[♪ soft haunting music playing]
[narrator] When you scroll through aspiring rapper
28-year-old Rahim Grant's social media,
it's easy to judge.
Beezy!
[narrator] What you see are tattoos, flashy clothing,
his unique style.
But, if you take a closer look, and you really see Rahim,
you’ll find a loving father
totally enamored with life
and his baby girl.
-Hey! -[giggling]
Daddy's little girl, he loved her to death.
[narrator] He consistently records every special moment,
fatherhood,
his promising music career.
I just got my major deal.
He was just lit, in a sense. Always live.
Beezy! Yeah.
[narrator] But, when his life is cut short...
-[gunshots] -[♪ ominous music playing]
He said, "Last night, Rahim was killed."
I was like, "No, that's not true. It can't be true."
[narrator] ...d etectives take a closer look behind the screen.
♪♪
Before you can judge, you have to know the entire story.
♪♪
[narrator] It becomes shockingly apparent
things aren't always what they seem.
I said, "Get his cellphone."
[narrator] In the end, Rahim's desire to capture it all
leads to his killer.
It's about to be a hell of a show!
I don't think we would've secured a conviction without those videos.
[gunshot]
[♪ theme music playing]
[speaker 1] She solved her own murder from beyond the grave.
[speaker 2] The fitness app on the phone. It was overwhelming evidence.
♪ I've been haunted by the visions ♪
♪ That I've seen with my own eyes ♪
♪ And the only way to find you ♪
♪ Is to go beneath the lies ♪
[speaker 3] She did help catch this killer.
[♪ light electronic music playing]
[narrator] Winter, 2017. Riverdale, Georgia.
Just a 25-minute drive from the city of Atlanta.
-[traffic noise] -♪ If you got it going on, hey ♪
♪ If you feel right, let me hear you say yeah ♪
[crowd cheering]
[narrator] It’s a city filled with up-and-coming movers and shakers,
all hoping to make it big,
just like 28-year-old Rahim Grant,
AKA Red Beezy.
Your boy, Red Beezy, man. Two cups.
[narrator] He's a musician and a father,
who loves to live life in front of the camera,
sharing his rise to stardom since he was a child.
[♪ soft music playing]
[Geraldine Grant Bryson] My name is Geraldine Grant Bryson.
I am Rahim Grant's mother,
and I love him truly.
Everywhere he went, everything he did,
people knew him. You could go in the studio with him,
and you could come out with a whole album
because he mixed and mastered and did everything.
[narrator] Then one evening, on December 29, 2017,
Rahim's rise to the top...
[♪ indistinct rapping]
♪ We went from losin' to winnin' ♪
[narrator] ...comes to a sudden halt.
[gunshots]
And a rookie detective gets the most defining call of his young career.
[Joshua Teske] In 2017, I was a detective
with Clayton County Police Department,
and my name is Joshua Teske.
[siren wailing]
The Criminal Investigation Division ended up getting a call
to go to investigate this homicide.
-[sirens wailing] -[police radio chatter]
I was thinking, "This is gonna be an easy call."
And then I get there,
and I realize it's not that simple.
♪♪
[assistant camera] A & B marker, John Gosart interview, take one.
[slate claps]
[John Gosart] My name's John Gosart, and in 2017, I was a senior investigator
for the Clayton County District Attorney's Office.
-[phone beeps] -We have someone who called 911
and said that a woman had shown up with her baby
-at her front door, hysterically crying. -[hysterical crying]
And was bleeding from stab wounds on the leg.
[♪ tense music playing]
[narrator] The woman is Ciera Harp.
The baby is three-year-old Angel,
whom she co-parents with Rahim Grant.
♪♪
[John Gosart] Ciera had multiple stab wounds
all up and down her left leg,
from the calf level to right below her buttocks.
[♪ tense sting]
They were afraid that she was actually going to bleed out.
[paramedic radio chatter]
They had to transport her into surgery right away.
[sirens blaring]
[narrator] While Ciera is rushed to the hospital,
a neighbor tells officers to check out the upstairs apartment
-where Rahim Grant lives. -[police radio chatter]
The responding officers end up seeing a blood trail
leading from their apartment.
[♪ soft haunting music playing]
They check the door, and the door's unlocked.
♪♪
[echoing creaking]
[narrator] Officers enter the apartment
and are met with dead silence.
So, they start walking into the door.
[camera shutter snaps]
[♪ tense music playing]
And that's when they saw a fairly large amount of blood
that was in the threshold of the apartment.
♪ Riding around, waitin' to die ♪
As officers start following the blood...
[door opens]
♪ Never did quite satisfy ♪
...it's leading further into the bathroom.
Halfway between one of the bathrooms
and the hallway leading into the bedroom,
they found someone's body laying face down on the ground.
[♪ tense music playing]
[narrator] Based on the studio equipment in the next room,
police realize the victim
is Rahim Grant...
[♪ dramatic sting]
...son of devoted parents and father of Angel.
He's the victim of a heartless attack
that will surely devastate those that love him the most.
[♪ soft dramatic music playing]
[Tony Bryson] Tony Bryson, uh, Rahim's dad.
Rahim was everything that the kid next door was.
He was kind, he was generous, he was mischievous.
He was, uh, he was funny, he was witty.
[Geraldine] I would put cartoons on for him,
and he would like to go to the music part.
He was always into music.
[narrator] Rahim’s parents proudly watched their son,
flourishing father and musical prodigy,
share his gifts with the world.
Now, he’s been rendered voiceless,
-lifeless. -[distant sirens wailing]
And they’ll have to come to grips with the tragic news of his passing.
[phone buzzing]
[Geraldine] Someone called me.
It was Clayton County Police Department.
"We need to talk to you about Rahim."
And I was like... said to myself,
"What has Rahim done?"
'Cause I always think it was the music.
Always too loud with music and stuff.
He said, "Can you sit down?"
Then, he said, "Well, we just called to let you know
that Rahim was killed."
♪♪
I mean, the worst thing that I think, for a parent,
is you gotta bury your own child.
[crying]
[Geraldine] I was crushed.
I was heartbroken.
He was really gone.
[narrator] We've all got dreams,
but now, Rahim's have been cut short,
and the time for sharing his passion
has come to an end.
But the person suffering the most
is his baby girl, Angel.
♪♪
From the day she was born,
if Rahim wasn't posting online,
producing, composing, or writing lyrics,
he was with Angel.
[Tony] It was like him.
Her hands-- she'll do certain things,
and it's like, "Wow."
I look at her, I say, "That's Rahim all day."
[giggling]
He would take pictures of her all the time, and on those phones,
it was him and her all the time, just doing everything.
[police radio chatter]
[♪ tense music playing]
[narrator] Did Rahim share too much?
♪♪
Did his openness lead to his tragic demise?
And will Angel's mom, Ciera,
whose life hangs in the balance, suffer the same fate?
♪♪
[police radio chatter]
Back at the crime scene,
and with no one else to speak to about the murder,
detectives will have to rely on clues
left behind at Rahim's apartment.
[camera shutter snaps]
Is this grisly scene the result of an intruder?
-Or a robbery gone wrong? -[shutter snapping]
[John Gosart] Door wasn't kicked in.
It did not appear that a home invasion had taken place,
so it told me that whoever committed this shooting
had free access to the apartment.
♪♪
Rahim Grant was, uh, very active
in the Atlanta rap community.
He was very successful,
was just about to embark on the next chapter of his career.
Could it be a jealous person from their career?
Absolutely, it could've been.
[narrator] Is it possible that a deranged fan,
or even an industry rival, took things too far?
Right now, Ciera is the only person
who can answer questions about that fateful night,
but her life is in limbo.
She's traumatized, and she's going to need
some type of help.
[♪ tense music playing]
[machines beeping]
[narrator] Then, once Ciera wakes up,
and she identifies the trigger man,
her story reveals a shocking truth...
[Rahim Grant] Y'all see this?
[narrator] ...that will bring the city of Atlanta to its knees.
Who was gonna get justice for Rahim?
[♪ dramatic crescendo]
[gunshot]
[♪ soft tense music playing]
[police radio chatter]
[narrator] It's been two hours since Rahim Grant
was found dead in his apartment.
His rise to fame shattered.
[♪ indistinct rapping]
His passion as a father cut off.
[♪ gentle music playing]
His love of recording his life out loud...
-[camera shutter snaps] -...gone forever.
[Rahim] She said, "Hit y'all with a long dance."
[narrator] And the mother of his daughter, Ciera Harp,
clings to life in the hospital.
[Joshua] The issue is, is that we're trying to figure out
what happened right here, right now,
and we can't because we can't talk to her.
[narrator] At the same time,
word of Rahim's sudden passing hits the news desk.
[♪ soft tense music playing]
[Audrey Washington] My name is Audrey Washington,
and I am a television news reporter for WSB-TV
here in Atlanta, Georgia.
[♪ tense music playing]
So, I got a call from my producer.
She said, "Listen, there's a murder
that happened in Clayton County."
[police radio chatter]
Ciera was bleeding profusely.
She had just survived this brutal attack.
When the police arrived, they could not even understand what she was saying.
♪♪
What we have to do is talk to the person that was there,
somebody that had eyes inside the apartment,
to tell us what happened.
The only people that would have known would have been Ciera,
and Ciera, she's sedated at this point, so we can't talk to her.
-[equipment beeping] -[ventilator hissing]
And then the other option, of course,
is trying to talk to 3-year-old Angel.
We end up trying to set up a forensic interview with Angel.
She can talk, but she's very shy,
so she didn't feel comfortable in that situation.
[Audrey] This little girl lost her father,
and her mother, she's in the hospital
struggling to survive.
[echoing beeping]
[♪ soft music playing]
[narrator] Back in 2013,
long before Angel was born,
Rahim and Ciera shared more than just dreams of a bright future.
♪ Turn away ♪
[Geraldine] Rahim met Ciera Harp,
and she wanted to do some promotion for him,
and she was a very, very nice person.
Got very close to her.
♪♪
[narrator] But Ciera's life
didn't always dish out sweet Georgia peaches.
She had told me that she had a rough bringing-up with her family,
and she was just trying to get into getting her life better.
And I was willing to help her, and Rahim was, too.
I treated her like a daughter. I really liked Ciera.
[narrator] Within a few months of working together,
Rahim and Ciera got even closer behind the scenes,
and Angel was born.
[♪ intense music playing]
Ciera was really drawn to Rahim.
With his magnetic personality and talent,
Rahim was desired by studio execs, too.
♪♪
[Rafael Capone] I'm Rafael Capone,
the owner of the Soul Asylum Studios Group.
♪ I got codeine and some Sprite ♪
♪ Yep, yep, slowed up, slowed up ♪
♪ I been smoking weed all night... ♪
This is 2013 Red Beezy, a song called O Well,
recorded in the Platinum Suite.
♪ I get high, I've been turned up every night ♪
Rahim came to us back when I was engineering,
a really great guy.
♪ Turned up ♪
"Turned up," slow that down hard.
He would write the hook, he produced the beat.
He was very talented.
Boy! Beezy. Beezy. Beezy!
He was just lit, in a sense. Always live.
They got our chain gang, Facebook chain gang. Come on.
I'll bet y'all know what it is! Beezy!
♪ Whoa-oh-oh ♪
Rahim was at that cusp of making it, you know?
The paid shows, the features.
♪ Can't catch me... ♪
You can check his social media, he would come to the studio
with so much energy
and it's-- you could tell it was something he really wanted to do.
Just got my major deal.
And then, his life... taken.
[♪ ominous sting]
Ooh! Ay, man, y'all know...
-[click, beep] -[narrator] Like everyone else,
Rahim shared his life on social media.
[text bloops]
But instead of analyzing algorithms...
-[shutter snapping] -...detectives must look to the evidence
if they want to understand what led up to his death.
[shutter snaps]
And that evidence
tells a heartbreaking story about Rahim’s final moments.
[John Gosart] I could observe multiple wounds.
I saw one or two in his back
and one in the top of his head.
[narrator] While detectives bag up Rahim's cellphone,
gun casings, the knife, and all other evidence,
responding officers also collect evidence
-from his neighbor's apartment. -[police radio chatter]
One of these items could point to his killer.
The neighbor turned over a, a gun at the time.
She said that Ciera had a gun when she arrived at the door.
[♪ dramatic sting]
It made me ask questions.
[narrator] Is this the gun that was used to murder Rahim?
Where did it come from?
Did the attacker bring it in with them?
Or was it already in the apartment?
Police run the serial number and get a hit.
-[keyboard clacking] -[data beeping]
We knew that the gun was Rahim's gun.
There was a holster on top of the refrigerator,
and we knew that's where the gun was retrieved from.
[narrator] What they don't know is why the gun was in Ciera's hand.
Did the same person who stabbed Ciera
fire the gun and shoot Rahim?
Or did Ciera use it to scare off the attacker?
[gunshot]
Now out of surgery,
doctors are confident Ciera will survive.
But, the recovery process is only just beginning.
[Joshua] Anytime that somebody goes through a traumatic experience,
it's gonna take them a couple of days just to kind of...
build back that memory and actually piece together
what it is that happened.
[♪ soft tense music playing]
♪♪
[Geraldine] So, after everything,
it took, like, four days.
I hadn't seen him. He got murdered on that Friday
and I didn't see him anymore Friday,
Saturday, Sunday, Monday.
It was, like, Tuesday.
I had to go to a funeral home
to go and get him and picked him up,
and that's when I got a chance to see him.
♪♪
And then, that's when I realized
he was... [stammers] he was murdered.
He was dead. He was gone.
[♪ haunting sting]
♪ Like a fire, I guide you ♪
[narrator] As Geraldine makes plans to put Rahim to rest,
Ciera opens her eyes and awakens
after a week in the hospital.
This is the moment detectives have been waiting for.
♪♪
[Joshua] I just wanna know what happened in the apartment
and how she made it through.
What does she know that took place?
[♪ dramatic music playing]
[narrator] Will the detectives get to the bottom of what went down
in this tragic situation and why?
[narrator] The truth is unbelievable.
It completely pivoted our entire investigation.
[♪ dramatic crescendo]
[Rahim] Hold up, hold up, hold up.
[gunshot]
[♪ tense music playing]
[narrator] After a week full of waiting, theorizing, and speculating,
Ciera finally tells the detectives
what happened that fateful night Rahim Grant's life was cut short
and his vibrant world silenced.
[gunshots]
She said that she shot Rahim.
[♪ dramatic music playing]
That completely shocked me.
She initially told us that
she knows that she shot him at least once,
but she doesn't know how many times.
[gun clicks]
[narrator] This solves the whodunit,
but the investigators need to know why.
Why kill Rahim, the father of your child?
Was it a tragic accident,
or was Ciera gunning for someone else?
♪♪
When I first heard that there was a third person that's in the apartment,
I started to get excited.
[narrator] But, who is this mysterious person,
and what does she know?
According to Ciera,
this woman witnessed the next part of her terrifying ordeal
right after Rahim called out to Ciera from the living room.
[♪ dramatic sting]
♪♪
[Joshua] It causes her to fall down, and as she was falling down,
she says that her knife falls out...
-[shutter snap, flash whirring] -...and lands right next to her.
Rahim ends up picking up the knife and begins trying to stab her.
[♪ ominous music playing]
[sniffles]
♪♪
[narrator] According to Ciera,
that's when Rahim's friend leaves,
and he becomes even more violent.
[♪ dramatic music playing]
Her glasses had been slapped off of her face.
There's blood and tears all over her eyes.
She feels a gun, and she picks up the gun.
[gunshot]
♪ White lies when I tell you that I'm sleeping ♪
Ciera was claiming that she had been suffering so much abuse
over such a long period of time,
and she was acting in self-defense.
♪ I'm as delicate as my... ♪
[narrator] Ciera sustained over 20 injuries
and stab wounds so deep that she could have lost her life.
It's a miracle she survived.
[♪ soft haunting music playing]
[Audrey] Unfortunately, I report on a lot of
domestic violence cases where the woman is the victim.
It usually happens when the woman is trying to leave,
or when the woman has left.
Immediately,
it sounds like a woman defending herself.
It sounds like self-defense.
[♪ tense sting]
So, at this point, Ciera is, you know,
she's told, "You can go home."
[narrator] But is Ciera's story as cut-and-dry as it seems?
Police aren't so sure.
Was there another reason why she started shooting,
other than this domestic incident that she was describing?
It didn't make any sense to me
if he was attacking her and stabbing her,
how he received that bullet wound at the top of his head.
[Joshua] Rahim was shot six times.
And not just that.
He had stab wounds on his forehead,
he had a stab wound on his shoulder,
and then he had another one that was near his chest.
[narrator] After sustaining so many life-threatening gunshot wounds,
Rahim never had a chance.
He was utterly powerless.
I'm not a doctor, but I believe he-he was shot so many times,
there was so much damage, he couldn't get off that ground if he wanted to.
♪♪
Ciera's story wasn't adding up with the evidence that we had.
And my job was to find the truth.
There's a third person, an independent witness,
that can put these pieces of the puzzle together.
[narrator] According to Ciera, the other woman
who was in the apartment was Rahim's gym buddy,
and it doesn't take long to find her and bring her in for an interview.
[♪ tense sting]
[Joshua] She tells us that she was just there to hang out.
While Ciera and Rahim were in the bedroom,
she starts hearing Ciera get loud,
yelling at Rahim.
[narrator] Before things got too heated,
Rahim's friend says she sent a text at 10:26 p.m.,
then she split.
-[phone dialing] -[dispatcher] 911...
The 911 call came in roughly 15 minutes later.
[Joshua] That large of a gap between when the incident started
and when 911 called means that there was a lot of stuff
that happened between then.
[♪ dramatic music playing]
How did he get into the position
to where she would've been able to shoot him at the top of the head?
It's not enough to say that this isn't self-defense.
[John Gosart] I believe that Ciera was lying.
There was more that happened that night.
I'm not ready to call her a murderer,
but I'm not ready to say she's a complete and innocent victim at this point either.
♪♪
[narrator] Are Ciera's claims about Rahim truly credible?
Detectives know just who to turn to,
Rahim's mom.
The police report, it just made me angry.
I don't want nobody to think that Rahim
is just an innocent person who is, you know, perfect,
who would do that. No, he's not.
But he wasn't taught-- raised to hit a woman.
So now, I got into mama bear mode,
with the grief that I have for my son,
the madness and the anger.
Now, I have to defend my son.
[♪ gentle music playing]
[narrator] The more police speak to those closest to him...
Beezy!
[narrator] ...the clearer the contrast between Red Beezy the artist
and Rahim Grant, son, father, and close friend becomes.
[indistinct chatter]
Red Beezy was someone who wasn't just a trap or a street rapper.
He still cared about family.
They were saying he assaulted Ciera.
It was dumb. It didn't even make sense to me.
He got a deal on the table.
Who would work that hard and invest so much?
He was too smart to do that.
-[shutter snapping] -[♪ soft haunting music playing]
[narrator] So, what should detectives believe?
Was Rahim a great career-minded father,
like his family and friends say he was?
[thudding]
Or was he the monster that Ciera claims him to be?
We heard from some of Ciera's family members,
we heard from some friends,
and we were told that Ciera wanted fame herself.
-[♪ techno-pop music playing] -[fans cheering]
In Atlanta, when you are the girlfriend of a famous rapper...
[crowd cheering]
...there are tons of opportunities that open up for you.
You can be on reality TV,
you can have a rapping career of your own,
anything could happen for you.
♪ Won't you give me what is mine? ♪
[cheering]
[narrator] Ciera wanted romance,
but Rahim chose his career,
and that's when things got complicated.
But, Rahim knew he had to keep it civil with Ciera,
or he could lose his daughter.
And just in case things got heated,
Geraldine shared a fateful piece of advice.
I told him that once he felt uncomfortable
with Ciera around him to always record,
and that was my thing with all of him.
♪♪
If you are in a predicament,
you have a camera, just record.
So, it'll be like her word against yours.
And I knew that he records everything.
I was like, "I need you to get his cellphone.
Where's Rahim's cellphone?"
♪♪
[narrator] Rahim's cellphone is still sitting in an evidence locker,
but it could take months to get a warrant,
and investigators don't have that kind of time to waste.
So, the detectives shift their gaze back to Ciera.
Could she be of any help?
It’s a long shot, but they give it a try.
I end up calling up Ciera
and saying, "Hey,
"one of the things that we wanna do is go through Rahim's phone.
"But, the problem is we don't have a passcode to it,
so would you happen to know what that passcode is?"
And she says, "I think I do.
I think it might be... 0025G."
[♪ dramatic music playing]
I turn on the phone, and I put in the passcode...
[typing]
...and it opens up.
And I'm thinking, "It can't be this easy."
So, I start scrolling through the phone.
I see one video that was recorded
on December 29th.
♪♪
I take the video, and I go to my lieutenant,
and I say, "You have to see this."
When I watched the video for the first time,
my jaw literally dropped.
[Ciera screams]
-[Rahim] Baby, stop! Don't! -[Ciera Harp] No!
[echoing gunshot]
[♪ haunting music playing]
[narrator] It's been nine weeks since Rahim's murder,
and after hearing Ciera's claims of self-defense,
investigators don't know who to believe.
That is, until they unlock Rahim's phone.
There was this huge... inaudible gasp.
I could not believe what I was watching.
He just recorded his own murder.
[♪ ominous music playing]
The video started out with Rahim
recording himself, and his face is bloody,
and in the background, you can hear Ciera.
[♪ tense music playing]
[gunshot]
-[gunshot] -[body thuds]
[♪ tense music playing]
The first gunshot ends up hitting the bathroom mirror.
[glass shattering]
And then, the second one ends up hitting Rahim...
-[gunshot] -...and he drops to the ground.
And Ciera walks over to where Rahim is.
She picks up the phone,
and she stops the recording.
I go back to the album,
and then I realize that it's not just that video,
but there were three other videos.
And Ciera gets mad, and she fires two shots.
Rahim starts to beg for his life.
You can hear Angel in the background.
[♪ soft haunting music playing]
[Ciera on recording: echoing, indistinct]
♪ Close your eyes ♪
He starts asking Ciera, "Please let me kiss my daughter."
And Ciera gets mad, and she fires two shots.
[gunshot]
-[♪ dramatic music playing] -[indistinct arguing]
Ciera is refusing everything that he wants.
She refuses him to have his dying wish
of hugging and kissing his daughter.
And...
the more she talks, the more she starts to upset herself.
Until finally, she fires two more shots.
[gunshots]
[♪ ominous music playing]
After that last shot, you can't hear Rahim anymore.
You can't hear him talking, you can't hear him breathing.
You can't even hear him moving around on the ground.
[echoing thud]
This was someone who picked up a camera and talked to the camera.
[indistinct yelling on video]
And then videotaped herself firing the kill shot.
♪♪
That I had never, ever seen with my own eyes.
The only time I'd ever seen anything like that was in a movie.
[Audrey] This was a victim,
basically telling anyone who would listen,
how he died and who killed him.
It's really painful to watch.
A man struggling to survive,
a man begging for his life.
It really is a chilling video.
He recorded his own murder.
It was clear this was not self-defense.
[narrator] So, police invite Ciera to the station
to confront her with the evidence.
She says, "I'll be more than happy to come in."
She seemed to be excited. She seemed to be in good spirits.
And, in the back of my mind, I'm thinking,
"I know what comes next,
and all of this is gonna change for her."
[♪ tense music playing]
[Rahim] [on video] Y'all see this? Y'all see this?
[Joshua] We played the first video, that Rahim started to record.
[Rahim] Look at this knife.
And she's shocked.
She can't tell what to make of the video.
I could only imagine she may have been thinking...
"Why did I give them that passcode?"
And then, she puts her head down,
and you can tell that she feels defeated.
At which point, we ended up telling her
that she's under arrest,
and that she would go to our county jail,
and she'll be awaiting trial.
♪♪
[narrator] Meanwhile, Rahim's mom and pop are shown
their son's horrifying final moments.
I'm sitting there watching this video, and I'm looking at her
and watching her...
murder my son.
♪ Do you want me to grow? ♪
[crying]
-[♪ singing continues] -[crying continues]
♪ Do you want me to grow? ♪
♪ Do you want me to... ♪
I haven't watched all the video.
Can't do it.
♪ Do you want me to grow? ♪
But, murder? I mean, we talking about murder.
Worst kind of murder.
Every shot he took, I felt it.
[♪ music fades out]
[newscaster] A crazy day in court for a woman
who killed her child's father while he recorded it all.
Now, this morning she cursed at her own mother...
♪♪
[narrator] As Ciera and her lawyers prepare her defense,
lead prosecutor John Fowler gears up for justice.
[John Fowler] I'm John Fowler, and I was Ciera Harp's lead prosecutor.
Before I meet with a family, before trial,
I tell them the exact same thing every time.
I tell them that I have bad news, and I have good news.
The bad news is I cannot bring you closure,
but the good news is I will fight like hell for justice.
[♪ curious music playing]
[narrator] At first glance,
the most compelling piece of evidence, Rahim’s cell phone video,
neither confirms nor denies Ciera’s claim of self-defense.
But prosecutors devise a plan to look deeper and read between the lines.
We found no arrest for any type of domestic abuse,
nothing along those lines in Rahim's background.
[narrator] Prosecutors face an uphill battle,
but not everything is as it seems.
There's one last piece of evidence hidden within Rahim's video
that will convict his killer.
♪♪
We're going frame-by-frame through each and every piece of the video.
[♪ intense music playing]
And we suddenly had a theory.
♪♪
We had evidence.
This was not self-defense.
This was not battered person syndrome. It was none of those things.
It was just a stone-cold murder.
[♪ dramatic crescendo]
[gunshot]
[♪ soft tense music playing]
[narrator] With Ciera's defense team building their case
around claims of abuse,
the DA finds a secret hidden in Rahim's videos
that tells a different story.
Ciera owned the fact that she killed Rahim.
They just claimed that it was battered person syndrome,
and they said that Rahim had routinely beaten her up over the years.
And so, based upon that theory,
she was always concerned that he was going to kill her.
[Audrey] It does sound like your typical domestic violence
kind of story at first, right?
She's a mom, she's a young mom.
She wouldn't be capable of hurting someone like that.
[narrator] To win this case, it comes down to who the jury believes,
and character is everything.
Unfortunately,
Rahim's carefully crafted brand as an artist isn't helping.
Now, you got a trial. So, now, you got to sit there
and watch your son be accused of things
that he wasn't and haven't done.
So now, you gotta defend him.
[narrator] Ciera sticks to her story of abuse.
But, when the prosecution gears up,
they have something more than just words and claims.
While the jury watches on in horrified silence...
[Rahim's video playing]
...they finally spot the moment that Rahim catches his killer.
[Ciera and Rahim yelling]
So, that final frame
where we're able to see that her pants leg is rolled up,
and we're able to match it to her tattoo
that we have pictures of from when she was at the hospital
with a stab mark right next to it.
But, in this frame, that stab mark is not there.
She inflicted those wounds on herself.
[♪ disturbing music playing]
[♪ somber music playing]
[Joshua] Rahim was on the ground, and you can tell that
he was no longer a threat to her.
There was nothing that he could have done at that point.
So, after watching the video,
it was clear that she had stabbed herself.
There was absolutely no way that Rahim could have used that knife
to stab Ciera in the legs,
which absolutely 100% disproved what Ciera told us.
The video was the star of the show.
That was the unforgettable part that no one could forget.
♪♪
[♪ vocalizing]
[narrator] The jury finds Ciera Harp guilty of murder.
During sentencing, in one last moment of desperation,
Ciera attempts to elicit sympathy.
And I throw myself at the mercy of the court.
[reporter] 30-year-old Ciera Harp asked the court
for leniency during her sentencing hearing
in the murder of her child's father, Rahim Grant.
It seemed like Ciera found this man who she loved.
His star was rising, and she didn't want him to leave.
And really,
he never left that apartment alive.
♪♪
[John Gosart] We were able to see that, you know,
she had a difficult upbringing as a child.
She would bounce from home to home.
She craved that stability,
and it was not coming the way she wanted it to.
It bubbled and boiled under the surface for years ,
and it just culminated that night in December.
I truly apologize, and I'm very sorry.
[reporter] The woman took the stand and apologized to the victim's mother.
"I was not in my right state of mind."
"Had I not been drunk, it would've never happened."
"Mrs. Grant Bryson."
"I am truly, truly sorry."
"And I throw myself at the mercy of the court."
[♪ somber music playing]
She's not sorry . She's just...
sorry she got caught.
[shutter snaps]
♪ How can I fight this ♪
If she had to do it all over again,
she would still murder him.
[newscaster] A Clayton County woman is sentenced
to 125 years in prison for a murder recorded on cellphone.
The judge gave her the maximum, gave her 125 years,
based upon the depravity of the crime.
It was just a stone-cold murder.
♪ Uncertain of myself ♪
I was happy, but, um, I-- like, I told her,
I would've preferred to slap her, too .
And that didn't make me feel good at all,
but it made me feel that nobody else
would go through what I went through.
125 years?
So what? She's still breathing.
He's not living. He's not breathing.
Did him worse than a dog.
♪ Trying not to let my guard down ♪
[Joshua] If the video had never existed,
there wouldn't really be anything that we could prove.
We have to tell the victim's story.
In this case, Rahim ended up telling us his own story.
Lemme show you something.
Look at these pictures right here. Oh.
I remember when my dad took me to that place.
[John Gosart] Geraldine was, she was a driving force.
She was very adamant
that we needed to look at his cellphone.
I don't think we would've secured a conviction
without those videos.
I remember that.
Yeah, look at it.
[John Gosart] Anybody can be a victim of domestic violence,
and it is not uncommon
for men to be victims of domestic violence.
[Rafael] When Rahim died, the world lost a father, a creative.
Guarantee you, Angel, you'd have been right along on the ride with him.
[narrator] Geraldine has since become an advocate
for fathers in the family court system.
Here in Georgia, the mother's the one
that is the owner of the baby, and the daddy has no rights,
which is a law they're trying to change.
♪♪
Angel, she's doing much, much better now
because she says that her dad is watching down over her ,
and I kept really saying that .
"You know your dad is watching over you. He loved you."
♪ This little affliction ♪
-I love my dad. -[laughter]
[video chatter]
♪ Don't say it's over ♪
♪ I don't know where my head is lately ♪
♪ Have I lost my mind? ♪
♪♪
[exhales]
♪ But, I know that I have a secret ♪
♪ And it's only mine ♪
♪ And the only way to find me ♪
♪ Is to go beneath the lies ♪
[♪ music fades out]