The boyfriend of a murdered pregnant woman was engaged to another woman who his slain partner texted to meet-up with before she died, it has emerged.
Police say Tyler Tessier, 32, killed Laura Wallen, 31, in Damascus, Maryland, then dumped her body in a shallow grave on September 2.
Her body was found on Wednesday in a field which she earlier sent a picture of to her sister, writing: ‘Tyler has me on an adventure in the country. Not sure why but it’s for something. Waiting in a field.’
Wallen, who was reported missing after she did not show up for the first day of class, was four months pregnant with his baby.
Her family have since revealed that he asked her father for her hand in marriage despite being already engaged to Kristina Wagoner.
Tyler Tessier, 32, has been charged with murdering his pregnant girlfriend Laura Wallen, 31, and dumping her body in a shallow grave. Police say he was engaged to another woman when he killed Wallen on September 2
On Thursday, they said they suspected him all along but that they were forced to take part in an emotional press conference with him because they had no proof.
On August 28, a week before her death, Wallen sent a text message to the woman asking if they could meet up.
Police say she wanted ‘an explanation’ and that both women knew of each other but neither thought Tessier was seeing them both at the same time.
‘It’s important that some things are cleared up and I would imagine that if you were in my position, you’d want some answers as well.
‘By no means is this an attempt at confrontation, just looking for an explanation, woman to woman’ the text message read.
It is not known whether or not the pair ever did meet up.
On September 2, she went with him willingly to a rural property. The pair were seen on surveillance cameras making a purchase at a Safeway that day, the last known sighting of Wallen alive.
On September 3, her family said they stopped hearing from her. The next day, her sister received text messages from her phone which claimed Tessier was not the baby’s father but that another man, called ‘Antwan’, was.
‘I am like 95 per cent sure Tyler is not the father,’ one read. Another said: ‘I’m probably going to lose my job over this.
‘If he tries to call you, please tell him he’s a great guy because I know I really hurt his feelings,’ they read.
Another said she would ‘try to get a hold of Antwane’.
Police have determined that Tessier wrote those messages to try to shift suspicion from himself onto one of Wallen’s ex-boyfriends, Antoine Broadnax, who she hadn’t seen for years.
On September 7, police found the woman’s abandoned car in the parking lot of an apartment complex in Columbus.
The front registration plate had been removed and it was backed in to a space.
Staff at the complex also found her driver’s license in a dumpster there. Her cell phone was tossed in alongside it.
Tessier took part in a press conference with Wallen’s parents last week before her body was found. He held hands with her mother and took pats on the back from her father. They now say they suspected him all along but that they were forced to go along with his pretense because they had no proof their daughter was dead
On Thursday, Wallen’s father Mike said they ‘knew’ their daughter’s boyfriend killed her but that they had to go through with the press conference because they had no proof
Wallen was four months pregnant with the man’s child and her family said she was excited about the pregnant
Tessier, who had taken part in television appeals and press conferences to find her, was questioned between September 5 and 11.
During the interviews, he admitted parking his girlfriend’s car and discarding her license but said she had asked him to do those things to ‘buy her time’ before revealing that Antoine was the baby’s father.
At a press conference on Thursday, Wallen’s father described him as a ‘monster’ and a ‘liar’ and said the family had their suspicions about him but were forced to take part in a joint press conference with him because her body had not yet been found.
‘He is a monster and he is a liar and it was absolutely the hardest thing that my wife could do, would be to sit there next to him and hold his hand and she had to hold his hand with two hands because she was shaking so badly.
‘We were pretty sure it was Tyler but we didn’t know where she was and you can’t put somebody away on a missing person.
‘Someone doesn’t go to prison for life on a missing person and it defies description the awfulness and the horror that we have been put through during this,’ Mark Wallen said.
Tessier has been charged with first degree murder and is being held without bond.
He is also charged with obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence and making false statements.
He has given police conflicting statements about the last time he saw her alive.
First, he claimed they had an argument at her home on September 4 which ended in her ‘hysterically crying’.
He later claimed to have arranged to meet up with her at a mall near the apartment complex where her car was found but says she never showed up.
He told police she had asked him to give her a ‘day’ to ‘sort things out’ and tell Antoine that he was the father.
After Wallen went missing, he took part in an emotional press conference with her parents where they all pleaded for her safe return.
He held hands with the woman’s mother and took pats on the back from her father.