U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
OFFICIAL MEMORANDUM
DATE: 1-03-2017
FROM: Special Agent Donald J. Peterson, FBI
TO: Charles D. Foster, Lieutenant, Midland Municipal Police Department
The Federal Bureau of Investigation asserts investigative authority in the matter of Case ID # 79-SA-1337, pursuant to Title 28, U.S. Code, Section 540A0. We hereby confirm receipt of a total of eleven (11) excerpted fragments from the interrogations conducted by the Midland Municipal Police Department on the night of December 31, 2016. Full data records of the online Twitter history for accounts @EricThornSucks and @TessaHeartsEric have also been obtained at your suggestion. Forensic crime scene analysis is currently underway, and results will be made available to your department forthwith.
Please find enclosed a transcript of our recent conversation conducted in the FBI San Antonio Field Office. Thank you for your department’s full and speedy cooperation in this ongoing investigation.
Case ID #: 79-SA-1337
TRANSCRIPT OF ELECTRONICALLY RECORDED INTERVIEW
DATE: January 2, 2017, 12:17 p.m.
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| AGENT: | Lieutenant Foster, thank you for coming in today. As you know, you’re being interviewed as the last known person to speak with the victim in our case. This interview is being recorded. |
| FOSTER: | I understand. |
| AGENT: | For the record, I’m Special Agent Donald Peterson with the FBI San Antonio Field Office. Today is January 2, 2017. Could you please identify yourself? |
| FOSTER: | Lieutenant Charles Foster. I’m an investigator with the Midland, Texas, Police Department. |
| AGENT: | Thanks, Charles. You were the lead investigator conducting your department’s inquiry into the Blair Duncan–Tessa Hart stalking case. Please describe to me the last time you saw Ms. Hart. |
| FOSTER: | After the interrogations. I put her in a room with Mr. Thorn. |
| AGENT: | In the Midland police station? |
| FOSTER: | Yes, in one of the interrogation rooms. It was consensual. We recorded video footage of their interaction from behind the two-way partition, but unfortunately no audio. I sent you a copy of the tape. |
| AGENT: | I reviewed it. Can you provide any insight into Ms. Hart’s state of mind that might have led her to strike Mr. Thorn across the face? |
| FOSTER: | I couldn’t say. Not with any certainty. At the time of the incident, I put it down to shock. |
| AGENT: | Did Mr. Thorn at any time give you reason to believe he might be fearful of Tessa Hart? |
| FOSTER: | No, but he appeared paranoid in general. He was clearly concerned about a fan becoming violent. He spoke at some length about the Dorian Cromwell murder case and his concern that a deluded fan might attempt a copycat crime. |
| AGENT: | A fan, but not Tessa Hart in particular? |
| FOSTER: | No. It was such a strange dynamic. He didn’t see Ms. Hart as a fan. He came across as a bit delusional himself, in my opinion. To hear him talk, the two of them were in a mutual relationship. He viewed her as his girlfriend. And yet when I interviewed her, she had no idea the person she’d been talking to was him. |
| AGENT: | Did you get the sense that Ms. Hart might pose any kind of threat to him? |
| FOSTER: | Not really. We interviewed her as the victim in our case. We never considered her as a potential perpetrator. I don’t know, Don. It seems pretty tenuous. |
| AGENT: | We have physical evidence at her place of residence. |
| FOSTER: | What kind of evidence are we talking about? |
| AGENT: | Track patterns in the snow, fingerprints on both their cell phones, a butcher knife that may have been the murder weapon, and multiple bloodstains in her bedroom. |
| FOSTER: | His blood? |
| AGENT: | The final DNA report is still pending, but the initial blood type analysis looks like a match for Thorn. |
| FOSTER: | And the body? |
| AGENT: | No body just yet. From the tracks outside the house, it looks like the suspect managed to drag the body into the victim’s vehicle. It’ll probably turn up somewhere once the snow melts. |
| FOSTER: | Can’t rule it a homicide without a body. |
| AGENT: | We’re still treating it as a missing persons case for now. We were called in by state police in New Mexico after Thorn failed to appear for a show in Santa Fe. |
| FOSTER: | Can’t even say for sure there was foul play involved, if you ask me. |
| AGENT: | You think Thorn could’ve staged it? |
| FOSTER: | Depends. What does Tessa Hart have to say about it? |
| AGENT: | Nothing. She’s long gone. We believe Ms. Hart made it across the Mexican border. The victim’s car turned up this morning at a chop shop outside Del Rio. Our analysts are checking it over now. |
| FOSTER: | Damn. That car must’ve been worth a few hundred grand. |
| AGENT: | Yep, we’re guessing it may be a while before she surfaces, with the amount of cash she would have obtained for it. |
| FOSTER: | Well, that doesn’t look good for her. She told us she didn’t leave the house. Agoraphobic. |
| AGENT: | We have reason to question the credibility of certain statements she made to you. |
| FOSTER: | You never can tell, can you? I’ve been on the job twenty-five years now, and I wouldn’t have pegged her for a killer. You’d think Thorn would’ve seen it coming, the way he obsessed about that Cromwell case. |
| AGENT: | Love is blind, right? |
| FOSTER: | You can say that again. |
| AGENT: | Just one more thing, Charles. Could you take a look at this and tell me if it means anything to you? |
| FOSTER: | What am I looking at here? |
| AGENT: | The final tweets sent from Mr. Thorn’s Twitter account. He tweeted just before midnight on December 31, and I quote: “I love you, snowflake. This is real.” And then he tweeted this one on the morning of January 1— |
| FOSTER: | That’s impossible. We froze that account, pending our investigation. |
| AGENT: | No, I’m not referring to the @EricThornSucks account. This was tweeted from @EricThorn. |
| FOSTER: | My mistake. I just assumed because of the reference. |
| AGENT: | What do you mean by that? |
| FOSTER: | It’s a reference to a direct message that Eric Thorn sent to Tessa Hart from the @EricThornSucks account. Hang on while I look it up… [pause] I’m guessing you’re going to want to enter the whole thread into evidence, Don. This tweet right here’s your smoking gun. |
| AGENT: | Let the record show that we’re discussing a tweet sent out on January 1 at 7:26 a.m. from the account with username @EricThorn. The tweet states, and I quote: “Sleep with a leech, and it just might bleed you dry.” |