In 2017, Laura Wallen was a 31-year-old woman who was a teacher at Wilde Lake High School in Columbia, Maryland. She was a respected teacher who absolutely loved her job & had earned the “Teacher of the Year” award the year before in 2016. She’d been extremely excited for the new school year, working tirelessly to get her classroom ready where she taught social studies & law. Laura was a dedicated & involved teacher who always put her students first.
Laura’s sister was in contact with her on a daily basis & when her family was unable to get in contact with her, they knew that something must be terribly wrong. Laura’s sister reported her missing on the evening of Labor Day, Monday, September 4, 2017. The next day, Tuesday, September 5, Laura didn’t show up to the first day of school which was extremely unusual since, in normal circumstances, she would have called in & arranged for a substitute. Laura’s sister told police that she’d last seen her on Friday, September 1st & last had contact with her Saturday, the 2nd. There was no reason to believe that Laura had voluntarily disappeared.
Police went to her home in Olney, Maryland & found no sign of Laura as well as no indication that she’d come into harm there as nothing seemed out of place. At the time, Laura was four months pregnant. When they contacted her boyfriend & the father of her baby, 33-year-old Tyler Tessier, he said he hadn’t seen her & was unaware of where she might be.
As the search began, investigators found Laura’s black 2011 Ford Escape parked in a gated apartment complex in Columbia which was across from the high school where she worked. The front license plate was removed & the car had been backed into the spot & her phone & driver’s license were found by a nearby dumpster. At this point, investigators focused their search on Howard & Columbia counties & volunteers helped pass out fliers & hang up missing posters.
Both of Laura’s parents, Gwen & Mark Wallen as well as Tyler took part in a televised news conference on September 11th so they could plead for the public’s help in finding Laura, offering a $25,000 reward. While Tyler spoke during the conference, he told reporters that he’d known Laura for about ten years & made an appeal directly to Laura: “Laura, if you are listening, it doesn’t matter what’s happened, it doesn’t matter what type of trouble, there’s nothing we can’t fix together. There are so many people, so many people that miss you, so many people who were out, who haven’t slept. We haven’t eaten. We are just looking or praying that you are safe.”
What Tyler didn’t know at the time, was as he was making his plea to the public with Gwen & Mark by his side, both police & Laura’s family believed that they knew who was responsible for Laura’s disappearance. They believed that this person was Tyler. Police had this theory because of inconsistencies they noticed in the information he provided over the course of four interviews between September 5th & the 11th. The fact that Tyler was participating in the news conference was a calculated decision & one that the family approved of in order to get more information.
Mark Wallen later said that sitting with Tyler during his plea to the public, “was absolutely the hardest thing that my wife would do, would be to sit next to him & hold his hand. And she had to hold his hands with two hands because she was shaking so badly. But we did it. Because as any father would do, if your child is missing & someone has that child, we were pretty sure it was Tyler, but we didn’t know where she was, and you can’t put someone away on a missing person.” Mark indicated that throughout Laura & Tyler’s seven year relationship, he had been a liar & said the only thing they ever fought about with their daughter was her relationship with Tyler. Mark described him as “a monster & a liar.”
After ongoing questioning, Tyler told police that Laura came to him, asking for his help & told him that she “wanted to disappear.” He claimed that she went on to say that the father of her baby was a student of hers & she was embarrassed about the situation & wanted to get away before anyone discovered her secret.
The last transaction from Laura’s debit card was made on September 2nd between 8:30 & 9:30 pm at a Safeway store less than one mile from her condo on Rolling Meadows Way in Olney. When police went back to review the grocery store’s surveillance video, they saw that Tyler & Laura were together & this was the last known sighting of her alive.
It was the police’s belief that Tyler was the last person to see Laura alive & because of his inconsistencies, he was deemed a person of interest. Family had seen Laura for the last time on September 1st, three days before she’d been reported missing & the next day, September 2nd Laura had gone on a trip with Tyler. Laura had texted her sister on the 2nd: “Tyler has me on an adventure in the country. Not sure why but it’s for something. Waiting in a field.” A friend of Laura’s said that Laura believed Tyler brought her to the spot so he could propose. He told investigators that he’d taken her to the property because he was trying to buy land to build a house for them & their new baby.
Two days after the news conference, on September 13, police were searching the perimeter of a wooded location in Damascus after they’d been made aware that Tyler frequented the area & had recently taken multiple trips to the location. As they searched, they came across an area of freshly dug earth in a secluded part of a field. Tyler had told police that Laura was wearing a purple shawl or vest when he last saw her & police could see a purple piece of fabric “in plain view” protruding from the 10’ x 10’ area. With the help of cadaver dogs, they found Laura’s body in a shallow grave. The autopsy showed that she’d been shot once in the back of the head by a .22-caliber weapon. His friend’s house was about a mile & a half away from this spot where he had access to four weapons. Her car’s front license plate was found in a plastic bag of trash on the property. The property is owned by one of Tyler’s close friends & includes a farm that is surrounded by acres of open fields & woods. The property owner told police that he’d been out of town the weekend of Labor Day & Tyler would have had the area to himself. Since Laura’s disappearance, cell phone records placed Tyler in the area each night.
Laura & Tyler’s relationship had been on again & off again over about seven years, but anytime they went through a breakup, it was short-lived & they soon got back together again. On Facebook, Laura had referred to Tyler as her “sweet cowboy” & posted photos of the flowers he’d sent her “just because.” She posted a picture of a note that read, “I love you” that she’d found in the cabinet between dishes that he’d left for her to make her smile.
Despite what Tyler told police about Laura getting pregnant by one of her students, this proved to be untrue as DNA testing indicated that Tyler was the baby’s father. They discovered that Laura was carrying a healthy baby boy between 13-14 weeks.
As police looked further into Tyler’s background, they discovered that he was in a relationship with another woman, which could have been the motive for murder. What Laura hadn’t known was that while she & Tyler were on one of their many breaks, he began dating another teacher & moved in with her in 2012. Even after he got back together with Laura, he maintained his relationship with the other woman. Both women were unaware of the other woman. At the time of Laura’s disappearance, Tyler was essentially homeless, bouncing back & forth between both women’s homes as well as his friend’s property where Laura’s body was found.
That summer, when Laura told her parents that she was pregnant with Tyler’s baby, her dad Mark sat down with Tyler at a local Starbucks & asked him what his intentions were since their relationship had been so rocky. Tyler told Mark that he loved Laura & planned to get married. With that, he pulled out an engagement ring & talked about wedding plans. Mark had heard rumors about another woman, but Tyler looked him dead in the eye & insisted he had not seen her in two years. Tyler assured Mark that his intentions were good & he would look after Laura & the baby. To this point, he’d gone with Laura to all of her doctor’s appointments & accepted that he was the father of the baby. That very same night, he used the same ring to propose to the other woman.
The other woman said yes to Tyler’s proposal & the wedding was planned for one month after Laura would have given birth to their baby. During the investigation, detectives became aware of the fact that Laura knew about the other woman & had actually texted her on August 28th & asked her to meet up with her: “It’s important that some things are cleared up & I would imagine that if you were in my position, you’d want some answers as well. By no means is this an attempt at confrontation, just looking for an explanation, woman to woman.”
Police believed that within days of this text message, Tyler began planning Laura’s murder. They believe he convinced the woman he was living with that Laura was crazy & stalking him. Because of this, when she received the text message from Laura, she told Tyler about it via text & he replied, “I could literally kill her.”
Tyler initially denied being in a relationship with anyone other than Laura but faced with the evidence, he was forced to admit it. Police believe that Tyler brought Laura to the remote area with the intention of killing her so that she didn’t interfere with his relationship with his fiance. When Laura texted her sister about the trip Tyler had taken her on, her sister asked her for a picture. When police viewed the image, it matched the location where they ultimately found Laura’s body. Tyler had taken her to the area twice, on the 2nd of September as well as the next day. Police believe it was this day of the 3rd that he shot & killed Laura. It’s likely he intended to murder her on their fist trip, but because of her text conversation with her sister, he waited until the following day.
Investigators interviewed an acquaintance of Tyler’s who told them he’d received a call from Tyler on Sunday, September 3rd asking if he would drive him to Baltimore to pick up a car late at night. The acquaintance found this strange & quickly refused. Tyler later texted him, “Sorry man. Didn’t mean to make you feel like I was trying to put you in a bad spot.” When the acquaintance responded that he thought it was a bad idea to go to Baltimore late at night & Tyler responded, “It probably is. Just trying to clean up a mess.”
Police believe that after Tyler killed Laura, he began hiding evidence & trying to cast doubt about who the father of Laura’s baby was via text messages to her family. He sent Laura’s sister a text message on Labor Day from Laura’s phone, “I am like 95 percent sure Tyler is not the father. I am going to try and get a hold of Antwan. I am probably going to lose my job over this. Tyler is never going to forgive me. If he tries to call you, please tell him he’s a great guy because I know I really hurt his feelings.”
Laura’s sister was confused by the text because she was so close to her sister & doubted that she would ever send such a thing over text rather than talking to her in person if she was actually doubting who the father of her baby was. She said that Laura had dated a man named Antoine about two years before her death but had no contact with him since. Detectives determined that Antoine was living in Massachusetts & he confirmed that he hadn’t seen Laura in two years but had received a text from her in February. The name Antoine had been spelled incorrectly in the text from Laura’s phone & her sister said the texts were not consistent with her usual writing style.
With the information that police had, Tyler was arrested on September 13th & charged with first-degree murder as well as obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence & making false statements. Due to Maryland law, he only received one murder charge since the fetus must be viable outside the womb at 23 weeks gestation or greater. He spent his 33rd birthday behind bars on September 16 after a judge ruled that he would be held without bond. Despite the fact that he had no criminal history, he was deemed a danger to society.
He claimed that during an argument on September 4th at Laura’s home, she had gotten extremely upset. He said she was hysterically crying & demanded her house key back or she would call the police. He said she lunged at him with scissors & in the process, she ran into a post on the porch which caused her to collapse to the ground. Tyler said that he believed that she was dead so he brought her to the field where he then buried her. Police asked the obvious question; if this was true, why had Laura’s autopsy showed that she died from a gunshot wound? He explained that he worried that it was possible that he’d buried Laura alive so he went back to the scene & fired one bullet to ensure that she was dead because he didn’t want her to suffer.
In another interview, he claimed that after their argument, he asked Laura to meet him at the Nordstrom’s cafe at Columbia Mall so they could have a calmer conversation. He waited for her for two hours but she never showed up. He said he left & went back to her condo but never entered since he’d already returned her key. Laura’s neighbor said he saw Tyler walking Laura’s dog at about 2:30 pm that day & family members said they found the dog inside the locked home later that evening.
He went on to change his story again & told police that African-American men entered Laura’s home & kidnapped them. They forced them to drive to Damascus & that’s where they shot Laura. When they asked why he wasn’t shot, he said he’d pleaded with them to let him go. He also admitted that the last known messages sent from Laura’s phone to her sister were actually written by him, which investigators already suspected.
The prosecution felt that their case was solid & there was no doubt that Tyler was responsible for Laura’s murder. He’d gone on living a double life for years & when Laura got pregnant & then found out about the other woman, Tyler knew his worlds were colliding. It was the text that Laura sent to the other woman that set his plan of murder in motion. He originally planned to spend the weekend of September 2nd with the other woman in Pennsylvania to look at bridesmaids dresses & instead, he told her that he was unable to sit in the car for the four hour drive since he injured his knee while walking her dog. In all actuality, there was nothing wrong with his knee & he wanted to free up his weekend so he could go through with the murder.
He contacted Laura & made arrangements to go on the so-called adventure to the field where her life ultimately ended on September 3rd.
It was the prosecution’s case that the murder was premeditated which was evident by the location where Laura was killed & buried. They wanted to bring the jury to the murder scene so they could fully understand how remote & hidden the area was & they didn’t feel that pictures would reflect this. This would require the use of four-wheel drives since the location was off-road; the path curved down a long hill & went down to the corner of the grassy field where she was found. There was an animal processing facility close to the field where Laura was found & it’s believed that Tyler used a skid loader that was on the property, to dig the shallow grave where Laura was buried.
Because the location was so hidden, the person would need to know the area very well. There was an aerial image of the site with a picture of the tree line which was where Laura sat in a truck & sent her sister a photo of herself which was where her body had been found. Phone records for both Tyler & Laura placed them at the location.
After Tyler buried Laura’s body, he drove her car to the apartment complex across from the high school where she worked where it was later found. One of their witnesses was a friend of Tyler’s who said that Tyler called her & asked her for a ride from the apartment complex in Columbia; the woman picked him up & brought him to Laura’s house where Tyler had left his car. She also said that Tyler asked her to lie to the police if they asked her about picking him up there. Tyler eventually admitted to driving Laura’s car to the complex where it was found. He elaborated by saying that he dumped her car & belongings & removed her front license plate after Laura informed him that he wasn’t the father of the baby & that she needed to go to the real father about her pregnancy. She allegedly said that she needed a day to sort things out so he hid her car & disposed of her things “to buy her time” so she could figure out what she was going to do.
The prosecution was seeking a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole if Tyler was found guilty.
Tyler’s three week trial was set to begin on Thursday, September 6, 2018. He woke up at 4 am at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility in Rockville, Maryland, where he’d been living for the past year. He was showered & getting dressed & planned to have breakfast before the trial. The prosecution, however, would never get the chance to present their evidence in front of the jury. He was last seen in his cell alive & well at 4:36 am & twenty minutes later, he was found dead. Tyler had been in an individual cell, but he wasn’t in isolation; he was in a pod with fifteen other inmates in individual cells. He left behind five suicide letters on his bunk bed. The five letters were forensically analyzed before they were sent to their intended recipients & only his fingerprints were on the letters which eliminated the possibility that someone else killed Tyler. He never admitted to killing Laura in the letters which will not be released. The medical examiner indicated that his cause of death was hanging which was ruled a suicide & there were no drugs or alcohol in his system.
This was the second person in a sixty-five day span of time to take their life using a sheet at the facility. After Tyler’s death, the county removed sheets from the cells & doubled up on blankets instead.
Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy said that the letters indicated that he’d been considering suicide for some time. When McCarthy addressed the media that same morning, he said, “We were robbed this morning of the opportunity to allow the public to know the true nature & details of this crime. There should be no question in anyone’s mind in this county that this was Laura’s killer. I think today was where it was all going to crush down on him. He knew the discovery. He knew the evidence & he knew today was the reckoning. I think he took the coward’s way out. He had psychotic behavior that he carried on as he maintained a dual relationship with two women; one for ten years & one for seven years. To Tyler Tessier, lying was like breathing.”
Laura’s family never got to see Laura’s accused killer face his trial & potential justice, but her mom, Gwen Wallen, found some sense of peace: “As awful as today is, I feel at peace because I was worried for my family & I was worried for my other two grandsons to have such a diabolical human, if you can call him that, in the world.”
Laura’s dad, Mark Wallen spoke, “We can move on & we can hopefully remember our daughter as the wonderful woman that she was. We will not, unfortunately, know our grandson.” At the time of Laura’s death, she hadn’t yet learned that her baby was a boy, but she’d already picked out the name Reid. Maryland is among a dozen states where there are no or limited laws for fetal homicide. Gwen & Mark introduced legislation to make the consequences more severe for defendants like Tyler in cases of deadly violence against pregnant women. They’ve introduced Laura & Reid’s Law to allow prosecutors to charge for the murder of an unborn child at any stage of development. They know this bill won’t fully heal their wounds, but will help another grieving family seek justice. Gwen & Mark were present in May of 2019 when Governor Larry Hogan signed the bill into law which says that ten years can be added to a guilty person’s sentence. Gwen feels that not only will the bill protect at-risk women but also honors Laura & Reid.
References:
- Chilling Crimes: Laura Wallen
- ABC News: Man accused of killing pregnant girlfriend found dead in jail cell ahead of trial
- Daily Mail: How distraught boyfriend wept on camera as he pleaded for help to find his missing pregnant girlfriend
- Patch: Tyler Tessier wrote 5 suicide notes before he died
- CBS News: Police: Last texts from slain teacher said boyfriend was taking her on ‘adventure’
- SCRIBD: Tyler Tessier statement of charges
- Patch: Who is Tyler Tessier? 9 things to know in Columbia teacher’s murder
- The Washington Post: A murder suspect allegedly lured his pregnant girlfriend to a remote field. Prosecutors want jurors to see it.
- WBALTV: Man charged with killing pregnant girlfriend appears at pretrial
- CBS News: Parents of Md. teacher, killed while pregnant, to introduce fetal homicide bill
- WMAR 2: Governor Hogan signs Laura & Reid’s Law
- Wtop news: Death investigation complete for Md. man who killed self before murder trial
- The Washington Post: Maryland murder suspect Tyler Tessier dies in jail cell just before start of his trial
