Background.

My roommate, Tea, has been missing since April, and I have been law enforcement's target since the beginning, thanks to a vindictive X and a disgruntled friend excluded from the will.

In the summer of twenty twenty, Corey Bamley sets up a gofund me page to raise money for her legal fees, with a goal of twelve thousand dollars.

In her post, Corey refers to Teleina as Tea.

Tea has been suicidal for a couple years, had pre planned and pre paid for her own funeral, and repeatedly told those closest to her that she intended to carry out her final wishes in June twenty twenty.

In April, she was convinced she'd contracted COVID nineteen, and I believe she accelerated her plans and left for a destination unknown to everyone but herself.

If you left me in charge of home.

Finances and pets, but I cannot honor her wishes while she remains missing no death certificate.

Local law enforcement has targeted me based on malicious leads and a desire to close a case, regardless of the facts.

This law enforcement agency has a bad reputation for this type of unprofessional behavior, and my legal representation is essential but draining me financially.

If you are able to help in any way, it will not only be greatly appreciated, but it will be remembered once I've been vindicated.

Smiley face.

From iHeart Podcasts.

I'm Melissa Jelson and this is what happened to Telenazar.

The first thing I would say was how's your roommate going?

And she always answered the best I've ever had.

There's still part of me thinking that maybe someone will just call and say she's sick.

Somewhere.

He goes, well, she killed my Telena wife, And I said, if you know that, let's get the sheriffs.

Just because they're missing doesn't mean anything was nefarious.

I was angry with her.

I was just on a mission to take her down.

I wasn't scared.

Episode six, One Step Ahead.

It's May twenty eighth, twenty twenty, about two months since Telena disappeared.

The Wagner County Sheriff's Office now believes that her roommate, Corey Baumerly was involved, and with a search warrant in hand, they go looking for the evidence to prove it.

A team of detectives and deputies roll up on announced to Toelena and Corey's house.

Detective Weber has been inside before with Corey's blessing.

This time is different.

When I told her that I had a search warrant was coming inside the house, she instantly her demeanor changed.

She appeared to go kind of pale and began shaking real bad.

Corey comes outside to meet the detectives, says she has a lawyer and will no longer be speaking to them, but that's not how this works.

They show her the search warrant.

She has no choice but to let them in.

To get back in, she needed either a fingerprint on her doorknob or a code.

She tried her fingerprint several times and it wouldn't unlock for her because her fingers wouldn't go into the fingerprint reader.

She was trampling so bad.

She had to try the code several times to get it unlocked.

Inside the house, the deputies fan out.

Weber explains what they're looking for, phones, computers, and asks Corey to locate them.

I asked her where her phone was.

We walked to the kitchen where she had her cell phone hidden inside a saucepan in a lower cabinet drawer.

As for computers, Corey says she has none, so Weber goes hunting himself.

Corey had placed two of her dogs in the bathroom of the master bedroom.

I thought this was odd, given that.

There was plenty of room in the yard for them, and she had kennels in the garage.

I went into this bathroom.

And found a tower computer hidden underclothing in the bathroom closet.

I also located another laptop computer in the front bedroom closet.

Corey seems on edge as Weber continues to search the house.

He keeps an eye on her, and at one point sees her walk outside into the backyard.

She appeared to walk slowly toward the northwest corner of the yard while scanning her head back and forth.

It appeared she was looking for something.

Intrigued by this, Weber retraces Corey's steps, goes to the same corner of the yard and doesn't notice anything in particular, but a little ways off, a fire pit catches Weber's eye.

Up close, he finds burnt and melted remnants of a mattress.

Corey burned it because of feed.

He called her too.

Weber takes some photos to document the scene.

Back at the station.

Digging into Corey's phone, the police finds something ominous Internet searches for how to remove blood from cement and how to moved blood from wood.

They also find a photo of Corey's white cargo trailer.

For weeks, sheriffs have been trying to locate this trailer.

They think it might be key to understanding what happened to Telena, seeing as it seemed to disappear not too long after she did.

When Detective Weber asked Corey about it on May ninth, she said she'd sold it earlier for one thousand bucks.

It was there one day, and now it's not what's a trailer got to do with?

It was mine, it wasn't Telena's, so okay.

However, looking at the photo on Corey's phone, officers can tell that she took the picture on May tenth, a day after a meeting with Weber, meaning she lied again.

But they still don't know where the trailer is.

There had been at least one siding of it, though I.

Told him that I had all that trailer over at Billy's Shields.

Plave, Greg tells police during an interview that he saw the trailer on the property of Billy Shields, a neighbor who often cleaned Telena and Corey's house.

We were going to a place to go pick up a pizza, and we drove by and saw that trailer.

Spit made.

It was plugged into an extension cord, Like there's an extension, like an orange extension cord going into the back of this trailer.

And I thought, well, that's weird.

Why would Corey have that over here, especially plugged in.

She has her own house that she can plug it in over there.

Greg had been characteristically candid with the police, telling them all about how he got rid of Telena's bed frame at Corey's request.

He had voluntarily gone down to the station, but still it was intimidating being questioned about a missing person.

Yeah, it was the first time I'd ever been interviewed by Shaf's deputies like that.

They had had a couple of people of interest, and I believe I was one of them.

And I just sat down and just started the story and told him in there and they're looking at me, and I didn't really know what what to say or do.

Greg continued to share information with the cops as they requested it.

At one point, they asked him to verify the layout of Teleina and Corey's house.

Who slept where.

When they showed me pictures of the house, I said, that wasn't the bedroom that Telena stayed in.

Corey had told police that Teleina slept in the front room, but Greg explained that Teleina's bedroom was actually in the back of the house, and looking at the photos, he saw that Telena's room had been totally disassembled.

Corey had taken all of all of her stuff and put captain there, and I had seen the cats.

I'm what the hell is this?

Delena didn't let cats in the house.

I felt like at that point, you know, she was trying to cover up a crime scene by putting all that cats.

And they weren't clean.

They were thinky, nasty, fishing and pooping everywhere.

Cats.

You know, I felt like she's covering something up.

Grag told us Telena slept on the bed in the back bedroom on the left.

This was extremely significant information because Corey lied during interviews and during the tour of the residents.

She told us Telena slept in the front bedroom on the left.

And the back bedroom was the TV room.

This indicates Corey quickly completely rearranged the two bedrooms after burning the mattress.

This also indicates that there was something very significant about this mattress.

With all this new information, the investigation goes into hyperdrive.

The detectives tracked down two storage units that Corey rented in two separate parts of the state, and after getting more search warrants for the units, they find a backpack containing two guns and a driver's license chopped up into little bits.

Methodically putting the pieces back together, a picture emerges of a dark haired woman with a fixed gaze and her name Telena Janna Galloway.

During the execution of multiple search warrants, evidence showed Corey cut up Toelena's driver's license and was hiding it in the storage unit.

A week or so later, the Sheriff's office is back at Telena and Corey's house, this time with a search warrant that gives them free rein to take anything that could be evidence of a crime.

They use that blue Star chemical in the room that is actually Tolena's, the one at the back of the house that had been turned into the cat room, and the floor glows just like the garage did.

Elsewhere, officers find two more firearms, bringing the grand total to four.

A subsequent interview in Search Warren of the victim's residence produced a firearm and the defendant's possession that she claimed the victim took with her when she left.

Because Corey is a convicted felon, police are able to arrest her on the spot for possession of a firearm.

She was handcuffed to and arrested and taken to Wagner County Jail.

When I found out she was arrested, I was super excited, like maybe they got her, maybe they found something.

Because we didn't know right away what she had been arrested for.

We're all kind of connecting through conference calls from each person trying to figure out did you hear anything to do here, kind of talking to the neighbors.

The sluts soon learn Corey is facing more than a dozen charges, including possession of a firearm as a felon, destroying evidence, and obstructing a criminal investigation, but not any charges directly related to Toleina's disappearance without a body the police or hamstrung still Jess and the other online sleuths take it as a win.

It's like, Okay, maybe we're gonna have some answers, maybe they know something.

It was a super exciting time for everybody.

I think most people involved were like finally, as.

The online sleuths celebrate, Jess notices that Marty is dealing with Corey's arrest differently.

The only person who wasn't super excited and see more pissed off was Marty.

He was he was pissed, but he was excited, but he was more angry about the situation.

Corey's first night in jail, Jess gets a call.

It's Marty.

He tells her that he'd gone into Toleina's empty house.

He told me that when he went in, he saw the will sitting on the counter.

He saw Telena's will, and he had seen that Corey had circled and highlighted things about who's getting what and how she's trying to take everything and run.

And he had this whole long story about how he'd been completely cut out and he was furious.

And then he said he went to the garage and he took the chainsaw and pawned it because he needed to get some money to pay for a prescription.

The way Marty's acting plants a little seed that maybe he was involved in some way.

Something about that whole situation turned me off.

Alarm bells were kind of in my head, not enough for me to accuse him of anything, but just enough in the back of my head to say, this isn't right.

By this point, Jess is no stranger to the Wagner County Sheriff's office.

She's called in tips many times, but this is the first time she calls in to report Marty, someone she considers a front.

I'd said, hey, something about this made me feel weird.

He broke into this house and he took the chainsaw, and we don't know where Teleina is and Corey's in jail, and the whole thing just seems weird, Like it seemed weird.

I don't I don't know.

The rustic house nestled in the trees used to be full of life, first Tolena and her husband Tom, then just to Lena, then Teleina and Corey, and for a little while just Corey and now no one except for a huge collection of animals, from donkeys to cats to many many dogs.

She had like seven or eight dogs.

Three were like pitball box and mixes that she kept in the backyard.

And then there was a Bassett Hound and a chihuahua, and then there was Calena's a little dog, and then there was like three or four other dogs of Cory's.

This is Rachel Parker, one of Helena's friends who lived nearby.

And an animal advocate.

I'm not going to sit down here and listen about these animals dying because they're not getting fed or what not.

Her house sitter had reached out to me about the dogs, all of the dogs that were down there, and she's like, you know, Corey is in jail, can you come help me take care of these dogs.

Rachel asks Greg to come with her.

Rachel, you know, being the dog weaver that she is, and I mean, she wants to rescue every dog if possible.

So we go over to Helena's house to see about these dogs.

We hadn't talked to anybody to get permission from anybody.

Rachel just knew felt like she knew Telena, and I felt like I knew them well enough that we could just pop over there and see what's up with the dogs.

Pulling up to Corey's house, they noticed a U Haul trailer in the driveway.

It's not Cory's white trailer, the one that police have been hunting.

It's a different rented trailer.

But being armchair detectives, they're curious and decide to open it.

And I slung open the door and me and Rachel standing there, and she goes, oh my god, this thing sounds like Beth And I'm like, I know, it looks clean, but it just thinks, I mean, like somebody had packed dead fish in this thing or something and left it in the sun.

Maybe there was nothing, you know, overtly unclean or anything about it.

When we opened it up, there was just a really, really bad smell.

I wondered, you know, if I should go ahead and call the U haul people and tell them where it's at, because Cory, the person that had rented it, was in jail.

But we didn't.

We left it all alone.

Undeterred, they head into the garage.

There were dog crates and stuff in the garage, and there was a pile of boxes and other bits and bobs in there.

She had literally gone through and painted the floor around these areas.

And I looked at that, and I said to Greg, that odd looking And we just kind of looked at each other.

There's fresh gray paint on the garage floor, applied in a haphazard pattern.

There's even a wet looking roller sitting in a tray of paint.

Not like somebody had decided to paint their garage or whatnot.

They're going to move everything out.

She just painted around everything.

It was just really weird.

I mean, by then we all kind of had a suspicion that something bad had happened.

They keep going in the house, Rachel notices something that isn't there.

When we got to the kitchen, we noticed the freezer was not the freezer used to I think at one point it was in the garage, and then it was in the kitchen.

Well it wasn't there.

Jay wasn't meet and said, you guys should go ahead and take it.

Our freezer is stuffed.

Full of meat.

Rachel is so struck by the missing freezer that she mentions it to a few other people, and as it does, news gets back to the sleuths.

When we found out the freezer was missing from the garage, it was like how the hell, Like, how did she get rid of this freezer?

Get it out of here, and then get arrested.

It just seemed unreal.

How the hell did the police miss it.

Over the next few days, Rachel continues to feed the animals and begins the process of rehoming them.

On one visit, she runs into another person, Billy Shields to Lena and Corey's housekeeper.

I came in through the back gate and walk into the garage from the door into the kitchen, and she turned around and looked at me, and she just went white.

Because Telena and I were very similar in looks and body structure in the whole nine yard.

And she looked at me and she just started crying.

She said, I thought you were Toelena.

She said, you walked.

Into the door.

I swear to God, I thought you were Telena, And I mean she started crying, and do did I.

We all knew at that point that something had happened.

We didn't know what I think.

In a day or two, Rachel ended up getting all of the dogs out of there.

A couple of days after we moved the dogs.

I was at work, Greg was over here at my house taking care of my dogs.

I just happened to be over at Rachel's house letting her dogs out and Corey pulls up behind me.

Fortunately, I have cameras all around my property and I saw what was going on.

She pulled up behind him at my gate and kind of locked him into my into my driveway.

She's completely blindsided me.

I was closing the gate, walking up to the truck, pulled the truck door open, and she's walking around my truck.

And I thought she was still in jail.

And normally I carry it.

Again, I mean, I've been in concealed carries for a long long time, and I would I had my pistol on me normally, out of instinct, I grabbed for my pistol, but I did not have and she just said where's my dog?

And I'm like, I don't have them?

And she goes, does Rachel have them?

I said no, and she goes, did they get adopted immediately?

And I said yes, And she turned around and got back in the car and left.

Less than a week after her arrest, Corey is released on bond.

News of this travels fast.

Chantal Tolina's niece posts an announcement online which we've recreated.

Corey got out of jail this afternoon.

Everyone please be on alert.

I don't want her to hurt anyone else.

I fear for everyone who has helped in the investigation or spoken out about her.

Please just all keep your eyes open.

Jess gets a one line text from Marty.

Hey, sweetheart, the fucking cunt got out.

We thought she was going to get in a lot more trouble with the guns because she's a felon.

I know a lot of police officers and sheriffs, and like, we know how important it is for pellons TB guns, especially here.

I guess I don't know about Oklahoma, but it's a huge deal.

Bones cannot carry firearms.

We were looking up the penalties and it's like fifteen years per charge, and I was like, well, hell, we've got her on thirty years right there.

We can be done and haven't gonna let her out.

I was like, what the.

Hell it's going on here?

We thought we thought we had her.

The sleuths are worried that the police aren't moving fast enough, or more accurately, that Corey is moving faster.

It always felt like she was one step ahead of them and us no matter what.

I didn't really understand how police worked and gathering their evidence and what they actually needed in order to arrest her.

With law enforcement seemingly unable to hold Corey accountable, just starts to feel like it's up to her.

If justice is going to be served, she may have to be the one to deliver it.

But she's far away, so she deputizes Marty.

She asks him to drive by the house and observe what's going on, and even to go through the trash after Corey puts it on the curb.

It's a way for Jess to build her case against Corey, but it's also a kind of litmus test for Marty.

After all, Jess is convinced that Corey didn't act alone.

I'm saying, hey, I think somebody helped her, and he's like, no, she's super strong.

He didn't want me to think the accomplished theory.

In the days after Corey's release from jail, Jess notices that Marty's often agitated and upset, quick to turn on her.

He'd get pissy that I didn't answer my phone, or well, I'm just gonna call Rosie or I'll call Nicole.

It's like call him, I don't know, sounds good.

At one point, Marty tells Jess that Corey's been driving by his house.

Jess tells him to call the police, but he has his own way of executing justice.

He said, well, I've got my ar right here, so if she comes in, I'll shoot the bitch.

Jess can't make sense of marty behavior.

She doesn't know him well enough to understand what's going on inside his head.

Is he acting guilty because he did something or is he scared because he knows what Corey is capable of.

He tells Jess he's drinking more and not sleeping.

Well, I don't know if it was fear or panic.

I don't know if he was afraid.

Warning bells were in my head.

I was starting to think something was sketchy with him, more so than the drug use and the drinking.

Still, Jess continues to talk to Marty multiple times a day.

After all, Telena is missing, Corey is free.

Jess and Marty they're in this together.

Less than a week after Corey makes bond, It's Father's Day June twenty first, twenty twenty.

Jess and Marty send each other good morning texts.

Like usual, I was doing something with my husband and the kids.

I think you got a picture of us the car, maybe getting ice cream?

And he had sent a picture of Captain America that he had.

He had like an adult coloring book, and he colored Captain America and said, I've been working on this all day.

We kind of bonded over our love of Marvel and Star Wars and whatever.

And I remember saying Happy Father's Day because he's a stepdad.

He said, oh, nobody said that to me in a long time.

That was literally the last time I talked to him.

I think it was Nicole that called me and said Marty's dead, and then I tried messaging him.

I tried calling, and then I called the police station or the sheriff's office, and I asked, like, is he really dead?

Just as told that Marty died of a suspected drug overdose.

And then I became a little harsh with them and said, I know for sure that Corey did it.

And that was another frustrating phone call where I was upset, obviously because he was dead, but they were frustrated that I was making accusations, obviously because legally I couldn't prove that.

I still can't, But I said, I know she was driven by his house like he was texting me.

She killed Telena now she killed him.

Marty dies a week after Corey gets out of jail.

To Jess, it's just too convenient.

And then all of a sudden, he pawns a chainsaw and then he dies of fentanyl overdose.

A user, I mean, he used for years, years, twenty thirty years, talking out their addicts that I know.

I'm not saying an accidental overdose what is impossible.

I'm not saying it's impossible.

I'm just saying it seems like too big of a coincidence that that's how he dies.

In my opinion, Marty's death hits Jess hard.

Even though she suspects he may have played some role in Telena's disappearance, she has real feelings for him.

It's a contradiction that she still struggles with today.

I tried to get Jess to talk more about her reaction to Marty's death, but every time she tried, she became overcome with emotion.

I get really upset when I think about Wolf.

It's hard.

It's hard for me to talk about.

Because you did genuinely care about him.

I did.

Yeah, it sucks because sometimes I wish I could call him right.

There's just parts of me that wish he was still here.

I don't know how to explain it.

I was really sad, it really hurt.

I'm really uncomfortable.

I'm still really simp and that he's gone.

Because what if I'm wrong?

I need I need a minute.

Jess sent me a folder of her text with Marty, ostensibly to provide a window into her investigation to check facts and dates.

But as I scrolled through the hundreds of messages, what I saw instead was a relationship developed two people who found each other in the strange blur of pandemic life, united by their shared obsession with what happened to Teleina'sar.

The day after Marty dies, she texts him, please tell me you're okay, and then four months later, one last text, I miss you so fucking much.

One of the last conversations Wolfe and I had had, he was extremely drunken high and he said, I can't believe you figured it out.

Next time on what happened to Telena'sar.

The findings inside the safe were extremely significant.

A new discovery triggers a second investigation well beyond Wagner, Oklahoma, or even the mysterious disappearance of Telenasar.

Do we feel safe living next door to Corey.

No do our neighbors feel safe after our house was broken into No, none of us feel safe anymore, And.

The Wagner County Sheriff's Office makes a big announcement.

This press conference is regarding what originally started out as a missing person's investigation regarding Telena Galloway.

What Happened to Telenazar is a production of iHeart Podcasts.

It's written, reported, and hosted by me Melissa Jelson, with writing and story editing by Lauren Hansen.

Our executive producer is Ryan Murdoch.

For iHeart Podcasts, executive producers are Jason English and Karl Catele.

Fact checking by Maya Shukri.

Zoe Denkla is our associate producer.

Jeremy Thal is our editor.

Original music by Aaron Kaufman, with additional music by Jeremy Thal and Gideon Crevishe.

Additional sound design by Marita speH.

Episodes are mixed and mastered by Karl Catle.

Voice acting by Lizzie Gore, Chris Ferry, Stephanie Frame, Pete Monica, and Molly Maslin.

Our logo is designed by Edo Moore.

Thanks so much for listening.