Lauren Taylor Agee was born on August 19, 1993 in Biloxi, Mississippi & in 2015. At the time of this story, she lived in Hendersonville, Tennessee with her mother, Sherry Smith, stepfather Michael Smith & her three siblings Alison, Jordan & Joshua. 21-year-old Lauren was described as beautiful, hilarious, energetic & bubbly. Her sister described her as a spirited, silly girl. She had a zest for life & was passionate about sports & dancing & had plenty of medals from her time in gymnastics. She loved to copy dance videos & recreate them, had been in music videos & had even been offered a dancing scholarship for college, but turned it down because she wanted to focus on her studies in criminal science. She was in her second year at a local college & had the goal of solving mysteries when she graduated. Lauren was in a great place in her life, surrounded by friends & had a boyfriend who she’d referred to as “the one.”
On Friday, July 24, 2015, she went to Wakefest with her friend Hannah Palmer, Hannah’s boyfriend Aaron Lilly & his friend Chris Stout. That weekend was the first time she met Chris & Hannah later admitted that she also didn’t know Chris very well. Wakefest is an annual three-day wakeboarding fest that is held on Center Hill Lake in Smithville, Tennessee which is about 80 miles from where Lauren lived. People gather to watch professional wakeboarders compete & the fest usually draws about 2000 spectators each year. At night people camp out on houseboats or cabins along the lake to party.
Lauren’s mom Sherry wasn’t thrilled with her daughter’s friendship with Hannah despite the fact that they had been friends since childhood. She felt that Hannah treated Lauren as a friend of convenience & would only call on Lauren when she had nothing better going on. If Hannah found herself with a new boyfriend, she wouldn’t come around very often. Sherry felt anxious about the idea of her daughter going to an alcohol-soaked weekend away & as Lauren turned to leave, Sherry called her back for one last hug, squeezed her tightly, & told her that she loved her & to please be careful. Sherry & Lauren had been inseparable & Sherry referred to Lauren as “Mini me” while Lauren referred to her mom as “Mama Bear.”
Lauren told her mom that she & her friends had rented a cabin that weekend. Instead, the camp site had been arranged by Aaron & a man named Brix Heydrich. She appeared to be having a blast as she uploaded pictures to social media of her & Hannah inside the car on their way to Wakefest. Hannah drove Lauren’s car & the girls met Aaron & Chris at the fest & spent the day drinking, watching wakeboarding & cliff diving.
When it was Lauren’s turn to jump she ended up banging her head on one of the rocks & felt a little out of it after & may have had a small concussion. Despite the injury, she carried on with the day & continued to have fun.
On the night of Saturday, July 25, a fest security guard who was also an off-duty police officer named Chris Yarchuk saw Lauren at the only bar located at the marina & described her as “energetic” & “lively.” He recalls the people she was with were more quiet & reserved & not nearly as outgoing as Lauren. He said that she’d left with Hannah, Aaron & Chris Stout at 2 am. He saw them walk down the dock by the lake where they took a canoe to their campsite across the lake. A high school friend named Kassi Franks also saw Lauren that night at the bar & as they spoke, Lauren made it clear to Kassi that she wasn’t interested in Chris Stout & anyway, she had a boyfriend & they were in a happy relationship. She was just there to have fun with friends.
Instead of the cabin Lauren told her mom they were staying in, the group was at a campsite that was located on an outcropping across from the lake’s marina. On the outcropping, there is a 35 foot drop down to the lake on one side & a 90 foot drop to the lake on the other. The area they would be camping wasn’t owned or regulated by Wakefest; there were no signs or fences & in order to get to the top, you had to walk up a very steep & rocky incline that was lined with brush & trees & said to be inhabited by plenty of snakes. A long rope is attached to a tree that could be used to pull yourself up & prevent yourself from falling. According to Kassi, Lauren wasn’t happy when she found out they were staying on the cliff instead of inside a cabin & asked Kassi if she would be able to stay with her group. When Kassi later spoke with True Crime Daily, she said, “Lauren did ask if she could go with my group, but I just, we didn’t have any more room. That was the very last time I saw her.”
Kassi was worried about Lauren’t safety since she herself had camped in that area & knew she would never do it again after that one time. Since she had no extra room, she said goodbye & Lauren headed out with her group.
Another friend of Lauren’s named Evan Shelton said that when he saw her leaving the bar, he said that she had had a few beers that night but she didn’t at all seem impaired or publicly intoxicated.
Lauren recorded her & her friends leaving & canoeing to their campsite & Hannah could be heard making the comment, “we’re going into a deathtrap.”
Hannah & Aaron planned to sleep in the one available tent & Lauren was to share the hammock with Chris that was dangerously close to the edge of the cliff with a 90 foot drop below.
The next afternoon, Sunday, July 26, a man named Lynn Blair & his son Dylan were out on their boat fishing on the lake at about 4:20 pm when they noticed something floating in the water. When Lynn noticed bright pink shorts, he realized in horror that it was the body of a young woman floating face down. He said the situation was terrifying & seeing that it was a young girl, he thought about the fact that she had a mom & a dad & could only think, “All those people’s lives are going to be different from now on.” Sadly, this was the body of Lauren.
In the meantime, Lauren’s mom had been trying unsuccessfully to get a hold of her that morning, calling & texting messages, “Hello, hey you.” She was worried that she hadn’t heard from her daughter, but neither Hannah, Aaron or Chris had reported her missing. Soon, a police officer came to Sherry & Michael’s front door & told them that there had been an accident in DeKalb County & they needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible. They drove as quickly as they possibly could, their minds whirring with worry. When they arrived, they were told to sit in a room for about 15-20 minutes. Officer Jeremy Taylor brought Sherry & Michael into a private room & they were given the devastating news that Lauren was dead. The first thing Sherry wanted to know was where her group of friends were; she could not understand why she was being told on Sunday night when her daughter had been missing all day. Why wouldn’t Hannah have called her? They were initially told that the injuries that caused Lauren’s death were from cliff jumping. She had possibly been knocked unconscious & maybe suffered a concussion & fallen off the cliff in the middle of the night. Sherry never saw any written statements or police reports about Lauren cliff jumping & she was never able to find anyone that had taken a photo from the time this was allegedly happening. Police told them that Lauren’s group was being questioned.
When police spoke with Hannah, Aaron & Chris, they said that they had all been drinking the night before & were drunk by the time they got back to the campsite. Hannah said that Chris & Lauren slept in the hammock near the edge of the cliff & she & Aaron slept in the tent.
When they woke up, Hannah said that Lauren was gone. She woke Chris up & he said that Lauren had gotten up a while ago but he didn’t feel her. When she asked how long ago, he said he didn’t know. She said they hadn’t reported missing since Chris said that Lauren mentioned meeting someone. All of Lauren’s belongings, including her flip flops, wallet & cell phone were left under the hammock which Hannah admitted had worried her. The terrain was rocky & would have injured the bottoms of Lauren’s feet had she walked off without her shoes. Hannah also indicated that the canoe they used to get to the area was at the bottom of the cliff where they’d left it. Sherry couldn’t understand how her friends hadn’t told anyone that Lauren was missing, hadn’t asked anyone to help look for her or do any of the things normal friends would do in that situation.
When DeKalb County Sheriff’s Department investigated the area, they found no signs of foul play & believed that Lauren had simply fallen off the edge of the cliff & had either died from the fall or she’d drowned. The medical examiner found her blood alcohol level to be twice the legal limit. Her death was ruled accidental & it was documented, “fell from a cliff, landed on rocks & rolled into the lake.” It was assumed that she was intoxicated & fell out of the hammock to her death. The official report indicated that Lauren’s cause of death was blunt force trauma from the fall & possible drowning. The case was quickly closed.
Despite the results, Lauren’s family had no sense of closure & her mom, Sherry, wanted answers. She couldn’t understand why Lauren’s three friends would have gone about their day on the 26th despite the fact that Lauren was missing & her things had been left behind. Sherry was shocked when she saw a post on Chris’s Instagram account that had been posted on July 27, the day after Lauren’s body was found. It was a picture of Chris, Hannah & Aaron on a boat & the caption read “Best weekend ever.” The caption was later changed to “Wakefest 2015 went pretty good this year; met some new friends, that made it awesome.”
Sherry got a phone call from Officer Ryan Melanson who was an off duty patrol sergeant for the White County Sheriff’s Department who had been on security detail for Fishlipz Marina at Wakefest and felt that Lauren’s death was not an accident. He was on the scene right after Lauren’s body was found & spent time with Chris & Aaron at the scene & described their demeanor as nervous & anxious & they showed no sympathy at all. He said their body language was odd & at one point, Chris joked about grabbing Officer Melanson’s gun & going on the run.
Sherry also spoke with the off duty officer who was serving as a Wakefest security guard, Chris Yarchuck, who had seen Lauren leaving with her friends in the early morning hours before she died. Officers Melanson & Yarchuck took a pontoon boat to Lauren’s body & got the local authorities involved. At this point, Chris & Aaron came paddling over in their canoe & were told to stay back. They continued forward & asked if that was their friend in the water since their friend was missing. At this point, they approached the pontoon boat in order to question them. Officer Melanson felt it was so strange that they assumed it was their friend’s body in the water yet they hadn’t reported her missing. He thought that maybe they had something to do with her death & didn’t think her body would surface & were doing damage control. He voiced that he did not believe that Lauren simply slipped & fell to her death. He didn’t feel that where her body was found in relation to where she would have fallen made sense. Had she fallen from the campsite, the odds of her body even reaching the bottom was unlikely since so many trees lined the cliffside & would have likely prevented her from falling to the water.
Aaron, Chris & Hannah went to the police station at about 7:15 pm to fill out paperwork but weren’t interviewed. When they got back to the cliff, there was no crime scene tape stopping them, so they were able to go back up to the campsite to retrieve their things. When Sherry was given Lauren’s belongings, a lot of things were missing such as her clothing & sleeping bag. She couldn’t understand where these items went & was never given an explanation.
Sherry felt unsettled by the facts around her daughter’s death & made the decision to hire a private investigator, Sheila Wysocki who began investigating Lauren’s case in February 2016. Sheila was a stay-at-home mom who later became a PI after she helped solve the murder of her college roommate. When she reviewed Lauren’s autopsy results as well as the photos, she felt that things just weren’t adding up. She noticed what appeared to be a bite mark on one of Lauren’s breasts but detectives explained away as a bruise from the fall. She also saw hemorrhaging on Lauren’s neck that indicated strangulation. “Somebody choked her. Somebody either held her down or choked her.”
Sheila felt sure that Lauren’s death had not been a result of an accidental drowning. According to the results of the autopsy, no water was found in Lauren’s lungs or stomach. Sheila believes that Lauren was placed in the water after she had died. She believes that Lauren was likely fighting someone to get away & had fallen back & hit her head causing death by blunt force trauma. Her nose & fingers were broken which could have come from a fall but could have also happened if she was fighting an attacker. There was also bruising on Lauren’s thighs that Sheila felt could have occurred by someone kneeling on her, holding her down & could have also been an indication that Lauren could have been raped. The bruising that was found on her body wasn’t as deep as would be expected had she fallen from the height of the cliff & she only had some minor scrapes.
There was also the mark of a triangle inside a triangle on Lauren’s stomach that lined up with a mark you would get if you were pinned down against the edge of a canoe which is what they used to get back to the campsite. Her clothes were also in perfect condition despite the alleged fall. The sheriff’s department indicated that Lauren’s body had been placed onto a TWRA (Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency) boat to transport her to the boat ramp & said that the mark was an identical match to the TWRA storage locker lid where her body was placed face down. Officer Yarchuck does not believe this theory & feels that the mark looks as if someone laid Lauren over the bow of the canoe after she had died. Lividity sets in, the blood pools & leaves a mark like that. He feels this is indisputable.
Sheila & Lauren’s family did over 50 test drops using a mannequin the same height & weight as Lauren & dropped it over the edge of the cliff where Lauren would have been sleeping & each time, the mannequin got tangled in the thick brush going down the cliff, note even making it halfway to the bottom. Even if her body had made it to the bottom, there was still several feet of rock she would have had to roll over to reach the water.
Neither Aaron, Chris or even Hannah, who was a long-term close friend of Lauren’s, attended her funeral. A couple of months after her death, Hannah & Aaron relocated to Florida. It was around this time that nasty comments about Lauren & the circumstances of her death, including false statements, began coming out online. PI Sheila tracked the IP address to the same street where Hannah & Aaron lived in Florida. Sheila flew to south Florida to speak with Hannah in a recorded interview about what happened during that weekend & the events leading up to Lauren’s death. Hannah claimed she didn’t think Chris had anything to do with Lauren’s death & she felt if there had been a struggle, she would have heard it from her tent. During the conversation, Hannah got a phone call from Aaron & Sheila wasn’t able to hear the whole conversation but was able to hear Aaron tell Hannah to “stick to the story.” When defending why she hadn’t reported Lauren missing or contacted her family, Hannah said that Lauren was the type of person who made friends with everyone so she said she tried to keep herself calm & assume she had gone off with someone. She said they looked everywhere they could & assumed she would eventually come to find them at the fest.
Police spoke with Lauren’s friend Jade who hadn’t attended Wakefest but had been texting with Lauren all night. Lauren told Jade that she wasn’t having any fun & just wanted to go home. She asked Jade if she could come & pick her up. Since it was late & dark outside & Jade wasn’t familiar with the area, she didn’t want to make the drive. In her initial interview, Hannah told police that Lauren wanted to go home & was willing to drive drunk so they had taken her keys from her. Other people at Wakefest had also heard Lauren venting that she wanted to leave because Hannah & the others were being mean to her. It’s believed that Lauren never had any intentions of driving home drunk since she had asked so many other people to drive her & instead, the group only took her keys to upset her rather than help her.
In order to get Hannah, Aaron & Chris talking, Sherry & her husband Michael Smith filed a $10 million wrongful death lawsuit against the trio in December 2016. They all pleaded the fifth which invites their right against providing self-incriminating information. The complaint outlined the circumstances of Lauren’s death & alleged that Hannah, Aaron & Chris either intentionally, recklessly or negligently caused Lauren’s death.
Kassie Franks, who Lauren had seen at the bar before her death & was a former girlfriend of Aaron’s, was called during the wrongful death trial & reported being physically abused by Aaron. She had photos of bruising & bite marks. Kassie said that during the fest, she & Aaron got into a verbal altercation & he lunged at her. This testimony was to show that Aaron was capable of violence.
Hannah spoke out in regards to the lawsuit & said, “the profound sadness I experienced when learning of the death of my best friend, Lauren Agee, has only been approached by the painful allegations I somehow contributed to her death.”
As part of the wrongful death suit, Detective Taylor, who had investigated Lauren’s death, was deposed. He admitted that he had no experience working a homicide case & no training in homicide investigation. The deposition revealed that there were a lot of things that could have happened in the aftermath of Lauren’s death that did not. No rape test was done, Lauren’s body was never swabbed for DNA & no DNA evidence was collected from under her fingernails. Police indicated they didn’t conduct a rape kit because Lauren had a tampon in place at the time of her death despite the fact that she wasn’t on her period. Some point out that she may have used it as a “just in case” situation but it’s also been speculated that a potential rapist could have put it there for this exact reason. The clothes Lauren was found wearing didn’t belong to her, including her bra which appeared to put on in a tangled fashion. Of the three clasps of the bra, only the top one had been secured.
Detective Taylor never interviewed the person who had called 911 & didn’t speak to any owners of the houseboats that were docked near where Lauren’s body was found. He also failed to look for any evidence in or near the water where her body was found.
When the officers spoke with Lauren’s friends, they were never viewed as suspects, just as a source of information. Hannah continued to change her recollection of events, first saying that she’d seen Lauren with an older man on the canoe when she headed to bed. Lauren was also in a happy relationship, but Hannah mentioned that she may have gone to meet up with an ex-boyfriend. Chris indicated that Lauren had been planning to meet up with someone that night but had no details or information beyond this.
Sherry hired a hydrologist who studies the movement of water & determined that had Lauren fell from the cliff where she was camping, it would have been impossible for her body to float against the current to the cove where she was found.
Her body would have traveled in the opposite direction to where the marina was. There was also a 35 foot bend her body would have had to float around. Sherry asked the hydrologist, Mr Leiker to give his opinion as part of the suit. He is a former police officer who now does investigative & consulting work, including homicide investigations. He declared that he believed Lauren’s death was a homicide that had been covered up by Hannah, Aaron & Chris & determined the investigation to be insufficient. He pointed out the following facts:
- There was no water found in Lauren’s lungs
- Injuries found on her body indicated that she had been involved in a struggle before her death that were not consistent with a fall
- Symmetrical injuries were found on Lauren’s back that were consistent with her body being dragged
- Lauren’s clothing & injuries were inconsistent with a fall.
On March 24, 2017, a judge dismissed Sherry’s wrongful death lawsuit against Hannah on insufficient evidence. In 2019 an appeals court ruled that Sherry could sue Hannah, Chris & Aaron. They have denied any wrongdoing in the case & have not been charged. Aaron & Hannah are now engaged & Chris spent time in jail for a DUI charge. Sherry holds firm that she will never give up until she finds the truth for her baby girl & hopes someone will someday come forward with more information.
References:
- Chilling Crimes: Lauren Agee
- Wakefest
- Medium: The death of Lauren Agee: Accident or murder?
- ABC News: Tenn. mom on a mission to prove daughter’s mysterious death at lake event was no accident
- Ranker: Fisherman found Lauren Agee in a Tennessee lake, and years later, her death is still a mystery
- YouTube: 20/20: ABC Mystery: Mom Turned PI
- Medium: ‘We’re going into a death trap’: The mysterious death of Lauren Agee
- True Crime Daily: Crime Watch Daily investigates mysterious death of Lauren Agee
- Fox 17: Ferrier Files: New witnesses speak about Lauren Agee’s death
- Without Warning Podcast: Lauren Agree Case ~ Death Trap
