2 | 96 Miles

depictions of violence. Listen to discretion is advised.

“That night specifically, Aida was very emotional, he was frustrated, and it was time to”

be going to bed, and we read our bedtime book, Lee, and first her teeth, and taken a bath, and all that gets stuff, and he's in his bed, and he's just like, you know, I missed my mommy's pain, and he just gets into this long tangent, and he's crying, and he's like, "But which cloud is she above?" 'Cause I don't know which one, and he is just a stopping mess.

He's such a smart boy, he's always been a very intelligent boy, and he'll ask you questions

that are, you just, you thought a grown person asked you that question, and how do you respond to it? 'Cause you don't want to lie to him, but you also want to protect his innocence, and still have some kind of beauty in this crazy thing we've called life. (upbeat music)

It's a couple of days after my call with Amanda and Katelyn, and I've got Rosemary on the line. I'm staring at a file she just sent me, dumbfounded. What she sent doesn't make any sense. No matter what she says, she doesn't make any sense. No matter what she says, she doesn't make any sense.

No matter what she says, she doesn't make any sense. No matter what she says, she doesn't make any sense. No matter what she says, she doesn't make any sense. Not because it isn't clear, but because, until now, nobody seems to have known it existed, and if it's accurate, it changes everything.

What I'm looking at is a 911 call report, sometimes just called a CAD file.

At first glance, it seems like just a regular basic call from a guy called Bobby in quotation marks.

Reporting that he's just driven past someone waving a flashlight, trying to flag cars down around the area where faith's body was found.

“And Bob, the guy that stopped to help and went to go and get Smith for Ryan?”

No, this call comes in before the cowboy arrives to where Ryan lives. It's 100% not the cowboy that's going to pick up Smith. Rosemary tells me she's done some digging into the report, and she's found something astonishing. It's full number appears to be a landline and you pick saw a cloud. Two hours away.

Wait, two hours away. Two hours away, and they're calling 911 to make a report about the plate's dip? Yes.

What I think is really interesting is the first two calls from the neighbor.

Those call are like automatically like snapped into creating a log for the call. For example, on the neighbor's court, you know, when a call comes in, the data's there, the cell phone number's there, the name of a reporting person is actually there. Now this other report has nothing like that.

And it appears to be possibly manually created. She goes on to explain that based on the number attached to the report. When the call was initially made, it would have been directed to the Grady County dispatcher, not the seminal county dispatcher. So Grady County would have had to transfer the call.

Because the call was transferred through Grady County, none of the automated snap-in data, other than the time the call came in, would have actually pushed through. So the dispatchers would have had to manually enter the information into the record. And when Rosemary tells me about the timing of the call,

I go from staggered to absolutely mind-blowing. The three calls at first one is 829 and 34 and then 837. And so the back to that we initially thought was a first call from the neighbor or actually not the first call.

“I believe the first call was from the bottom.”

This narrowed the timer is down by three minutes. So that's it's a big deal. And if you look at it in conjunction with the neighbor's first call,

Ryan's screaming and as soon as she heard that,

he went to his front door. So Ryan, you know, waving his flashlight around and then he called, "No, I'm on one."

“So there's an interesting kind of gap there, I think.”

So if you wait three minutes out, like you just timed that, it's a lot longer than it sounds, you know? If he's traveling at the speed limit, which I think is 65, if he's calling it 829, then, you know, he's driving past at 828. So you're kind of closing that gap a little.

And there's a four minute gap there between his call and the neighbor's call. So what happened in that four minutes? That's exactly right. We end the call and now I'm sitting in silence, trying to make it make sense. We've got this guy, Bobby, who's clearly using a fake name.

They're just having to be the same name as the first guy who stops during the aid. Falling from a landline 96 miles away at 829 pm, a mile north of where Ryan found faith's body. I just can't get my head around it, and I realize, as I'm still trying to connect the dots, that I'm failing, not because of the complexity around it all,

but because those dots don't even go together in the first place. In the hope drawn huge Ackman and Emma Thompson,

it's about 30 million dollars.

They have our motive. With the estimate of an anchor angle and the bus to Stefga, Glenn Kils, Anchef Scremier, a person in my new team. After 5th died, his sister Katelyn and her husband Casey, a doctor of son Aiden.

He was only 3 when she died, but he still has memories of her. Katelyn tells me if there's anything positive to hold onto on the back of 5th death.

“So there are kids who just hold enough to remember her.”

The idea that they'll be able to carry those memories with them for the rest of their lives gives them a sort of comfort. I asked Katelyn to tell me a little more about who faith was. Faith that faith was a very spunky and outgoing individual, very positive person.

She was a girl's girl. She loved to do makeup and her hair. She loved boys and magazines. She was in fact shoated with Justin Bieber when we were growing up. She was an all-through-out, girly girl.

There were a total of four of us, and we were all raised by our mother. I was the third in line, faith was second in line, and then our brothers held up the top of the chain and the bottom of the baby of the family. Faith and I were 360 days apart and age growing up.

We always shared a room together, and I was the more clean and organized sister,

and she was a mess train. Everything was just a mess. Close everywhere. Make up hair products, you name it, shoes, clothes. It was everywhere.

As kids, we were pretty close. We figured like your typical siblings did, but we would find a way to get around it. And at the end of the night, we were karaoke in our room, and dancing and jumping off our nightstands to some Shania train,

and any kind of pop music that was trendy back then. We also played softball together. We played for nine years together, her and I on the same team. So that was a really good thing for us bonding wives. And then funny enough for about half of those years.

Our mom was one of our coaches. So we had mom yell and add us pushing us to do better. When she wasn't trying to jump over a fence on a referee, because he called the wrong shot or she was definitely a ball mom.

“I remember one specific time, Faith, had pitched me a ball and the girl at the plate.”

She hit the ball and she almost hits me in my head with the baseball bat. I don't know that that's happening. I didn't see that happen. I'm just looking up for a ball, a pop fly ball. And my mother is coming around that softball cage.

She is coming out that referee. She is not having it. I don't know what happened after that. But I do remember her coming around those softball cages. Coming out that referee to tell him about himself.

They just says who she is. She is a protector of her children. That's what we do as parents. And even when it's some younger girl who doesn't realize where she's swinging up at, she wasn't doing intentionally.

But for the fact that it almost hit her baby child, it was a wrap. We got into our teenage years and still shared a room. I was the tomboy of girls and Faith was the girly of girls.

She was about boys. I was not so much about boys.

“I was just surviving and going to school and wanting to come home and sleep”

and just hang out chill watching TV.

Faith got pregnant at 17 and had her first child when she was 18.

Beautiful little girl. I was over the moon. I was the nurturing sister for sure. I swooned over her daughter being born. Faith even growing up.

She was the center of attention. She, everywhere she went, everybody just flocked to her. Her aura was where everybody wanted to be at. So Faith was just a life of the party. And I was more so not.

I was staying in the corner, watch everybody see how everybody acted. See who was my kind of person.

“And what kind of group really wasn't my kind of person.”

Faith was just like, "Law me friends with all of you. Until one of you say something that I don't like." And then I'll just fight her and we've run. We didn't hang out a whole lot in our group of friends. Because her group of friends happened to not be my group of friends.

Faith had a lot of abandonment issues and acceptance issues due to the fact that our father wasn't in our lives. And unfortunately, she fell into the wrong kind of crowds and to be accepted. She followed Sue and she did what other people did. Because she wanted to be liked and loved for who she was.

And she didn't see her self-worth like many of us had always seen herself for being.

So she started actively using drugs. And she lost custody of her daughter. She started seeking out treatment.

“Wanting to get better, wanting to get sober.”

And she was having a hard time. But she was doing it. And then a couple years later, she had aid in her son. And that was her kind of like in her mind kind of her restart. Like this is where I can't mess up.

I got to raise him and I got to keep my stuff together because I'm seeing my daughter. I'm on my way to get her back. I've got this new little baby who depends on me. I couldn't see how you can make the choice of a drug over your children. But now that I am a little bit more seasoned and experienced with life.

I know that it's not something that you can just make a choice to say. Okay, I'm done or I'm going to do it. It's just a monkey on your back. I take a breath when Caitlin first mentions faiths drug use. Not in judgment, but because I know how these things can sometimes play out. People with addiction issues, they often look upon unfavorably.

And it can change the perspective of a person in some people's eyes. It's the sort of thing that can lead to a bias or dismissiveness in the way a case is handled. And people sometimes take the view of well if she hadn't been there in the first place. It's prime victim blaming territory. There's no denying that addiction is part of faith story.

It was a daily dance with a devil and like so many who struggle with a devil will often lead. But she was fighting back, she'd moved into her own place, found steady work, and had gone through rehab. For the first time at a long time, she was getting back on her feet, focused on building something better for herself and her son. But the world around her hadn't changed.

The people in her orbit were still caught in the same cycle she was trying to escape. And she remained surrounded by the risks that came with it all. And when she had to aid in the day that she had him in the hospital, my husband and myself went to the hospital, of course.

And she looked at me and she said, "If something were to happen to me, please promise me you'll always take care of my son."

And I told her, "Of course, I promise that." And I didn't think not much more of it. That was kind of a crazy thing to ask me because you're not going anywhere. If losing faith that night on Highway 56 wasn't painful enough already, Caitlin goes on to tell me that it wasn't the first time that she and Amanda had felt the gut-dropping burden of loss and grief.

And the nine months earlier, the ground had already dropped out from beneath them. Even our older brother, he was 24 when he died. But he kind of rolled the roost. He was just a goofy kind of guy. Six foot forward, just flipped his head in the clouds all the time.

June 29th of 2020, we get a phone call that Stephen had died.

I was off a work that day.

“And I was just kind of running some errands and funny enough.”

I was at the bank in a teller line. And two aisles over from me, I see that there's a sheriff also in the teller line. And he is, I would assume his wife works at the bank. They're having a conversation. They had just got done leaving a brick on the highway with some fatalities.

And it was just awful of a sad. And I was just like me, and that's horrible. And I continued driving when about my day and not ten minutes later, do I get a phone call of this lady crying saying that Stephen had died. So I immediately hang up and I'm calling my mom, calling my mom.

She's at work. So she's not answering their phone because she's actually in training at work.

And finally, she answers and like, I need you to figure this out.

Because this is what I'm being told. I don't know. You got to figure this out. And sure enough, about 30 minutes later, I felt like forever.

“But really, I was, I've just pulled into the pharmacy when I got that call.”

And she was crying. And she said that Stephen had died in a car accident. And he lost his life. His dog passed away. And another lady had died in that fatality.

Stephen and his girlfriend were traveling down. Highway 102. I was a two lane highway. And he clicked the back end of this little SUV.

That was going the opposite direction. And Stephen went, his vehicle went to the ditch.

He had overcorrected. What down into the ditch came back up, back onto the road. And then his car rolled a few times before landing on the head of the vehicle. And at that time, another lady who was traveling behind Stephen, smashed into Stephen's side of the vehicle.

And killing him head off. Nine months and one day.

“That's all the time they got between losing Stephen and losing faith.”

Nine months to grieve, nine months to try to put the pieces back together. Nine months before another phone call, another highway, another devastating drive towards flashing lights. It would shatter their existence. And this time, it'll be Caitlin and Casey who made that drive.

About nine months later, Mark's 28th of 2021. My husband and I, we were Abbott Fisher. We got up and we took our niece and our nephew. We were all going to go fishing. That was a Sunday.

So we all loaded up. We went out fishing, fished all day. And that day, specifically, Casey had caught the biggest bass of his entire lifetime. It was amazing. I was a good nine pounds.

He was just on top of the world on that fish. And he happened to be on the phone with his mother at the time. That he caught this nine and a half pound bass. And I'm on the other side of the pond. And he's freaking out.

He's yelling at me. And he's telling us, well, he's got to go. He's got to go. He's got to get to hands on this fishing reel. Catches this big Ofish.

We decided we wrapped it up around seven o'clock, seven thirty. And come back into town. And we stopped and got our kiddo something to eat. And as I pull back into the driveway, my phone rings. And it's my mother.

And I don't answer it. I got my hands full. My hands are dirty. Just everything just wreaks of fish and sweat and sun. And as soon as my phone stops ringing, Casey's phone starts ringing.

And it's my mom. So just new. It's like that stomach draw group. And she says. And she says.

And she's like, this lady just called me. Told me that faith is dead. That faith is laying on the side of the road dead. And Casey at that point. He gets out of the car.

I'm telling our kids like, you know, let's let's get out of the car. He goes into the house. And I just kind of sit in our car by myself. I'm just trying to gather what she was saying at the time. Casey, Casey comes back out of the house.

And he's like, I know where it's at. And we just, we just hauled tail. Casey had called the sheriff's office and got the location of any accidents in that area at that time. And they had given them an approximate location of where they were working and accident seeing right then.

And I remember going down the highway.

And you can see all of these lights going on on emergency vehicles. And I see that there's there's a line of cars at a stop. And Casey was driving thankfully. And he put the car in park. And before he had it in park, I was out of that truck running up this highway.

And the middle of nowhere.

“And I remember I was running until I got about 10 feet to faith spotty on the ground before I just stopped.”

There was just no need to go any further. Not for sure why. If I could go back, I would have definitely done a few things differently. But I stopped. And I see all these men standing around my sister's body.

And there's a big light tripod looking till above her. And one of those officers look up and they see me and they start coming my way.

And he's emotionally back behind another emergency vehicle.

And I'm just telling him, I'm like, I need to know if that's faith-ealy. I need to know if that's my sister or not. I have to know. And he's like, well, this young lady, she doesn't have any identification. We're working on trying to get an identification on her.

And he asked me, why am I there? So I said, there was this lady who called my mom who said that my sister had been hit by a car. She was dead. I said, I don't know who it is, but I just need to know. Like my brother just died nine months ago.

I need to know if this is my sister or not. And he says, okay, well, do you have a photo over?

“Do you just you have any tattoos, markings, anything you can think of?”

And I'm like, well, she looks like me. She looks like me.

I'm like, she has tattoos.

She's got a monitor on her legs. She's got roses on her arm. And he's like, well, we believe that this is faith. And he said, but we're working on that. I'll be right back.

And so at that point, I just, I just, I just collapsed in the middle of that highway. And I call my mom. And I'm calling my mom to tell her that it is her. I felt that it was her. I knew it.

And poor Casey, he don't know what to do. He's crying. And he's trying to console me. And I'm just, I'm not getting out of the middle of this highway. For what, seem like forever.

“And then I hear this woman or somebody coming.”

So I look up and there's this lady. So I stand up and she comes rushing over to me, hugging me. She's like, I'm so sorry. I loved her so much. I hope that she didn't run in front of a vehicle.

I loved her. And she's just rambling on and on. And I have no idea who this woman is. And she's like, if you need anything, just call me. And then she leaves.

I don't know what she went to go do. And another officer comes up to me. And he says, if you want, just go sit in your vehicle. And then we'll send somebody down to you. Caitlin explains the woman who approached to that night was Ronika Ryan's mom.

She was also the one who made the call early at a faith's mom, Amanda, to tell her that they'd been an accident. And that faith was found dead on the side of the highway. And we started making her way back to the vehicle. And two people had approached me.

And they say that they're with the DA's office. They're investigators of the DA's office. And they're there that night kind of looking over everything. One of them gives me his phone number and says, you know, I'll be in contact with you. And another gentleman comes up.

He's a lieutenant. And he says, my name is Lieutenant DSB. And I'm with OHP. I'm sorry to hear about your sister. We're investigating it.

But at this time, I would advise you not to talk to the other party involved. Is this whole, this, this ordeal is very hinky. So whatever you do, I would not talk to that party. And at the time, I'm not putting those two and two together. That connection until we happen to see Veronica come to our vehicle once more.

And she's, she's still in the same kind of state. I'm so sorry. I loved her. She was like my daughter. I hope she didn't run in front of a vehicle earlier today.

She was drugged. And she was out on the highway. My husband was writing his moer. He saw her in the middle of the highway.

And Ryan is so distraught.

He's in the truck. And then that's kind of when it all started clicking of who she was with at the time. And then Casey and I stayed there on scene. I don't know what time it was. That the medical examiner's office.

I picked up my sister. But we stayed there until that medical examiner's. They hadn't left the scene with my sister. If we could go back in time and I said this to myself is like. If we had a known the right question to ask on scene.

“Like, I think Caitlin and I would have been like, hey, why, if she's hit my car.”

Why isn't her body spread out? Why isn't it look more like an accident? Why are you talking to these people where she just left them? Didn't they realize to be a question? They're not thinking to pursue that accident.

There's no evidence to show that there's a vehicle. There's no skid marks. There's no broken glass. There's no tell-life. There's no broken mirrors.

In the lady even said the Ronica lady even said, well, yeah, we had a scuffle back at the house. You know, I went back into shower or something like that. You know, you know, the rest sort of around in the night. Like, why didn't the police go down there? And at least look at the area to see if there was blood.

“And then they come up with this choppy video of this white truck with the trailer and time stand and like, come on.”

[Music] Peyton is eight now. He doesn't talk about her as much as what he did when he was three and four and five. But he'll say, hey, it's usually over dinner. He's like, hey, we told me some more stories about mommy things.

Yeah. What was she like? What was her favorite ice cream? What was her favorite color? Yeah.

And we just will get into big conversations about faith when we were children and growing up together. And he just laughs. And he's like, oh, as we do have a lot in common. We like the same ice cream and the same colors and the same kind of music. And there are a few things that he will probably hold on forever when it comes to what he likes and she likes at the same time.

They don't come with a handbook especially with this type of situation when it comes to children. He's been till recently, Aiden has known that there's more to why mommy faith has passed and why she's in heaven. And throughout those years, we could only tell him, like, you know, we'll be able to tell you more when you get older and you understand. But mommy faith was in the wrong place at the wrong time and Jesus had to come and take her home. Hey, he was like four years old. He's looking up in the sky, looking up the clouds and we've told him that, you know, his mommy's up in cloud, you know, and trying to give him a reason why she's up in that cloud or what kind of work she's doing.

It's just tough. He just knows his mommy's gone and he wishes his mommy's back. I hang up the phone from Caitlin in case he and just sit there for a minute. The weight of everything settling heavy on my shoulders. To lose two loved ones within the space of nine months, devastating.

But to then wake up every day in this kind of holding pattern, asking questions without answers and never finding closure.

We're tired to even comprehend. But before I can get too deep into contemplating it, something else in the back of my mind starts pushing its way to the surface. Something that doesn't quite add up. There are a lot of things in face case that don't make sense, but this is different. This is something I hadn't fully seen in context until now.

And it's to do with the initial call to Amanda, the one where she was first told about what had happened to faith.

“And all of a sudden, it's the only thing I can think about.”

I grab my phone and dial Caitlin's number again. So was it Ronnaker that called your mum? Yes. Okay, do you know what time she called? I don't know. I believe so my mom probably would.

She's got the times. We pulled up about nine. It was between nine and nine fifteen. And it's a 40 minute. Yeah. Because, you know, like the, the, the,

Or only after eight thirty. It was like a thirty two or something right. It must have happened pretty quickly because If it took you guys 40 minutes to get there and you think you got there around nine nine fifteen, then yeah.

Yeah. What time did Ronnaker miss the cold? Probably got dentition, you know. Some cold between eight and eight thirty. Maybe some life at that.

Yeah.

But the first because the first I don't want calls at eight thirty two.

Faith's case is still open and her killer or killers have not yet been brought to justice.

“If you know anything about faith, her death or those who may be responsible.”

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If you'd like to keep up to date with progress on face case, please visit and follow the justice for faithyly Facebook page. You'll find a link to it in the episode notes. bluntforce trauma is a production of Echo Space written in hosted by Troy Taylor. Executive producers of Troy Taylor marked to rule in French shirts. A main theme song is "Lose My Mind" by May and David Off.

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