S1: E20 – Louisiana Love Triangle, Part 1

After a night of partying in New Orleans, an angry friend lost control after what he heard.

She did say that her husband forced her into having sex with her.

When it was all over, one man was dead and another was in custody.

There was a lot of alcohol it went on that night, and we believe probably drugs as well. I believe that's what led to the rage, which led to the shooting death of our husband.

But when witness statements didn't match up with the evidence, investigators scrambled to understand what was true and what was not.

And I just thought, this is not how I feel like this went down.

And the investigation exposed more than just murder.

How they pulled this off is the one thing that amazes me today.

We're just outside of New Orleans for part one of the Louisiana Love Triangle. I'm Sloane Glass and vis is American Homicide. Just a note that this episode contained some graphic content. Please take care while listening. On the other side of Lake Pontatrain is the charming and quiet suburb of Covington, Louisiana.

Covent's the last bedroom community is close in your Orleans. So you've got the convenience of the city if you need it with everything that goes with that.

Doug Arrowood is a former detective with the Covington Police Department. You'll notice an accent. Detective Airwood was born in the UK, but moved to the States and lived here on and off throughout his life. It's a unique background for a local detective.

It's a city where you have almost mentioned that you see in magazines and see on TV and they make you jaw drop. But you also have rapport areas of town where people live in little shacks that you wouldn't think chickens would want to live in. So it's got everything from a to Z.

As people grow up and out of the party atmosphere of New Orleans nearby, Covington is a great place to art and raise a family if.

You want a quieter atmosphere, a slower pace of life, very friendly folks here about. It's a great place to live. You can spend any amount of time here. When you bump into somebody that you've not met before, within five or ten minutes, you've already got ties with them.

That sort of camaraderie gives the city of Covington a small town feel that.

What's what makes it so interesting, Especially as a police officer. You've got that nature of everybody knows everybody, so it is a pretty good chance when something happens, you know who did that, that's all so and so, and you know which way to start looking, which is helpful.

On the morning of December eleventh, two thousand and four, Covington Police dispatcher Heather Jenkins was wrapping up after working the overnight shift.

We were getting off at six in the morning and right at shift change, nine to one one phone rang. The report was that someone hanked a horn and that this gentleman came outside and there were gunshots.

The call came from a worried resident.

We did not have a lot of crime in that subdivision. When we did, it would be things like a mailbox got smashed or you know, loud noise complaints, that type of crime.

Within a minute, another call came in, and then another.

We had seven regular lines into nine one one lines, and more calls started coming in that there were gun shots and that someone actually was down and had been shot.

With each phone call, more details emerged about the shooting.

This neighbor could see that someone had been shot and was laying in the driveway.

That someone was Thomas Tally, who lived on Gratitude Drive with his wife, Kendra, and their two year old son.

There were other people calling to say that Kendra Tally was outside yelling for help.

And neighbors reported seen a gold colored Chevy truck flee the scene. As Kendra cradled Thomas on the driveway. He was bloodied and wounded, wearing only his pajamas.

Kendra Tally was just basically there kind of freaking out.

Anyone would freak out. Imagine how difficult it was for Kendra to hold her dying husband in her arms. And that happened just as Covington police and emergency responders arrived at the Tally's home.

The Ambulance Service did arrive and try to save him, but they were not able. Mister Tally was deceased there in the driveway.

The only good news for the investigation was that Thomas's wife, Kendra, witnessed the whole ordeal.

This poor woman has just watched her husband be gunned down. You know, how can we work this situation to get this resolved.

Here's Detective Doug Arrowood describing the scene.

At that point in time. I believe there were four of as detectives and once she got a case of that magnitude, all hands on deck, everybody's coming out, so we're all called out, and there had been a body just laid out on the drive.

Work next to Thomas's body. Detectives found shards of glass, some spent shell casinges, and of course a devastated Kendra.

I recall her being obviously very upset, hugging her husband, saying keep breathing, stay with me, stay with me, and wors to that effect.

Kendra Tally was twenty four years old at the time. She was short and petite, with dark reddish hair.

She was obviously a mess. She looked like she'd been out for a couple of nights, which you could probably say that somebody's been through something as traumatic as that, they're probably going to fold to pieces pretty quickly.

The one good thing about Kendra Tally witnessing her husband being shot was that she could tell the detectives what happened. Kendra said the shooter was no stranger, but rather a good friend of her and her her husband, a man named Tommy Row. Now it gets a little confusing here because both The husband and the shooter have similar names, so keep in mind that Kendra's husband was Thomas Tally and the shooter was.

Tommy Row Tommy Roll. He'd been a friend of the family. They'd known each other quite some time.

Tommy Roll lived about thirty miles north of Covington in rural Buggaloosa. He had three children and was very close with Kendra and Thomas. They spent a lot of time together and they had known Tommy Row for years. Even their children all played together.

Tommy Roll had left the scene and gone to his house as the.

Police search for Tommy Row. Detectives questioned Kendra. She said that she, Tommy Rowll and some other friends had been out on Bourbon Street while her husband stayed home.

Her husband that day had had oral surgery. He's at home recovering. He just had both wisdom teeth out in the bottom. For those that have had the wisdom teeth out, they know it takes a couple of days to recover from that. And he was in some discomfort. He was under medication.

So what happened on Bourbon Street that caused Tommy Raw to go to his friend's house and gun him down?

There was a lot of alcohol. It went on that night, and we believe, uh probably drugs as well. And because of the drugs, I believe that's what led to the rage, which led to the shooting death of her husband, Thomas Telly.

So here's what a devastated Kendra told detectives. Just after the bars closed, Tommy Row went into a murderous rage and took it out on her husband.

He was going to take care of businesses.

What Kendra said, the Covington PD turned their attention to finding the shooter. It was a pretty simple case, but Tommy Roll was long gone by then.

He got on a struck and he left. So once we kind of established that we had the victim's wife here and we had that locked down with them, went to try and find the repartrator.

The police believe Tommy Row was hiding out at his home in a wooded area of Bugaloosa about half an hour away.

He was armed, probably dangerous after what we discovered, so we wanted to take all precautions. We've got the Sheriff's office involved, We've got the SWAT team involved.

With Kendra's help, more than a dozen law enforcement officers spent that early Saturday morning on a manhunt for an out of control killer.

If you're not careful, you can be led in that wrong direction. You need to take it one step at a time and make sure that you're going in the right direction. You know what's happening that I felt was going to be the most pivotal moment of the case.

As the sun rose and Covington Tommy Raw showed up at his best friend's house and opened fire on him.

This happened two weeks exactly to the day before Christmas Day.

Mark Kelly woke up to learn his younger brother Thomas was gone. Here's Mark.

Kendro's sister in law started calling me about six in the morning and she said Thomas had been shot. He was shot in the driveway. She said, I think he's dead. I'm pretty sure he's dead. I think he's dead. And you just imagine him barefoot and pajamas laying on his concrete driveway with blood around him. Yeah, that does a number on you, and so I have to I just shut everything off. I shut my phone off, I shut the TV, the radio off. I just I just needed to be alone at that time.

As you can imagine, it was an awful day for Mark.

He was my younger brother by a little over five years.

When they were kids, Mark said Thomas was the typical younger brother, always followed him around.

Me and Thomas had a lot of similar interests. We tinkered a lot with stuff. We weren't into the whole hunting fishing thing. We did like to trek through the woods and just goof off and play around Thomas. He was on on a roll in school for several years. Very sweet kid. Same with Kendra.

Kendra and Thomas met a few years earlier while working at the local pizza hut.

He was a delivery person, she worked inside, and sparks happened and they went from there. He called me one time said, remember the girl, Kendra said, now she wants to go out with me. So I was happy for him because I knew the kind of person. She was very bubbly and energetic and happy, and she was very pleasant to be around, and I think that's what Thomas liked in her.

The two eventually got married and had a.

Baby boy, and then everything after that fell in the place.

Most recently, Thomas worked as a courier.

Thomas was working two jobs, sometimes another job after that to support his family.

And becoming a husband, father, and provider were rules that Thomas embraced.

He'd always wanted that. He was kind of like me, settled down type.

Although Thomas was six years older than Kendra, it didn't make a difference.

At first. I didn't think she was motherhood material, but she was very good.

It's understandable given that Kendra went from a girl barely out of her teens to mother and wife.

She still had that in her, the party girl type, but that did not hurt her from being a great mother.

Mark had last seen Kendra and his brother a couple weeks earlier at Thanksgiving dinner.

We all were together and she cooked a mean Thanksgiving dinner. We all had a great time. Kender was happy, Thomas was happy. But three weeks later, Boom Thomas had been shot. It sends shockwaves.

Even more shocking was that Thomas's best friend, Tommy Row, had pulled the trigger.

That was one thing I struggled with. You're sad, then you're this, then you're angry. I went through all that all day. It was terrible.

Law enforcement was on the lookout for an armed and dangerous Tommy Row.

I basically Barrick hated myself in my house.

Think about it. This was somebody they were all friends with. Mark was scared. He didn't know what Tommy would do next or where.

He was, and they went to go look for him. That had the whole slot team.

Heather Jenkins was a local nine one one dispatcher.

When Kendre Tally told the investigator who the shooter was, we notified the sheriff's department and they activated their SWAT team because she had told the investigator that he was kind of a conspiracy theorist and had cameras outside of his home and blackout curtains and lots of guns and just very kind of a scary guy.

The police found the gold colored Chevy truck that Tommy Row was driving parked outside of his home in Bugalusa. Covington, where the crime took place, has a low crime rate compared to the national average. Meanwhile, Buggaloosa has one of the highest crime rates in the country.

He was at home and had evidently barricaded himself in the home. That was afraid that it was going to turn into a big standoff with this guy, and they were out there for you know, a while at.

The time, Tommy was thirty six years old and on probation after being charged with cocaine possession.

There was a real concern that he was not going.

To give up.

His sister apparently called him up and did the cops or come up to carry you and you take care of yourself.

Jack Hofstat worked for the District Attorney's office.

According to him, he put all the guns in a bed, loaded them up, and that he was even shoot it out with him because he didn't want to die.

You'd think if he didn't want to die, he would surrender, But Tommy wasn't your typical character. He was an avid outdoorsman who liked to hunt and fish. He owned numerous weapons, and the police weren't taking any chances. The tents stand off with Tommy Row went on for nearly four hours until one of the officers made a breakthrough.

His job is to get somebody out of the house without having to kill him, and he finally gets Tommy on the telephone and Tommy tells him immediately without being asked, that he had killed somebody.

Tommy Row's guilty conscience got the best of him, Fest to killing his friend Thomas Tally when the officer on the other end heard this, he purposefully denied that Thomas Tally was dead.

He says, no, no, he didn't kill anybody, He just wounded.

The officer hoped that by saying Thomas Tally was wounded and not dead, that Tommy would peacefully surrender.

He didn't tell him anything he could to get him out of the house where at somebody else.

Getting hurt, and thankfully it worked.

He eventually came out and then they arrested.

Him with Tommy Rowlan custody. Detective searched his house for evidence, and the inside looked like a junkyard.

They went up and got the guns and Kendra's cell phone, which had numerous phone calls from her husband trying to find out where she was and when she was coming home, and his notebook with a suicide note in it.

Tommy really was planning on killing himself. He had penned a suicide note in it. He speaks to his relationship with Kendra. Here's one part of it. I also want my mother to know that I love her with all my heart and Kendra just as much or more. I just hope Kendra can forgive me for what I have done. I also hope Kendra will always know how much I love her and what she means to me. I just can't sit around and watch her being hurt all the time.

I still remember the vivid pictures of the camera crew when they arrested him, putting him in the patrol car.

It was all so shocking for Thomas's brother Mark.

It's so rare to have a shooting murder, especially the way it was done here on the north shore of Lake Pont Train stuff like that's not supposed to happen here, and that's what made unfortunately the biggest news, not my brother dying, but that because no one gets killed here.

As the police search Tommy Row's home, they uncovered evidence which to them pointed to his long running obsession with Kendra. There was that strange suicide slash love note, along with pictures, including a family photo. But here's the strange part. The photo was of Tommy with Kendra and Kendra's son.

That seems to be a little off to me.

Tommy Row often hung out with Thomas and Kendra. He was a regular at many of the Tally's parties and barbecues, and his three children often played with the Tally son.

All I know is he worked with Thomas installing car stereos carl arms back in the day. I think he worked at Pizza Hut, I think where him and Kendra met.

In Mark's mind, Tommy Row was just one of the many friends the couple had.

He comes off as a pleasant person, but he only will talk to you if you ask him a question. I'm not gonna be judgmental, but it just seemed a little odd.

Tommy's deadly obsession with Kendra appeared to be a slam dunk for prosecutors. They had a confession and eyewitness and plenty of incriminating physical evidence.

He still cared about her, and almost in an overwhelming way. My gut feeling was saying, something's not right. I still think he had a thing for Candor after Thomas got married to her, and I think that always stopped.

But the results of Thomas Talley's autopsy would throw a wrench in everything. Just before sunrise on December eleventh, two thousand and four, Thomas Tally was gunned down in his driveway in Covington, Louisiana. A few hours later, his killer, Tommy Row, who had been his best friend, was in custody. Jack Hofstat worked for the District Attorney's office.

We have very few murders.

Most murders that we have are what I call business disputes. One drug dealer killing another, or somebody's robbing a drug dealer because they've got the money. And every once in a while we have something like the Raal Tally case, which it really doesn't fit in with the norm.

In addition to murder, Tommy also faced a drug possession charge. Police had found crystal meth inside his truck. His case appeared to be open and shut until the result of Thomas Tally's autopsy came back.

The pathologist, the medical examiner, is the one that decides exactly what killed him.

That report stated that Thomas Tally was shot in the chest, hip, head, and groin area a total of six times. But the detective's job got a whole lot harder when the report listed the origin of those six bullets two different tests.

One was a RUGU nine milimeter, the other was a LAMA forty five.

Okay. The fact that the victim took bullets from two different guns, well, that changed the entire investigation.

Se We shot four times with the nine milimeter and two with the forty five. The first shots to none milimeter shots were shot in a downward pattern, but they weren't close shots. They were at least thirty six inches apart. The last two shots were directly standing over and the ones.

Are the forty five.

Okay, So here's what that means. Four bullets were fired from inside Tommy's truck and two bullets from a different gun were fired outside the truck.

We had multiple gun shot wounds and two calibers. When you have two calibers, you know you have two guns.

It was up to detectives to figure out who fired the second gun. Was it someone else or did Tommy fire both guns? Here's Detective Doug Arrowood.

In reality, that's usually not the case unless you've got the old Wild West one gun in each hand. People are not at all comfortable with shooting on an everyday basis. Very very few people up.

The only other person law enforcement knew of who had been at the crime scene was Kendra. She had already talked to the detectives right after witnessing her husband being shot to death in the driveway of their home.

She was definitely worse for work, so to speak. But given the circumstances, you've got to say that's understandable in a very traumatic time. Maybe there's something that she missed. Maybe there's something she could tell us that would either say yes I did it or no I didn't, and here's why, and we'd say, you know what, you have a point, you're good to go. So she agreed to come in within attorney, I'm agree to talk to us.

Kendra held the key to what happened and had been so helpful to the investigation. So the detective had Kendra walk him through what happened that night one more time.

She was telling me about how she was abused by her husband.

At the time, Kendra told the detective that her husband, Thomas, had sexually assaulted her a few weeks earlier. On tape, Kendra said, he forced himself on her and did some things he had never done before.

I didn't think there was a lot of love lost in this marriage. Maybe there wasn't a lot of love at all in this marriage.

Kendra explained that in the hours leading up to Thomas's murder, Kendra and Tommy grabbed breakfast after their night on Bourbon Street.

They went to a local all night establishment waffle house and they were sitting there eating and she claimed that he pressed her, saying something wrong. What is it? What is it?

And that's when Kendra first shared her secret about how her husband had sexually assaulted her.

She said, okay, well, this is what happened, but you know, please forgive him. It's not that big a deal.

But it was a big deal for Tommy. He loved Kendra and he was furious and he.

Went into a rage and says, that's it. He loved her so much he didn't want to see anything happening to her, so that was it. He was going to go and take care of business.

Tommy rouse stormed out of the restaurant. Kendra followed and found him in his truck, and she said she'd tried to calm him down because she feared he was going to hurt her husband.

She talk to him out of it and she thought everything was okay.

Kendra and Tommy drove to his house, where she says he seemed to.

Cool off, but they got to his house, he got into more of a rage. Then he locked her in the truck.

She said.

Tommy grabbed her cellphone, ran into his house, and returned with two guns. Now armed and dangerous, Tommy drove them back to Covington. Kendra said she had never seen Tommy like that and feared the worst.

She said she was kicking him and resisting to the fullest extent, begging him not to do what he was going to do.

When the two arrived at Kendra's house, her husband heard the sound of Tommy's horn and walked outside. Kendra said she screamed for him to go back inside, and that's when Tommy row grabbed a gun and opened fire on him from inside the truck. Kendra then exited the vehicle and ran to get help, but Tommy wasn't finished.

He got out, went around the truck, and he put a couple in him, just to finish him off, just to make sure. But the more you look at this, the more you say things aren't adding up.

That's probably what you were thinking too. A few key details of Kendras's story stuck out.

She was telling me during the interview about how he with one hand drove one curvy windy roads in the middle of the night, and with the other hand tied her up and then tied her to the steering wheel. Can you imagine tying somebody to the steering wheel of a vehicle. Every time you turn a corner, they're going to be a new lap and then they're going to be off to the side again.

And speaking of the truck, remember how Kendra said Tommy locked her in his truck.

Sure, I've known plenty of people be locked out of a vehicle. I've helped him get into their vehicle when their key's been sitting in there. I've never known somebody been locked in a vehicle unless they were an infant in a cradle and couldn't get out, or unless it was a dog.

Her husband, Thomas's funeral was scheduled for December fifteenth, two thousand and four, but that morning, Kendra was a no show at the service.

Was arrested, and she was charged. She was charged of the principals of the mardle.

Just before her husband's funeral, the police arrested Kendra Tally and charged her with being the principal to his murder.

We had a pretty good idea of the evidence that We found at the scene that she was involved in this and not just a victim.

Was Kendra the other shooter or was someone else involved? The police were about to hear a whole different side to this story.

We had two peoples tell and two different stories. We're trying to figure out which story is true.

In Part two of the Louisiana Love Triangle, just as Thomas Tally was laid to rest, we'll learn how two lovers turned on each other to save themselves. I'm Sloane Glass. That's next time on American Homicide. Can contact the American Homicide Team by emailing us at American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. That's American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. American Homicide is hosted and written by me Sloane Glass and is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of