It was her dream to be a mom. That's all she wanted in life.
SCOTT: We were a close family all together.
Tammy was looking to provide everything
she didn't have.
The furthest thing from your mind is how bad life can go.
[Meredith speaking]
I just called her over and over again,
and I kept saying Dad, something is wrong.
[Tammy speaking]
MEREDITH: I can't help but think that
she's recording, like, where she's gonna die.
Like, she's gonna die in that house.
[suspenseful music playing]
[automated message]
[Cliff speaking]
[detective speaking]
[Cliff speaking]
MEREDITH: My mom was with Gabe at the Good Shot bar that night.
Cliff was absolutely irate
when he saw my mom with Gabe.
Cliff was relentlessly calling my mom.
[Cliff speaking]
MEREDITH: 43 times within an hour.
He was very determined.
-[detective speaking] -No, but I'm...
She was moving on from him. She no longer needed him.
[Cliff speaking]
NARRATOR: It's Christmas Day, 1995,
in Hockessin, Delaware.
[Scott speaking]
NARRATOR: 33-year-old Scott Gardner videotapes
his 30-year-old wife Tammy, and 18-month-old daughter,
Meredith, as they unwrap their presents.
[Scott speaking]
She was all about Meredith.
Tammy was just as happy as could be to be
a mother, and especially for a little daughter, to have
a daughter -- I think that made it really special.
They had a strong bond.
Come on.
I remember my house around Christmastime
being just almost like a wonderland.
[drum beat playing]
My mom loved Christmas.
She was just like Santa Claus, putting everything together,
so excited -- it looks like a dream come true,
like, countless presents.
It was magical.
[Scott speaking]
She just looks such a ham and so happy.
She doesn't know what to do.
[Tammy speaking]
SCOTT: That's my mother, and sitting in the chair just
to the right will be my dad -- for all holidays,
we always went over to my parents' house.
NARRATOR: Meredith's traditional family setup is very different
to the one that her mom grew up in.
My mom's family was quite large and complicated.
NARRATOR: Tammy has four half siblings and two stepsisters
from her dad's side
and a younger brother Patrick, known as PJ.
But even though they were all half siblings
and step siblings,
everybody was just one big family
regardless of how they got there.
She had a very simple childhood.
They didn't have a lot of money.
When Tammy was 12, her mother passed away from liver
disease, and at that point, her father was also ill.
So Tammy dropped out of school to care for her father,
who then passed away when she was 18.
NARRATOR: Tammy becomes guardian to her 14-year-old brother, PJ.
My mom, when she spoke about her childhood,
it was just very brief.
She had to work to make money to buy
food and such and take care of herself and PJ.
[Tammy speaking]
She worked a lot.
She did not finish high school.
She grew up before she wanted to, just because she had to.
SCOTT: Tammy and I met on my birthday in 1986.
I would have been 24,
and Tammy would have been just under 21.
I just knew she was the one -- I even went into work
the next day, and I said,
"I met the woman that I'm gonna be with for
a long time."
She was the love of my life.
Tammy and I got married,
um, October 7th, 1989.
It was a beautiful wedding.
She was stunning.
NARRATOR: Scott works locally as a technician
at his brother's home security company.
For the next five years,
he and Tammy enjoy a comfortable middle
class lifestyle in their townhouse in
Mendenhall Village.
[Tammy speaking]
She was excited to be a mother
and to show off that massive belly.
-[Scott speaking] -[Tammy laughing]
Oh, my gosh. I was nervous.
NARRATOR: Daughter, Meredith, arrives on June 22nd, 1994.
[Tammy speaking]
NARRATOR: Two months later,
it's time for Tammy to return to her job.
We knew that Tammy was going to have to
go back to work, because we were a dual income family.
SCOTT: I remember the first morning that Tammy was
getting up, getting dressed,
trying to get Meredith together and take her to
a daycare.
I could tell from that moment it wasn't ever gonna work.
Tammy didn't want it to work.
[Tammy speaking]
NARRATOR: To stay close to Meredith, Tammy
quits her job and starts a daycare business at home.
SCOTT: She started watching children in
our townhouse, and that just exploded.
She was really organized.
She had all her paperwork in line.
She had schedules, she had everything.
The daycare and taking care of children
was really Tammy's knack.
She was meant to be a mother, she really was.
NARRATOR: Fast forward to 2000.
The Gardner family moves into
a spacious new home in nearby Wood Creek.
The property is large enough
to accommodate Tammy's growing daycare.
SCOTT: It was in a family-oriented neighborhood.
The house was plenty big.
[Tammy speaking]
[Meredith giggles]
MEREDITH: The house in Wood Creek was my mom's dream home.
SCOTT: It was perfect. We saw it as a forever home.
It was a good happy family at that time.
[Tammy speaking]
SCOTT: But I would say that other factors
come into a marriage that cause problems,
and I wasn't aware of that.
I didn't see it comin'.
[Tammy speaking]
SCOTT: Once my parents retired, they built a place down
in Florida. It was on the Gulf Coast.
A beautiful, big condo with two pools and golf courses
and walking trails and biking trails,
and restaurants, and we'd go down
every year without question.
[Tammy speaking]
MEREDITH: It's me with my floaties on my pool noodle.
[Tammy speaking]
My favorite thing in the entire world,
swimming in that pool.
[Tammy speaking]
I used to love sitting there and just, you know,
watching them, making sure they were good.
[Tammy speaking]
At that point, our family was very happy.
SCOTT: At the moment right there,
it's just all about enjoying the pool and the water.
You'd never guess what was in store in life.
[Tammy speaking]
The furthest thing from your mind is how bad life can go.
In 2001, Tammy and I were still doing real well.
Her daycare was flourishing.
It's obviously challenging,
when you work at home.
I worked a lot of hours, you know,
I'm gone usually 10 or 11 hours a day.
It was easy on me, because she was home with Meredith.
Maybe things got too routine.
MEREDITH: After 2001, my mom's sisters decided
they wanted to see each other more.
So that's when my mom and the sisters decided
they wanted to start going out
to dance at bars, and -- because they loved karaoke,
and they love singing and dancing.
SCOTT: She didn't have the social life
that a lot of young women had.
We started dating, and she was 20, and it was Tammy and I,
and then we got a house, and we got kids,
and so she never lived that.
Everybody knew that she was gonna go crazy
if she didn't get out of the house.
So I was all for that, no problem.
MEREDITH: It started off as one weeknight a month,
they would go out on Thursdays to a bar.
SCOTT: Their going out ramped up.
it went from just Thursdays to
Thursdays and Saturdays.
Tammy actually really started to change at that point.
You could see it in her demeanor.
You can see it in how she dressed.
MEREDITH: My dad started to feel a little frustrated with it.
It seemed like my mom was coming home at, like, 2 AM,
and my dad was mad,
and things were definitely strained at that point.
And then
my mom met Cliff.
NARRATOR: In Fall 2003, Tammy meets 33-year-old
Clifford Wright at the Tailgates Bar in
Newark, Delaware.
They share a connection and strike up a friendship.
Within weeks,
Cliff is tagging along with Tammy on her nights out.
My mom invited Cliff over.
I'll never forget, I saw him walk up
to the front door, and he had this long leather
trench coat on and cowboy boots, and it was kind of scary.
She thought he was a pretty good guy.
He loved motorcycles, and he was kind of rough
around the edges and totally different from my dad.
The bad boy persona just drew her right in.
SCOTT: I didn't see Cliff very often.
Christmas in '03,
Tammy had planned to have
a Christmas get-together at our house,
and Cliff came to that.
MEREDITH: I remember thinking it was a pretty weird situation.
Who was this man that was
Sitting at our dinner table with my dad?
I actually, at the time, thought it was great that there was
a male amongst all these women, and that's what he told me,
he said, "Don't worry about Tammy."
He says, "I'll take care of her."
I can remember sitting and him looking at me
and telling me that.
I never thought that Tammy was with Cliff in
any way other than just chumming around with him.
But it didn't take real long before it got out of control.
MEREDITH: That's definitely when I started
to see my parents' marriage struggle.
In 2004, there was, like, a month
of my parents just fighting more and more.
And it almost seemed like the second we walked in
the door,
my mom and dad were just yelling at each other.
It was a Saturday -- Tammy had been out all day
with Meredith, and then she had the opportunity
to meet up with Cliff later on,
so she came home with Meredith, and her intention
was to leave Meredith with me and go back out.
Well, obviously I got to a breaking point,
and I got upset.
Never got physical, but we got mad,
and we had a fight.
She called 911,
and the police came, and everything had calmed down,
and the police were like, "It was just a domestic fight."
She said, "You're gonna leave him here?"
And they said, "Well, yeah,
unless you feel threatened." "I feel threatened."
And that's exactly what she said.
And they took me in.
MEREDITH: I just remember sitting on the stairs, crying,
because my dad was being escorted out of the house,
and I didn't understand why.
SCOTT: Because she said she felt threatened,
they're obligated to remove me from the house.
I never laid a hand on her. I never touched her.
But once I was out that door, that was it.
NARRATOR: Scott moves in with his parents,
who live a few miles away in Greenville, Delaware.
I could have zero contact with her.
No phone conversations, no calls, no emails.
I was not even allowed to see Meredith
until the court got things straightened out.
Never, until January 31st of 2004,
did I ever think we would be a broken family.
Within six months, we were divorced.
Tammy's mind just clicked, and she wanted something different.
She wanted me out and Cliff in, just like that.
I did not see it going down the road that it did.
I don't think Tammy did.
NARRATOR: Within a few months of Scott and Tammy's separation,
Cliff moves into the Gardner family home in Wood Creek.
MEREDITH: It was pretty early on after my parents separated
that we realized Cliff and my mom were together.
Cliff kind of just settled right into our family.
He just took the role of being the man of the house.
NARRATOR: Tammy's newfound happiness with Cliff
is cut short in August 2004.
I remember my mom being absolutely distraught,
because Cliff was arrested in 2004.
She said he was gonna be away for a little while.
NARRATOR: Cliff spends 12 months in prison for
stealing jewelry from his sister-in-law.
He had to do a year down in Georgetown.
And in that year, Tammy and I were very good.
We had a good relationship, we could have
good conversations,
but as soon as Cliff was back in the picture,
she was a different person.
He told her, in so many words,
she could not have a relationship with me.
MEREDITH: When Cliff was released in 2005,
he did come right to our house,
and we were so excited that he was home.
MEREDITH: Cliff's criminal record leaves
Tammy with a difficult choice.
MEREDITH: Word did get out that we had a criminal
living in our house,
and that's not allowed in the state of Delaware
for a home daycare.
So she was told to kick him out or close the daycare.
My mom decided to close the daycare.
She wouldn't kick him out.
Their relationship started to get abusive
and toxic pretty quickly after that.
They were always fighting.
A lot of it had to do with money.
He couldn't hold a job.
SCOTT: People say you don't know what goes on behind
closed doors -- you really don't.
She would be seen in a grocery store with bruises on her.
Nine out of 10 times, when someone says
that they got a black eye
from opening a cabinet or hurt their neck
from falling down the stairs,
they're probably covering something up.
In between 2005 and 2006,
they were on and off countless times.
It was like a cycle.
He would blow up.
Things would be really bad,
and she would kick him out.
He would be gone for a little bit,
and then he'd be right back in our house every time.
One day, Cliff actually called me from my mom's phone
and said that there had been an accident,
but your mother's okay.
She's in the hospital.
It turns out that he beat her so bad in the car that
she apparently jumped out of the moving van
to get away from him.
SCOTT: It was spiraling out of control.
It was a time bomb.
MEREDITH: July 1st of 2006,
I don't know what the fight was about.
My mom kicked him out again
and said, "You're not welcome in this house anymore."
This time, her demeanor was much different.
It seemed like she was always looking over her shoulder.
NARRATOR: Tammy and Meredith attend
a friend's barbecue for Independence Day,
and someone new enters Tammy's life.
One of the guests is 42-year-old Gabriel Gabrielli,
a father of five who was separated from his wife.
DIANE: Gabe was my husband.
He was a musician.
He spoke English and Spanish, and it was just so wonderful.
I loved it so much.
Gabe was a really fun dad,
because he was kind of a big kid himself.
He really loved his kids.
DIANE: And they loved it when he would sing to them.
NARRATOR: But despite being a devoted dad,
Gabe struggles with his personal demons.
By 2005, his substance and alcohol abuse
was so incredibly bad
that I had to have him removed
from the house in August of 2005.
It took a hold of him, and he tried to get out of it,
but he couldn't, so me and the kids had to.
NARRATOR: Tammy is unaware of Gabe's past struggles when
she meets him at the July Fourth barbecue.
His charm rubs off on her,
and they agreed to go out to a local bar the next evening.
My mom was with Gabe at the Good Shot bar that night.
She was moving on from Cliff.
She no longer needed him,
and that infuriated Cliff.
-NARRATOR: While out with Gabe, -[phone ringing]
Tammy receives a call from Cliff.
[phone ringing]
She lets it go to voicemail.
[Cliff speaking]
Cliff was relentlessly calling my mom...
[phone ringing]
...43 times within an hour.
[phone ringing]
[Cliff speaking]
He was certainly trying to scare her.
[Cliff speaking]
And then he would follow up,
"I'm just kidding. You know, I'm sorry."
[Cliff speaking]
It was up and down, up and down.
SCOTT: Tammy called me that night.
It must have been one or two o'clock in the morning.
Meredith was with me.
So I said, "Well, the only thing you can do
at this point is call the police."
[911 operator speaking]
[Tammy speaking]
[911 operator speaking]
[Tammy speaking]
[911 operator speaking]
[Tammy speaking]
NARRATOR: Officers from Delaware State Police arrest Cliff.
At 3:46 a.m. on July 6th,
they charge him with aggravated harassment.
The offense is a misdemeanor in Delaware,
and Cliff walks out of the station
just over two hours later.
MEREDITH: Dad was dropping me back off at my mom's house
the next morning, probably around seven o'clock,
and Cliff was waiting in the neighborhood,
trying to wave down my dad.
SCOTT: He gets out of the van, and he starts to come
walking to me, and he's just slandering Tammy,
telling me that she's a drug addict and she's doing
this and all this kind of stuff.
As soon as Cliff and I parted ways,
I called Tammy, and I said, "Cliff's in the neighborhood."
And my mom brought us inside and locked the door,
and she had the house phone in her hand.
She looked scared. She felt scared.
She did feel helpless.
She seemed like she was in fear for her life.
[automated message]
MEREDITH: When I was at my dad's house,
I always started my day by calling my mom in the morning.
I called her when I woke up that day, and she didn't answer.
I decided to call her again, probably two hours or so later.
She didn't answer.
That's when I started to panic.
I called Cliff and asked him if he knew where my mom was,
because she wasn't answering the phone,
and he said, "No, sweet pea.
I haven't talked to your mom all day,"
and I told my dad, and I was like, "Dad, something's wrong."
NARRATOR: Scott drives over to Tammy's house
to check for anything unusual.
He notices that one of the downstairs windows is open.
He calls Tammy's friend Rose,
the owner of Good Shots Bar, to ask for help.
I said, "Look, I didn't go in
the house, because I'm the ex-husband."
I said, "Can you take a ride over there and see if you
"can go in through this front window
and see what might be going on in the house?"
And Rose called me from in the house and said
Tammy's purse was there.
Her cellphone was there,
but the van was gone and Tammy's gone.
That's when I called the police,
and I said, "I think there's a missing person."
[distant sirens wailing and radio chatter]
STEVE: When the first police officer arrived on scene
and went upstairs into the master bedroom,
he immediately noticed that there
was a significant quantity of blood
in various places.
It seemed likely that a violent crime,
maybe even a homicide, had been committed.
TOM: The officers could smell the odor
of some type of cleaning agent.
There was fresh vacuum markings on the rugs.
It was obvious that somebody was trying to clean
something up.
The fact that Tamela Gardner wasn't present,
we were obviously concerned about her welfare.
It was basically all hands on deck to try to locate her.
NARRATOR: Investigators retrace
Tammy's movements before she disappeared.
Her friend Rose reports that Tammy was at Good Shots Bar on
Saturday, July 8th, with Gabe Gabrielli
and a friend named Kelly.
TOM: Kelly told us that they left the Good Shot Bar
at approximately 1:30 and ended up back at
Tamela's residence.
When she left,
she promised Tammy that she would call Tammy
when she got home.
That call happened around 1:45 a.m.
Sunday morning.
And that was the last that -- that she saw
or heard from either Tamela Gardner or Gabe Gabrielli.
STEVE: Tammy was missing, and so was Gabe.
He was new to her life.
Not very much was known about him.
Detectives reach out to Gabe's estranged wife, Diane,
25 miles away in Philadelphia.
DIANE: When they said he was missing,
he'd been missing for months from me.
So that didn't mean anything.
So I feared they were just out
partying somewhere where nobody could find them.
STEVE: So, early in the investigation, rather
than limiting the number of potential suspects,
it was actually growing.
From the morning of July 10th, Gabe Gabrielli was a suspect.
Scott Gardner also was a suspect.
The marriage had exploded because
of Tammy's affair with Clifford Wright.
SCOTT: When I was questioned by Detective Abram,
he asked me if I had an alibi for the evening
that Tammy disappeared, and I said that I was
asleep in bed, and I said I was alone.
So Scott didn't have an alibi,
and that was -- that was problematic.
And then there was Clifford Wright.
NARRATOR: Detective Tom Abram interviews Clifford Wright at
the New Castle County police station
26 hours after Tammy went missing.
TOM: When I was interviewing Clifford,
he appeared to be cooperating with the investigation.
For the police to show up there...
NARRATOR: Cliff describes Tammy's behavior
and state of mind in the weeks
leading up to her disappearance.
[clears throat]
STEVE: The picture of Tammy
that Wright was trying to portray was that of a troubled
woman who was depressed, who was unstable,
who was, at times, irrational.
And he tried to portray himself as the loving,
concerned partner.
TOM: Appeared to me during the interview that, you know,
if you had a chance to say something negative about her,
he was more than willing to do that.
NARRATOR: Detective Abram questions Cliff
on his whereabouts on Saturday evening
and early Sunday morning, the night that Tammy
went missing.
[Tom speaking]
When he left the bar, he says he went to spend
the night with a friend
named Raheem Cannon.
And he said that once he got home,
he was there until the next morning.
[Tom speaking]
NARRATOR: The police issue a Be On The Lookout
for Tammy's red minivan.
Four days after her disappearance,
they receive a report of a sighting.
STEVE: The morning of July 13th,
the New Castle County Police received a 911 call from
a construction worker in a park in Hockessin, Delaware,
which was only a few miles from the Wood Creek home.
He saw a minivan that had been there for
a couple of days, and he thought it was suspicious.
Within minutes, the police were at the scene,
inspected the minivan from the outside,
and by its license plate,
knew that it was Tammy Gardner's minivan.
TOM: First thing I noticed when I'm walking towards the van,
you can see birds over top of the van just circling the van.
A million things are going through your head.
What were we gonna find inside this vehicle?
NARRATOR: July 13th, 2006.
The New Castle County Crime Unit
examines Tammy Gardner's minivan.
Upon opening the rear hatch of the van,
the odor of decomposition was very strong,
and you could see that there was two bodies in
the rear of the van with a bunch of bedding.
The perpetrator had tried to light a fire in the van,
obviously to destroy evidence,
but he had closed all of the windows in the van, and so
the fire burned itself out almost immediately.
When the bodies were taken to
the medical examiner's office in Wilmington,
they were identified as the bodies of Tammy Gardner
and Gabe Gabrielli.
MEREDITH: That day, my dad came down from the kitchen.
He said, "Let's go upstairs."
And he sat me on the end of his bed
and said, "Mommy's not coming home.
"Somebody hurt her really bad,
and she's in heaven now."
SCOTT: We had a conversation, just the two of us.
That would be a conversation I'll never forget.
And we stayed in my bedroom for a long time.
NARRATOR: Their autopsies revealed that Tammy and Gabe
died from multiple blows to the head.
The medical examiner thought that the murder
weapon could have been a hammer.
There were no injuries to their hands, to their arms,
which would suggest that there was any kind of a fight.
It quickly became apparent they were murdered
as they slept together in that bed.
NARRATOR: Gabe Gabrielli is no longer a suspect in this case.
He is a victim.
Investigators are now looking for a double murderer.
STEVE: We knew from talking to Scott
that Tammy was the love of his life,
and until the day she died,
Scott was hoping they would get back together and live
together as -- as a family again.
So he was eliminated as a suspect.
The investigation against Clifford Wright
really ramped up at that point.
NARRATOR: Detective Tom Abram interviews Cliff
for a second time.
TOM: Something just didn't seem right with him at that time.
He didn't seem overly concerned about her death.
He just seemed more angry.
No...
But I'm asking you... Well...
TOM: When he makes that statement,
that it's not a jealous thing,
I'm thinking in the back of my mind,
everything that he's doing is obviously showing that he is
jealous of her new relationship.
NARRATOR: Abram presses Cliff for details about the time
he spent with Raheem Cannon
on the night that Tammy and Gabe were murdered.
Raheem Cannon was a friend of Clifford's, a friend
of Tammy's, and at the time, a drug dealer.
[Tom speaking]
[Cliff speaking]
NARRATOR: Clifford lets it slip that he received payment
from Raheem to deliver cocaine to buyers inside Tailgates Bar.
[Tom speaking]
And did you...
NARRATOR: Cliff says that he returned to Raheem's house
around 2 a.m., where he stayed until the next morning.
STEVE: But Raheem Cannon and his girlfriend
were always adamant that Wright
never came home Sunday, July 9th, until about 7:10 AM.
NARRATOR: Investigators check Cliff's story
against his cellphone location records.
TOM: He says that he was at Tailgates, and he didn't leave
Tailgates till about 1:40, 1:45, and then
he arrives home at two o'clock in the morning, and then he went
to bed soon after that.
But the records showed at 1:30, he was heading towards
the Pike Creek area,
which is Tamela Gardner's residence.
At about 6:50 in the morning,
the cellphone shows him in the area
of Tweed's Park, where the minivan was located.
So it was obvious that Clifford Wright
was lying about his location.
[Cliff speaking]
[speaking indistinctly] Okay.
[Tom speaking]
It was at that point where Wright invoked
his constitutional right to silence
and ended the interview.
TOM: I was pretty confident after the review of
the cellphone records and all the other information that
we have obtained through the interviews that Clifford was
the person responsible for killing, uh, Tamela and Gabe.
But we needed additional evidence
and information before we charged him with murder.
NARRATOR: Following the interview, detectives
charge Clifford Wright
with two counts of delivery of cocaine.
He has quickly tried and sentenced to 18 months
in prison.
TOM: We knew that he would be in
prison while we're still working on the case
and gave us additional time to
start doing additional interviews,
have evidence examined.
NARRATOR: In prison, Wright shares details about
the murders to his cellmate, Robert Mahan.
TOM: Clifford Wright was probably his own worst enemy,
because he just couldn't keep his mouth shut.
STEVE: In a series of conversations, Wright
confessed to the murders to Robert Mahan.
Wright told Mahan how he got into the home,
through the basement.
He said there was a window that he had left open.
Wright said to Mahan, "They think the murder weapon
was a hammer, but it was really a baseball bat,"
and it's true that we thought the murder
weapon was a hammer, and Wright knew that.
He told Mahan that he killed them both
while they were sleeping,
which is what we believe to be true.
The case got so much stronger.
NARRATOR: On January 22nd, 2008, investigators
charge Clifford Wright with the murders
of Tammy and Gabe.
The trial begins on October 5th, 2009.
Clifford Wright pleads not guilty.
Clifford Wright was controlling,
manipulative, violent.
He was a predator in every sense of the word.
Robert Mahan testified at trial
and was a very powerful and convincing witness.
NARRATOR: The jury finds Wright guilty.
The judge sentences him to four life sentences
and an additional 147 years in prison
for the brutality of the double murder.
DIANE: Gabe was a kind person. He was a good person.
My heart was broken, because I always did love him.
I never not loved him.
Clifford was a monster,
to take two parents from two families.
SCOTT: We love Tammy.
We'll never stop loving her,
and it was too short a time we had together,
for sure, and she'd be very proud of Meredith.
Meredith is taking something horrendous
and trying to do good with it.
She's an amazing person.
MEREDITH: For years, I spoke in prisons,
and I've spoke at schools on domestic violence.
-Hi. -This is Meredith's pink room.
MEREDITH: I would like my mom to be remembered.
She was a fighter,
and...
she would have kept fighting if she could.
And
I never want her story to die.