Was Plummer’s Killer in the Database All Along?

[00:00:00]Our guard this week is [music] Terrence Kenomi Plameumber, the Ace of Spades from North Carolina.

[00:00:08]We talk a lot about what it takes to solve a murder. The lucky breaks, the [music] dead ends, new evidence. But sometimes solving a case isn't about finding [music] something new. It's about finally understanding something that was there all along, as was the case here. It was Memorial Day weekend in [music] 2010 and hot as Hades in North Carolina when 22-year-old Terren Kenomi [music] Plameumber was found murdered in a crime so brutal and so [music] deliberate that it stayed with everyone who touched the case, especially Lieutenant Jeff Lleier. What began as another homicide investigation became the [music] one case he could never shake, his white whale. More than a decade later, [music] the answer would come from something investigators had possessed all along and information they never knew existed. Finally solving Plameumber's murder and giving Lleier something that he had spent years chasing, closure. I'm Ashley Flowers and this is [music] the deck.

[00:01:19]On May 31st, 2010, Lieutenant Jeff Lleier was just a young homicide detective [music] with the Fateville Police Department on his way to a training program. And that's when his phone rang in the early morning hours.

[00:01:32]On the other end was his sergeant with some instructions. Turn around and head south in the opposite direction toward R Street in the Bonnie Dune neighborhood of Fagetville. There had been a murder [music] and they needed Lleair on the job. He'd been told that someone had found a body in an abandoned duplex and it was who local officers knew as [music] Terrence or Kenomi Plumber. They were a sex worker in the neighborhood.

[00:01:58]And while their identity was known by officers, how they identified themselves as a person was not as clear, so I'll use plumber [music] in this episode.

[00:02:07]Lleair didn't get many details in his first call out. But honestly, [music] even if he had, it wouldn't have prepared him for what he was walking into. Lleair explained it to our reporter as if it had just [music] happened yesterday.

[00:02:23]>> This was in May and it was about 95° that day. And there's no power at this place. So, it was really hot, really humid. And the place was covered in trash and it's got a lot of old beer bottles and that kind of stuff. And the place was just filthy. You go into that room and one of the things that you learn real early as a homicide cop is death has a smell and um that was readily evident in only 24 hours because of the heat. Um that smell was per had permeated the whole room. The other things you you smell is blood and there's a lot of it in this case. And um the the best way I can describe that to you is to put a penny in your mouth.

[00:03:13]That sensation you get from that copper taste is kind of when you go into a really bloody crime scene, that's kind of what you're dealing with. As Lieutenant Lleair stepped into the stifling room, his eyes fell [music] to the victim's body, laying face down, wig displaced and bra still on, but naked from the waist down [music] and positioned a few feet from a mattress that was on the bedroom floor. As we walked over a little closer to his uh the victim's body, um the amount of injury um even before we moved the victim um was evident.

[00:03:53]There was uh cutting slash marks throughout legs, hands, arms, face. And again, I'm, you know, I don't want the crime scene folks yelling at me. Um, I don't want to move anything around, but I'm over, you know, trying to really take a look at what I have.

[00:04:10]>> Part of what he had right from the top was what he suspected could have been the murder weapon, a bloody knife laying next to the body.

[00:04:19]>> Trying to paint you a picture. Um, and this is common what we see in what would we describe as a trap house or a flop house. There's a mattress on the floor.

[00:04:29]It's not in a bed frame. It's just a mattress on the floor. the the uh comforter was covered in blood. Um a lot of clothing and stuff laying around, a lot of cigarette butts. Um and again, it's 95° in there, right? So, we hadn't been working 30 minutes and we were already soaking wet with sweat. That becomes an issue, too, cuz you don't want to drip sweat or contaminate your evidence or whatever. [music] And then you got three or four people in a room working. So, that adds the heat, you know, it starts building up even more.

[00:04:58]So, um, I don't remember the exact number of pieces of evidence, but we collected a significant amount >> along with the blood soaked bedding and [music] cigarette butts. There were a number of condoms and beer cans around the room along with something that ruled out at least one motive.

[00:05:17]>> There was actually some money on the floor in the bathroom. I think there might have been over a hundred bucks total, which kind of made me think, okay, well, this weren't a robbery.

[00:05:28]>> The money might have confirmed that this wasn't a robbery, but I don't think anyone really believed at any point that that was the motive here. It appeared to Lleair that the attack started in the bathroom where Plumber was first stabbed in the [music] upper thigh, and he could tell that because of the arterial blood that had been sprayed on the bathroom wall. It then seemed that plumber moved or was moved to the bedroom and that's where the rest of the attack took [music] place. When I say attack, I am not just talking about a frenzy knife attack. This was torture.

[00:06:03]And this next part, it's a lot to take in, mostly because it reads more like a horror movie than a crime scene. But it is also important. I believe it speaks to the killer's MO, their state of mind, and what they're capable of doing.

[00:06:20]Plumber had multiple stab wounds, including one between the collar bones to the top of both lungs. According to law enforcement, this made it so that plumber couldn't scream. Their Achilles tendons were severed so that plumber couldn't run and their eyelids had been completely cut off so that plumber likely had to watch everything that was happening. Ultimately, the cause of death was determined to be exanguination, as in plumber bled to death from the multiple injuries inflicted by the very knife that was found near their body. The sheer brutality of this case only fueled Llear to get out on the streets and talk to anyone that he could.

[00:07:02]>> I'm the kind of fell that I'll talk to a stop sign, right? If it'll if it'll stand still long enough, I'll have that conversation.

[00:07:10]>> But talking to someone and getting someone to give you information are two very different things. And Llear knew that in order to solve this case, earning the trust of the community was the only way to get people to speak with him. I even tried several times stopped by early in the morning with some McDonald's coffee and some breakfast. I went out there several times like that.

[00:07:32]Um, and I would just show up in the neighborhood, stop by McDonald's, get 10 or 15 biscuits, a couple cups of coffee, park my car, set that stuff on the trunk, and the people in the neighborhood would swing by. My last name is Lock Leair, so for short they call me Lock. It's Detective Lock.

[00:07:49]What's up, man? you know, pass out the stuff to see if anybody had information or whatever. They knew I weren't out there to shake them down for what they did or, you know, pat them down for any drug prefet whatever. I'm trying to solve a murder here. I don't have time for those kind of crimes, right? I didn't care.

[00:08:05]>> The Mickey De's worked. It drew a woman to Lock Leer who knew a whole lot about the room that plumber was found in [music] because she said it was kind of a shared space with a bit of a if you know you know kind of secret.

[00:08:20]>> So she's just sitting there just kind of leaned against the seat just talking to me and everything. And she opened up real quick as far as information goes.

[00:08:29]She said, "Hey, my DNA is in that room.

[00:08:31]You're going to find my fingerprints in that room." She said, "I was just in there two nights ago. There's probably some condoms in there. And she's the one that initially brought up the knife. And she said, "Hey, there's a knife in there that we always kept hid underneath the the mattress." And um everybody that used the room knew that that knife was in there. If you had a a date go bad, you know, and somebody's trying to be weird with you or trying to hurt you, whatever, you know that there's a knife in there. So, I had her describe it to me. I even showed her a picture of it, and she was like, "Yep, that's it.

[00:09:01]That's the knife." So, their murder weapon was something shared, but who knows by how many people that plus all the condoms, beer bottles, and cigarette butts in that room that was used by so many people was going to make for a real game of DNA whack-a-ole.

[00:09:17]>> So, we're loading that database up, right? Everybody I talk to, I try to stick a Q-tip in their mouth and get them to give me their fingerprints. We we identified a lot of other sex workers in the room as well um with fingerprints. Lleair was depending on this community of sex workers to explain who might want to do this to plumber.

[00:09:37]Did someone have it out for them in particular? Were there any violent clients that they knew of? Well, it turned out Lieutenant Lleier had a lot to learn.

[00:09:47]>> It didn't take long for us to start talking to some of the other folks in the neighborhood who were sex workers.

[00:09:57]And immediately, you know, we start asking them, can you guys think of someone who stands out that you've dealt with, who's rough or who's in the twisted stuff, um, [snorts] who has tried to hurt people in the past? Um, can you guys point any of those out? And, uh, they kind of looked at us funny. And I I remember some of them I was like, "Well, what you're looking at me funny. Why is that?" And they're like, "Man, we deal with that every day, multiple times a day, right?"

[00:10:32]And I was like, "Oh, okay.

[00:10:35]Well, all right.

[00:10:41]Rank them then, right? Who do you who who should I go look for? Who do Who was the victim with?"

[00:10:46]>> But the problem wasn't narrowing people down. The problem was that there were too many people to count. And again, while we don't know how Plumber identified, transgender people are targets [music] for violence in outsized numbers. The Human Rights Campaign Foundation found that since 2013, 84% of known transgender homicide victims in the United States were people of color [music] and nearly 74% were black trans women. Things get a whole lot murkier when it comes to trans sex workers near military bases. But a Rand study found [music] that certain military installations were quote unquote hot spots for sexual assault with some bases reporting more than 500 assaults in a [music] single year. If you heard our recent episode about Jimmy Jaime [music] Riddle, then you know that this level of violence near a military base is not uncommon. But even still, there [music] were a few specific people that came on Lleair's radar.

[00:11:46]>> There's a guy who he he wouldn't dress like a cop, but he was in a a security guard uniform and he would kind of portray himself as a cop. they said would come up there all the time and like [music] would especially with the less experienced sex workers, you know, uh he would stop them, you know, tell them to get against the wall and he would pat him down really rough or whatever. Um just a just a kind of a weird weirdo kind of guy. Um, and I told my partner at the time, "All right, we're literally going to start every name that they give us, we're going to start writing that name down when we find him."

[00:12:26]>> And that's exactly what Llear did. He ran down every name he'd been given, including a man that Plameumber had, according to witnesses, had an argument with the night before the murder.

[00:12:37]Someone who was historically known to be rough with sex workers. And while Lleier was knocking on all these people's doors, getting fingerprints and DNA swabs, he got his first piece of good news, [music] they actually had something that they could compare those things to, or at least the print. A bloody palm print was recovered from the scene in plumbers's blood. Luckily, that palm print was on the sink, which is a very smooth surface, almost glass-like, so it was perfect, and it was in blood. So, my initial concerns were that that palm print belonged to my victim. You know, he tried to after he was injured, he put his hand over it or whatever, got some blood on his hand, and then he deposited that palm print. Um, so that's the first thing that I had our latent examiner check. Hey, make sure that doesn't belong to the victim.

[00:13:31]>> It didn't, which meant that no matter who else came and went from that place and went, this had to be their killers.

[00:13:41]>> Hearing that the palm print didn't belong to the victim and it was [music] in the victim's blood was almost like an early Christmas gift because I knew that that that that's the key piece of evidence in this case.

[00:14:01]In the mind of then detective Jeff Lleier, once he heard that he had the killer's palm print in the victim's blood, he was sure it was going to be case closed in no time. Llear may have been just 7 years into his career, but by then he had already had a reputation for getting results.

[00:14:19]>> Up until this point in my career, I'd never had an unsolved case.

[00:14:24]And that was a it was a point of pride for me, I guess, right? Um, and I kind of walked around like I was 10 ft tall and bulletproof. And uh, I I wasn't concerned at all at this crime scene.

[00:14:40]I'm like, get this thing figured out, you know, we'll be done by by the end of the week. We'll [music] have this thing figured out. The sink, there's a bloody palm print. That's solid gold right there for me. I thought I had it right.

[00:14:54]We brought that bloody palm print back and we ran it through our databases and I didn't get a hit.

[00:14:59]>> Well, that was the first moment that [music] Llear felt not so tall and not quite so bulletproof.

[00:15:07]>> So, now we're months into the investigation and um nobody that I had talked with so far, no, none of those folks palm print matched the palm print that was taken from the scene. We didn't have any other crimes that mirrored that crime. Nothing else to make us believe that we had somebody was going around chasing down sex workers [music] to murder them.

[00:15:34]So, it's a little frustrating. You get a little depressed about it because you got this key piece of evidence here.

[00:15:39]That's a what better evidence than a print. And I couldn't match it. Didn't m it weren't hidden in any of our databases. There's no way Lleair could forget about this case because even if he tried, the community wasn't going to let him.

[00:15:54]>> As the weeks and days went on, if even if I was just driving through and I stopped at a stoplight and one of those folks saw me from that neighborhood, they would scream it out, you you told us you were going to solve it, don't lie. Don't be a liar.

[00:16:09]And um that also became a bur in my saddle if you will because I had made my mind up that just to show his grits his grocery I was going to solve this case right [music] folks weren't this was my wipe whale case >> plumber's family was knocking down Lleier's door too we reached out to Terrence Plameumber senior and he didn't want to be interviewed at this time so Lleier told us about his calls with the plumber family Every time I talked with them, they always just wanted to remind me, look, don't forget about this. This is a human being and regardless of where that person was at in their life, you know, they made some mistakes, got on the wrong road, but they loved that person, right? And they reminded me of that.

[00:16:59]>> Lleair didn't forget about this case.

[00:17:01]And even though this was his white whale, he had other murders that landed on his desk. Other murders that demanded his [music] time, pulling him away from the one case that he couldn't solve.

[00:17:12]>> I don't know that a day went by that I didn't think about it. And the guys in the office, every chance they got, reminded me that I had that unsolved. And it was really frustrating to know that I had the one of the most soughtafter identifiers in the case. and it hadn't identified anyone.

[00:17:33]That was tough.

[00:17:34]>> Whenever he had a moment to revisit the plumber case, Llear did. He was turning over every possibility that he could think of, throwing out theories, chasing leads, seeing what might stick. He was even calling other military installations to see if maybe they had similar cases. He presented the case at conferences. He reached out to homicide detectives outside of his department, hoping that someone might [music] see what he couldn't. At one point, Lleair even asked the Laton print examiner if he could be totally mixed up, questioning his own investigation. But the Laton examiner assured him that the [music] palm print is exactly what they needed to nail their guy. And she became nearly as obsessed with this as him.

[00:18:18]>> She said that she had actually dreamed about that palm print. She could literally the ridge detail and everything was ingrained into her brain.

[00:18:28]She could identify that print not even looking at it. It was just burned into her mind that way. She wanted it solved as almost as much as I did.

[00:18:37]>> As years went by, plumbers's case would have should have been in a new home, the cold case room, but Lleair refused to move it. Not even when he switched desks and got a promotion to [music] sergeant in 2019. Plumbers's big old box remained in front of him the entire time. And as it turns out, Lleair's relationship with homicide was a lot like his relationship with Plumbers's case. No matter how far he wondered, he always found his way back. By 2022, he was in his old stomping grounds again.

[00:19:10]>> I eventually find myself back in charge of the homicide unit.

[00:19:15]And uh the first week, the first day I'm back up in the homicide unit, of course, my mind immediately goes back to this case. I'm going to now that I'm back up in homicide, I'm going to solve this case.

[00:19:27]>> For plumbers's case, Lleer was a dog with a bone. And just as he was settling back into the homicide unit, [music] one of the detectives mentioned the Midatlantic Cold Case Homicide Investigators Association meeting. He said, "Hey, why don't you go and present this case?" And at this point, Lleier was willing to do anything. [music] So, why not? Now, the folks at this conference are the best of the best.

[00:19:51]They are retired FBI agents, homicide detectives, SBI agents, DNA experts, you get the picture. And all at one meeting for Lleair to shoot his shot again.

[00:20:02]>> And I presented the case to them.

[00:20:06]They, you know, wrote some notes down, threw some ideas at me. And a friend of mine who is actually in charge of a big chunk of CCBI in Raleigh, the city county Bureau of Identifications, his name's Andy Parker, catches me in the hallway after I presented the case and makes a suggestion.

[00:20:24]>> Blink and you'll miss it cuz that was it. Just one moment in a hallway that changed the trajectory [music] of this case. And he was like, "Look, I'm I'm not trying to insult you here, but he was like, when you put that print in every night, it's consistently comparing other prints automatically." He said, "You put that in in 2010." I was like, "Yeah." And he said, "Uh, buddy, you might want to go back and check because the systems have all changed since then."

[00:21:02]And now they communicate.

[00:21:04]>> I'm sorry, what?

[00:21:06]>> Back then all that was in its infancy, especially with palm prints. But he said, "You want to make sure that your prints just not querying against just the prints that's in your local area."

[00:21:17]And I had I said, "Well, I I didn't know that. Had never thought of that." So he said, "Just simply take it out or have your latent examiner take the print out and then reenter it and then that way it'll go nationwide. It won't just query against prince from your region.

[00:21:33]>> Take a beat here and make sure what he just said fully sinks in. Especially for anyone in law enforcement listening, cuz I didn't know this. Lair, the bulletproof homicide detective with a stellar solve rate, didn't know this.

[00:21:47]The Laton print examiner that he worked with, didn't mention this to him. So, I have to think that other people out there don't know this, too. And I get why, because trying to get to the bottom of this has been super confusing and complicated. [music] The question I went around asking everyone is, does Aphus continually run unidentified prints against new ones or not? And the answer I [music] think I'm getting back, at least from the Fateville PD and Kristen Slapper, a forensic [music] scientist, is no.

[00:22:23]And the question mark is only coming from me because when I look at state agency websites, some of them very clearly say that queries are continually being rerun. So I get why everyone's confused. It seems like there is a difference in the state and national databases and even stateto state that don't treat rerunning prints the same. I am determined to try and get a source of truth on this and be able to explain it in a way that a novice like me can like wrap my head around, but I need a little more time. Stay tuned. [music] Until then, to be safe, if you have a cold case, take Lleair's advice. Rerun your prints. There is a chance that when you ran your prints, they were only compared to your local database, not a [music] national one. And even if it was run against a national database, at some point, if that was more than like a day ago, there are likely new prints to compare it to.

[00:23:21]Rerun your old prints. That might be the only thing standing between one of your cold cases becoming solved or not. Cuz guess what happened when Lleair reran his?

[00:23:32]>> My late examiner calls me, asks me if I'm in the office. I tell her I am. She comes into my office and she said, "I got some information." And I was like, "Well, hit me with it." And she said, she slides this piece of paper over on my desk and she said, "That's the person that murdered Terrence Plumber."

[00:23:57]After more than 13 years, Lleier finally had the answers that he'd been searching for, a name. And his late print examiner took it one step further and included a photo. And I actually got to look at that person. I knew what he looked like.

[00:24:13]Now, you always think you got some idea of what the bad guy looks like.

[00:24:19]And in this case, I didn't I didn't That's not what I expected. It's just a normal looking dude, right? Nothing special, nothing over the top. It just looked like another Joe. We're sitting there looking at one another and there was a moment we're just kind of like, "This dude has haunted us.

[00:24:39]for all these years and now we're sitting here looking at him. We know who he is. We know what his name is. We know where he's from.

[00:24:45]>> The man's name was Joshua Aaron Richardson. In 2010, he was a 28-year-old soldier at Fort Bragg in Fagatville. But shortly after the murder took place, he had been chaptered out of the military for disciplinary reasons.

[00:25:00]He went on to have a significant criminal history. Records reveal six arrests for charges related to drugs, trespassing, and assault. most of which took [music] place after he'd gone back home to Texas. By the time Lieutenant Lleair was looking at his photo in 2022, Richardson was living in an unhoused camp for veterans. Lleair told our reporter Annie Rodri Jones that it took until 2023 for the Fateville PD and the Houston PD to solidify a plan of action.

[00:25:30]But when they got Richardson in for an interview, he admitted to being a soldier at Fort Bragg during the [music] time of Plamer's murder. He even said that he'd been to some strip clubs around the Bonnie Dune area, but he said that he didn't know the victim.

[00:25:45]>> Well, physical evidence says otherwise, right? His palm print is in my victim's blood in that bathroom.

[00:25:51]So, that story went out the window really quickly.

[00:25:55]>> And then what did he do when you told him that you had the evidence to show that he was the one? A >> comment was made almost like, "Well, I guess you got me. do what you got to do.

[00:26:07]So at that point we decision was made to go ahead and swear to a warrant back here in North Carolina which we did and then he was taken into custody in in Houston and then the extradition process started.

[00:26:20]>> Richardson was indicted and instead of going to trial they offered him a plea deal.

[00:26:26]>> He was charged with firstdegree murder and they took a plea for um second degree.

[00:26:34]He is now in the custody of the Department of Corrections for the state of North Carolina.

[00:26:38]>> Richardson went to prison in 2024 and according to his inmate detail page. The minimum term of his sentence is 14 years and 11 months and the maximum term is 18 years and 8 months. His projected release date is February 4th, 2038.

[00:26:58]What's wild to me is that in all the time since his arrest and incarceration, Joshua Aaron Richardson has never been connected to any other murders. One of the reasons I felt it was important to include the details of what happened to Plumber is because I find that so hard to believe. That was Richardson's first and last murder. Richardson never gave a statement or a motive, even when a different detective interviewed him. But Lleair says that he feels pretty confident that there aren't any other victims of Richardson out there. But who knows, maybe someone out there listening will rerun some old prints one day and get the same shock that Lieutenant Lleair did. So here's your reminder again. Rerun those prints.

[00:27:49]Lleier is constantly on the receiving end of calls, not just from law enforcement, but from families. On Christmas, Thanksgiving, he always picks up the phone when they call about their loved ones. And over 12 years after Plumber's life was taken, he was the one to make the bittersweet phone call to their father.

[00:28:10]>> Mr. plumber, we're calling you to let you know that we have the person in custody who took your son's life."

[00:28:19]>> And to that, Mr. Plameumber replied, >> "I'm glad you didn't give up on my my son's case. I'm glad that you didn't forget. That was always our concern, the family's concern. Thank you for never forgetting." Lieutenant Lair held Plamer's card in his hand during the interview with our reporter Annie and he told her this.

[00:28:41]>> If I live to be 100 years old, the the crime scene and and this kid's picture, uh, I would probably remember them even if I [music] lived to be an old old man.

[00:28:54]>> Anything next for this case or is it closed?

[00:28:57]>> Case closed. Um, this case file actually has already been put in storage. I had to get pull it out of storage to do this this interview with you. Um, this podcast is called the deck and it's called the deck for a reason. This deck of cards, some people can look at it as a deck of there's a deck of losses, right? Those are cases that you didn't solve.

[00:29:20]But I try to tell these young detectives coming up now, it's a deck of possibilities because you can take one of the cards out of this deck and possibly put some new fresh eyes on it and solve it and then you can take that card out and uh you can do what I'm about to do.

[00:29:45]What Lleair did was take out Plumber's card, the Ace of Spades, and he scrolled one word across it diagonally in thick black marker. Solved. While Plumber's father didn't want to be interviewed for this podcast, he did have a message for families out there dealing with the same thing. He said, "Keep checking in with law enforcement. Ask about retesting.

[00:30:09]Ask about science. be diligent because the squeaky wheel gets the grease. He also provided our reporter with a heartfelt statement about plumber that I'd like to read. Losing my son to murder is a pain that words can never fully describe. For a long time, I carried hurt, anger, and questions that seemed impossible to answer. But I realized that if I held on to hate, it would only destroy me from the inside. I made the decision to give it to God because I could not carry that burden alone. Through prayer, God has helped me find peace even in the midst of unimaginable loss. I pray for the person who took my son's life. I pray that somehow he will find his way to God, seek forgiveness, [music] and allow God to change his heart. That does not erase the pain, but it frees me from being consumed by bitterness. There are still days when I wonder what my son's life would have been like if it had not been cut short. When I see the accomplishments of my friend's children, I'm genuinely proud of them and celebrate their success. Yet, I cannot help but think about what my son might have accomplished. What dreams would he have fulfilled?

[00:31:23]Whose life would he have touched? What kind of man would he have become? How many people would he have helped along his journey? Those questions will always remain in my heart. While I may never know the answers, I thank God for the time I had with him and for the memories that can never be taken away. I trust that God has my son in his care. And I look forward to the day when I will see him again. Until then, I choose faith over bitterness, love over hate, and trust in God's plan, even when I do not understand it.

[00:32:00]The Deck is an Audiochuck production [music] with theme music by Ryan Lewis.

[00:32:04]To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit the deckpodcast.com.

[00:32:10]I think Chuck would approve.