The Death From Success

December 15, 2025

On this episode, Payton and Garrett dive into the case of Lance Herndon, a successful tech entrepreneur whose life ended under mysterious circumstances. As investigators search for answers, it becomes clear that success can come with dangerous consequences.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland.

And I'm Garrett Moreland

And he's the husband.

I'm the husband.

All right, we don't really have any announcements. Nothing too crazy, I guess. The holiday is coming up. We are recording. I think we mentioned an announcement last week, something we're still working on, but any day now.

Any day.

If you are watching on video, we're messing with some new lighting, so my face is kind of dark. That's okay. We did get— we got shades, I guess.

Mhm.

We've been needing shades for our studio for a year.

Yeah. Got them. I got them installed. They look great.

Way better. We had curtains hanging up. I don't even know if you can call them curtains.

Me either.

Yeah. No announcements, nothing too crazy. As far as the podcast, and for my ten seconds, I'm going to talk a second about the bagel shop. So if you don't like bagels, you can skip forward. And if you skip forward, that means that I don't know if I like you.

Bagels. Bagels are getting closer. I am opening a bagel shop. It is happening. For those that are curious, it's happening. I got the space. I'm signed into a lease. I'm working on permits, working on construction, finalizing recipes, got my concept down.

Bagel shop will be opening. It will be opening in Utah. I'm not going to say where yet. It'll be in Utah County. And I'll keep everyone updated. More updates coming soon, I promise. I'm just still in a little bit of the beginning stages that I don't want to say too much yet.

Yeah, that's my ten seconds. I'm excited. I promise the bagels are going to be good. I promise they're going to be hot. They're going to be warm. No one's getting a cold bagel. That's what I have.

So on that note, let's hop into today's episode.

Our sources for this episode are oxygen.com, upi.com, miamiherald.com, NBC.com, 11alive.com, caselaw.findlaw.com, npr.org, corrections.com, NBC.com, findagrave.com, and happyscribe.com.

I think it's safe to say that a lot of us want to be successful at what we do. It's what drives and motivates many of us to be the best. Sometimes we want the success for the money, or sometimes it's recognition, sometimes it's just wanting the spotlight. And for a lot of people, it is a combination of all three.

But when you finally reach that success, there can be a lot of unforeseen consequences: critical voices, financial hurdles, and new relationships to navigate. Because success can make you a lot of friends and a lot of enemies. And a lot of your enemies look like friends.

Today's case will prove just that, that those new relationships are often the most dangerous part of success. Because the more people you let in and the more people you trust, the more chances you have of getting hurt emotionally, financially, and maybe even physically.

So jumping right in, it is the summer of 1996, and we are in Atlanta, Georgia. Now, this city is actually hosting the Summer Olympics in 1996, bringing in tourists from all over the globe. It is the place to see and be seen. It's also the hot spot at that time if you want to build a business.

And 40-year-old Lance H. Hearnden knows that. Lance grew up in New York to pretty humble beginnings, but he became a self-made businessman in Atlanta as he grew up. And by the mid-90s, he was a tech mogul who had gained a lot of success after creating his own business called Access Incorporated. It was a computer consulting firm that became a $3 million-a-year enterprise in the ’90s. It had contracts with massive corporations like Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, and NationsBank.

But that was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to Lance. He had a lot of interests and hobbies. He liked collecting cars, traveling the world, getting his pilot’s license, and he also co-owned one of the hottest nightclubs in Atlanta called the Vixen Club.

I just can't even imagine what the Vixen Club was like in the ’90s. I feel like clubs in the ’90s— it's just a different time. Not everyone's running around with iPhones.

Honestly, it would probably be kind of nice.

There's probably so much speed.

You're probably right. You're probably right.

So I think it's safe to say that Lance obviously took his life, his work, very seriously. He had been given several public achievement awards, like a Small Business Entrepreneur of the Year award from President Bill Clinton and a National Service Award from President George H. W. Bush.

So he's just well known in the business world as a self-made businessman.

Okay. Lance was seen as a hero, an icon in Atlanta in the ’90s. But there was just one thing Lance wasn't suited for, and that was marriage. He had been divorced three times, his most recent divorce being in January of 1996.

Now, he was still very close to and greatly admired by his two kids, his son and his daughter, but he was also seen as one of the most eligible bachelors in Atlanta, who was now back on the market again.

So that August, Lance would be turning 41, and he wanted to ring in the occasion in style. Because Lance, by this point, had sort of built a reputation for himself. Some people referred to him as “a Black Jay Gatsby” because he loved to throw lavish parties where he spared no expense. And that was exactly what he did for his 41st birthday.

Now, in the months before his actual birthday—yes, he had his birthday party months before his birthday for some reason—he rented out a space overlooking the city of Atlanta. Hundreds of people showed up to this party to celebrate Lance. Many of them were big hitters and power players in Atlanta at the time. Several of the people who came were girlfriends of Lance that he would just kind of keep on rotation.

And that night, everyone danced, everyone drank, and they cheered to what would certainly be a long and flourishing career for the soon-to-be 41-year-old Lance. But if only they knew what was about to unfold.

It was Thursday, August 8, 1996, a couple of months later, actually just four days after Lance’s actual 41st birthday. That morning, Lance’s employees start showing up to his house in Roswell, Georgia. This is just north of Atlanta. It’s here, at his big colonial-style home, that they actually operate the business out of Lance’s basement.

Now, Holly Stuber, one of Lance’s most loyal workers, is the first to arrive. So she gets to the house at 8:00 a.m., and she kind of finds it strange that Lance isn’t already up and down in the basement, sitting at his desk, hustling away. Usually, Lance gets up early and is the first to begin work. I’m talking 4:00 a.m. early, so he could be in front of his computer around 5:00 a.m. to answer calls and emails from around the world, which is what his business did.

But that day, like I said, he’s not there. And it’s strange because Lance is really diligent about this. He has not one but three alarm clocks that go off every morning, in case he had spent the night partying. He wanted to make sure no hangover could beat the ringing of those alarms for work.

So Holly thinks, okay, maybe Lance just had a doctor’s appointment or something today that he forgot to tell me about. So she goes into his office to look for these tapes that he always leaves her. It’s little cassettes that have his verbal instructions on what to do for the day. Basically, think like a voice message in Slack, but way before. Actually, it’s kind of cool.

So this is something he leaves her every single day. He’s very diligent about it. But then she notices her tape for that day isn’t there, which to Holly means, okay, he definitely did not step foot in the office at all this morning.

So Holly calls Lance. There’s no response. She pages him. He doesn’t call back. Eventually, she does the next best thing and actually calls Lance’s mom, Jackie. Now, Jackie often came by the office to help with admin stuff, which is why Holly even knows her.

So when she arrived at 10:00 a.m. that morning, she went right upstairs to the main house to check on her son because she had been notified that things were looking a little odd. And that’s when Holly hears screams coming from the upper levels of Lance’s home.

Jackie, his mother, had found Lance lying in bed in a pool of his own blood.

Okay.

All right, here we go.

He’s naked, and he has been bludgeoned to death.

Oh, Jesus.

In the head and the face, which no mother would ever have to see.

Horrible.

Yeah.

So Jackie immediately dials 911 for help. She is in hysterics when she’s heard saying, “Someone killed my baby.” And within minutes, the Atlanta PD is showing up at Lance Hearnden’s house with a high-profile murder case now on their hands.

One of the first things they notice is that Lance was struck with so much force that there was actually blood streaming, like dripping, down the wall.

Okay. Uh-huh.

In fact, Lance had been hit close to a dozen times with a blunt force weapon. But Lance didn’t have any defensive wounds on his hands or any injuries below his waist. He was lying on his back with his hands across his chest, which was how some witnesses said he often slept.

There was no sign of forced entry in the house. However, one of his credit cards is missing. The clothes he was wearing the night before also seemed to be gone, as was his work laptop from the office. And even weirder, there’s a bloody towel stuffed in the toilet in the primary bedroom.

God.

And the phone next to Lance’s bed, along with all three of Lance’s alarm clocks, had all been unplugged. One of the clocks was actually stuck on a time. It was at 4:10 a.m.

Now, Lance did have a high-tech home security setup, but it appeared to be disabled or had never been activated before his death. There were a few other important clues left behind, though, like a bunch of silver gum wrappers on the ground near the garage.

And the photo next to his bed, which was a picture of Lance’s girlfriend, Kathy Collins, was actually turned down. Someone had put it face down.

Got it. Uh-huh.

Now, the one thing they can’t locate on scene was the murder weapon. However, when they spoke to Lance’s housekeeper later on, she realized a wrench had been missing from the home, which could have fit the description of the blunt object that police were looking for. Luckily, there was some useful evidence to be gathered for DNA testing, like hair follicles on the bed.

Now, one of the first things police consider after taking in the scene, especially because Lance’s work laptop from his basement is missing, was that maybe this was a business rival. Lance had a lot of competitors, and he had won a lot of contracts over the years with big companies. It was actually something that pissed off a lot of other business owners, and Lance knew that he kind of dominated the game. But, I mean, that’s business. Still, when police follow these threads, it leads them nowhere.

However, they do learn something else as they’re digging into Lance’s life. Besides how his life looked on the outside—his cars, the lavish parties he threw—Lance was actually in debt, and a lot of it. His company, Access, Inc., was nearly bankrupt, and Lance had borrowed against a line of credit that he had taken out with a local bank.

It’s crazy. People would be surprised how much this actually happens, where you think a business is making money, where you think somebody is making money, and they’re not. Sadly, the amount of businesses and people you think are making millions of dollars usually aren’t.

Well, I mean, he’s been awarded by two presidents.

Yeah.

So you wouldn’t even question it.

You wouldn’t question it.

Reality is, the business world goes up and down. Just because a business flourishes in the first five years doesn’t mean it’s going to continue to flourish in the next.

Exactly.

And that’s kind of what happened here. Lance was not getting the massive contracts that he used to get, and Lance’s priorities had shifted over the last year or two, and his business had felt that.

Ever since opening that nightclub, Lance had been dealing with a bunch of problems. Supposedly, several months after Lance opened the Vixen, one of his DJs was bludgeoned to death in the VIP room.

Oh my God.

This case actually went unsolved, and as word spread, it began to sink the establishment. After that, Lance had a falling out with his business partner at the club, and there were rumors of Lance owing a lot of people money in this business, too.

Interesting.

Now, apparently, the local police were also familiar with Lance because, in the months before his death, he had been acting pretty paranoid. He was actually calling police over to his house on more than one occasion before he was murdered, asking them to do a check of his property. Reportedly, Lance was always coy with police when they were like, “Why are you nervous? Why do you want us to walk around your property?” He was just kind of cagey, wouldn’t really say what he was worried about.

So this is the background police have. They then get to the autopsy, and it gives detectives a little more insight on what those calls, calling the police to his house, might have been about.

Had to have been something illegal, otherwise there’s no reason to be cagey, right?

So, turns out that missing wrench is what likely killed Lance, according to the medical examiner, and would have been easily accessible to the killer, considering Lance had the wrench out and was using it to put together some exercise equipment earlier in the evening.

They had also collected DNA from under Lance’s fingernails and found several additional hairs on Lance’s body that they believed were the killer’s. But the lack of defense wounds and the way Lance’s body was positioned when he died told the medical examiner that he was more likely asleep when he was killed, that the attack was quick, and was likely done by someone who had been intimate with Lance right before.

Okay.

The fact that Lance had no lower-body injuries made them wonder if someone had climbed on top of his naked body and beat him to death. This was sort of confirmed by a blood spatter expert who said the only way you would get those blood marks that they found on his wall was if someone was striking Lance while on top of him in a straddled position.

So this is sounding less and less like some angry business associate and a lot more like a crime of passion, which doesn’t exactly narrow things down because, like I said, Lance had plenty of romantic partners over his years. He was a bit of a playboy. In fact, at the time of his death, he was said to be seeing around four different women. And you have to remember, he has three different ex-wives, too.

So this is actually where police kind of start, with Lance’s most recent ex-wife, Janine Price.

Now, Lance and Janine were married in 1990. Though I’m not entirely sure when they met, I do know where. It was in Brazil, under the statue of Christ. Lance was on vacation, and Janine was a flight attendant on a layover. Apparently, it was love at first sight.

Friends of Lance’s said Janine was a kind, generous person with a good heart. The reality was, the two just weren’t really a good match for one another. Lance stepped out on the marriage often, and Janine didn’t want to deal with it. So six years after they tied the knot, she took their son, four-year-old Harrison, and moved out. This was about seven months before Lance was killed.

And when police looked into Janine, they also found what might be a motive: a $750,000 life insurance policy, which she was still listed as the beneficiary on. So police zero in on Janine, especially when she admits to them that she still knew the security code to Lance’s house.

But Janine insisted that on the night Lance died, she was at home with a man that she had been seeing post-divorce, and he confirmed her alibi. They also learned she’d been getting quite a bit of money every month from Lance for alimony and child support. So the motive doesn’t really add up.

Yeah, it’s true.

Okay.

And with her alibi checking out, police feel confident enough to move on to the other suspects, like Lance’s current girlfriend, Kathy Collins.

So Kathy’s photo was the one found face down next to the bed. Though Lance was a bit of a playboy, Kathy was said to be his main girlfriend, the woman that he spent the most time with. Now, whether she knew he was seeing other people on the side or not, I’m not sure.

Kathy and Lance were introduced in Los Angeles, where she lived at the time, and they started fooling around, even though they were both married at the time they met. Now, after they both left their marriages, Kathy moved to Atlanta, literally just to be closer to Lance. She even moved a bunch of her things into his house. So it’s looking kind of serious.

But when police spoke with some of Lance’s friends, they said they weren’t so sure about Kathy. That Lance bought her a lot of gifts and took her traveling, but she seemed to care more about that than their actual connection. Though it was clear Lance wasn’t that serious about her either, since he continued seeing other women on the side.

So detectives have to wonder, could she have found out that Lance wasn’t being monogamous with her and taken drastic measures? Was Lance starting to lose interest in her, and she thought she was going to lose this new, fancy lifestyle that she had just moved across the country for?

So this appeared to be a bit of a motive. And her behavior when she showed up at the crime scene wasn’t exactly that of a grieving girlfriend. According to police, she seemed more concerned with getting her own personal belongings from Lance’s house than she was about her boyfriend having just been murdered in bed.

And I’m not talking about her wallet and keys. I’m talking about her saying, “Please, before you guys tear the house apart, I want my clothing, my sunglasses, an expensive bottle of wine I have here.”

But the more police looked into Kathy, she sounded like she was just pissy.

Well, the more they’re looking into her, the less likely they think she’s a suspect. Mainly because she kind of had already moved on emotionally and physically, too. They learned she, too, was seeing another man on the side, and he confirmed that they were together the night Lance was killed.

So with that, police start looking into other suspects once again. And that is when they stumble into an old friend of Lance’s, a woman named Tana Carowaway.

Now, Tana and Lance had dated in the past. It was just a quick fling. Their relationship kind of evolved into a close friendship, one that was going on 11 years at the time of Lance’s death. Tana told police that when she was having a hard time making money, Lance offered her a part-time job at his company. And that’s actually what put her at the scene of the crime on the night of the murder.

Tana says she was still working away in Lance’s home office around 10:30 p.m. the night he died. So when police learned this, they went to Tana’s house to speak with her. She immediately refused to speak with them without an attorney present. Obviously, this is smart, but detectives are like, “Girl, we weren’t even coming over here to see you as a suspect,” so this is a little strange to them. It looks like a sign that Tana’s hiding something, but to Tana, it’s just her covering her bases.

Now, a day or so later, she agrees to come in and speak to police with her attorney. And this is what she told them about the night that her boss and longtime friend, Lance, was murdered. She said that evening she was doing some data entry work for Lance in the basement when he came down to the office to check in. She said he was relaxed, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. In fact, he started telling Tana about a new woman he had met, a teacher, and that he wanted to write her a nice message on a card, something romantic.

So Tana helped him out. Now, that night, it was raining heavily, and Lance told her he was worried about her driving home. So when she left and got home around 11:30, he called her to make sure that she had made it home safe. They chatted briefly around this time, and this is something police actually verified with phone records. This also helps them establish a clearer timeline.

Lance had died sometime between 11:30, when he made that call from his house, and around 4:30 a.m., when his alarm clocks were set to go off.

Okay.

But there was something that happened before she actually left his house that stuck out to police. Tana said a woman called the home office repeatedly that night asking for Lance, and she was sounding annoyed that Lance was dodging her calls and not trying to call her back. She identified herself as Lance’s girlfriend, which Tana probably found a little bit odd since she knew Kathy. But also, Lance was known to have women on the side.

I’m just going to be really surprised if this ends up being one of his girlfriends. I feel like it’s got to be more than that.

Maybe not. I mean, this happens all the time, but I don’t know. We’ll see.

I will say, it happens all the time where we have girlfriends, husbands, whatever—wives—who get mad and kill their spouses. But this seems like there’s more here.

I think, without reporting on it, the police believed it was a woman because he was found naked and someone had straddled him to kill him, which I guess makes sense.

Yeah.

And I know that might sound biased or weird.

No, I mean, it’s good evidence.

But I mean, the fact is, genders kill differently, usually, statistically. And so I think sometimes when we look at cause of death, if it’s passionate, we think it’s someone they knew. If it’s this, we think maybe it was a woman. You know what I mean? And statistically, usually that is correct. Obviously, there are oddities, but—

Tana’s like, “Yes, this woman kept calling saying that she was his girlfriend, but I know Kathy. But again, he definitely could have a side piece.”

Tana also added another interesting detail that happened before she left the office that night. She says that when she went upstairs to say goodbye to Lance, she noticed that he was moving Kathy’s clothes out of the main bedroom and into a hallway closet, something she had actually seen him do before. And she knew what that meant. Lance was having another woman over, a woman who wasn’t Kathy.

So now police have this new suspect that they think they need to look into. It’s a mystery woman who kept calling that evening, said she was Lance’s girlfriend, and Tana saw him kind of clearing out the primary bedroom to bring another girl in.

So they’re like, “Hey, did she tell you her name?”

And Tana’s like, “Actually, I wrote it down. I took a message for her, and I wrote it down.”

Twenty-seven-year-old Dion Baugh.

So Dion wasn’t an Atlanta native. She’d actually been born and raised in Jamaica and later moved to Atlanta to study finance at Georgia State University. Dion also had a great job as an executive assistant at the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority.

Her husband, Shawn Nelson, was a pilot for Air Jamaica, and the two had a four-year-old daughter together. But with Shawn’s job taking him on constant business trips away from the family, Dion saw that as an opportunity to step out of the marriage.

In fact, when her boss was invited to a birthday party for a high-profile friend in Atlanta, Dion weaseled her way into an invitation. Obviously, the birthday party was for 41-year-old Lance. Hence, this is how the two met.

This is where Dion caught Lance’s eye. That very premature bash was four months before Lance’s actual birthday, like I’ve mentioned. But for the next four months, things kind of got hot and heavy between Lance and Dion. He wined and dined her, bought her expensive things. He even got her a Mercedes. What she failed to mention to him was that she was actually married to another man.

So once police hear that there was a woman who was starting to replace Kathy on Lance’s roster, police realize they need to speak with her. So she comes into the station for questioning around August 17th. This is nine days after the murder.

She tells police that she and Lance were madly in love and that she’s actually heartbroken over the news of his death, and that her husband still wasn’t aware of this secret relationship. He just thought Lance was mentoring her.

Oh.

She tells police she wasn’t at Lance’s house the night of the murder because he actually stopped by hers the night of the murder. She said that evening around 7:00 p.m., she took her husband and daughter to the airport because they were going to go on a trip back to Jamaica. And after that, sometime between 9:00 and 10:30 p.m., Lance came by her apartment to loan her a laptop that she needed for school.

Now, this might explain why that one work laptop was missing from his office, but it doesn’t match with the story Tana said, that Lance was at home while she was working in the office that night.

True.

That, as far as she knows, he never left.

Now, when Dion starts to feel a little backed into a corner about this, she mentions one thing. She says, “Actually, my husband was sending some angry texts to Lance around the time he died. He must have found out about our affair.”

Okay.

And they’re like, you just said this was all up in the air. Is she trying to pin him now?

Yeah.

They’re like, “But you just said he didn’t know.”

Yes. This is all over.

So the police leave Dion that night knowing that there are some holes in her story. And it doesn’t take long for them to find out that Shawn had already known about the affair. The Mercedes Dion had gotten from Lance gave that away. I mean, how does your wife just get a brand-new car from a mentor?

And Shawn was confirmed to be on a flight to Jamaica the night Lance was murdered. So they rule him out quickly, but they also learn there was an altercation between Lance and Dion about a month before he died.

So maybe he hired a hitman. Who knows?

Okay.

So back on July 10th, Dion showed up to Lance’s house completely unannounced. And apparently, she knew Lance had another woman over at the time and went berserk over it. She started beating on the door, ringing the doorbell repeatedly while calling his phone.

Oh.

And she showed up to his house with a knife to confront him with this other woman. It scared Lance to the point where he actually called 911 on her. And when an officer showed up a few minutes later, he noticed a car in Lance’s driveway and peered inside. That’s when he saw a black coat on the floor of the back seat and a woman’s leg poking out from underneath it.

Dion was clearly trying to hide from the cops, but she was eventually lured out and arrested. She was charged with criminal trespassing, and she and Lance were actually scheduled to go to court on August 8th over this entire incident. Only the two never showed up because that morning, Lance was found dead.

However, it seems Lance and Dion were still seeing each other in the days leading up to that court date, though he had kind of been pulling back a little bit ever since this incident. He had stopped letting her use his credit cards. He was no longer lending her money.

That didn’t really stop Dion from spending his money. Police found out that on the day he died, she actually used one of his credit cards to buy some furniture. And remember, one of his credit cards was missing from his wallet.

Plus the car he had gotten for Dion. Apparently, there was a document that stated that in the case of his death, she would be able to keep it forever. She wouldn’t have to give it back.

So this really is just that she killed him?

Investigators—what the freak?

I mean, open and shut, I guess, but wild.

So they don’t feel like this is all enough to move in with an arrest warrant, at least not until they gathered more evidence. So they actually keep building their case on Dion.

And then, 18 months after Lance’s death, as police are still trying to gather enough evidence, there’s a big break in the case thanks to Dion’s own husband, Shawn Nelson.

So in January 1998, Shawn called the police in Atlanta to say, “Listen, we’re getting divorced. I need to turn over this information. We were in an argument. I confronted her about whether she killed her lover, Lance.” And according to him, Dion turned incredibly violent. She threatened Shawn, saying if he said anything, she would kill him the same way she killed Lance.

Holy crap.

Now, according to Shawn’s mother, Dion had said something interesting to her as well. Dion told her mother-in-law, just a few weeks after Lance was killed, that she went to his house on the night he died. This completely contradicted the statements she made to police.

And it’s around this same time that police get confirmation on those DNA samples found in Lance’s bed. They do appear to be a match for Dion.

So on January 29th, 1998, with now two witnesses who they can have testify in court, police finally arrest Dion and charge her with murder. And the prosecution takes their time building the case against her. It’s actually not until 2001 that Dion finally faces her day in court.

Now, this is the theory the prosecution paints. Sometime after Tana went home that night and Lance called her to check on her—so after 11:30—Dion came over to Lance’s house. The two of them had sex, and Lance fell asleep. That’s when Dion got on top of him, straddled him, and violently beat him with the wrench that she had found sitting out in his own home.

She then unplugged the alarm clocks, turned the picture of Kathy over on the nightstand, and then went through his wallet and took that credit card that she then used later to buy furniture. After this, she went down to the home office and took the laptop, too, because she needed it for school. She then went out to her car, and that’s where police found another clue pointing to Dion.

Those silver gum wrappers that were on the ground outside—Dion had the same wrappers stuffed into a purse of hers that was examined as evidence, which seemed to prove she kind of was at the house that evening.

And as for motive, prosecutors say Dion knew she was on the outs with Lance, that it was only a matter of time before he kicked her to the curb and moved on. She wanted to make off with as much of his money and things as possible before he dumped her.

Huh. I wonder why his laptop, because I feel like that was for school.

That was just not smart.

No. Like, if she honestly would have left the laptop and some other— I don’t know. That was just… I mean, everything was stupid, but anyways.

They also state that at first, Lance was planning to drop the charges against her at that August 8th court hearing and changed his mind in the days before. And once Dion learned about that, it might have been the final straw, the thing that made her want to end Lance’s life for good.

However, the biggest piece of evidence was those hairs found on Lance’s bed that were a match with Dion’s, and that her DNA was also found underneath Lance’s fingernails. But the defense says all this proves is that the two had been recently intimate with each other.

Yeah, it’s true. I mean, she was over there. They had sex. She even had access to everything she took. That doesn’t mean that she murdered Lance.

They pointed to all of the other potential suspects police failed to follow, like Kathy Collins. The defense said police only questioned her new boyfriend about her alibi, but not the other people who saw her that evening. They also pointed to Tana’s boyfriend, who had financial dealings with Lance and was said to be seen driving around the area the night he died. And on top of that, they listed the many enemies Lance had made through the Vixen Club.

The problem was, all the evidence was kind of pointing to Dion.

So on April 17, 2001, the jury found Dion guilty of first-degree murder. She was sentenced to life in prison. But on July 10, 2003, Dion’s lawyers successfully appealed her case.

Okay. Why? How?

This was because hearsay found by one of the investigators was admitted during the trial when it shouldn’t have been. So Dion went back to court in the fall of 2003, and this time her case was declared a mistrial.

What?

After the jurors were deadlocked. So that meant Dion was awaiting a third trial. But instead of repeating the process again, she decided to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Yeah. I mean, yeah. She gets out in 10 years instead of life.

Well, she only served about seven of those years.

Okay.

Dion was released in July of 2011 at the age of 44. Technically, her whole life ahead of her.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, she got it.

Meanwhile, Lance died before he ever even saw that age.

Yeah.

Though Lance’s legacy does still live on. His rags-to-riches story is a huge inspiration, especially in Atlanta’s business community. He is still talked about today as a generous, hardworking man, an excellent boss, mentor, friend, and dad whose life was cut short way too soon by someone who tried all too desperately to ride his coattails to the top.

And that is the murder of Lance Hearnden.

I just figured it would be some business thing, considering business wasn’t going good.

Nope. One of his girlfriends.

This is why—this is why you only have one girlfriend at a time.

I mean, she pled guilty. That’s insane.

That sucks. Horrible.

It just feels so senseless again.

Yeah.

Like, I don’t think crimes ever have any sense. Sometimes it seems so obvious and senseless. You’re just like, what?

For some furniture, or some furniture, a car, and a laptop that you’re obviously going to get caught with.

Maybe she was a lover scorned.

Maybe. And she just didn’t admit it.

Yeah, because it’s like she just didn’t want to. I don’t know. It almost feels like maybe they couldn’t go that route because it’s more of a motive.

Maybe.

But for the state, it almost feels like instead of going the money route, they could have gone with her marriage just got destroyed because of this affair. Her whole life’s kind of falling apart. He’s now going to go to court against her and drop her when she’s still in love with him. That almost seems more of a motive, and I’m kind of shocked the state didn’t focus more heavily on that.

Yeah. I don’t know.

That is the brutal, senseless crime against Lance, and we will see you next time with another case.

I love it.

And I hate it.

Goodbye.

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