack, a quiet determination, and nothing else. Throughout those first few weeks, she kept to herself. She rarely socialized with her classmates. Her neighbor Terry Smith, noticed it right away. She wore baggy clothing. She hardly ever hung out with the neighborhood kids. She seemed, as Terry put it, lost, like she wasn't comfortable in her own skin. But after a few months at school, Laurie found her footing. Slowly, quietly, the way she did everything. It didn't take long for her teachers to notice her. Laurie ran between classes so she wouldn't be late. If she made a low score on something, she was upset about it. If she misspelled a word on a writing assignment, she wanted to learn her mistake. At some point that school year, a large number of students failed a civics test. Laurie made an A. Her teacher gave the class a chance to make it up with an extra credit report on the Bill of Rights. Laurie had already passed. She didn't need to do the extra credit, but she did it anyway. The following morning, she walked into class with a trifold cardboard covered in tiny soldiers and little American flags lined across the top, every inch of it deliberate and precise. Her teacher looked at her, then at the board, then back at Laurie. You know, you can't actually improve an A, the teacher said. Laurie already knew that. She just wanted to do the assignment.

[Colin Brown]

She loved art most of all. She had joined the Griffin Middle School art Club, and her art teacher was one of the only adults at school she fully trusted, according to Andrew, the only one outside of class. She played basketball and soccer. She challenged the boys to foot races. She usually won at home. She watched anime and YouTube videos and played Roblox. She maintained excellent grades and earned honor roll. She took detailed notes in science and civics while many of her classmates laughed and goofed off. But Laurie was also starved for attention. She had grown up in households where the adults were largely absent, and the hunger showed up at Griffin in ways that concerned her teachers. She sought out adults. She lingered. She had a much closer relationship with the teachers than with her peers, and at some point during her sixth grade year, that need for connection crossed a line. Lori developed what appeared to be a crush on one of her teachers, a man named Nathan George. She was openly flirtatious with him. She tried to hug him. Mr. George reported the behavior to the guidance counselor immediately, and Lori was called in. But she denied everything. But afterwards, she wrote Mr. George a note. It said, do you like me? Yes or no? The school thought it would be best to remove her from Mr. George's class. The guidance counselor, Mr. Woods, spoke with her. He would later say that Laurie was typically quiet, but in the last months of sixth grade, she started to, in his words, spaz out on other students, especially as rumors spread about her behavior with the male teachers she had been carrying. So much for staring at your screen.

[News Reporter]

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[Colin Brown]

Start slashing now.

[Courtney Brown]

So good, so good, so good.

[Narrator/Reporter]

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[Courtney Brown]

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[Miranda Paige]

How did I not know?

[Margaret Summers]

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[Colin Brown]

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[Narrator/Reporter]

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[Colin Brown]

And it was starting to show.

[Courtney Brown]

In April of 2023, Andrew said that he had to take Lori's phone away from her. According to him, he caught her watching pornography. When he called and told Miranda about it, she said she wasn't surprised. It wasn't the first time, she said. But without her phone, Laurie had even less connection to the outside world. She had no way to reach her friends back in Nashville, no way to reach her mom or anyone, really. And then one morning, something happened at the bus stop that several of the neighborhood kids would never forget. Laurie was already there, waiting for the bus with the other kids when Andrew appeared. He had a belt in his hand. He walked straight to her, pulled her off to the side and in front of everyone. While still standing there, he whooped her with it. A boy named Aniston Kearse was standing right there. He watched the whole thing. He didn't hear exactly what was said, but he didn't need to. And he wasn't the only one who noticed things weren't right. At some point during the middle of the school year, while a group of kids were standing at that same bus stop, Laurie said something that caught everyone's attention. I can't take this abuse, she said. Nobody said anything. Instead, the subject was changed. Laurie had been trying to tell someone, but no one was listening.

[Colin Brown]

Around the same time, Laurie got into trouble for attempting to light a fire on the grass at the bus stop. Andrew would later tell investigators it was nothing serious, just a minor thing. She was a good kid. But the situation at home kept deteriorating. On May 8, 2023, on the bus ride after school, Lori told Donald Sin Pierre that she wasn't going back home. He was a classmate. They rode the same bus. He had noticed things weren't right for a while. At the beginning of the school year, for example, he had seen a bruise on her lip. He never asked about it directly, though, but he still noticed. And over the months, Laurie had said things, small things, that she wasn't happy at home, that things were bad, that she didn't know how much longer she could take it. He didn't try to talk her out of it. I live on Ocala Road, he told her. There's a pool behind my apartment building. Nobody goes back there at night. I can bring you food. It wasn't much, but it was something. And right now, something was everything. When the bus stopped, Lori got off with him. And she didn't go home that night. Lori sat on a lounge chair by the pool at the complex on Ocala Road, barely a five minute walk from the home she was supposed to be in. The night was warm and still, just the sound of bugs and the distant hum of traffic on West Tennessee Street. Donaldson brought her food. They talked. She told him about the abuse, that she wanted to go live with her grandmother in Georgia, that she just needed to get out. He listened to her. And he didn't tell anyone. Meanwhile, Andrew Wylie had come home from work and found the apartment empty. He reported Lori missing. Officers went to the school, to nearby parks, to the places she was known to frequent. But they couldn't find her.

[Courtney Brown]

The next morning, May 9, 2023, Laurie walked through the doors of Griffin Middle School. She had no shoes on. She was in yesterday's clothing. And she felt, for the first time in a long time, like she had done something. She had actually done it. She had gotten out, spent the night somewhere else, somewhere safe. And on top of that, she even made it to school the next day all on her own. Now she just had to get through the day. At the time, Laurie was determined to make it back to her mom in Tennessee. She wanted to find a way. But as Laurie walked into middle school that morning. The other kids noticed her bare feet immediately. Of course they did. Comments were made. Eyes went wide. Someone in her class laughed at her. But Laurie brushed it off. She had bigger things on her mind. She found her seat. She took out her notebook, and she paid attention to the lesson. For a few hours that morning, sitting in her classroom with her bare feet on the floor, Laurie Page felt brave. Because she was. And then her name came over the intercom. She figured it was about the shoes. Maybe they'd send her to the lost and found, give her a pair of sneakers someone had left behind. No big deal. She gathered herself and walked out into the hallway, past the lockers, past the other kids who didn't look up. She pushed through the doors in the front office, and there was Andrew, her father. Laurie stopped in her tracks. Her hand was still on the door. Her eyes went straight to him and then to the ground. That feeling came over her, the one that told her to go still, go small, don't react. She stood there in the doorway for a moment, barefoot on the floor in yesterday's clothes. The plan she had been building all morning dissolved in real time. She wasn't going back to her mom's, and she knew what was waiting for her back at that apartment now. She was going to go back home with her father, and there was nothing she could do about it. The staff member at the front desk smiled at her like it was any other morning. Andrew signed whatever he needed to sign. He then looked at her. Let's go, he said coldly. Laurie let go of the door and she walked out of her school with her dad.

[Colin Brown]

Police had called Miranda the night Laurie went missing. They wanted to know if Laurie was with her, but she wasn't. And then Laurie turned up at school the next morning. Andrew picked her up, and that was that. But Miranda was hundreds of miles away with no way to reach her directly. Andrew wasn't picking up the phone. Lori's phone was gone, and Miranda had no way to hear her voice, no way to know how she was really doing. A few days went by like that, and then Miranda decided to call the school herself. Once again, Lori's name came over the intercom. She looked up. The teacher looked at her. She got up from her desk and walked out into the hallway and down to the front office. The woman at the desk pointed to the phone. She picked it up.

[Courtney Brown]

Hey, baby. Just wanted to check on you, make sure you were okay.

[Colin Brown]

Laurie didn't say anything.

[Courtney Brown]

Laurie, you there?

[Colin Brown]

Yeah, she told her mom.

[Courtney Brown]

I've been trying to reach you. I've been trying to get through to

[Colin Brown]

your dad and you never call, laurie said. Her voice came out smaller than she had intended. Miranda kept talking. She just wanted to hear her voice, make sure she was okay. But Laurie wasn't really listening anymore. She was standing there with the phone pressed against her ear and her eyes on the floor. And something that had been sitting in her chest for months was pressing hard against her ribs and she couldn't make it stop. She said as little as she could, and when it was over she handed the phone back and walked down the hallway and back to class and sat down. She didn't tell anyone what had happened. She just picked up her pencil and kept going.

[Courtney Brown]

Andrew was home when she got back from school. He looked at her when she walked in. He could see it on her face. Something was off. Something happened. You okay? He asked. Laurie set her bag down. She didn't look at him right away. And then she told him about the call from her mom. According to Andrew, Laurie then said, quote, I want to kill myself. End quote. The apartment went quiet, just the two of them standing there in that small space on Continental Court. Andrew said he didn't know what to say. He worked night shifts and left her alone in his apartment because he had no other choice. And now she was standing in front of him telling him she wanted to die. Not knowing what else to do, he picked up the phone and called Miranda.

[Colin Brown]

What did you say to her?

[Courtney Brown]

Andrew's voice was tight, controlled, but not for long. What are you talking about? Miranda said.

[Colin Brown]

She just told me she wants to kill herself. What did you say to her on that phone?

[Courtney Brown]

I just called her to check on her. I just wanted to hear her voice.

[Colin Brown]

You called the school. You pulled her out of class in front of everyone. She doesn't need that. She's already going through enough.

[Courtney Brown]

I had no other way to reach her. You never pick up and her phone is gone now. What was I supposed to do?

[Colin Brown]

Andrew didn't have an answer for that. The weeks after that phone call were quiet. Lori went to school. She came home. She did what she always did. Kept her head down, kept to herself, kept going. No incidents, no runaways. Just the ordinary rhythm of a child trying to get through her days. But Miranda still couldn't reach her. Andrew wasn't answering her calls. Lori still didn't have her phone back. Days turned into weeks and the silence on the other end of the line was getting louder. She didn't know what was happening inside that apartment. She didn't know How Laurie was doing. She didn't know if she was okay. The worry was turning into something else. Anger, Frustration. She had been shut out long enough. At one point, she got a text from Andrew in all caps. Stop ruining your daughter's life. She does not want to go back and live with you. This convo is over. Do what you gotta do. Miranda's response was quiet and direct.

[Courtney Brown]

You talk in capital letters like you didn't rape a 16 year old, but you're not ready to have that conversation.

[Colin Brown]

Of course Miranda was talking about how Andrew raped her when she was 16. The very rape that led her to get pregnant with Laurie.

[Courtney Brown]

Miranda knew deep down that something was going on with her daughter. She was so convinced of it, she decided to call the Tallahassee Police department. It was May 25, 2023. She asked them to do a welfare check on Laurie. That day, officers arrived at 1229 Continental Court. They spoke to Andrew. They checked on Laurie. Everything appeared to be fine. And so they left, but Miranda was already on her way.

[Colin Brown]

Are you ready to have your mind blown? I want you now to imagine that in front of you was a locked door symbolizing all that you know, everything you've been taught in your time on Earth, the lies your government has fed you with my podcast, the Conspiracy Files. I now give you the door's key. And once you've listened to the show, you finally unlock this door and step inside. Beyond the door is another dimension. A dimension of false narratives, a dimension of hidden evidence, a dimension of truth, lies and murders. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of deadly, deadly secrets and explosive ideas. You've just crossed over into the conspiracy zone. I'm your host, Colin Brown. Join me now on this journey into the world of secret pedophile rings, government cover ups, and suspicious suicides on my new show, the Conspiracy Files, available now on all streaming platforms.

[Courtney Brown]

She pulled up to Continental Court not long after the officers left. Andrew was there. Miranda had her iPad, and she was recording everything. When Laurie saw her mother, she didn't move towards her. She didn't smile. She just looked at her. And what was on her face wasn't sadness. It was anger. The quiet, controlled kind that a child develops when they've been hurt too many times to cry anymore. I just wanted to see you, Miranda said. I just wanted to. Laurie cut her off. You never call. You never come see me, she said. Miranda tried explaining that she had been trying to reach her, but Laurie wasn't buying it. You don't love me. She said to her mom. The words hit hard. Nobody moved. Miranda tried to explain herself again. She talked about the financial aid, the apartment, everything she had been dealing with. But Laurie wasn't interested in her excuses. That was almost a year ago, she told her mom. You sent me here in August. It's May, and this is the first I'm seeing you. Miranda couldn't find the words. But Laurie wasn't finished yet. I don't feel loved, she said. You're never going to bring me home. You don't care about me. You don't even want me. Things were said that couldn't be unsaid. Voices rose. Miranda felt that Andrew was trying to put a wedge between her and her daughter. At some point during all the arguments, the police were called again. And this time they removed Miranda from the property. From there, she got in her car and she left. Back inside the apartment, Laurie went quiet. A different kind of quiet than usual. Heavier. She started pacing back and forth around that small place. Andrew watched her. He would later tell investigators that after Miranda's visit, Laurie was completely off. Like something in her had shut down. She told him her mother didn't love her, that she felt unloved and unwanted. Now, in the days surrounding this incident, Andrew actually took off from work. It was summertime now. Laurie didn't have school to distract her. And after such a traumatizing event, perhaps he wanted to be home with her. But on June 2, 2023, a Friday, Andrew had an overnight shift. Before he left for work that night, he said that Laurie had been sitting on the couch watching television. She seemed to be doing a lot better. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. So from there, he went to work. The following morning, June 3, he came home from work just after 10am School was out for the summer, so Laurie should have been home. But as he walked around the house, he couldn't find her. Andrew would later say that he wasn't concerned right away. It was a Saturday morning. Maybe she just stepped out to play with the neighborhood kids. But something he did notice is that her rainbow backpack was gone. That's when Andrew decided to call the police. His voice was steady. A father worried about his little girl. He told them his 12 year old daughter was missing. She was in the apartment when he left for work the night before. But when he came back, she was gone. He didn't know what she was wearing. He didn't know when she left because he was at work. But he did tell the officers that she had run away before. Just a few weeks ago. In fact, however, that time she had turned up at school. The next day. Within minutes, Officers arrived at 1229 Continental Court. It was 11:15 in the morning. Andrew let them in. He answered their questions. He allowed them to search the apartment for any signs of foul play. There were none. Everything looked normal, undisturbed. But inside they found Lori's diary. In her own handwriting were the words, it would be better off if I wasn't here. Seeing that, the officers started wondering if she was a runaway. But that afternoon, Lori Page was entered into the national missing persons database.

[Colin Brown]

Immediately, investigators also set out trying to locate any family members who might have had contact with Lori or perhaps head her at their house. First, they went to Lori's grandmother's house, Brooklyn Page, who lived at 1332 Arkansas Street. But Brooklyn had not seen or heard from her granddaughter. They also looked into her mother, Miranda, since she had come to Tallahassee about a week earlier to see Lori. But she didn't have her either. And the news of Lori's disappearance completely broke her. The last interaction she had with Lori wasn't a good one and either telling her that her daughter is missing. But in those early days, everyone was hoping that Lori was just at a friend's house, that she would turn up the next day like she had before. But that next day came and she was still gone. Then the next day and the next. But still, investigators didn't think that there was any foul play. Lori was a 12 year old with a history of running away. But she had no phone, no social media, no digital footprint. To help track her down, they had tracked down her school issued Chromebook, hoping for search history, messages, anything at all to help find where she could be. But over summer break, it had been reassigned to another student, wiped clean and reset. Another dead end. Detective Anna Drake of the Tallahassee Police Department's special Victims unit was assigned to the case. A missing persons flyer went out almost immediately. Lori Anneliese page, 12 years old, 5ft tall, 120 pounds, shoulder length, black dreadlocks, brown eyes. She had taken her rainbow tie dye Jansport backpack with her. If anyone had seen her, they were asked to call Tallahassee police. Detective Drake was straightforward about where things stood. She told reporters, everything is pointing to that. She ran away voluntarily, but voluntary or not, we're going to exhaust all options to locate her. Harboring a juvenile is a serious crime and can result in an arrest, Drake warned. But nobody came forward. Flyers went up. Officers canvassed the neighborhood. They checked the abandoned apartment on Ocala Road where she had hidden before they checked Griffin middle school, they checked the parks. They spoke to neighbors, classmates, anyone who might have seen her. Nothing. Investigators interviewed sex offenders in the area and looked at surveillance footage from nearby businesses. But it was hard to locate footage because they had no idea when Lori might have left Andrew's apartment. But people who knew Lori said she was afraid of the dark. She wouldn't walk outside alone at night. That detail sat with people who knew her. But day after day, Laurie didn't come home soon enough. It had been two weeks since anyone had seen her. Margaret summers, a paraprofessional at Griffin middle school, had watched this girl run between classes so she wouldn't be late. She had told her she couldn't improve in a and now it had been 14 days, and she couldn't stay quiet anymore. She told reporters, I feel like after

[Courtney Brown]

14 days, there has to be at least one adult who has seen her or has an idea of where she may have gone. I'm hoping that if nothing else, Laurie will come to the school. She knows she's safe there. She knows that people care about her there. And we're in summer school, so she can come there any day.

[Colin Brown]

Monday through Thursday, Margaret was already thinking about what came next, about what Laurie would need when she came home.

[Courtney Brown]

She said, if we can find Laurie, hopefully we can find her a mentor so next time she faces struggles, she can talk to her mentor and not feel that she has to run away.

[Colin Brown]

Margaret then looked into the camera and spoke directly to Laurie herself.

[Courtney Brown]

Laurie, you're a great student and a great kid, and there's nothing you haven't done well enough. Just come back.

[Colin Brown]

Around this same time, Somers reached out to Rudy Ferguson, a pastor and neighborhood advocate who helped organize community searches. Volunteers fanning out through the streets, around continental court, through the parks, through the neighborhoods Laurie had walked every day. Summers also went on Nancy Grace sitting in front of a camera and telling the country about this little girl. The honor roll, the art club, the trifold cardboard board with the tiny soldiers. She wanted the world to know who Lori page was. She wanted someone, somewhere, to recognize her, to find her and bring her home.

[Courtney Brown]

Meanwhile, Laurie's father, Andrew, was calling his ex wife, Jeannie, just to talk the way they did sometimes. He mentioned it almost in passing.

[Colin Brown]

My daughter ran away. I don't know where she's at.

[Courtney Brown]

Genie asked how long she had been gone.

[Colin Brown]

Oh, I don't know. Probably a couple weeks now.

[Courtney Brown]

A couple of weeks? Genie pressed him. Are you looking for her? Do you have any idea where she Might be.

[Colin Brown]

I know where she's at. She's on the wrong side of town, that's where she's at. Where all her little friends hang out at.

[Courtney Brown]

Genie waited for more, but there wasn't any.

[Colin Brown]

I'm just tired. Her mom ain't shit. She just dumped her on me. I'm trying to get another job and I don't have time to be dealing with this.

[Courtney Brown]

His 12 year old daughter had been missing for two weeks and he didn't have time to be dealing with it. Sadly, the weeks kept passing. Tallahassee police canvassed neighborhoods over and over. They checked the parks, the community centers, the bus stops. They put up flyers at hotels and motels and extended stay facilities across the city. They followed up on every tip that came in, but it never led anywhere in Nashville. Miranda was not taking it nearly as calmly as Andrew. She was posting on social media every day. She was sharing Laurie's flyer, reaching out to anyone who would listen. She wasn't convinced Laurie had run away, not this time. This time she feared something far worse. That Laurie had been lured by a predator. Tallahassee had one of the highest rates of sex trafficking in Florida. That thought never left her. By July 11, 2023, more than five weeks in, Margaret Summers, the employee at Griffin Middle School, still hadn't given up. She was still pushing, still talking to anyone with the camera. She wanted to keep Laurie's name alive. She told reporters, quote, I don't feel she's getting the attention she deserves. She's polite, studious, and has zero disciplinary issues, end quote. But sadly, there was still no movement in the case. Weeks turned into months with no sign of Laurie. Soon enough, the summer ended, school started back up. Laurie's seat at Griffin Middle School was empty. And it's during these months when Laurie's classmates started to hear rumors. One student named Paris said that she overheard a group of kids discussing Laurie being kidnapped, murdered and placed into the back of a van. Back in sixth grade, Paris and Laurie had second and sixth period together. Paris admitted that they were never close. But during the last few weeks of school, Paris said that Laurie's personality changed. She would frequently put her head down on her desk. She stopped doing her schoolwork. Paris said it was unlike her. After this many months into her disappearance, the entire town of Tallahassee was talking about her. Many of them had the same questions. If Laurie was a runaway, then where was she? And why hadn't she been seen after this many months?

[Colin Brown]

In August, Andrew allowed detectives to come to the apartment and run a Luminol test, the chemical that reacts to the presence of blood. They went through every inch of that apartment and found nothing. Months passed. Fall became winter. And then in November 2023, five months after his daughter disappeared, Andrew Wylie quietly moved out of the apartment on Continental Court. He packed up his things and relocated to Thomasville, Georgia, a small town just 35 miles north of Tallahassee. He got a new phone number. He didn't tell investigators he was moving. He didn't ask anyone to forward his mail. He just left. His daughter was still missing, and he left. On January 8, 2024, seven months after Lori disappeared, Miranda posted a status on her Facebook page. My baby is gone. A broken heart emoji. That was it. She deleted it almost immediately. But investigators had already seen it. They reached out to her. She told them she hadn't meant it the way it sounded. She meant Lori wasn't with her. She meant she missed her. But then she said something else.

[Courtney Brown]

She told investigators, with plan B, emergency

[Narrator/Reporter]

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[Courtney Brown]

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[Courtney Brown]

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[Colin Brown]

That she knew in her soul that Lori was dead.

[Courtney Brown]

On January 31, 2024, investigators drove to Thomasville, Georgia. They knocked on Andrew Wylie's door. He let them in. They told him where things stood. With no sightings, no contact, no leads, the chances of Laurie being found safe were not great. They watched his face as they said it. Andrew showed no emotion, and he was adamant that he had nothing to do with her disappearance. But he also offered no insight into where she might be.

[Detective]

So here's why we're here. It's been six months. This girl walked out of your house with a bag and nothing else. She's 12 years old, and she hasn't unheard of him in six months. Me and him were part of the homicide unit. I'm not telling you anything's happened to her, but it's gotten to the point now where probabilities are. Are not in our favor. Yeah, and that's why we're here.

[Andrew Wylie]

So,

[Detective]

you know, we kind of wanted to get our own perspective of everything. That's why we're asking you these questions again. Me and him don't believe you have anything to do with you. You did not kill her, right? No, you would not. You would not want to. That's your daughter, right? Okay.

[Courtney Brown]

Andrew even told them that at his new apartment in Thomasville, he had even set up a bedroom for Lori for when she came back. He walked the officers down the hall, but what they saw was no bedroom at all. It was an office. There was a desk, a computer, but no bed, no dresser, none of Laurie's belongings, nothing at all that said a child had lived here or was expected to. When investigators asked Andrew why he moved away, he told them that he had already been planning to move to Georgia before Laurie disappeared. This had always been the plan. The officers continued looking around the apartment. Are any of Laurie's things here? Her hairbrush, a toothbrush, Anything with Laurie's DNA on it? He didn't have either. I guess it all got thrown away in the move. Instead, he opened a bag and dumped some of her clothing on the floor. Shirts, pants, socks, underwear, all in a pile at their feet. Investigators crouched down and sorted through it. They took what hadn't been washed, socks and underwear. It was all they had to work with. They drove back to Tallahassee with a bag of dirty laundry and nothing else.

[Detective]

Do you have. Do you have any Laura stuff? Yeah, those stuff still. You need anything like a toothbrush or anything? Nothing like that.

[Colin Brown]

So.

[Andrew Wylie]

I mean, it's supposed to be her room because she ain't have her own last time, so we was trying to move to a bigger space. Yeah.

[Detective]

So you were. You were already planning to move here?

[Andrew Wylie]

Yeah, I was already planning to move because like I said, when I got Louie, I was just by myself.

[Detective]

So where. Where's her clothes?

[Andrew Wylie]

Is there?

[Miranda Paige]

Yeah, so he seems to use this.

[Andrew Wylie]

And. And in the old house, she had her own hanger at.

[Colin Brown]

Yeah, so we mostly put her clothes

[Andrew Wylie]

on the hanger act in this, but once it's moving.

[Colin Brown]

On February 8, over 50 officers fanned out over a five square mile radius from the apartment on Continental Court. Businesses, wooded areas, bodies of water, cadaver dogs moved through San Luis Park. One dog paused near the lake bridge. Not a full alert, just a flicker of interest. Investigators waded in and checked. There was nothing there. Five days later, on February 13, the Leon County Sheriff's dive team searched the lake at San Luis Park. There was nothing there either. Detectives had been looking at everyone in Lori's life. Friends, neighbors, classmates, family members across three states. They traveled to Nashville to interview Miranda three times over the course of the investigation. They had asked her for a DNA sample three times. She refused. But on the fourth ask, on February 15, she finally agreed. They spoke to Latonya, too, Miranda's wife. She told them that as far as she could see, Laurie had seemed happy in Tallahassee. She was a daddy's girl, that she had no issues there. But by this point, police were zeroing in. They had canvassed the neighborhood around Continental Court. Over and over, they had followed hundreds of leads. And through all of it, every lead, every interview, every dead end, one person kept landing at the center of it. The person who had last seen Lori, the person who had reported her missing, the person who had allowed them to search his apartment, answered their questions calmly and then quietly moved to another state while his daughter was still missing. Andrew Wylie.

[Courtney Brown]

They pulled up his work records. His supervisor told detectives she didn't even know Andrew had a daughter. He had never mentioned Laurie once. Not her name, not her disappearance, not a single word. She did say that Andrew was a reliable employee. He showed up. But interestingly enough, there were a few days when he didn't come into work. One was 27 May and the other was the 29th, days before Laurie disappeared. Andrew gave his boss no explanation, no reason on why he didn't show up for work. So on February 19, Detective Megna contacted Andrew by phone. He asked him to come into the police station the following morning at 9am for an interview. Andrew agreed. He seemed cooperative, agreeable, no problem at all. But the next morning at 9am Andrew didn't show up. By 10am Investigators learned he had driven from Thomasville to Tallahassee. But instead of coming to the police department, he went straight to Brooklyn Page's house, Laurie's grandmother. Then from there, he went straight to his attorney's office.

[Colin Brown]

While investigators waited for him, over a hundred officers from the Tallahassee Police Department and fire department were fanning out across San Luis Park. The park sat just a mile from the apartment on Continental Court Trails, woods, a lake. The kind of place you could lose something and never find it again. Investigators had already been back to that park again and again. This time, they did a full grid search, each inch covered systematically. They found nothing. That same day, the Tallahassee Police department and the FBI announced a $15,000 reward for any information leading to Lori's whereabouts. Billboards went up across Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. FBI, Jacksonville. Acting Special Agent in Charge Mark Dargis addressed the public directly. The FBI will stop at nothing to protect kids, Dargis said. We encourage everyone to keep an Eye out for this young lady and help us bring her home. Nancy Grace had covered Lori's case once already during the summer search. That February, she brought it back to a national audience on crime stories.

[Courtney Brown]

By 2:30 that afternoon, Andrew Wylie arrived at the station with his attorney by his side. The detectives had questions, a lot of them. Andrew sat down. He was calm. But this interview would be far more intense than any questioning he faced before. Andrew told detectives that he was still convinced Laurie ran away. But as for why she ran away, he wasn't sure. He claimed things had been good at home. There were no disputes, no arguments. Any problems that Laurie faced came from her mother, he told them. Andrew said that Miranda had been neglecting Laurie her whole life. He said throughout Lori's entire childhood, Miranda would just drop her off with anyone and not take care of her. To Andrew, Lori likely ran away because she was still upset over seeing her mother.

[Detective]

When it comes down to it, it's about, I'm missing 12 year old girl who hasn't been home in 7 months and making sure that we've done everything we can to find him. So I mean, this is, this is a tough thing to do, especially with, with you.

[Andrew Wylie]

But

[Detective]

did something happen to cause Lori to run away? And what sense, any sense, an argument, a fight, discipline, Anything that you haven't told us?

[Andrew Wylie]

No, I mean, from what I think it was that argument with Miranda that kind of set it all off. On top of that, I mean, obviously she ran away because I think she had got in trouble again. That's why she ran away the other time.

[Miranda Paige]

So.

[Andrew Wylie]

And

[Detective]

don't think any way about this at all. All right? I have to ask these questions. I would, I've asked everybody these questions. Do you know where Lori is now?

[Andrew Wylie]

No, I do not.

[Detective]

Okay.

[Andrew Wylie]

No, I do not. And if I did have. I know.

[Courtney Brown]

But again, he was adamant that he had nothing to do with her disappearance. Now it's here where investigators brought up his work records. We noticed you didn't go to work on these two days. They said it's around the time Laurie went missing. Do you remember calling out? Andrew had no recollection. They continued pressing him. By looking at your records, you hardly ever call out of work. Was there something that happened at home that would have caused that? But again, Andrew said no, so they moved on. They asked him about the day before Laurie was reported missing. Did you leave town at all? They asked him.

[Colin Brown]

I don't know, I can't remember.

[Courtney Brown]

But investigators already knew the answer to this question. Andrew's car was Spotted at the Jacksonville airport the day before Laurie was reported missing. So they asked him, was there any reason you would go to jacksonville? Andrew paused.

[Colin Brown]

Jacksonville? Not that I can recall.

[Courtney Brown]

Well, it looks like you went to Jacksonville that day just before you went to work. Do you remember that?

[Colin Brown]

Oh, yeah, I do remember that.

[Courtney Brown]

What was that for?

[Colin Brown]

I was dropping off a friend at the airport.

[Courtney Brown]

Who's your friend?

[Colin Brown]

Tim brown.

[Courtney Brown]

Do you have his phone number?

[Colin Brown]

Not in this phone.

[Courtney Brown]

Next, investigators asked if Laurie had any access to any other cell phones or computers that were in his house prior to her disappearance. Andrew admitted that he did have multiple phones and computers that Laurie sometimes used. He even agreed to hand the computer over at the request of his attorney. However, he would later change his mind, Citing an invasion of privacy. As for his friend Tim brown, the one he said he took to the airport, it turns out there was no one by that name listed in Andrew's cell phone. To investigators, it appeared as if Tim brown was made up. But from here, Andrew walked out of the police station with his attorney and drove back to thomasville. However, the detectives weren't done just yet. Not even close.

[Colin Brown]

On February 23rd, detectives met up with Andrew's brother Antoine to drop off additional missing persons flyers. During that conversation, Antoine told them something that hadn't come up before. He said that in the months before Lori disappeared, Andrew had been talking about how he wanted to send Lori back to her mother. He was done with it, but antwan had talked him out of it. A couple days after their conversation with Antoine, investigators moved in two teams, Two locations simultaneously. The first team drove to jefferson correctional facility in monticello, florida, Where Andrew was working his overnight shift. They had a search warrant for his vehicle. His white dodge charger was sitting in the parking lot. Detective magna walked up to Andrew and explained why they were there. Andrew looked at the warrant. He looked at his car. Do your thing, he said. He laughed. Even okie dokie, he told them. After that, he called his brother. Then he climbed into a coworker's car and left.

[Courtney Brown]

The second team was already at Andrew's apartment in thomasville, georgia. They were executing a search warrant with the help of local police. Inside, they found three shopping bags containing the pieces of a single dismantled cell phone. They found two iPhones that had been factory reset, completely wiped clean. They also found Adele laptop and some notebooks, torn papers pulled from a trash can, and a hard drive. Android. Spend a considerable amount of time trying to make sure there was nothing left to find. He arrived back at his house while the search was underway. Detectives stood outside with him while his apartment was processed. He looked around at what was happening. They done took my baby, he said, laughing. He was talking about his car. This is great, he said. I love it.

[Colin Brown]

Meanwhile, the Dodge Charger was being towed to a forensics facility for processing. When the team got inside, they found a loaded Ruger SR45 firearm with a round already chambered, a Ziploc bag containing ammunition with Andrew's correctional officer name tag sitting right inside of it. They also found three paper maps of San Luis park, the same park investigators had just searched inch by inch the week before. They found 20 of Lori's missing persons flyers stuffed under the passenger seat, a bottle of cleaning fluid almost full, with a label that specifically advertised its ability to remove blood. They also found a receipt, small, folded up, and easy to miss. One of the investigators picked it up and smoothed it out. It was a receipt from Goodwill. 2734 Capital Circle. The purchase. A laptop computer. He had just purchased the computer the day before when they showed up at his house to take it in. Andrew had handed it over without protest. Okie dokie, do your thing, he said, laughing. Detectives went to Goodwill and pulled up the security footage. In it, Andrew walks into the store empty handed. He walks out with the laptop he bought off the shelf. The original computer, the one that had actually been sitting in that apartment, the one Lori had used, the one that contained two years of whatever Andrew had been doing was gone. Whatever he had done with it, it was never found. And the one sitting in the evidence bag right now was a $40 decoy from a thrift store. Investigators theorized that he had known they were coming with a warrant. He'd gotten rid of everything he needed to get rid of. But the computer wasn't the only thing that could tell the story.

[Courtney Brown]

During the search of Andrew's car, they noticed that his floor mats were missing. Upon seeing it, the investigators looked at each other. Then they reached for the lumenol. The canister hissed softly as the lumenol misted across the front passenger carpet. It was quiet, the kind of quiet where you can hear your own breathing. The technician moved slowly, methodically, covering every inch of the carpet. The lower interior door, the door jamb. And then the glow appeared. Blue, white, unmistakable, spreading across the front passenger carpet like something that had been waiting a long time to be seen. Luminol doesn't lie. It reacts to the presence of blood. Blood that the naked eye can no longer detect. Someone had tried very hard to clean that carpet. The missing floor mats, the Bottle of blood, Removing cleaning fluid, sitting right there in the car. Someone had worked on this, but it wasn't enough. The carpet was cut out and sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement crime lab. By this point, they already knew that Andrew Wylie murdered his daughter. But now there was no doubt in their mind. However, they couldn't make an arrest just yet. They didn't even have confirmation that the blood was Laurie's. So in the meantime, as they waited for the results, investigators went wider. They got warrants for Andrew's bank records, his credit cards, every financial transaction attached to his name going back through the spring of 2023. And eventually, the story of what happened started to become clear. Throughout most of their investigation, they knew that Andrew was likely responsible. But one thing they couldn't figure out was why. What motive did he have to murder his daughter? Well, they were about to find out. With any investigation, you look at the victim's whereabouts on the day they disappeared. In Laurie's case, Andrew reported her missing on June 3rd. But as detectives started looking into things, they actually found that Laurie hadn't been seen for several days before that. In fact, June 1st was the last time anyone had seen her alive. So detectives started following Andrew's whereabouts during that time. As they did, they saw something that made their stomachs drop. On May 31, 2023, the day before Laurie was last seen, Andrew drove to an urgent care on North Monroe street. He paid $30 for a visit. Now, what was Andrew being treated for, you ask? Investigators would later learn that he was being treated for a sexually transmitted disease. However, when the doctor tried to examine him, Andrew refused. According to State Attorney Jack Campbell, he believed that Andrew wasn't there to treat himself. He was there to get medication to bring home to someone else. Someone who couldn't come in herself, Someone whose symptoms would raise questions no doctor would leave unanswered.

[Colin Brown]

Now, STDs like chlamydia and gonorrhea can sometimes be completely asymptomatic. Some people who have them never develop any symptoms and have no idea they're infected. But the person they pass it to may not be so lucky. They may develop symptoms while the person who gave it to them never did. Following his trail that day, investigators said he went from an urgent care to a Publix pharmacy. He paid $42.95. He had also purchased a generic form of Plan B, a morning after pill taken to prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex. No prescription required. You walk in, you pick it up off the shelf, you pay for it, and you leave now. At the time, Andrew's girlfriend, Simone Robinson, was at Fort Polk in Louisiana for National Guard training. She had been there for weeks. She hadn't been anywhere near Tallahassee.

[Courtney Brown]

The only other person in that apartment was Laurie. From what we could find, Andrew didn't have any other sexual partners. Which led investigators to the unthinkable. After finding all of this, they believed that 12 year old Laurie was being sexually abused by her father, which would explain the change in her personality shortly before her disappearance. It would explain why Andrew was trying to distance Laurie from her mother. Investigators theorized that while Andrew was abusing Laurie, he might have given her an std. In the days before her disappearance. He was trying to get rid of it, which is why he went to the doctor. He was also likely trying to give her a plan B to stop her from getting pregnant with his baby. But what happened? Did Laurie threaten to tell someone about the abuse? Is that why Andrew killed her? Investigators had another theory. What if Laurie was already pregnant? That plan B wouldn't have worked. And once someone is pregnant, that's it. You really only have two. Have the baby or get an abortion. But both of those options wouldn't have worked out well for Andrew Wiley. When a pregnant 12 year old comes into any clinic, the doctors are required to ask questions. Soon after that, they'll figure out who the father is. And it would only be a matter of time until they found out it was him, Laurie's own father. Investigators believe that it's likely after Andrew found out his daughter was pregnant, he decided to kill her to avoid prison time. Now, how he killed her, they didn't know, but they did figure it was violent. Considering all the blood found in Andrew's

[Colin Brown]

car, investigators believe that Andrew Wiley killed Lori on June 1, 2023. Then the following day, he got rid of her body. But where did he take her? They figured that looking through Andrew's electronics might hold more answers. But Andrew had done what he could to make sure the phones would tell no story at all. One he had taken apart completely. He'd disassembled it into pieces and stuffed it into shopping bags. To others, he had factory reset, the standard method most people use when they want to wipe a device clean. To the average person, a factory reset means the data is gone. What Andrew didn't account for is that to a forensic examiner, it isn't law enforcement. Forensic tools can reach into a reset device and pull back data that the reset process left behind. Fragments, traces, things that were supposed to be gone. But aren't. Through their search, they discovered some Internet searches on one of Andrew's phones. One search was made June 1, 2023, the day police believed Lori had been killed. Andrew had searched for remote areas in Alabama and Georgia, bodies of water in those areas, driving directions to these locations. He had searched for bad neighborhoods in Tallahassee. He had searched Apalachicola National Forest, dead body, and he had searched. Where do police look to find missing kids? He was looking for somewhere to put her, and he was making sure he'd know where not to put her as well. Following Andrew's movements, they saw that on June 2, 2023, the day before he reported her missing. Andrew was very busy that morning. At 4:34am while it was still dark, his phone left the residence. It traveled through Frenchtown, through East Tallahassee, through Monticello. It crossed into Jefferson County. It kept going north into Georgia, and eventually it turned down a rural road. And then at 7:01am the phone went silent. No ping, no location, nothing. And when it reappeared, it was in a field 800ft off the roadway near Mitchell Road in Thomas County, Georgia. The phone stayed dark for a stretch of time. Investigators theorized that Lori's body at that point was sitting in his car, bleeding out as he frantically searched for a place to dump her. Once he found a good spot, he tossed her body out in the wilderness and then took off again. It's here where his phone came back to life and headed south, back through Georgia, back into Florida, back to Tallahassee. A license plate reader captured Andrew's white Dodge Charger heading back to Georgia at 8:28am Then just before 9:30am his phone began moving again. He drove all over. East, then south, back toward the residence, then east again, then north. Finally, he was back home. By 10:14am the phone was restless, moving in patterns that didn't make sense for a man who was supposed to be at home.

[Courtney Brown]

About an hour later, Andrew left the residence and headed east towards Jacksonville. His phone record showed that he stopped by the Jacksonville airport. Now, if you remember, Andrew told investigators that he went to the airport that day to drop off his friend Tim Brown. But there was no Tim Brown. As it turns out, Andrew wasn't dropping anyone off at the airport. Instead, he was booking himself a one way flight out of the country. He paid $150.70. It was a Delta flight from Jacksonville to San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was scheduled for the next day, June 3rd. But when it was time to leave for that flight, Andrew didn't Go. Perhaps he knew that leaving the country wouldn't look very good once people realized his daughter was missing. So instead, he stayed home. He cleaned out his car. He destroyed his electronic devices. On June 2, he even clocked into his overnight shift at work. Then on the morning of June 3rd, as that flight took off for San Juan, Andrew Wylie came home and called the police to report his daughter missing. Interestingly enough, after reporting Lori missing, Andrew tried to get a refund on that one way ticket he bought to Puerto Rico. He was denied. Now, as investigators are figuring all of this out, they get a call from the crime lab. It's here where they learn that the blood found in Andrew's car was indeed a match to Lori Page. Andrew had been driving around for eight months with his daughter's blood soaked into the floor of his car. He had cleaned it. He had removed the mats. He had bought a special cleaning fluid designed to eliminate exactly this kind of evidence. And from then on, he kept driving to work, to the grocery store, through the streets of Thomasville, Georgia, for eight whole months. Now, one would think that finding all of Lori's blood in his car would lead to an arrest. But it didn't. They still needed to find Lori's body.

[Colin Brown]

Following Andrew's movements on the morning of June 2, they found a remote, heavily brush covered area. A plantation. Locals knew it as Merrily Plantation, and they went there. Believe it or not, they had searched this area before the first time. The brush was years deep, dense and low and tangled. You could walk within feet of something and never see it. They searched what they could reach and searched it again. They came back with dogs. The dogs moved through the undergrowth and found nothing they could confirm. One area drew a flicker of interest. Not an alert, just attention. And then that too went quiet. They marked it. They kept coming back. And every time, the plantation gave them nothing. Months passed. The searches continued. And then in the spring of 2025, land managers conducted a prescribed burn at Merrily Plantation. When investigators heard about the burn, they reached out to the Thomas County Sheriff's office. They were going back out to the plantation. It's April 5, 2025, in South Georgia. The air is still. The prescribed burn has done its work. The thick brush that had covered Merrily Plantation for years is gone, burned away, leaving nothing but flat, blackened earth stretching out in every direction. The ground is open in a way it hasn't been in a long time. You can see it now, all of it. A small team moves across the clearing.

[Courtney Brown]

Some of them had been here before. They knew these coordinates. They knew what the phone data said. They know that somewhere in this field, somewhere within a few hundred feet of where they are standing, a phone went dark on the morning of June 2, 2023. It was right here, 800ft off the roadway. The cadaver dog's name is Kairos. He belonged to the North Florida search team. That day, he moved through the field the way dogs like him always do. Methodically, nose low to the ground, working in careful overlapping passes. His owner follows a few steps behind, watching him, rating the small shifts in his body language that most people would never notice. The investigators are there, too. Nobody's talking. There's nothing much to say. They've all been here before. They all know how these days usually end. However, they're hopeful that today will be different. The field is quiet. Kairos keeps working. He's sniffing all along the burned field. And then he stops. Completely still, nose down, right there in the dirt. His owner watches him for a moment. Cairo signals that he's found something. One of the investigators steps forward. They crouch down and look at what the dog has found. And there, just beneath the surface of the cleared and blackened ground in a field 800ft off Mitchell Road, are bones. Small bones. A child's bones. Nobody speaks. They already knew whose bones they were. They just needed her to be found. On April 8, 2025, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement positively identified the remains as those of Lori Ann Elise Paige. Only two bones were returned to Tallahassee, but that was all it took. They finally had what they needed. Several days later, on April 11, 2025, three days before Laurie's 14th birthday, Andrew Lamal Wiley was arrested and charged with second degree murder.

[Colin Brown]

Under Florida law, second degree murder means killing someone without premeditation, not planned, not calculated. A killing that happens in the heat of something. The charge reflected what prosecutors believed at that moment. That whatever happened inside that apartment on June 1, 2023, had not been planned in advance. That it had been triggered by something. State Attorney Jack Campbell would later say it was possible Lori's death was a crime of passion. That Andrew may have realized he could not cover up what he had done to her. That she was a 12 year old girl who was sick, who might be pregnant and who could tell someone.

[Detective]

Put your hand behind your back. You know why we're here, right? We're gonna head up to the station. We're gonna have a chat. We're good.

[Colin Brown]

You ready?

[Detective]

Come on. Yeah. Where are you working? Come on.

[Colin Brown]

Margaret Summers, Laurie's teacher, found out that morning When a friend called her. Andrew Wylie had been arrested. Laurie had been found. I just couldn't believe it, she said. It was a shock to me. She thought about all the times she had met with Andrew over these 22 months, offering support, telling him that they were going to speak up for Laurie, that they would never give up. She had hugged him. She had meant every word. I thought I was giving him comforting words, she said. And now I'm only imagining what he was thinking. Later that day, the Tallahassee Police Department held a press conference. The rotunda was packed. Law enforcement community members, Pastor Rudy Ferguson, who had organized search after search, who had stood in front of cameras month after month, refusing to let people forget her name, people who had spent nearly two years looking for this little girl. Chief Lawrence Revelle stepped to the podium. I told you two years ago we would find Lori and we would bring her home, he said. I told you two years ago that we would find who did this and we would arrest them and bring them to justice. And today I stand before you to tell you we have done just that. He paused. This case has deeply impacted our community for nearly two years. Lori deserved a safe home and a full life. While today's arrest will never bring her back, it does bring us one step closer to justice. Pastor Rudy Ferguson spoke outside when it was over. While this was the grim news we were hoping we didn't get on the other side of that. We're grateful that we do have this information. It brings some sense of closure, but it also reminds us that there's work to be done in the community to safeguard our children, to protect them, to love on them.

[Courtney Brown]

On Sunday, April 13, a candlelight vigil was held at a park in town for Lori Page. The community that had searched for her, posted flyers for her and driven her face across three state lines on billboards came out one more time not to look for her now, just to remember her. Nine days later, they did it again. On April 22, the community filled Bethel AME Church to remember Laurie. About a hundred people showed upcommunity members, local leaders, teachers and staff from Griffin Middle School. People who had never met Laurie but felt like they knew her through the flyers, the billboards, the searches, the 22 months of refusing to let her name disappear. No members of her family were in attendance, but her mother, Miranda, sent a message. Ashley Leland, one of the service organizers, read it aloud. It said, quote, laurie's life was a testament to love, a resilience to ripple through the hearts of those who knew her in the face of tragedy. Our community stands united not only in our grief, but in hope. We honor Laurie by carrying forward her light, choosing compassion over despair and holding each other with the same warmth that she gave to us so freely, end quote. Stephanie Tolbert, a teacher at Griffin, also stood up and spoke. She said, quote, it's devastating to Griffin to know that we've lost such a sweet soul. But I'm not here to mourn her death. I'm here to celebrate her life and what we remember. She's smiling to be celebrated, to know so many people loved her, end quote.

[Colin Brown]

Margaret Summers said she hoped Laurie's story would become a turning point. I would like to see that be the legacy, she said, that we all spend more time focused on the kids in our community. Rudy Ferguson spoke about what Laurie's case had become for him personally. We must do better, he said. We want the community to know that one child matters, no matter their color, what side of town they live on, or even financial status. Getting back to that sense of your child is my child, you live in my community, you live next door to me. So we are a community, we are neighbors and we need to operate as a neighborhood. A community member named Patty Wilson, who had been involved in the searches from the beginning, put it simply. I have pure sadness for that child, she said. She said, everyone has abandoned me. And she was right.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Tallahassee remembered Laurie Page Tuesday evening.

[Colin Brown]

She ran from class to class just

[Margaret Summers]

to be sure she was never tardy. She was attentive and tried to get every answer correct.

[Narrator/Reporter]

As the community filled Bethel AME Church to celebrate the dedicated, passionate and caring former middle school student.

[Colin Brown]

We're proud to say she was indeed a tiger.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Those who knew Laurie personally, and even those who didn't but feel like they did through the 22 month long search effort for Paige, including Stephanie Tolbert, a teacher at Griffin.

[Colin Brown]

It's devastating to Griffin to know that

[Andrew Wylie]

we've lost such a sweet soul. So I'm not here nearly to mourn

[Colin Brown]

her death, but to celebrate her life.

[Narrator/Reporter]

And those memories were shared in abundance Tuesday, especially by Margie Summers, who spearheaded the search efforts for Laurie.

[Margaret Summers]

That's the best feeling that I've had maybe since she went missing. And for all the people that came out and said that she mattered, that was really satisfying.

[Narrator/Reporter]

One of the key takeaways from the memorial was how the community wants Laurie's story to live on and to also be the foundation of the next efforts to protect Tallahassee's children.

[Margaret Summers]

I think if I see another kid like that I'll realize that if this kid needs me to be proud of her that much, maybe she needs me to have a conversation with her, too.

[Narrator/Reporter]

But these teachers telling me they know Laurie is looking down on this community with love.

[Detective]

She's smiling.

[Colin Brown]

She's smiling to be celebrated, to know

[Andrew Wylie]

that so many people loved her.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Definitely not many dry eyes. At Bethel ame, our hearts are with those grieving a life over far too soon.

[Courtney Brown]

For the first time in 22 months, they had some answers. Throughout everything they found, investigators were confident that Andrew Wylie was her killer. And soon enough, he was going to have to sit in a courtroom and answer for what he had done. The community that had searched for her, the teachers who had loved her, her mother, they were all going to watch that happen. And then they weren't. On June 19, 2025 at 5:36pm, Andrew Lamal Wiley died at the Leon County Detention center. He was 36 years old. The cause of death was a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in his lungs. Andrew's death was sudden, without warning and natural. He died just 69 days after his arrest.

[Jacob Murphy]

Thank you for joining us here at six o' clock tonight. I'm Jacob Murphy. Julie is off this evening. Tonight, an investigation underway after a man accused of killing his daughter dies while in the Leon County. Jack. Andrew Wylie died after a medical emergency last night, according to lcso. Just two months ago, the sheriff's office announced his arrest, sharing the shocking news they had discovered the remains of his daughter Lori Page in South Georgia. Page had been presumed missing for almost two years with billboards, signs and search parties working to find her. Wiley was at the Leon County Jail, charged in Laurie Page's murder, awaiting trial when he died. Our Capital City correspondent Matt Hoffman joins us now from the jail. And Matt, you were there yesterday when you noticed something was off.

[News Reporter]

Yeah, that's right, Jake. We were here for an unrelated story when we saw literally just past those gates, multiple fire trucks. That was a bit unusual, but there are some a thousand detainees at any given time. When we asked though, we learned of a surprising end to a long running case. Police say Andrew Wy killed his daughter Lori Page and dumped her remains at a plantation in rural Georgia. He'll never face those allegations in court though, after he died from a pulmonary embolism while at the Leon County Detention facility. According to a preliminary autopsy report provided by the Leon County Sheriff's Office. Here's Margie Summers, a longtime paraprofessional and advocate for Lori Page.

[Margaret Summers]

There should be people crying in front of the media and begging for her return. And nothing's happening.

[News Reporter]

Authorities say Wiley's death was natural. His brother Antwan Wiley, said he maintained his innocence until his death. Summers isn't buying it. For a long time, she didn't believe Paige's father was the one who killed her, but she does now.

[Margaret Summers]

I've tried to think of how else his pain could be in the exact place of her bones, and I have not been able to come up with one.

[News Reporter]

Summers said she met with Andrew Wylie on multiple occasions while police say Paige was already dead. She didn't know that at the time, and she encouraged Andrew Wylie to speak out. Looking back, she believes his behavior.

[Margaret Summers]

One of the times I met him was like months after she'd been missing. And I said, we're still looking. We're never going to give up. And he met us at one of the searches, and I was like, we're still looking. And I thought I was comforting him. He was probably thinking, lady, please stop. But I never. I didn't think it was him.

[News Reporter]

Summer says justice has been served. But she also says Wiley's death leaves many unanswered questions.

[Colin Brown]

He never went to trial. His brother Antoine had told the media that Andrew intended to represent himself, that he believed he could stand up in that courtroom and talk his way out of it, the same way he talked his way through every interview, every search warrant, every knock on his door. He would never answer for what he did to Laurie. Not in a courtroom, not under oath, not in front of her mother or her grandmother or the community that had spent two years searching for her. He was gone before any of that could happen. State Attorney Jack Campbell spoke publicly after Andrew's death. He said the evidence against Wiley had been strong. He said the biggest evidence in the case was his phone leading us to this plantation where her body was eventually found. Which doesn't really make sense that he would be there at that time in that area other than him disposing of her body.

[Courtney Brown]

And then Campbell said something else, something that had been in the probable cause affidavit in a carefully chosen language, evidence suggesting abuse of a sexual nature. Up until this point, they had never talked about that, but there it was. State Attorney Campbell told the public that Andrew Wylie had likely murdered his daughter after sexually assaulting her and possibly impregnating her. Campbell said, we know that we unfortunately deal every year with sexual abuse where people do impregnate children and even their own children. If he had gotten her pregnant, if he had given her a venereal disease, Those would be hard things to explain, end quote. But the evidence was all right there. The urgent care visit, the plan B, the two sick days Andrew took with no explanation, the refusal to let the doctor examine him. When the community heard all of this, they were even more devastated than before. But they still didn't have all the answers. After all, only two of Lori's bones were found. Without the rest of her body, investigators couldn't definitively determine exactly what happened to Lori. They couldn't prove how she was murdered or why. For the last few months, they'd been putting together a theory that Andrew impregnated his 12 year old daughter. But without finding the rest of her, they couldn't prove that.

[Colin Brown]

Campbell said there was no way to know for certain what Laurie's final hours looked like. That uncertainty, not knowing exactly what happened inside that apartment on June 1, 2023, was part of why Andrew's arrest hadn't come sooner. That, and the possibility that Lori had been taken by a trafficker rather than killed by her father. They hadn't been able to rule it out completely, not until the bones were found. But Campbell said he was not closing the case entirely. If new information develops, the door remains open. The community of Tallahassee is still hopeful that they'll find the rest of Lori's remains. It's unclear exactly what happened to them. It's possible that they were scavenged by animals. It's also possible that Andrew Wiley moved them. But with his death, any answers of what happened to Laurie or the rest of her remains went to the grave with him.

[Courtney Brown]

This case is heartbreaking in every sense. Lori Anneliese Paige was born on April 14, 2011. And from the very beginning, she didn't have an easy life. For most of her childhood, she moved from home to home. There was a lot of change, a lot of abuse and a lot of instability. More than anything, Laurie just wanted to feel like she belonged. She wanted to stay in one place and be surrounded by people who loved and supported her. But she didn't get that. Instead, she found herself in a new town, at a new school, where she didn't know anyone. The one person she did know, the one person that was supposed to protect her, did anything. But in the months before her death, she tried to speak out. She stood at a bus stop in the middle of everything that was happening to her. And she said out loud, I can't take this abuse. But nothing happened. Her father, Andrew Wyley, continued abusing her. And not only did he likely get her pregnant, but As a result of his own sick actions, he killed her. Then he dumped her body in the wilderness like she was nothing. I wish there was justice in this case. I wish Andrew Riley would face the consequences for the monstrous acts he committed against his daughter. But he didn't. And that's where this story comes to a tragic end. But Lori Page was far more than what happened to her. She was a girl who taught herself to read before she was 4. When she made an A, she did the extra credit anyway. She challenged boys to races at recess, and usually one. She loved anime and Roblox and YouTube and art. She helped kids she barely knew with their math. She made honor roll in a city she hadn't chosen. In a school. She started three weeks late in a life that had given her almost nothing to work with.

[Colin Brown]

Today we will be making a donation to the Rain, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, the largest antisexual violence organization in the United States. They work to support, prevent, and advocate for survivors of sexual assault. Hey everybody, it's Colin here. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Murder in America. Courtney and I have a great series planned that we are starting next week that we can't wait to dive into with you guys. And yeah, we just can't thank everybody enough for all of the support over the years. It's been an absolutely incredible journey here on the show and and we just can't thank each and every one of you who listen every week enough. If you want to help to support the show, please consider joining us on Patreon. On Patreon, you can get early ad free access to every single episode of the show and you can also get access to an entire library of bonus episodes of the show. These are episodes that will never be posted on the main feed that feature Courtney and I. They sound exactly like the episodes that you hear here on the main feed of the show, but they are exclusively on Patreon or they will always be exclusively for Patreon members. In addition, don't forget to leave us a five star review wherever you listen to the show. We love reading those reviews from you guys and follow us on Instagram at Murder in America to see photos from every case that we cover here on the show. Anyways, y', all, thank you for listening. Thanks for tuning in this week. I hope each and every one of you has an incredible weekend or week. Thanks again from Courtney and I both and I'll catch y' all in the next one.

[Podcast Advertiser/Promoter]

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