BONUS: Blunt Instrument (The Real Murders Of Atlanta)

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Hi, Snap listeners.

We are bringing you a special bonus episode today from Oxygen True Crimes hit series, Real Murders of Atlanta.

You can also watch full episodes live or on demand on the free oxygen app by clicking the link in our description.

Enjoy.

Horror strikes a stylish Atlanta neighborhood when a mother goes looking for her son.

She goes upstairs and they hear this blood-curdling curdling scream

emergency somebody will kill my baby he was not just murdered he was bludgeoned

based on the injuries to him as well as the blood on the wall somebody was out of control the person that committed the homicide took a shower before leaving the residence whoever was responsible for the murder had to be someone that lance knew.

The victim is one of the city's most influential entrepreneurs.

He wasn't just my dad, right?

He was really this amazing man that, you know, in a small way

changed Atlanta.

And the deeper detectives dive into the case, the more they uncover what appears to be a crime of passion.

The husband knew that she was having an affair.

He was going to, you know, break off the relationship.

It could, you know, make you enraged enough to commit a homicide.

That was the piece that gave us confidence that we, in fact, had identified the right person to charge with Lance's murder.

In the late 1990s, the city of Atlanta is on fire.

Atlanta was the place to be.

There was a real buzz in the city, a real electricity.

It was a land of opportunity.

It was just very, very much booming and alive.

A lot of folks in their 20s and 30s doing a lot of great things.

Atlanta was

just aspirational,

but it was big and robust.

Atlanta was ripe for young capitalists.

And it is within that context that Lance Herndon was able to develop a very successful business as a consultant for his own personal software technology company.

Lance had moved into one of Atlanta's suburban jewels, the city of Roswell, a bucolic haven of horse farms and handsome homes, a refuge from the fast-paced metro city life.

But on Thursday, August 8th, 1996,

that quiet is shattered.

Emergency, somebody don't kill my baby.

Tell me what's going on.

I don't know.

I came here in the house and I found him in the bed.

Hurry, please.

The paramedics arrived, but he was gone.

He was gone.

And they found his body in his bedroom.

He was not just murdered, he was bludgeoned.

Moments later, detectives are on scene at the home and speak with the distraught 911 caller, Lance Herndon's mother, Jackie.

She told investigators.

Lance, he had three employees that worked for him downstairs in his home.

And that morning, When they showed up, there was no Lance.

They got worried.

Lance didn't call.

There was nothing.

So they called Lance's mom, who lived around the block.

So she comes over and she goes upstairs.

After a few minutes, there was this blood-curdling scream.

She was shocked when she pulled back to Comforter to see her only child.

laying in the bed face up.

Investigators begin their exploration of the murder scene and quickly discover they have a complex and confounding series of clues.

Someone had struck his forehead and top of his head with such force that there were streaks of blood droplets that were streaming down the wall.

This appeared to be someone in a bit of a rage

because based on the injuries to him, as well as the blood on the wall, somebody was out of control that did this.

Detectives notice there's a significant amount of blood spatter on Lance's upper torso, but very little blood below Lance's waist.

Our theory was that the killer climbed onto his naked body and straddled him, struck him in the head and face, causing his death.

The instrument used to bludgeon Lance is nowhere to be found, but left unique and perplexing wounds.

We didn't know what the murder weapon was.

Was it a bat?

Was it a cane?

Was it a brick?

Like, what could have caused it?

One of the things that was very obvious was a blood trail, blood droplets that led from the bed,

out of the bedroom, and into the master bathroom, wherein they found a bloody pillowcase stuffed down in the toilet.

We use luminol and things like that, and it highlights the blood, and it was all in the shower.

So the person that committed the homicide took a shower before leaving the residence.

Investigators noticed there were no signs of forced entry to the house.

They checked all the doors, all the windows around the home.

So whoever was responsible for the murder had to be someone that Lance knew and might have been familiar with because they were given access to the home.

As they continue working the crime scene looking for evidence, they also find three alarm clocks.

All three of these alarm clocks had been unplugged from the wall, which was very unusual.

Two of the clocks did not have the time, but one of the clocks did.

And the time that was frozen for eternity was 4.10 a.m.

Investigators viewed that as maybe

one clue into his time of death and when the murder may have taken place.

In speaking with family members and friends who were familiar with his sleeping habits, we know that the clock on the nightstand was set to go off at 4 o'clock.

We know that a second clock was set to go off at 405

and the third clock was set to go off at 410.

The theory is that the killer was there at 4 o'clock when those clocks began going off and unplugged them rather than allow them to continue to blare.

The intricate puzzle of clues multiplies as investigators continue their search of the room.

The other thing that was unusual was he had a photograph at his bedside, and that picture was face down.

When we turned that picture up, we could see that that is a current or ex-girlfriend of Mr.

Herndon.

She's in like a little teddy, and she's right there on his bed.

You know, who is this person?

We need to figure out who this person is.

Why is this one picture turned over?

Another thing was that outside of the home in the driveway in a trail like breadcrumbs leading through the garage of the home, they found silver chewing gum wrappers,

many of them, that they thought was very unusual.

Lance was not known to be a gum chewer.

And so because he was so meticulous about the way his house looked, it is something that he would not have allowed to occur.

Investigators questioned Lance's mother and his employees to try to understand how such an aspirational community figure could elicit such a violent end.

Lance Hernan was a fascinating figure just right off the bat.

He's an entrepreneur, born and raised in New York, but migrated to Atlanta, which was the epicenter at the time for sort of the black nouveau reached.

He was a generous man.

He was a loving father.

He had recently gotten divorced from his wife, and so they shared responsibilities for raising their son and did so together in a very positive environment.

I remember my mother telling me that my father wasn't going to be around anymore.

I was four years old when Lance was murdered.

I can remember that day like it's yesterday, looking out into our backyard and leaves blowing all over the place, and my mom telling me that my father was gone.

I started to realize it when my dad wasn't at Little League sporting events, you know, little things like that, where other kids had their fathers around.

Their sadness of not being able to spend that time with my father.

But he wasn't just my dad, right?

He was really this amazing man that changed the landscape of Atlanta by being one of the first businessmen to

work in the IT field while also being an African-American.

You know, that's a one in a million story.

Lance had built a thriving business from his home, which leads investigators to ask employees working there that morning if he had been robbed.

The workers at the house searched for anything that was out of place or suspicious, and they immediately noticed that a very expensive laptop was missing.

The case was there, but the laptop was not,

which was really unusual because Lance was really fastidious and Lance rarely let like the laptop and the case ever become disconnected.

Lance's employees also help by identifying the woman in the bedside photograph as Kathy Collins.

We learned that Kathy and Lance were dating, were were intimate, and that Lance was getting ready to break off his relationship with Kathy.

If Lance had mentioned to her, had conversations with her that he was going to break off the relationship, it could

make you enraged enough to commit a homicide.

Lance had a reputation of being kind of just a serial

philanderer.

A very large consideration was the motive in this case.

He knew that she was having an affair, and so there's motive right there.

Roswell police detectives grapple with the brutal homicide of tech mobile Lance Herndon, who's been found bludgeoned to death in his own bed.

Hours into the investigation and with few solid leads to go on, detectives focus on a turned-down photo of a girlfriend of Lance's named Kathy Collins.

People describe Kathy Collins as really smart, very attractive, Lance's trusted public girlfriend.

Lance had been dating Kathy Collins for years, on and off.

They were really, really good friends and took a lot of trips together and they were quite close.

Typically, if he had special events to go to, he would usually take Kathy Collins.

They looked good together as a couple.

Before detectives can begin their search for Ms.

Collins, she shows up unannounced at the crime scene.

Kathy showed up while they were still investigating the crime.

She wanted her clothes out of there.

She came back to the house and caused a big scene.

She wanted to recover personal effects from the house and caused a ruckus.

For someone to be Lance's public girlfriend, her behavior is odd.

Detectives are dumbfounded because she didn't seem too concerned that Lance was murdered.

Detectives ask, could Kathy be cold-hearted enough to kill Lance and then return for clothes the next day?

During our interview, she came off very genuine and she provided us with an alibi.

Kathy Collins had a boyfriend.

I don't know whether Lance knew it, but they were together the night before, then was able to exonerate herself.

With Kathy's whereabouts accounted for, detectives are stymied.

Who would have taken the time to turn down her photo while committing a homicide?

One of the primary suspects in this murder, the natural person that you would sort of question, would be Lance's ex-wife because she could stand to gain millions

through his insurance policy.

Janine Price

was from Kansas City, a dancer before she moved on to work as a corporate flight attendant.

My parents met under the figure of Christ in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Pretty crazy story.

I think my mom walked up to my dad and introduced herself because she saw a,

as she describes, a cute-looking brother at Enrio.

Within months, Lance and Janine are married in a lavish ceremony.

And within a year, Harrison is born.

It was, you know, a pretty normal family relationship with

mom and dad both in the household.

It was a happy time.

They seem to be happily married.

The thing of it is, with Lance being so popular and so successful, I think

a lot of females thought he just would be a great catcher.

Lance had a reputation of being kind of a just a serial philanderer.

Janine just got sick of it.

She loved him, but she couldn't take the infidelity and so she filed for divorce.

Not only had they recently been divorced, but Lance also had a $1 million life insurance policy that listed Janine as a beneficiary.

We began to just look at her very closely as a person who may have had an emotional motivation and a financial motive to want to murder Lance.

She provided us with an alibi.

She was out to dinner with a boyfriend of hers, and all of that was confirmed through our investigation.

With no suspects in custody, panic begins to spread around the town of Roswell.

The way it was committed and the viciousness of the attack really created a sense of fear and concern amongst the neighborhood.

36 hours into the investigation, the medical examiner's report comes in.

and adds to the horror of Lance's murder.

And he found that there were no injuries to Lance's hands at all, which means he did not do anything to defend himself, to ward off these blows.

It appears that he may have been asleep at the time that this incident took place.

Someone climbed onto his naked body and straddled him and struck him in the head and face at least 11 times and as many as 14 times, causing his death.

Investigators are at a loss about the weapon used in the murder until the ME meticulously studies the wounds.

He said the object had a texture

and a shape to it, and it was just a curved pattern that he noticed that was very particular.

And within that curved pattern, he noticed that there were these linear lines that showed a pattern.

That pattern reminds the medical examiner of a case he'd done years before.

He showed me a dissertation paper he had written years earlier.

The medical examiner felt very, very confident that the murder weapon that was used was an adjustable crescent wrench, one that is just like this one.

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three days after atlanta tech mogul lance herndon was bludgeoned to death in his home the medical examiner has identified the likely murder weapon an adjustable crescent wrench now detectives need to find the instrument that delivered the killing blow

I went back to the house.

I went to a shed, like a tool shed area, and it was very immaculate.

The man was very, very neat, and he had all of his tools like traced out and placed out onto his pegboard.

Only tool that was missing was a 16-inch adjustable or crescent wrench.

We re-interviewed several of the persons that had been in the house in the days and weeks leading up to the murder.

And what one of the housekeepers told us is that Mr.

Herndon had a wrench just like this one in his bedroom on the night that he was murdered.

She said that Mr.

Herndon was going to be putting together a piece of exercise equipment.

So the crescent wrench had been there in his bedroom, which made it readily accessible for the killer to use.

Despite this new information, investigators still struggle to locate the wrench, but confirming it was last seen in the bedroom where he was killed, they now believe Lance's murder may not have been premeditated, but was instead a crime of passion.

During the course of our investigation, it became known to us that Mr.

Herndon had a lot of women in his life, including Miss Talana, one of his people that worked for him.

Talana Carraway and Lance Herndon were friends.

Earlier in their relationship, they dated and actually been intimate.

But at the time of his death,

they were

platonic friends.

Lance was trying to help her by giving her some part-time work there at the office.

And on the night of Lance's murder, Talana Carraway was scheduled to work from 6 until 10.30.

During her interview with police, Talana helps establish a window of time when Lance was killed.

She told us that she was with Lance at Lance's house up until around 10.30, at which time she left Lance's house and went straight home, according to her.

She said when she got home around 11.30, she she had a message on her answering machine from Lance

checking to see if she made it home okay.

We did confirm that she called him back and talked to him for a little while up until around midnight.

And so the theory is that there was only one opportunity to commit this murder.

It was a very narrow window of time, and it was from midnight when he was talking to Tolana to 4 a.m.

because his clock is unplugged at 4.10 a.m.

During her police interview, Talana claims she didn't go back to Lance's house that night and quickly points the finger elsewhere.

She told us that he was dating.

a woman who several months earlier had come into his life named Dion Baugh.

Dion Baugh was a 28-year-old college student at Georgia State University here in Atlanta.

She originally is from Jamaica and she and Lance began a relationship.

Talana explains that Dion and Lance met at his 41st birthday party and he was immediately captivated.

Dion has both beauty and brains.

When he met her, he was smitten and they started dating and it quickly turned sexual.

Talana told investigators that Lance loved to wine and dine and he didn't spare any expense on Dion.

You know, he bought her a Mercedes.

They traveled together.

He lavished Dion with a lot of material goodies.

What Lance didn't realize was that Dion Ball was probably as much a player

as him.

She didn't tell him, but she was married.

Once the investigation revealed that at the time that she and Lance began a relationship, Dion Baugh was actually married.

It then immediately created

a real interest in her husband, Sean, a Jamaican resident.

who worked as an airline pilot.

Investigators suddenly need to speak with Ms.

Baugh to know if Lance's amorous activities landed him at the deadly corner of a love triangle.

We were able to speak with Dion Baugh.

She indicated that she and Lance were madly in love,

that Lance was enamored with her.

She claimed she did tell her husband that Lance Herndon was just a mentor and a friend.

But I would say it was probably hard to explain the Mercedes and the extra money and and all of the other stuff like husband caught on pretty quickly

sean knew that she was having an affair and so there's motive right there

and very early on what the investigation revealed very interestingly is that sean had been in Atlanta the night of Lance's murder.

Mr.

Herndon called us and asked for her to be removed from the property and in turn be given a criminal trespass warning not to return.

Investigators get a tip.

We were shocked to see inside of her purse the silver foil gum wrappers like we had seen in the driveway of Lance Herndon's home.

Detectives are hot on the heels of a new person of interest in the murder of Lance Herndon.

One of Herndon's lovers, college student Dion Baugh, has revealed that she's not only married, but that her husband Sean, who lives in Jamaica, was in Atlanta on the evening of the murder.

And she said, he got on his 8-ish p.m.

flight, and then she went back home and she did a late-night study session from 9 to 10 30 ish.

That's how she described that night.

Investigators check flight records to determine if Sean was actually on the plane as scheduled the night Lance was killed.

We were able to confirm that Sean did actually have a reservation to catch a flight.

And then we learned that he was physically on the plane, which means that at the time of Lance's death, Sean would have been a thousand miles away at home in Jamaica.

So he was able to be eliminated as a suspect.

As Sean is taken off the list of viable suspects, detectives turn back to the other side of the lover's triangle and focus in on Lance's current lover.

Dion Baugh.

A short time later, in some of the interviews with the workers at the office, they told us about a prior incident involving Lance Herndon and Dion Baugh that occurred at the house late one night, about 30 days before the murder.

Dion showed up at Lance's house unannounced.

Dion was able to see Kathy Collins.

walking through the house with a towel on.

Dion came very enraged.

She began to ring the doorbell, beat on the door, kick the door, and try to gain access to the house so that she could confront Lance about what she had seen.

Lance refused to answer the door.

He called 911.

Mr.

Herndon called us and asked for her to be removed from the property and in turn be given a criminal trespass warning not to return.

That's when the fight kicked off.

She started scrapping, struggling, pushing.

You got two fully grown police officers here handling a 5'7, 5'8 female.

So we managed to get her under control.

We got her handcuffed and got cursed and kicked and everything

all the way to the jail and booked her in for trespassing.

They arrested her.

And they charged her with the misdemeanor of criminal trespassing for being on his property without his permission or authority.

They flat out take her to jail.

And Lance never,

he didn't bail her out.

He didn't do anything.

And that criminal case was scheduled to go to court on the day that Lance Herndon's body was discovered by his mother.

Although Dion's arrest had been a month before the murder, Detectives must now scrutinize a potential motive.

Was she trying to silence Lance before he was due to testify against her in court?

Detectives bring Dion back in for questioning, where she makes a surprising admission.

During that interview, she indicated that on the night of his death, that he, in fact, came to her home, which was located in Norcross, Georgia, and brought her his laptop computer for her to use for a class.

She claims that he came to her house sometime in between 9 and 10.30 p.m.,

dropped off the computer, and left.

And that was the last time that she saw him alive.

But Dion's explanation doesn't match with Talana Caraway's account from that night.

Talana Carraway is there in the office with Lance and she doesn't leave until 10.30 and she says Lance never left the house.

It would have been impossible for Lance to have left his home

to bring the computer and drop it off and leave during this window.

All of this was confirmed with her records.

So that kind of led us to Miss Baugh.

We have no alibi for her.

So we're really concentrating on her.

Considering her possession of the missing laptop, a court date with Lance scheduled just hours after he was found murdered, and no alibi.

Detectives are convinced Dion Baugh is their killer.

But with no eyewitnesses or evidence tying her to the crime scene, there's nothing they can arrest her on.

There were some really serious forensic challenges to the case.

There were no fingerprints of anyone there in the bedroom other than Lance Herndon's fingerprints that were found.

We've done forensic testing on the hair and on the materials found underneath the fingernails of Lance Herndon during the autopsy.

We looked at all aspects of Lance Herndon's life.

We did a really deep dive into his finances.

We've exhausted every lead, then we've done all the interviews and re-interviews that we can find.

So the case goes cold.

Based on the fact that it took so long,

none of us had a lot of hope.

I did not have a lot of faith in the Roswell Police Department because it was just too long of a period of time.

Over a year and a half passes with no new leads until detectives get a call from someone close to their prime suspect.

Eventually the investigation gets a break.

We get a phone call from an Atlanta attorney who represents Sean in a divorce action against his wife, Dion Baugh,

and that Sean would like to make a statement to the investigators that he has some information that is relevant to the murder of Lance Herndon.

The case of Lance Herndon's murder had gone cold for more than a year, despite exhaustive efforts by the police.

Then a call sparks the investigation.

back to life.

In 1998, investigators get a tip, and it comes in from Dion Baugh's husband, Sean, himself.

Sean is here in Atlanta in a divorce action against his wife, Dion Baugh, and he would like to make a statement to the investigators.

Sean indicates that several months earlier, While Dion had been in Jamaica visiting, they got into an argument

over

her relationship with Lance Herndon.

And he confronted her about whether or not she had anything to do with Lance's death.

She has

a very hot temper and she begins to curse him out, kick him, and beat him.

And she makes the statement that she will kill John

just like

she did Lance.

That was the piece that gave us confidence that we, in fact, had identified the right person to charge with Lance's murder.

Sean then tells investigators that he and Dion will soon be in divorce court, giving police the opportunity to use any statements she makes under oath against her in their criminal case.

I watched Dion Baugh testify under oath that she and Lance Herndon never had an intimate or sexual relationship, that she and Lance Herndon were just merely casual friends.

That statement made under oath was a completely different statement than the one she had given to our investigators on the day after Lance's death, where she indicates that they were madly in love and had shared a very intimate and personal sexual relationship.

Denying an adulterous relationship with Lance, Dion also makes a perplexing admission about Lance's laptop, which she had previously told detectives he dropped at her house.

At this divorce hearing, which was based on infidelity, Dion

said that she actually left the house that night, went and picked up the laptop from Lance's home, which placed her at the scene of that crime.

And it's also a contradiction to what she had said two years prior to investigators.

Dion has finally admitted on record that she was at Lance's house the night he was killed.

It was one of those things

that added to this ever-evolving clear picture about what happened the night that Lance Herndon was murdered.

It was big.

So at this point, police have what they need to make the arrest and charge Dion Baugh with the murder of Lance Herndon.

When we arrested Dion Baugh, the vehicle and her purse were searched.

Inside of her purse, we were shocked

to see it filled with literally hundreds of the silver foil gum wrappers like we had seen in the driveway of Lance Herndon's home on the night his body was found.

I got the news that Dion was arrested and it was the greatest news we'd ever gotten.

The first thing I did is I called my husband and I called, you know, everyone close to me and close to the situation to let them know Dion was finally arrested.

I felt, you know, at such peace.

It takes more than three years for prosecutors to bring Dion to court to face charges of murder.

Because

there were no eyewitnesses to this murder, I thought it was very important that a demonstration needed to be done

to

show the jurors a very clear picture how

this

kind of very vicious, rage-filled murder happened.

Dion Baugh wanted what Lance Herndon had.

She was a person who was accustomed to being in control.

getting her way.

And when Lance

refused to continue having this relationship with her, had gone so far as to have her arrested for being on his property, that really was kind of the straw that broke her back.

And she had to do something about it.

And she had to do something about it before her court appearance the next day.

This was going to be an uphill battle for the prosecution because this case was built all on circumstantial evidence.

There was no murder weapon, no fingerprints.

It was just thin, just thin.

Almost five years after the death of high-tech mobile Lance Herndon, the trial of Dion Baugh gets underway.

She's charged with murder, an aggravated assault, and faces a term of life in prison.

With no forensic evidence or murder weapon tying her to the homicide, the prosecution is relying on circumstantial evidence.

This was a circumstantial evidence case, but all of the pieces of circumstantial evidence that really pointed to Dion Baugh and to Dion Baugh alone.

Fundamentally, The one piece of evidence that tied all of this together was

the laptop computer.

The consistent theme I pointed out to the jury is when did Dion

get the laptop?

There was only one opportunity for her to do it and that was when she came to the house at midnight.

When he fell asleep, she picked up the wrench that was on the floor in his bedroom, turned the photo face down.

She climbed onto his naked body and straddled him

and she struck him in the head and face, causing his death.

She would have been covered with blood spatter.

She would have used the bloody pillowcase on the bed to perhaps wipe off, deposited in a toilet, hopefully trying to destroy any evidence that could be recovered from the pillowcase.

She was there at four o'clock when those clocks began going off and she unplugged them rather than allow them to continue to blare.

And then she went back to the basement where the office was located, took that laptop computer that she knew was very expensive, and gone out of the garage, dropping those silver gum wrappers in the garage and driveway as she fled the scene.

The prosecution rests, and the jury returns a swift verdict.

So after a two-week trial, Dion Baugh was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

When the jury found Dion Baugh guilty, I was so elated.

I just wanted to shout at the top of my lungs.

Thank God.

I just felt like justice had finally been served.

With Dion Baugh behind bars, the ordeal is over.

But two years later, she turns the tables on everyone who cared about Lance Herndon.

Dion Baugh was able to successfully have her conviction overturned based on a technicality.

involving the detective's testimony during the trial process, I was furious.

I felt like this is so unfair.

Dion Baugh's second trial doesn't go as smoothly as the first, as the jury deadlocks and a mistrial is declared.

One year later, the prosecution prepares for yet another trial.

So by the third trial, what was clear was that the prosecution really had its work cut out for them.

I mean, this case was built all around circumstantial evidence and there was a lot of just emotional fatigue.

Particularly, Lance's mom did not want to sit through another trial.

Shortly before the third trial is set to begin, prosecutors get a call from Dion's defense team.

Dion Baal's lawyers came and indicated that she was willing to accept responsibility.

And so we allowed Dion Baugh to plead guilty to a manslaughter manslaughter charge and receive a sentence of 10 years to serve.

Nearly a decade after Lance's brutal murder, the family can finally move on.

Those that were close to him still remember Lance as a game changer that opened the high-tech landscape of Atlanta to African-American entrepreneurs.

Just a great man.

He was a great friend.

I think about him quite often.

I miss him.

I will always miss him.

When I see Harrison, I see Lance.

I see a lot of Lance and Harrison.

I think ever since I was 16 years old when I started my first company, I wanted to be Lance.

I wanted to be as successful as Lance.

And I wanted to have the life that Lance had.

I think that in a lot of ways, Lance's murder is what's really driven me to try and continue his legacy by being as close to to him as possible.

And I hope that he looks down on me from heaven knowing how hard I work and how hard I try to continue that legacy.

We're Herndons, you know, and not everybody looks at the world that way.

How hard is it to kill a planet?

Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene.

Are we really safe?

Is our water safe?

You destroyed our town.

And crimes like that, they don't just happen.

We call things accidents.

There is no accident.

This was 100%

preventable.

They're the result of choices by people.

Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime.

These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet.

Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it.

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