The Disappearance of Tiffany Whitton : Part 1

a half full parking lot right now. What was it like all the night she disappeared? Very few cars. From the video that we acquired, you don't get to capture much of the parking lot, but descriptions or was that it was a quiet n I don't Walmart pretty much northwest and you can see the uh the backside of the Chick fil A. That's the last general vicinity that she was seen running from the Walmart. Hi, I'm your host, Philip Holloway, and today we're looking into a very different

kind of missing person's case. As you may recall, at the end of the Wideman murders, I posed the question that, unlike in the Wideman murders, what would a cold case investigation look like if investigators really put their shoulders into solving. On September two, thousand thirteen, Tiffany Witten was caught shoplifting at a Walmart in Cobb County, Georgia. When she was stopped by the loss prevention officers, she ran away from the Walmart, never to be seen again. Or was she.

We've just passed the four year mark and still there's no sign of Tiffany. We're going to be exploring what makes this case so hard to pin down, namely the lack of physical evidence, the lack of witnesses, the lack of cooperation, the delay in reporting, and the high possibility of foul play. This is sworn. So let's walk while we're talking. Let's take a look at I want to see for myself what these doors look like. Um, that she came out of. That's a that's a fairly typical

Walmart sort of entrance and exit. But it is a large door, right and or they're surveillance video cameras right there at that door, uh manner from inside. Yes, there were cameras and the doors are those automatic you know, the motion centers, and you've come up Fort Belden. So how far out of the door did she get before she was apprehended by the store security. She wasn't out

the door yet. She was at the door, um, and had not made her way out that that set of doors at the time that she was approached by security and they kind of got between her and the in the parking lot. This is John Dawes, the lead investigator of the cold case unit in Cobb County, Georgia, and now the lead investigator in the Tiffany Witten case. Mason and I decided to go down with John to the Walmart where Tiffany was last seen in order to get

a better feel for the area. Yeah, what was described by Walmarts that she was going, uh, pretty much northwest and you can see the uh, the backside of the Chick fil A. That's the last general vicinity that that she was seen running from the Walmart head headed towards the back side of Chick fil A. And where she went in you can see there's tree growth now, um, so you could lose sight of her pretty quickly. Is that I hope that we're looking at up there on

the top of the hills down where she worked. She used to work at that I hoop. It's actually on the other side of Cop Parker from here, but yes, that's the eyehop for the people who are listening to this, John, can you describe what co Parkway is and how big it is? Uh? Cup Parkway is uh two lanes south and two lanes north with a center turn lane between. Uh. So it's a wide state route that comes through Marietta and normally there's there's a good bit of traffic on

on Cob Parker. Part of the case that would have been really really good to have is all the video from all the his neighboring businesses. UM. I was sure that most of them, if not all of them, have their own systems. Uh. You're talking about probably twenty twenty businesses that we could have gotten footage from, including Chick fil a. UM. But the problem that we had is

the delay in reporting. This happened in mid September and was reporting in January, so UH, that time frame pretty much absolves the opportunity to get video from these commercial businesses.

John Dawes brings up one of the biggest obstacles in this case, several months went by before Tiffany was actually reported missing by her mother, and this created lots of different problems for law enforcement in terms of creating an accurate timeline and in obtaining surveillance footage from businesses before

it's erased. So you may be wondering, if a young girl ran out towards Cole Parkway, a major thoroughfare in a suburb just north of Atlanta, and was never seen again, why did it take so long to report her as missing? Lisa Daniels, My daughter is Tiffany Witten, who disappeared in Marietta from the Walmart on Cole Parkway on September. So we just passed the four year mark since anyone last saw Tiffany. How oh was your daughter at the time

for her disappearance? She was where she well, she lived in Marietta at the time, um or Powder Spring I think it might have been Powder Springs area. It's kind of hard to say. She was a little nomadic. She was a drug addict, so she moved around, stayed where she could. I think was kind of the way most of these people, um live is wherever they can find a place. She would say to me that she wanted to get clean, that she wanted to do better, she

wanted to be a better person. Um. But she also stated to me that the only time she felt normal is when she was high, and that was sad to me because it made me feel like there was probably some underlying mental illness there um that we weren't aware of. But we as a family did everything we could to try to help her get clean, rehab and just everything that we could possibly think of, and nothing seemed to work.

She get clean for a little while, and then as soon as she would run into somebody that had a supply, she'd be right back into it. What was her drug of choice meth and heroin. I thinks she started out like a lot of people do with the opioids. UM, it was oxy and then I don't know who introduced her to meth, but at some point she was introduced

to heroin and UM that became probably her primary. So what happened that caused the delay in reporting her disappearance, Well, like I said, she was nomadic and she did not always stay in touch with us, so when she was using, we wouldn't hear from her. It could be weeks, it could be a couple of months. So initially was I worried, Yeah, I worried about her every day, but I wasn't worried that she was missing or that something had happened to her. I was used to not hearing for her from her

for a couple of months. But when the holidays came around and I didn't hear from her at all, that was not That was not normal. And um so after the holidays we did go down and follow missing person's report. To Lisa, this was an abnormal behavior. Admittedly, she'd got as long as two months without hearing from Tiffany before, but after that time had gone by and the holidays came and went, Lisa felt this had escalated past typical drug user behavior. Tiffany was last seen in September. Lisa

reported her missing in January. It's bizarre. It's bizarre. Pretty much my entire high school has either you know, I'm graduating class is either guy d of whole in some sort of treatment or recovery or legal consequences. But no one's ever just disappeared. This is Aaron Warren, a close friend of Tiffany's. You know a few of us have gone missing from time to time, because we're out there in active addiction. I did myself, but you eventually reach surface.

She's known Tiffany for a long time and could offer perspective on the drug addiction that apparently ran Tiffany's life. Aaron can talk about Tiffany's addiction because she can relate. But when the time came and Aaron got clean, Tiffany didn't, and that caused them to drift apart. So I've known Tiffany actually since middle school, and we've been you know, friends, on and off throughout middle school. And when I say on an office, you know, I'm I'm in recovering myself.

So you know, addiction takes you different places and you don't always hang around the same group of people. But HM, any time we were hanging out throughout middle school and high school, we were definitely partying together, which I always involved alcohol drugs. And then I got sober in TWN and not too long after that I reconnected with Tiffany.

She had gotten out of prison and um, you know it was was sober for a period of time, and so we attended meetings together and we're once again a part of one another's lives, but in a more healthier place for each of us. So when she relapsed, you know, I I'm still sober today. So I tried to you know, and see her at meetings, meet her at meanings and tried to talk to her, but she was so strung out on meth again, you just couldn't get through to her.

I don't remember if she you know, maybe she went through our side in prison, but I don't recall her going to rehab and when she got out, you know, at that point, I don't know why she couldn't go back home, you know, if she lost custody of her daughter. But she was actually living with a a mutual friend for a period of time before she relapsed, mutual friend that we also went to school with, and then he was a member of you know, recovery also at the time.

I don't think it was that long before her disappearance. I'm not sure. I saw her at a at a a a meeting and that that that was literally our last, my last contact with her. She was so strong out, you know, high at that time, very emaciated and finn um and and just telling me some crazy story. I just asked her, like, do you want help? Are you ready? To like come off of the stuff again, because you know, I'll help you do that, but I can't like enable

you because she was needing somewhere to stay. No, was kind of the crisis at the moment that she was back on drugs. But turns out she's like stolen stuff from her roommate who was also a co worker, and that's why her her roommate kicked her out. That's the same coworker she worked with it uh at I hop that's actually been interviewed several times for her story. You know, the police report and all that she got fired from I Hot for stealing from there too, So you can

just kind of see her pattern with this. We also asked Aaron about Ashley Coddle, Tiffany's boyfriend at the time and the last person she was with on the night that she disappeared on the surveillance tape footage from Walmart. They walk around the store together. He like pulled up that night outside of the meeting when I was trying to talk to her and ask her she wanted help, and he picked her up. Um. I mean I heard from people that ran with them that he had very

bad temper. Sketch absolute sketch. I mean, they're both strung out on meth. And you know, anytime anybody's on math, they're sketchy, they're flighty shifty. You get this feeling, I'm trying to describe it, like when someone's on the math and they're in the same room as you. Yeah, it's like being around someone who's possessed, Like you instantly feel I've got to get away from this person. It's scary,

it's it's un it's unsettling. And on the inside, if you are locked up in Cobb County gel they're always a group of tweakers that are locked up in there, and all of the gossip, you know what I mean, in latest news that goes on in the in the meth underworld. So the fact that nobody has come forward with information, I mean, I feel like she she she has to be dead. I was arrested many times when I was an active addiction, and but I would be in there with a bunch of the you know, the

the column tweakers. You know, one time in particular, they were talking about, oh, she knows something about the body that was done somewhere. Now this is unrelated to Tiffany, but you hear you hear the gossip in jail. You know what I mean because I've heard it myself as an innate. I mean, somebody knows something. It's like, Okay, was she picked up in sex traffic? I feel like that and and and you know, being killed or the

two most likely outcomes. Okay. The IHP waitress, the one in Marietta that Tiffity worked out, got fired from forestaing. I spoke with her, um like, face to face. I can't tell you where or when. I mean, it was that closer to the times disappeared. And I mean she told me straight up, like Ashley came there after her disappearance, looking visibly shaken, you know what I mean, like distraught, shifty,

what you would expect for someone that's til meth. But she said like more so and was acting really weird, so I mean just her. And then you know, it was reported that she said, well, why don't you call Tiffany and he pulled out her cell phone and said, because I have it. So then if a message wasn't a month later to her brother whoever, for Happy Birthday? Okay, why the funking that being investigated? Had they looked at her phone records, you know what I mean, Like, why

isn't this stuff being tracked? The birthday message that Aaron is referring to is a message that was sent from Tiffany's Facebook to her half brother Blake around January. According to an interview Blake did in two thousand sixteen, Tiffany also called him around his birthday that year, using her special nickname for him, Mudbug. Keep in mind, this was just about four months since she was last seen. More

on this later. When you have two drug addicts in a relationship, the codependence is so strong that you're not going to separate no matter what. So for the fact that actually claims she just disappeared into the night, I don't fucking believe. You know, toxic codependent relationships just as strong as drugs and alcohol. The effect is the same for someone, you know what I mean. So if you're in that type of relationship and you have to have that person to be okay, you're not gonna let them

wander off into the night. There's just not Because humans, individually, we're we're can be unpredictable to an extent, But when you add drugs into the months, there's no way to predict outcomes. When Lisa found out that her daughter was shoplifting for the Walmart at the time she disappeared, her first thought was that maybe she was laying low knowing she was in trouble. It didn't seem like such a crazy idea, especially given the crowd Tiffany ran with and

her obvious drug usage. On that night, Mason Paine and I went to visit Lisa and talk with her about her daughter's case. As part of Lisa's effort not to let this case rest, she never turns down any interview or opportunity to speak about Tiffany. There's no evidence that. I mean, initially, my thought was I was suspicious of him. Initially, however, I did think, well, you know, she she did get caught shop loveding. She knows she's going to be in trouble.

So my initial thought, like I said to you before, was she's laying low, she's out with one of her friends. She just she doesn't want to face the music. Um. Then I started thinking, what has something happened? What if she ran behind behind Sam's and she fell, she got hurt, she you know, hit her head, something happened back there. And but they've searched all back there and nothing. So, um, I don't think that any anything happened in that immediate area.

I do believe and have always believed, that they somehow met back up that night, whether it was you know, around that area, maybe at one Stein's. He lived close by. She knew a lot of people in the area. You know. I told Tom when we first met, and I think the first day that we met, you know, I said, you look out that one I said, look out that window right behind us. What do you see out there? He said, trees? Woods, And I said, you know what

I see somewhere? My daughter could be everywhere I look every time I go to the lake, you know, I'm i'm. We went to the lake one day. This was the first summer that we had our boat, and we were in a cove close to Bethany Bridge as a matter of fact, and we were pulling up anchor to go back to the marina, and the anchor was stuck and so my husband's you know, pulling and tugg and he said, oh, there's something on the anchor. And then my daughter says, um,

I hope it's not a body. And immediately I thought, would that be the craziest thing. I mean, crazy doesn't even begin to describe it. But I cannot even tell you how sick I felt when he was pulling on that rope to see what was at the other end. It was an anchor. It was another anchor that we pulled up with, you know, part of a rope on it. But my gut tells me that she hit out for a little while until the police were gone. You know, she ran over behind Sam's. They did not give chase,

They did not take off after her. They had her first, they knew who she was. So my gut instinct is that she hit out for a while until you know that he was off, so to speak. And then when Ashley came back to get that truck, she was she was in it or buy it or near it, or she was there. They they hooked back up that night. I have no doubt about that. The truth never changes.

So if, if truly she ran out of that Walmart and he never laid eyes on her again, why he told people, Oh yes, she got arrested, Oh yes, she went to rehab. Oh yeah, we were arguing and she you know, she walked off and I don't know where she went. There's no reason to lie unless something happened that he doesn't want anyone to know about. There's no other reason to lie. I mean, if he had, if he had stuck with the same story that I swear to you, she ran out the door. I did not

see her again period. So you can ask me, you know, any way you want, or try to trip me up or I never saw her again. He but he hasn't done that. He hasn't done that. I mean he's kind of doing that now because he's on the hot seat. But he didn't do that in the beginning. I did not get a lot of cooperation in the beginning on this case. And you probably saw that with Chase Master's

case as well. It was the yeah, so if you're not a if you're not a you know, blonde hair, blue eye, co ed um or a child obviously you know, any child, they're gonna go looking for. But the bottom line, and it was the same thing I had told my mom, And what mom, you know, I don't know about following a missing person report. She's gone off the grid like this before for a couple of months where she didn't when she's using she didn't want to talk to her family.

She didn't want to talk to anybody who was going to try to push her to rehab or you know, try to do anything to get her off of that path. So, um, maybe two months, maybe two months. So you know that that part of it was not out of the ordinary, and it wasn't really until we got those letters we found out that, you know, the Walmart incident had happened, that we really began to think, Okay, there's something more to this. But even still, I'm thinking, Okay, she's on parole,

she just got cop shoplifting. Put two and two together, and I said, if I go, if I go down to the police department and follow this in person report, they are gonna laugh me out the door. And um, and you know, of course I did feel that way. And of course I look back on it now and think, God, your dumbass. You know, maybe if you had gone sooner, they would have video from the parking lot that. I mean, I'd beat myself up every day for that. I can't but I can't change that, so I have to move

on from that. But when I did go, and then when I did press the detective, and and the detective call and said, yeah, We're we're not even gonna open We're not going to open an investigation on this. She's just hiding out. She'll she'll turn up. Correct. That was in UM. It was in Janue, weary of fourteen, well, September, October, November, December, jam four months. You know, she she's on paroll, she she was shoplifting, She's in trouble, she's just hiding out. She'll,

she'll turn up. Yeah. I started calling people. I just started calling. I went up the chain at Mary Att a p D. And UM was actually called the Chief's office and his assistant was amazing and gave me every name and number of people I needed to call, and she said, if you don't get any satisfaction there, then you call me back and I'll make sure that you get to talk with Chief Flynn and UM. So I went up the chain, and then I got a call from a major who UM who basically was not was

not very nice. He basically told me, we don't even know that UM who has jurisdiction on this. And I said, and I know who has jurisdiction because it's the last place that she was seen and it was in your city. Well, she was in our city committing a crime. I really don't care what she was doing. Um, she was in your city and she's missing. It does not matter what she was doing when she went missing. The fact is

she's missing, and it is your jurisdiction. And um. During the course of the conversation, I realized he had mentioned that he had a daughter, and I think he has to actually, but he had mentioned something about having a daughter, and I said, I said, so, I'm just gonna ask you this. Um, you mentioned you have a daughter. I said, if she went missing, regardless of the circumstances, would you not move heaven and earth to find her? And it was just complete silence, and he said, I'll be back

in touch with you. Then he hung up the phone. And then later that evening I got the first call from Detective Mueller. I don't like to knock any municipality or or anything like that, but he's been arrested multiple times in cop County. It's always a slap on the rest. He's always out in record time. I don't understand how somebody can be you know. I mean, my brother works at that jail. He said, it's a revolving door. He sees the same people in and out of there all

the time. Ashley's one of them. He's done time there, he's done time in prison, he's been in, he's been out. But every time he gets in trouble and cop counting is the same thing they pleaded. You know, he's a little bitty squirt, and I think that he you know, tries to talk big and bad, and he tries to intimidate people. And he's supposedly a part of this ghost Phase gang. Whatever the heck. That is a bunch of losers.

But I have to say, look, I knew he had already set the expectation for me that they were not going to be able to get him on trafficking and a lot of other things that they wanted to charge him with, and that, um, you know, he said, as much as I hate to say it, we're not going to be able to give him as much time as what we're hoping. So my expectations were very low. When I heard that he got sentenced to twenty years and had to served in I was happy. I was really

happy because he's not gonna be on the street. He can't intimidate witnesses, he can't you know, hide evidence. If there is any out there. I mean, I know that he saw me. When after the March drug bust, I did go to court. Um I went to Yeah, he saw me. He definitely saw me. Um. No, Well, when he saw me and we did make eye contact, he immediately turned and I had on a shirt with her picture on it, so there was no doubt who I was. He doesn't want to look at me. I don't think

the guy can look at me. It's just like a um never ending nightmare that you can't wake up from. You know, you. I go through my day. I take care of my family, I do my job. I do what I have to do to get through a day. And you know, I've had people say, God, you know, how do you even how can you even get out of bed in the morning if my my child was missing, I like what, I have two other kids to take care of in a husband, I can't not get out of bed. Yeah, I have no choice but to get

out of bed. And thank God, thank God for that, because otherwise, I mean if I just if I didn't get out of bed in the morning, I mean I would just die. I would just die. I have to keep going, I have to keep searching and I have to keep doing what I can to try to convince people to do the right thing. If you know something, you need to say. Something is as simple as that, and it's frustrating. What do you tell Tiffany's daughter? You know, we don't talk a lot about it. I've kind of

let her be the lead on them. We do talk about her mommy, but we try to. I try to talk about her in positive ways. You know, when when she'll do something funny that reminds me of her mommy, I'll say, oh my gosh, you know you look just like your mommy when you did that. Or I'll be brushing her hair and say, gosh, you know your hair is exactly like hers. I mean, they look exactly alike. You look at a picture of Tiffany and you honestly accept the fact that the picture is older and the

styles have changed. There's no difference. You know. She's very much like her mommy in a lot of ways, which can be worrisome. She's like her in good ways and bad ways. She finally got to a point where she was she was upset one day and she just told me that she was starting to forget what she looked like and that just broke my heart. And then she wanted to know, you know, she said, is she is mo mommy dead? No grandmother should ever have to answer

that question or never even be asked that question. But um, I was honest with her and told her that as much as I pray that she's not, that, you know, in my heart, I believe that she is. And I explained to her what happened, and not only what happened, but how she got to that point, you know, what what happened in her life that led her down that path. And I told her, you know, Tiffany didn't tell the

truth a lot, and she stole things. I mean, obviously she was shop flofting in walmartch and she had taken things that didn't belong to her. She had an issue with the truth. I have felt for a very long time that this particular person was the key to blowing this case open. And um, I've been saying that to law enforcement now for three years. I guess this guy right here, I'm telling you right now, this guy right here is the key. And here's why abc D. Here's

why he's the key. And I'm not gonna say that that other people necessarily discounted what I was saying, UM, But I don't think they really felt as strongly about it as I did. John Dawes listened, and John Dawes believes the same thing that I believe. I thought about

it so many times. I thought, what if, you know, I'm sitting at home one night and there's a knock at the door and it's John Dawes, or you know, somebody is knocking out my door to say, hey, you know, we found her, even though I know in my heart, I feel in my heart that she's gone to get that to find that out would be so final. It's just final at that point. But the one person who I had said has the key. Yeah, that's what I believe.

You could tell him something right now, would say. I would say what I've said, UM directly to him, and that is, you know, if the shoe were on the other foot and you were missing, and Tiffany knew what happened, she would tell. She wouldn't have any problem telling. And you know, one day this could be your child, this could be your daughter, God forbid. Don't you want somebody to do that for you? Wouldn't you want somebody to step forward and do the right thing and say what happened.

I mean, I don't know how else to put it except dude, come on, you know the time is the time has come. What is there to be afraid of? What is there to be afraid of? If you did nothing wrong, then why are you so afraid to come forward? Maybe that's what he's afraid of. Maybe maybe, but yeah, that could be. I've thought about that too, that maybe he did do something wrong and that's why he's so afraid. I mean, I think you did something wrong, But I

don't think he actually I don't think he actually harmed Tiffany. Um, but I do think he helped cover it up. Yes, is it definitely is. But I think that in the interest of information, law enforcement would probably be willing to overlook that to get the information if they need. So, that's what I would say to him. Quit being a pansy. You know, you act all tough with your gang signs and your tats and all this kind of stuff. You

ain't tough. You're not tough at all. Tiffany wouldn't disappeared within about a mile or so of my office where I work. Every day I drive past the location where she was last seen alive. Almost every single day I shopped right near there, I near there. I can barely imagine how someone could literally disappear without a trace from

that place. Unlike other cold cases that we've seen, there's one factor present here that was not present in anything else that really hampered law enforcement when this case started as well as today. That factor is the delay in reporting. It was four months before Tiffany's mother went to the Marriott A police department to report her daughter missing. In that four month period of time, just imagine what all could have been going on with Tiffany Witten Considering her lifestyle.

What type of hazards was she facing every day? Was she exposing herself to bad people? Was she exposing herself to bad habits? Was she perhaps getting herselves in a situation where maybe she would overdose or something else tragic could happen. The possibilities are seemingly endless. And just how regrettable is it that all of those security cameras and surveillance videos that I saw just in the parking lot of the Walmart alone, not to mention all of the

nearby stores, they all probably saw where she went. There was probably security video showing exactly what happened to her. But in that period of time, those recordings went away the way that the systems work may usually record over themselves after a number of days or perhaps a couple of weeks. And so during that four months, think about all of the evidence that was simply lost. It's nobody's fault, necessarily, it's just the way that it is. That's what happens

in four months time. Tiffany Whitten was a human being. She deserves to be found. It doesn't matter what her lifestyle choices may have been, It doesn't matter what her past history might have been. She was a human being, and she does not deserve to be missing. Her family doesn't deserve to go through life. Her daughter doesn't deserve to go through life wondering what the hell happened to

her mother. As much as Tiffany deserves to be found, her friends, her family, and her loved ones deserve answers. We hear from the Assistant District Attorney in Cobb County and discussed the case at length with the current lead investigator, John Dawes. Next Time on Sworn. Sworn is produced by Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta. Story and production by Payne Lindsay, Mason Lindsay and Meredith Steadman and myself Philip Holloway executive

producers Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay. And if you have it yet, please check out our sister podcast, Up and Vanished that follows the investigation into the disappearance of Georgia High School teacher and beauty queen Tara Grinstead. Up and Vantage is available now on Apple Podcasts. Sworn is mixed and mastered by Resonate Recordings. If you're in the market for podcast production, go to Resonate Recordings dot com to

get your first episode produced for free. If you haven't already, please head over to iTunes now to subscribe, rate, and review Sworn and make sure you check us out online at sworn podcast dot com and follow us on social media at Sworn podcast on Twitter and Instagram, and you can follow me your host, Philip Holloway at phil holloway e s Q on Twitter. Thanks for listening. This is Philip Halloway and I'll see you next time on swarn se