Texas v. Uriah Urick

Terry Utton had known this family for over forty years.

He was married to Tammy's sister-in-law. When his wife Sandra passed away in 2021 after almost 45 years of marriage, Terry stayed close to the family. When Tammy's husband Butch died about a year and a half later, Terry and Tammy grew even closer. Friends became something more. Two people who had lost their spouses found comfort in each other.

On Tuesday night, February 4th, 2025, Terry sat on Tammy's front porch in Baycliff, Texas. They were cutting up. Laughing. Tara and her boyfriend Uriah were inside eating Taco Bell they had ordered through DoorDash. It was a normal evening. Nothing seemed off.

Terry texted Tammy goodnight and went home.

By Wednesday morning, Tammy was texting him that Tara had slept in again and would not get her clothes out of the washing machine. Normal frustrations. A grandmother trying to get her teenage granddaughter to go to school. Terry had seen this before. Tammy and Tara would argue about school attendance, about Uriah, about the normal things grandmothers and teenage girls argue about.

Then the texts stopped.

Terry kept reaching out Wednesday. Thursday. The messages changed color. They were not going through. He asked if she had blocked him. No response. He drove to the house. Her vehicle was in the driveway. He knocked on doors. Beat on windows. Called her phone. Nothing.

So Terry called 911. And then he broke in.

He climbed through the master bathroom window after breaking the glass. The moment he got inside, he knew. Thirty-six years earlier, Terry had been a firefighter in Galveston County. He had smelled death before. He knew what it meant.

The gun safes were open and empty. Tammy was lying across the bed, nude, covered with sheets and blankets piled over her head. Her bedroom door had been locked from the inside and pulled shut. The washing machine had been tipped over to block the back door. A mattress was propped against the bathroom window.

Tammy King was dead. Shot in the left side of the head.

And her seventeen-year-old granddaughter, the girl she had raised since age two, the girl she had adopted and tried to guide through high school, was gone. Along with her eighteen-year-old boyfriend. Along with thousands of dollars. Along with an arsenal of firearms that Tammy's late husband had collected from his gun store.

Day 2 of this capital murder trial answered the question of what happened after Tammy King died. Eight witnesses took the stand and painted a picture of two teenagers on the run. Neighbor surveillance footage. The friend who gave them a ride. The acquaintance who let them crash at his apartment. The crime scene investigators who documented what was left behind. The financial crimes detective who traced the money.

But somewhere in all that testimony, a different picture started to emerge. Not in what the prosecution asked. In what the defense asked. Questions about abuse. Questions about the relationship between a grandmother and the granddaughter she was raising. Questions about what was really happening inside that house on 15th Street.

Uriah Urick is eighteen years old. He faces capital murder charges that carry a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. The State of Texas says he shot Tammy King in the head and then helped Tara steal her money and guns. The prosecution has Instagram messages they say show him asking permission to kill her. They have a murder weapon traced through ballistics. They have a trail of panicked teenagers trying to flee to the Mexican border.

But Uriah Urick is presumed innocent. And the defense has not yet presented its case.

This is Day 2. This is where the flight begins.

The first witness of the day established the timeline with grainy black and white surveillance footage. Yurit Villanueva grew up next door to the Kings on 15th Street in Baycliff. She had known Tara her whole life. They used to play together in the street when they were little girls. But they drifted apart around fifth or sixth grade and went their separate ways.

Yurit was not living at her parents' house in February 2025. She was hospitalized the day before her testimony and had just been released. She was also pregnant. But she came to court because her parents' security camera had captured something.

The footage showed two figures moving around in the backyard of Tammy King's house. They appeared to be carrying trash bags. The timestamp on the camera was off by about an hour, Yurit explained. So what the camera recorded as 1:47 PM was actually around 12:47 PM on February 5th, 2025.

Then a black car pulled into the driveway. It backed in, positioned near a tan tarp or curtain at the back of the property. The figures loaded something into the trunk. The car pulled away.

That black car belonged to a twenty-year-old college student named Rigoberto Gurruesquieta. Everyone calls him Rigo. He was the second witness of the day, and his testimony put flesh on the bones of what that surveillance footage captured.

Rigo is twenty years old. A college student studying process technology with one year left in his program. He works at a coding center teaching kids computer science. A normal young man making his way through school. He grew up in Dickinson. Went to Dickinson High School. Graduated in 2024.

He knew Tara King, but barely. He had seen her around since freshman year of high school. They were never friends. Just acquaintances. He knew she went by the nickname Aaron. He did not know Uriah at all until the day of the phone call. Did not even know they were dating.

Rigo was sitting in a computer lab at college working on an essay when his phone rang at 12:24 PM. It was his close friend Nathan Anderson, who the jury had heard from on Day 1. Nathan sounded distressed. He needed Rigo to pick up two people because Nathan's mom had tracked him on Life360 and made him come home before he could complete the ride himself.

Rigo agreed to help. Four minutes later, at 12:28 PM, his phone rang again. An unknown number. A male voice asked if he was Rigo. The voice said they needed a ride to Nathan's house. The voice asked Rigo to stay on the phone the entire time.

That request struck Rigo as odd. Stay on the phone the whole time? But he agreed. He started driving to the address they texted him, somewhere on 15th Street in Baycliff. When he arrived, they told him to back into the driveway near the tan curtain. Do not look. Do not see what they were doing.

He heard the trunk open. Heard bags being loaded. Then two people got into his 2014 black Nissan Altima. Uriah in the passenger seat. Tara in the back. With a small black dog.

The bags in the trunk were shaped like guns, Rigo said. Long bags in the distinctive shape of firearms. He did not ask questions. They told him they were trying to get away from Tara's abusive grandmother.

As they drove, Rigo called Nathan to see if they could still go to his house. They could not. So Tara started texting people, trying to find somewhere else to stay. Uriah made phone calls. He got angry. And at some point during one of those calls, Uriah pulled out a large stack of cash.

Rigo described it sitting right there on Uriah's lap. A big stack. Uriah was talking to someone on the phone about paying them back. Rigo had no idea where the money came from.

Eventually they found someone who would take them in. A former classmate of Tara's who worked at Energy Metals Inc. in Pearland. Rigo drove them there. They told him to look for a white Jeep with blue handles. When they arrived, Tara and Uriah grabbed the bags from the trunk, thanked him, and walked toward the Jeep.

That was the last time Rigo saw them in person. But it was not the last time they contacted him.

At 4:26 AM the next morning, his Instagram started blowing up. Missed calls. Messages. One thousand dollars to drive us to Illinois. Rigo did not answer. He did not know what was happening. He was just a college student who had tried to help his friend Nathan help someone else.

Two days later, on Friday, his friends started sending him screenshots. A Facebook post from the Galveston County Sheriff's Office. Two young people identified as persons of interest. A deceased woman found in a home. The same home Rigo had backed into on Wednesday afternoon.

He immediately called the police.

When asked on cross-examination about what he knew of the relationship between Tara and her grandmother, Rigo was honest. He did not know anything. He only knew Tara as an acquaintance. He had no idea about her family affairs. The only thing he knew about the grandmother was what they told him that day: that she was abusive. That was the first time he had ever heard that claim. They did not discuss anything else.

His involvement with Uriah was even more limited. He had never spoken to Uriah before that phone call. Never met him. Only knew he existed because they told him. By the time Rigo was involved, whatever had happened at that house on 15th Street was already done.

Detective Hillary Rodriguez was the third witness. She works in the Major Crimes unit at the Galveston County Sheriff's Office. Her assignment in this case was not to investigate the murder itself but to execute Instagram search warrants for the witnesses involved.

Detective Rodriguez has been a peace officer since December 2015. She started at the Hitchcock Police Department, then moved to Galveston County Sheriff's Office where she worked patrol for four and a half years, then sex offender registration for a year, then felony warrant apprehension for two years. She has been in Major Crimes for about a year.

Her role in this case was narrow but important. She was assigned to draft and execute search warrants for the social media accounts of the people involved in helping Tara and Uriah flee. She also collected surveillance footage from businesses they passed through.

The detective obtained search warrants for Nathan Anderson, Rigoberto Gurruesquieta, and Christian Atkins. Instagram returned thousands of pages of data. Messages. Call logs. Timestamps. The digital trail of teenagers desperately trying to escape.

Detective Rodriguez also collected surveillance footage from Energy Metals Inc. in Pearland. The video showed Rigo's black Nissan Altima pulling into the parking lot at 2:04 PM on February 5th. It corroborated exactly what Rigo had described. The timeline was coming into focus.

But the most significant evidence from Detective Rodriguez's testimony came from the Instagram messages themselves. She walked the jury through screenshots showing conversations between the username "South Park Emo" and "Chris.Packer12."

South Park Emo was Tara King's Instagram account. Chris.Packer12 belonged to Christian Atkins, the man who would become the fourth witness of the day.

The messages started on February 5th at 4:50 PM. South Park Emo was desperate. Where to? Wyoming or a place to crash for the night. Please, we will pay for all food and gas if you take us. We are carrying guns. They are hidden and safe. Please. It is me and my boyfriend. Please, we are getting away from my abusive grandmother.

Christian Atkins responded that Wyoming was too far, but he had a spare room they could use. He was at work at Energy Metals and could not leave until 5:30. They could put their stuff in his white Jeep in the parking lot.

The messages grew more frantic as the afternoon went on. Can you come as fast as you can? We will pay another hundred. We will help you clean. Our person we were going to be with dropped on us.

By the time Christian got off work, Tara and Uriah were waiting for him. He loaded them into his Jeep and took them to his apartment in League City. For the next two and a half days, he would watch them unravel.

Christian Atkins took the stand as the fourth witness. He is twenty years old now. Laid back by his own description. A phone salesman waiting on a callback for a job in Virginia. He attended Dickinson High School, transferring there midway through junior year. That is where he first met Tara King.

His description of meeting Tara was telling. She was quiet. Did not talk much unless you talked to her first. Then she opened up. She seemed friendly. Normal. Nothing remarkable.

Then she started dating Uriah.

Christian noticed something change. Whenever he tried to talk to Tara after that, he was not really talking to Tara anymore. He was talking to Uriah. Uriah would answer for her. Christian stopped trying to engage with them because he did not want to deal with it. He had his own problems.

This is a pattern multiple witnesses have described. The prosecution framed it in their opening statement as Uriah becoming possessive, pulling Tara away from her friends, isolating her, speaking for her until she only spoke to him. The prosecution's theory is that Uriah led Tara down a dark path.

Christian did not have contact with either of them after graduation until that Instagram post in February 2025. Tara was asking for a place to stay. She wanted to get away from her abusive grandmother. Christian knew what it was like to be homeless. He reached out to help.

When they arrived at his apartment that Wednesday evening, they seemed calm. Cool. Collected. Just two people who needed somewhere to rest. They had bags with rifles in them. A showman gun. A couple of pistols. Some customized AR-15 chambered in 9mm. It did not alarm Christian. This is Texas. Everyone has guns.

They offered to pay him in guns. He declined. Just give me three hundred a night, he said. They paid him four hundred dollars in cash. More than he asked for.

That first night was uneventful. They went to Walmart. Bought hair dye and scissors. Christian did not think much of it. He had done wild things with his own hair before. Used to have a mohawk with multiple colors. They said they wanted to change their appearance. He understood. Sometimes people just want a fresh start.

He let them use his bathroom to dye their hair. Just clean up your mess, he told them. He went back to playing video games with his friend Demi. Normal night. Or so he thought.

The next morning, Thursday, February 6th, Christian went to work at Energy Metals. He left Tara and Uriah in his apartment with his dogs. Three pit bulls and a husky. Big dogs that would bark if anyone came to the door. He thought they would be fine.

But by Thursday, things started to change.

Christian was at work when his phone started blowing up. Cops at the door. Loud knocking. They were panicking. Christian asked them to check through the peephole. Percy did, they said. It was cops. He asked if they were sure. Yes, they were sure.

Christian told his boss he had a family emergency and left work. He drove home as quickly as he legally could. He was not about to speed. He already had plenty of speeding tickets. When he got to his apartment, there was nothing. No cops. No knocking. No evidence anyone had been there at all.

He asked his neighbors if they had seen or heard anything. Nothing. Nobody knocking. Nobody at the door. The whole thing had been in their heads.

Christian was upset. He could only work so many hours a week. He had just lost money because two paranoid teenagers had cried wolf. But he tried to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they had been through trauma. Maybe they just needed to get outside and walk around. Cabin fever.

Thursday night, they did it again. More knocking. More panicking. Christian left his video game to check. Nothing.

By Friday, the messages were constant. Come home please. We are begging. They sent him pictures of something and then unsent them before he could see what it was. Red flags were going off in Christian's head now. Something was wrong.

They wanted him to drive them out of state. Wyoming. Idaho. Illinois. They would pay him a thousand dollars. Christian agreed, but he needed to finish his shift first. They could not wait. They were texting him constantly. Begging him to hurry. Saying there were cops at his actual house.

Christian finally snapped. He was angry-typing in those messages. Stop begging. Stop being so paranoid.

When he got home Friday evening around 6:30 or 7:00, they were gone. They had left behind clothes. Towels. Hair in the sink. Dye on the counters. A mess. And in a closet, two firearms in soft gun cases.

They had also left their dog. Salem. A small black dog that could not keep up when they fled. They texted Christian to find her a good home. The neighbors eventually adopted her. Renamed her Lily James.

Christian did not know what was happening. He checked the weather on his phone Saturday morning and a local news article popped up on Google. Two faces he recognized. Persons of interest in a murder investigation. A deceased woman in Baycliff.

He called the police immediately. Detective Brian Barnard arrived at his apartment. Christian gave full consent to search everything except his bedroom, which had three large aggressive dogs inside. He handed over the guns, the screenshots, everything. He had nothing to hide. He was just a guy who tried to help someone escape what he thought was a bad situation.

The fifth witness was Terry Utton. The man who found Tammy King's body. The man who had loved her.

Terry is retired now. He spent years working in oil refineries and about a decade as a firefighter in Galveston County in San Leon. He built a house in San Leon in 2003 and raised his family there. His wife Sandra passed away in March 2021 after almost 45 years of marriage. Tammy's husband Butch passed away about a year and a half before trial.

Terry met Tammy back in 1980. Over forty years ago. He was married to Tammy's husband's sister. They were family. When Sandra passed, Terry stayed close to the Kings. When Butch got sick and died, Terry and Tammy grew closer still. Friends became something more around the end of 2024, maybe five or six months before Tammy's death.

Two people who had known each other for over forty years. Two people who had lost their spouses. They found comfort in each other in their later years.

Terry described Tammy as loving, fun, caring. She helped everybody. Sweet as could be. A great person. His voice carried the weight of someone describing a woman he had loved and lost.

He also knew Tara. Had known her since she was born. Tammy had raised Tara since she was about two years old and eventually adopted her. Tara's father Christopher, Tammy's son, had been having problems. The kids went to different relatives. Tara ended up with her grandmother.

When Terry first met Uriah, he thought he was a good kid. Liked him. There was one incident where Uriah raised his voice, and Terry shut that down immediately. Told him that was not going to happen in this house. After that, no more problems. At least none that Terry witnessed.

The defense attorney's cross-examination was revealing. Bill Atten represents Uriah Urick. He asked Terry about the dynamics between Tammy and Tara. Terry acknowledged that Tammy was strict about certain things, especially school attendance and curfew. Uriah had a 10:00 PM curfew at the house, set by Tammy. Sometimes Terry would advocate for the kids to get an extra hour.

The defense asked whether Tammy supported Tara. Terry said yes, absolutely. Treated her like her daughter. Gave her things. Tried to help her get everything she wanted. Was generous. But the defense also established that Tara did not work. Had no driver's license. Did not even know how to drive. Terry was going to teach her. They had discussed it. He was going to take her to a parking lot and start her on the basics.

Tara was entirely dependent on Tammy for everything. If she was going to get money, it had to come from her grandmother. At seventeen years old, with no job, no driver's license, no transportation, and no income, Tara's entire life was controlled by the woman who raised her.

The defense also established something important. Tammy did not want Uriah living there. Tara was seventeen. She thought she was in love. She wanted to spend time with her boyfriend. Tammy said no. That caused arguments.

The defense also asked about the guns. Tammy's late husband Butch had owned a gun store. When he died and the store closed, all that inventory came to Tammy's house. Hundreds of firearms. Expensive guns. They were stored in safes and tubs throughout the house.

Terry said that to his knowledge, neither Tara nor Uriah was supposed to touch the guns at all. As far as he knew, Tammy never let anyone take them hunting. She would not have let anybody take one. But the defense asked whether Terry actually knew if Uriah had ever been allowed to use them. Terry admitted he did not know for certain. He was not there every day. He was not there at night after he went home.

The defense also asked about drug use. Terry admitted that he and Tammy smoked marijuana together sometimes. But he said they never used any other drugs. Never methamphetamine. Never anything harder. And Tammy never used drugs around the kids. Was never impaired in front of Tara or Uriah.

Terry never saw Tammy hit Tara. Never saw her grab her. Never saw any physical abuse in over forty years of knowing this family. But he acknowledged that teenagers can be difficult. That seventeen-year-old girls want to be grown up but are not grown up yet. That they test limits.

The defense also asked about Uriah's background. Terry admitted he did not know much about it. He knew there were some problems at Uriah's home too. He did not know that Uriah was homeless at the time of the murder. He had met Uriah's mother once, briefly, at a McDonald's when she came to pick up Tara.

What the defense was planting is clear. We do not know everything about what was happening in that house. We do not know everything about Uriah's circumstances. The witnesses who say abuse are not crazy. Something was going on. The full picture has not emerged yet.

After the lunch break, Terry described finding Tammy's body in more detail. The crime scene investigator who processed Tara's bedroom followed.

Investigator Larry Eugene Crow Jr. has been in law enforcement for thirty-six years. He started at the Lamar Police Department as a reserve officer when his father was chief. Could not work full time because his dad was in charge, so he joined as a reserve. Then he moved to the Texas City Police Department and spent twenty-six years there, most of it in crime scene investigation. He has advanced training in crime scene processing, blood spatter analysis, latent fingerprint examination, and recently completed the FBI trilogy. He holds a master peace officer license.

Investigator Crow explained how crime scenes are processed. You start from the outside and work your way in. Photograph everything before anyone touches it. Then place yellow evidence markers on items to be collected. Each marker corresponds to a number that tracks that piece of evidence through the chain of custody. Retake photos with the markers in place. Then sketch the scene or use a 3D scanner.

He was called to 4723 15th Street in Baycliff around 6:00 AM on February 7th, 2025. His first assignment was to run the Pharaoh 3D scanner, which creates a complete 360-degree diagram of a scene with precise measurements. You set it up in a room and it does a full rotation, capturing everything. Then he was assigned to search and collect evidence from two areas: the living room and Tara King's bedroom.

The living room looked ransacked. Cards on the floor. Papers scattered. A white purse with red droplets that appeared to be blood. A wallet and a clear baggie with what appeared to be marijuana behind the couch. A loaded magazine between the bedroom hallway and the kitchen.

But it was Tara's bedroom that painted the most disturbing picture.

The room was unkempt. That was the investigator's word. Really unkempt. Empty soda cans everywhere. Half-eaten food in takeout containers. Some of it molded. Dirty clothes on the floor. A trash can with no trash in it. And underneath the desk, a makeshift bed constructed from blankets and pillows. Like what kids build when they make pallets to sleep on.

Underneath that desk, next to the makeshift bed, were several water bottles filled with yellow liquid. Investigator Crow believed it to be urine. He was later told that is exactly what it was.

The investigator described the conditions as poor hygiene. Roaches. A smell from the old food and the bottles of urine. He compared it unfavorably to other scenes he has processed.

Detective Brian Barnard, the eighth witness, would later echo this assessment. When he walked into Tara's bedroom, his reaction was blunt: "I've been in cleaner dope houses."

What does this mean? The prosecution has not addressed it. They are focused on the murder, the robbery, the flight. But the defense will likely make something of these conditions. A teenager sleeping under a desk. Bottles of urine. Molded food. What was happening in that house?

Was Tara neglected? Was she mentally unwell? Was she living in squalor while her grandmother had gun safes full of valuable firearms and ten thousand dollars in cash? Or was she simply a messy teenager who refused to clean her room?

The crime scene photos do not answer these questions. But they raise them.

Investigator Crow collected a pillow from under the desk that had red droplets appearing to be blood. He collected a cell phone from a chair near the desk. He collected three more pillows from around the bed area. Then he was pulled outside to photograph a footprint impression on a chair cushion near the fence in the backyard.

The seventh witness was Detective Ashton Scott, a fraud investigator with specialized training in financial crimes. She has been a peace officer since 2012. Worked for Galveston Police Department from 2013 to 2023, starting as patrol, then field training officer, then crime scene detective, then patrol sergeant supervising about fifteen officers. Then she spent a year and a half in the private sector as a corporate fraud investigator handling financial crimes and internal fraud. Now she works for the Galveston County Sheriff's Office in Major Crimes, where she investigates everything from sexual assault of a child to homicide to robberies to financial crimes.

Her background in fraud investigation made her the perfect person to trace the money in this case. She knows how to read financial records. She knows how to issue subpoenas to banks and money transfer services. She knows what to look for when accounts are being drained.

Her testimony was technical but devastating. She traced the money.

Detective Scott issued subpoenas to Cash App, Wells Fargo, and Chase Bank. Cash App is a peer-to-peer money transfer service. It lets people send money from their bank account or credit card to another person. You can also keep money in your Cash App balance without transferring it out. The company that owns Cash App is called Block Inc.

When you subpoena financial records, the company sends back what is called a business records affidavit. That is certification from an employee that the records are authentic and came directly from the company. Then they send the actual data, usually in Excel spreadsheets.

The returns painted a picture of what happened to Tammy King's money on February 5th, 2025.

In early February, the Cash App transactions between Tammy and Tara were normal. Small amounts. Twenty dollars for a phone case. Twenty-nine dollars for a different case. Fifty-five dollars. Normal grandmother-to-granddaughter transactions for a teenager without income.

Then February 5th happened.

Starting around 2:00 PM, the transactions changed. Request after request from Tara's account to Tammy's account. One thousand dollars. Exceeded recipient monthly receive limit. Then $300. $200. $200. $100. $10. $20. Rapid fire. Some succeeded. Some failed. The pattern was someone trying to drain the account.

But it got more interesting. Someone also tried to link new payment sources to Tammy's Cash App account. Two attempts to link a JP Morgan Chase debit card. Both failed with an error message about suspected fraud.

Then a Chase Bank account was successfully linked to Tammy's Cash App around 6:11 PM on February 5th.

Detective Scott subpoenaed Chase Bank to find out who owned that account. It was not Tammy King. Chase Bank had no accounts for Tammy King.

The account belonged to Uriah Urick.

The prosecution's theory is clear. Tammy King was killed in the early morning hours of February 5th. Within hours, someone was draining her Cash App account and linking Uriah's bank account to it. The transfers totaled over $2,500 in successful transactions. There were failed attempts for $5,000 and $20,000.

But Detective Scott was careful to note something important. Cash App records show which accounts are doing transactions. They do not show who is sitting at the keyboard. The transfers came from Tammy's account to Tara's account. That does not prove Tara sent the requests. It proves her account sent the requests.

The defense did not press this point hard on cross-examination. They asked whether Detective Scott had any history from before February 2025 to establish what normal transactions looked like between Tammy and Tara. She did not. She only subpoenaed February records. So we do not have a baseline for comparison.

What we know is that the pattern changed dramatically on February 5th. Small, normal amounts became rapid-fire requests for hundreds of dollars. Failed attempts to grab thousands more. And Uriah Urick's bank account showing up on Tammy King's Cash App the day she died.

The eighth and final witness was Detective Brian Barnard. He has been with the Galveston County Sheriff's Office in the Major Crimes unit since January 2025. Before that, two years in the narcotics unit as part of the organized crime task force focusing on gangs, guns, drugs, prostitution, and gambling. Before that, patrol. Ten years total in law enforcement.

Detective Barnard was asleep when his phone rang around midnight between Thursday and Friday. A suspicious death in Baycliff. He arrived at the scene, made contact with the patrol deputy, then with Detective Hudson who was the lead investigator. He and Detective Hudson interviewed Terry Utton, the man who had found the body.

Then Detective Barnard wrote the search warrant for the residence.

He explained why a search warrant was necessary. Tammy King was deceased. But Tara King still lived there. She had an expectation of privacy in her home. They did not know where she was. So to search her room and the rest of the residence, they needed a warrant. The search warrant was signed and executed.

When Detective Barnard walked through the house, he observed what others had described. The living room looked like it had been burglarized. Things thrown on the floor. Guns stacked against the wall. Cards and papers scattered. A bag of dog food cut open in the middle of the floor with water bowls nearby, but no dog.

He walked through to Tara's bedroom. Gross was his assessment. Full of young girl stuff like dolls. And filthy. Old food. Bottles of urine. I have been in cleaner dope houses.

Then he went to the master bedroom where Tammy King's body lay. Multiple gun safes open and empty. The body lying across the bed, covered with sheets and blankets wrapped around her head. He could see lividity on the lower portions of her skin, indicating she had been dead for some time.

He was present when the medical examiner investigator located the gunshot wound on the left side of Tammy's head near her ear.

After the scene, Detective Barnard was part of the team attempting to locate Tara and Uriah. They followed pings to the League City area but could not find them that night. He went to interview Uriah's mother, Shauna Prigen, and his stepfather Joshua.

Shauna was upset, Detective Barnard said. Obviously. As any mother would be. She did not know what was going on. Joshua was quiet, stood back. They obtained some information about Uriah's Cash App from his mother. That information would eventually help Detective Scott trace the financial evidence.

By Saturday morning, Detective Barnard was at Christian Atkins' apartment collecting the guns and evidence left behind. By Sunday, Tara and Uriah had been apprehended in Laredo after fleeing with a man named Travis Hodges, who allegedly drove them to the border in exchange for firearms.

Day 2 ended there. Eight witnesses. The flight timeline established. The financial evidence presented. The crime scene documented.

But the case is far from over.

What the Jury Saw

The jury spent eight hours on Day 2 watching a story of panic unfold. Two teenagers moving from car to car, apartment to apartment, desperately trying to find someone to drive them out of state. Cutting and dyeing their hair at a stranger's apartment. Paying people in cash they should not have had. Jumping at every knock on the door. Seeing cops who were not there.

What does consciousness of guilt look like? It looks exactly like this. It looks like Instagram messages begging for rides at 4:26 AM. It looks like hiding behind tan tarps while loading guns into a stranger's trunk. It looks like telling the driver to stay on the phone and back into the driveway and not look at what they were doing. It looks like paranoid phone calls about cops at the door when there are no cops at the door. It looks like cutting and dyeing your hair to change your appearance. It looks like leaving your dog behind because you cannot take her where you are going.

The prosecution does not need to prove motive to win a capital murder conviction. They only need to prove that Uriah Urick intentionally killed Tammy King in the course of committing robbery. But motive helps. Motive helps the jury understand why someone would do something terrible. And the prosecution is giving them a story that makes human sense.

Two teenagers who wanted money, guns, jewelry, and the freedom to be together. A grandmother standing in the way. A plan discussed in Instagram messages over weeks or months. Execution on a Wednesday morning while Tammy lay in bed texting her boyfriend about her frustrating granddaughter. Then flight.

The financial evidence is powerful. Not because Cash App records prove who pressed the buttons, but because of the pattern change. Small normal transactions in early February. Then rapid-fire requests starting around 2:00 PM on February 5th. Failed attempts to grab $20,000. Successful transfers of over $2,500. And Uriah Urick's bank account appearing on Tammy King's Cash App the day she died.

That is not coincidence. That is consciousness of guilt documented in digital receipts.

The crime scene testimony reinforced what the prosecution told the jury in their opening. Empty gun safes. A ransacked living room. A body covered in sheets with the bedroom door locked from inside. A washing machine tipped over to block the back door. A mattress propped against the bathroom window. These are the actions of people trying to hide what they did and delay discovery.

But the jury also saw something the prosecution did not emphasize. They saw photos of Tara King's bedroom. Bottles of urine under a desk. A makeshift bed where someone had been sleeping on the floor. Molded food. Conditions that made a detective with ten years of experience, including time on narcotics, say he had been in cleaner dope houses.

What story does that tell?

The prosecution's story is two teenagers who got impatient. Who could not wait for Tara to turn eighteen and access her inheritance. Who decided to take what they wanted and run.

But there is another story lurking beneath the surface. The defense has not presented it yet. They are waiting for their turn. But they planted seeds on cross-examination.

Christian Atkins said Uriah would answer for Tara. Speak for her. That she became quieter around him. The prosecution frames this as control and isolation. But what if it was protection? What if Uriah was speaking for someone who had been silenced?

Terry Utton said Tammy was strict. That she did not want Uriah living there. That Tara thought she was in love and wanted to spend time with her boyfriend. That this caused arguments. Terry never saw physical abuse. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Terry was not there every day. He was not there at night after he went home.

The living conditions in Tara's bedroom raise questions. A seventeen-year-old sleeping under a desk. Bottles of urine suggesting she did not or could not leave her room to use the bathroom. Molded food. Roaches. In the same house where there were gun safes full of expensive firearms and $10,000 in cash.

Why was Tara living like that?

The jury does not know yet. The prosecution is not telling them. But the defense might. And when the defense presents its case, everything the jury heard on Day 2 might start to look different.

Why This Matters

Uriah Urick is charged with capital murder. In Texas, capital murder is not just murder. It is murder plus an aggravating circumstance that elevates the crime to the most serious offense in the criminal code. There are several aggravating circumstances that can turn murder into capital murder. Killing a peace officer. Killing during a prison escape. Killing for hire. And the one charged here: killing in the course of committing robbery.

That phrase matters. In the course of. The killing and the robbery have to be connected. They have to be part of the same criminal episode. If Tammy was killed for one reason and then someone decided to steal her property afterward for a completely separate reason, that might be murder and theft. Both terrible crimes. Both carrying lengthy prison sentences. But not capital murder.

Capital murder in Texas carries mandatory punishment of life in prison without parole for defendants eighteen or older. Uriah was eighteen at the time of the alleged offense. If convicted of capital murder, he will never leave prison alive. There is no good behavior release. No parole board review after twenty years. No hope of ever walking free again.

The death penalty is technically possible for capital murder defendants who are eighteen or older, but prosecutors have not announced whether they will seek it in this case. Given Uriah's age and circumstances, life without parole is the most likely outcome if convicted.

The prosecution's evidence connects the killing and the robbery. They say the Instagram messages show planning. The murder happened. The gun safes were emptied. The money was transferred. The defendants fled. All one continuous criminal episode.

But the defense might argue something different. What if Tammy was killed for reasons having nothing to do with robbery? What if the theft happened afterward, separately, as two scared teenagers tried to survive? What if the actual shooter was Uriah, but Tara was the one who initiated the theft without his knowledge or participation?

These questions matter because of something called party liability. In Texas, you can be convicted of capital murder even if you did not pull the trigger, as long as you acted with intent to promote or assist the offense. But the State still has to prove that intent. They have to prove you were part of the plan.

The prosecution says both Tara and Uriah planned this together. The Instagram messages allegedly show both of them discussing killing Tammy. But we have not seen those messages yet. We have only heard the prosecution describe them in opening statements. The actual evidence has not been introduced.

When it is, the defense will have the opportunity to challenge it. Was the context clear? Were there explanations that do not involve actual murder planning? Were the messages even real? Instagram records can be authenticated, but the interpretation of those messages will be contested.

My father used to say that the Constitution is not a technicality. It is the only thing standing between citizens and the overwhelming power of the government. The State can investigate. Arrest. Charge. Prosecute. They have resources defendants cannot match. They have professional witnesses trained to present evidence effectively. They have the presumption of credibility that comes with law enforcement uniforms and badges and years of courtroom experience.

What defendants have is the presumption of innocence. The requirement that the State prove every element beyond a reasonable doubt. The right to challenge the evidence. The right to cross-examine witnesses. The right to present their own case. The right to make the jury consider other possibilities.

My father was disbarred for protecting attorney-client privilege. He was criminally convicted for teaching people their constitutional rights from a coffee shop. He understood better than most that these protections are not abstract legal concepts. They are the practical machinery that keeps the government from crushing people who cannot fight back.

Uriah Urick is presumed innocent. That is not me saying he did not do it. That is me saying the Constitution requires us to presume he did not do it until the State proves otherwise. And the State has not finished presenting its case.

Uriah Urick has not testified. He may never testify. The Fifth Amendment protects him from being forced to take the stand. But his attorney has been quietly laying groundwork. Questions about abuse. Questions about family dynamics. Questions about what was really happening in that house.

The prosecution's case is strong on what happened after Tammy King died. The flight. The financial transfers. The witnesses who helped them run. That evidence is compelling.

But the prosecution's case on why it happened is based on their interpretation of Instagram messages we have not yet seen. And the defense may have a very different interpretation waiting.

The Bigger Picture

Day 1 introduced us to this case. The prosecution's opening statement painted a picture of young love turned dark. Of a boyfriend who became possessive. Of planning that went back months. Of Instagram messages saying "please let me kill her" and "we ride at dawn."

Day 1 gave us Deputy Hunter Tauch, the patrol officer who responded to Terry Utton's welfare check call and watched him break in to find Tammy's body. Day 1 gave us Nathan Anderson, the college student who got a distressed call from Tara asking for a ride and almost drove to pick them up before his mom tracked him on Life360 and made him come home.

Day 2 picked up where that ride request ended. Nathan called his friend Rigo. Rigo drove to Baycliff and picked them up. The neighbor's surveillance camera captured the black car backing into the driveway. The timeline of flight began.

What Day 2 established is that Tara and Uriah were desperate from the moment they left that house. They were not acting like people who had committed a planned, premeditated killing. They were acting like people who were terrified. Calling everyone they knew. Begging for rides. Offering guns and money. Jumping at shadows.

Does panic prove guilt? Usually yes. Innocent people do not normally flee toward the Mexican border after someone dies. Innocent people do not dye their hair and beg strangers for rides to Wyoming.

But panic can also indicate something other than cold-blooded premeditated murder. Panic can indicate a situation that spiraled out of control. A confrontation that turned violent. A decision made in a moment that could never be taken back.

We do not know what the defense's theory is yet. They reserved their opening statement. They have barely cross-examined witnesses. They are waiting. Watching. Taking notes. Preparing for their moment.

But the seeds they are planting are visible. Christian Atkins described Uriah speaking for Tara. Multiple witnesses described their claim of fleeing an abusive grandmother. The crime scene photos show a teenager's bedroom that raises serious questions about how she was living.

The prosecution has to prove capital murder beyond a reasonable doubt. That means proving intentional killing in the course of robbery. If the defense can raise reasonable doubt about any element, Uriah walks on capital murder. He might still be convicted of murder. He might still spend decades in prison. But the mandatory life without parole goes away.

For the victim's family, none of this matters as much as the loss itself. Tammy King raised her granddaughter from age two. She was shot in the head in her own bed by people she trusted. Her son Christopher lost his mother. Terry Utton lost the woman he had grown to love after they both buried their spouses.

Whatever the legal outcome, Tammy King is dead. She was sixty-one years old. She deserved to live out her remaining years. She deserved to see her granddaughter graduate high school, turn eighteen, maybe go to college. She deserved better than what happened to her.

But the trial is not about what she deserved. The trial is about whether the State can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Uriah Urick committed capital murder. And that question is still very much open.

What to Watch For

Day 3 will likely bring more witnesses. The medical examiner will probably testify about cause of death. The firearms expert will probably testify about ballistics matching the shell casing found under the bed and the bullet recovered from Tammy's body to the AR-556 rifle that ended up in Travis Hodges' storage unit.

We will probably hear from Travis Hodges himself. The prosecution mentioned in opening statements that he has a plea agreement. Ten years in exchange for his testimony. He allegedly drove Tara and Uriah from League City to Laredo on Friday night into Saturday morning. He allegedly received firearms from them, including the murder weapon. He allegedly admitted to being told "there's a body on one of these."

Watch for the Instagram messages. The prosecution has been promising them since their opening statement. Messages where Uriah allegedly asked permission to kill Tammy. Messages saying "we ride at dawn." If those messages are as damning as the prosecution claims, they will be introduced soon. And the defense's cross-examination of whoever authenticates them will be critical.

Watch for the defense to build their alternative narrative. They have been asking about abuse. They have been asking about family dynamics. They have established that Tammy did not want Uriah living there, that this caused conflict, that Tara was a difficult teenager testing limits.

The conditions in Tara's bedroom are a wild card. The prosecution has not addressed them. The defense might. A teenager sleeping under a desk. Bottles of urine. Molded food. What does that suggest? Neglect? Mental health crisis? Something else? The defense might try to use those conditions to paint a picture of what life was really like in that house.

And watch for Uriah himself. He sits at the defense table every day. We have seen photos. Curly hair. Glasses. Green jail clothing on witnesses who identified him. The prosecution says he is a calculating killer who planned this murder for months. The defense has not yet told us who they say he is.

Capital murder trials are marathons, not sprints. The State presents its case first. The defense waits. Cross-examines. Plants seeds. Then presents its own witnesses. Then both sides argue to the jury.

We are still in the State's case. The story they are telling is compelling. But it is only one story. The defense will tell another. And the jury will have to decide which one is true beyond a reasonable doubt.