Deadly Betrayal. The case of Jimella Tunstall

On the 15th of September 2006, paramedics receive a call from a distraug woman who says she's in a park in East St. Louis in Illinois. She says she's given birth to a stillborn baby. Now, when paramedics arrive, they do find a young woman and she's holding a tiny newborn baby in a blanket. Sadly, they checked the baby and they confirmed that she had died. Now there were no obvious external injuries on the infant, so paramedics took the young woman and the newborn to the local hospital. And medical staff they quickly became suspicious after the woman refuses to have a routine physical examination to confirm that she'd recently given birth and they want to see if she's okay.

Hospital staff actually alert the local authorities, but it would be a confession at the baby's funeral that would go on to uncover the horrifying events that left four children and their young mother dead. This is the case of Tiffany Hall and the Tunstall family. Hello everybody and welcome back to Unthinkable, a true crime podcast. My name is Lisa. Thank you for joining me. I just want to say I'm looking after a pug at the moment, and she's asleep by my feet, and she does snore, so you might hear a little pug snoring if you do.

That's Mabel. So today's case, oh, it's a horrible one, and I didn't think I knew it, but then when I started doing the research, I realised it was familiar, and it's so shocking. I'm surprised I didn't have it on my list of cases to cover. Right, so let's get started. So Jamella Tunstall, so she was born in February 1983. She grew up in East St. Louis in Illinois, and this was once a bustling industrial and rail hub. East St. Louis suffered major economical decline in and around the 1950s due to factory closures and the loss of many manufacturing jobs.

There's been decades of decline in population, shrinking from 82,000 residents to under 18,000. Many of the buildings have just been abandoned. On the large parts of the landscape, there are old rail tracks and industrial yards which have just been left. They're just out of use. Now East St. Louis is recognized as a very disadvantaged area, and the city faces significant poverty. And Jamela, she had a tough start to life. She spent time in the foster care system as a young child and into her teens.

She lived in several foster homes. I couldn't find much information about her early life, who her parents were. She does have a stepmother though called Ladonna Tunstall, indicating that her parents have split up and gone on to remarry. As a young child, Jamela was enrolled in school, and here she meets another young girl from her neighbourhood, Tiffany Hall. Tiffany and Jamella were known for individually being very quiet, and the pair bonded over being thought of as loners by the other children at the school.

Now, Tiffany Hall, she had quite a challenging life as a child. She was raised by her biological parents, so she wasn't taken into care like Jamella, but she had quite a history of psychiatric and behaviour issues that started in early childhood, and she had been hospitalized on a number of occasions, including treatment for suicidal ideations. It's also noted that she had an intellectual disability and a very low IQ. Now, Jamella and Tiffany became close, and over the years they developed a long-standing bond.

Friends and family actually described them as being like sisters. So Tiffany's behavior problems continued, and when she was 14, she was charged with domestic battery for an incident with her mother. She was sentenced to probation, but she violated the terms of the probation and ended up spending six months in juvenile detention. Tiffany also started having auditory hallucinations, so she's either hearing sounds or voices that aren't actually there. So she's having quite a tough time, isn't she?

But the pair remain close and they both become teenage mums. So while Jamela, she's 16, she gives birth to her first son, Demond. When she leaves school, Jamela focuses on raising her son. She's a single mother. We don't know who the dad is, he's not documented anywhere. And Jamela, she goes on to have two more children. So she has another baby boy called Ivan when she's 21, and a baby girl called Janella when she's 22. The father of the younger children is a man called Ivan Collins, and Ivan does provide Jamella with some stability.

The couple did not live together, but they were in a relationship, and he was actively involved in co-parenting and spent significant time caring for the children and being at their home. Now, in March 2005, things take a drastic turn when Jamela's three children are taken into care temporarily. This is due to allegations of child neglect, an unstable home, and children being left alone for long periods of time. And they are very young children. Baby Janella is she's only a couple of months old.

They shouldn't be being left alone, should they? However, Jamella, she's very cooperative. She complied fully with the child and family services demands. She completed parenting classes, she secured stable housing, and she even enrolled in college. She took a course with the goal of entering the medical field, and she also started to explore her creative interest and she had a love of photography. Now in early 2006, Jamela, after all her hard work, she regained full custody of her kids. I think she's amazing.

She could have gone down a very dark path, couldn't she? But she didn't. She worked hard to turn her life around and now the family are back together. So Tiffany Hoare, so she gave birth to her first child when she was 17. I don't know the names of the children, but she had two daughters and they were born a year apart. The youngest child was reportedly dropped on her head as a baby, causing irreversible brain damage, and by the time she's seven, she's still wearing nappies and can't really communicate.

In August uh 1999, Tiffany lost custody of both her children due to allegations of being physically abusive towards them. Reports say that Tiffany would beat them. I will never understand how anyone can look at a child and hurt them. These are babies. Now Tiffany is still struggling with her mental health issues. She is trying to work. She worked various short-term jobs, and remember she's got an intellect disability, so she's going to find things hard, isn't she? She struggled at school and she was left with no qualifications.

Tiffany also took parenting classes and in 2002, three years after the children were taken into care, her daughters were returned to her. Now, throughout all of this, Jamella and Tiffany remain very close. They visit each other regularly, and the children got to know each other as well. So it looks like things are looking up for them both, doesn't it? They would go to the cinema together, go out for food together, and eat at each other's houses. It was like one big extended family. They would babysit for each other, and Tiffany actually babysat Jamela's children regularly while she was attending college.

So these two have been best friends since they met at kindergarten. They've supported each other through their struggles and into motherhood, and they have a close bond and trusted each other completely. Now, the father of Tiffany's children isn't in the picture. She has a friend to lean on, but the father is not involved at all. He doesn't provide financially or in any other way. But in late 2005, Tiffany meets a US Navy soldier, Keith Horn, and Keith Horn is a good man. He's a stable man, and the pair start a relationship, and it's reported it was a serious relationship, but with Keith being in the Navy, he does spend long periods away.

He lives in East St. Louis, but he's stationed in Virginia, and this makes Tiffany a bit insecure, but you have to think she's had a pretty unstable life so far, hasn't she? She's in a relationship with Keith and she's desperate to hang on to him. Now in 2006, Keith stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, which is roughly about 900 miles away from where Tiffany lived, and the pair have maintained a long-distance relationship and communicate regularly. But Tiffany is becoming more and more paranoid. She's scared he'll leave her and end the relationship or he'll meet someone else in Virginia.

So we get to February 2006, and Jamela happily announces that she's pregnant with her fourth child. And this announcement leads to Tiffany coming up with the idea of telling Keith that she's pregnant with their first child. Tiffany believes that if Keith thinks she's pregnant, this would tie them together and he wouldn't leave the relationship. So this is what she does. Days after Jamela announced her pregnancy, Tiffany made her announcement. Jamela was overjoyed they were going to have babies at the same time.

Now there is one obvious problem here, isn't there? As the months passed, Jamela's baby bump started to show and grow, as you would expect, but Tiffany doesn't have a baby bump, and she's now almost seven months pregnant. It's unclear if she ever got questioned by anybody or if anyone was suspicious. I couldn't find any reports on, but it does seem Tiffany had managed to deceive her friends and family. She had put on weight and she was altering her clothes. Her fabricated due date was approaching and she was facing the inevitable exposure of her lie, and she can't confide in Jamella.

She's lied to her too, so now she's starting to panic. She's completely unwilling to admit what she's done, and this is what leads her to target her childhood long-term best friend Jamella.

So on the 15th of September 2006, Tiffany invited her friend round to her mother's apartment. This is apartment 28 28J of the John DeShield's public housing complex. Tiffany was actually living with her mother at the time. Jamela left her three children at her apartment with their dad, and she made her way to a friend's house. There's nothing unusual here, the pair are always visiting each other. Jamella made her way across the neighborhood, arriving at the apartment complex. She went up the stairs and knocked on the door.

She could not have predicted in any way what was to happen next. As soon as she entered the apartment, Tiffany attacked her. She repeatedly began striking her best friend over the head with a wooden table leg until Jamela was knocked unconscious. Tiffany then bound Jamella's hands and feet together with duct tape. Jamella actually started to regain consciousness and she starts to try and wriggle free. Can you imagine the confusion she's in, trying to understand what's happening to her? She cries out, but Tiffany hits her over the head again, knocking her unconscious once more.

And then she puts duct tape across her mouth. Tiffany drags her friend into the bathroom and lifts her into the bathtub, and it's here she carries out her unthinkable plan. Tiffany uses a pair of scissors to cut into Jamela's swollen belly. She cuts a wound so deep that she is able to remove the seven-month-old fetus. The tiny baby sadly dies immediately. The baby was not developed and couldn't survive the trauma of being forcibly removed with a pair of scissors. Tiffany wrapped the baby in a blanket and then she set about disposing of Jamela's body.

She wraps Jamella in the shower curtain. She originally puts her body in a large plastic container and puts it in the basement, but later she moves her body and abandons her in a vacant plot so overgrown, she's kind of hidden in the grass. And this is near Frank Holton Park in East St. Louis. But how is she getting away with this? Like, how is she not being seen? She lives in an apartment complex and she's just wandering around with the body. So Tiffany returns to the apartment and she washes down the bathtub and she gets rid of Jamela's blood, and there was a lot of blood.

It was later said in court that Jamela was still alive when Tiffany cut her baby out. Her cause of death was the amount of blood she lost. Tiffany then picks up the deceased baby and she wraps it in a blanket and goes to the local park to ring the emergency services. And she tells the call handler that she had gone into early labour and given birth to a stillborn baby. Paramedics and police arrive at the park shortly after. They spot 24-year-old Tiffany Hall cradling the deceased newborn baby girl.

She appears visibly upset. She had tear stains down her face. Now, Tiffany tells the officers that she had been brutally raped by a man known as Tony. She claimed that the trauma of the assault had caused her to go into early labour. So paramedics transport Tiffany and the Stillbourne to the local hospital, but Tiffany refused to let doctors perform a routine physical examination which could conclude whether she'd been raped or just given birth. But she outright refuses. She won't let them touch her.

Now the baby girl's little body was handed over to St. Clair County Coroner, where a medical examiner will perform an autopsy the next day. So Tiffany goes home and she gets in contact with Keith Horn. So remember he's away in Virginia and she explains what she's been through. So she says about the rape, the early labour, the stillborn baby. So now Keith, thinking he was going to be a father, is now realizing that his baby girl has died and that his girlfriend has just been raped. So he arranges emergency leave from the military so he could return home to support Tiffany and help arrange the burial.

The couple name their baby daughter Taylor Horn. I say their baby in Adverte Commas. Now on the Monday, the 18th of September, so this is three days after Tiffany murdered her friend, Tiffany goes to Jamela's apartment where Jamela's partner is looking after the three children. I couldn't find anything about if Jamela's partner was wondering where she was. Reports just say that he wasn't suspicious, so I don't know whether it had been arranged that Jamela was supposed to be spending the weekend at Tiffany's because she's been gone all weekend, but he's not suspicious, he's looking after the children.

So Tiffany she turns up and she says that Jamela had asked her to come and pick up the children from him and bring them to her. As far as he's concerned, Tiffany is a trusted lifelong friend, and she frequently babysat the children, completely unaware of the situation. The children's father, of course, he's happy for them to go with her. He says goodbye to his children and they happily go off with Tiffany. Why wouldn't they? But that was the last time he would see his children alive. Tiffany takes all three children back to her mother's apartment.

She pretends that she is running a bath for them. This is normal as far as they're concerned. They've known this woman all their lives, and they are close to her own children. So Tiffany, after the bath is full, she then takes the children one by one into the bathroom. And she drowns them. This is Jamela's son, Dimond, who is seven, little Ivan, who is two, and baby Janella, who is one year old. How could she do this? She helped raise these babies. How could you hold a child under the water until they died?

And why? Why did they have to die too? They weren't any part of this. They were killed in the same bathtub that their mother and their new baby sister were killed in three days earlier. So the funeral for baby Taylor Horn, so that's the stillborn baby that Tiffany is claiming is hers. So this was arranged for the 21st of September 2006. But Tiffany, she is now starting to unravel. So minutes before the funeral of her stillborn baby daughter is about to take place, minutes before she actually called the funeral home to cancel the ceremony and reschedule for another day.

The request for rescheduling is of course denied. The funeral was going to go ahead as planned, but then Tiffany wasn't at the funeral home when the funeral was supposed to begin, and she couldn't be contacted. She showed up two hours late. She was two hours late for her baby daughter's funeral. It's reported that she was behaving bizarre and erratic, so much so that she was immediately required to sign an affidavit, which is a written oath, certifying that the child was hers before the home would proceed with the funeral.

Now Keith is trying to comfort Tiffany. The service briefly commenced, but almost immediately Tiffany became even more distressed, and then she pulled Keith over to one corner of the chapel, and she confessed. She whispered to him that she had murdered Jamella and the baby in the coffin was Jamela's unborn baby. Now Keith, he's absolutely horrified. He just stares at Tiffany in utter shock and disbelief, and then he leaves. He's gone, he rushes out of the chapel, he gets into his car and he drives straight to East St. Louis Police Department.

Now the funeral service did continue, and although it was brief, but baby Taylor was buried. So after the funeral, Tiffany went back to her mother's apartment and she is completely unaware that Keith has gone straight to the police. Keith provided the police with his terrifying statement. Straight away they are dispatched, and officers arrive at Tiffany's mother's apartment and they arrest her that afternoon. Once in custody, it didn't take long for Tiffany to confess. During her initial interrogation, Tiffany Hall completely broke down and she confessed to everything.

She confessed to striking her childhood friend over the head until she was unconscious. She admitted to using a pair of scissors to cut open Jamela's stomach and wound before extracting the seven-month-old fetus. And she told them where she dumped Jamela's body. And then she confessed to the crimes that the police at the moment are unaware of. She told officers that she had forcibly drowned Jamela's other three children, and based on her confession, the officers drove immediately to Jamela's apartment.

They are looking for the bodies of her children. Once they are there, they open Jamela's washing machine and dryer, and inside they recover the decomposing bodies of Jamonde, Ivan, and Janela. After Tiffany killed these beautiful children, she put their bodies in the washing machine and in the dryer. And just I'm trying not to imagine her thought process. It's not something you can compute with, is it? Like, what are you doing? So autopsies performed on the children confirmed that all three had drowned.

Tiffany was held at St. Clair County Jail. Her bail was a massive$5 million, obviously, due to the severity of the crime. The judge ordered an immediate psychological examination to see if she was fit to stand trial. And they concluded that yes, she was fit to stand trial. So in 2007, prosecutors announced that they would seek the death penalty against Tiffany Hall. Now I Know everyone has their own opinion on the death penalty, and rightly so. But I do often think in some cases when it's 100% guilty and there's no doubt.

I don't know, I do kind of think with exceptional cases, I don't know. I kind of agree with it sometimes. I know I know I shouldn't say my opinion on here, but there are just some cases that are so horrific and cruel that if it's 100% definite they're guilty, why do they get to live? Yes, they're in prison, but they still get fed. They have a roof over their head and they're not worrying about bills. But I do understand obviously the argument against it, and I don't necessarily agree with it, but I do read some things and I, you know, I do think I don't know, I can be persuaded.

Anyway, so prosecution seek the death penalty against her. They describe her actions as cold, calculated, and premeditated, and it was, she'd planned this. However, to avoid the death penalty, Tiffany took a plea deal and she pled guilty to all five charges against her. So she never actually went through a full criminal trial. So why does a plea deal automatically mean the defendant avoids the death penalty? So by taking a plea deal, the defendant gives up the right to a trial where they could potentially be found not guilty.

If they give up on their right for a trial, this is a guaranteed conviction. It's like a bargaining chip. I will give up my right for a trial if you remove the death penalty, if that makes sense. And taking a plea deal does spare the victims' families from having to sit through weeks-long trials that can cause severe re-traumatisation. Having to listen to detailed accounts of what happened to their loved one, plus it provides some sort of closure. Being sentenced to death doesn't mean it's immediate.

Perpetrators could be on death row for years, it could be up to 20 years, and that's with uh constant appeals, which then brings the families back to court over and over again. So to avoid execution, Tiffany pled guilty to four counts of first-degree murder, and that's for the murder of Jamela and her three children, Dimond, Ivan, and Janella, and one count of intentional homicide of an unborn child. Now, Tiffany, she sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Tiffany will never be released.

During her court hearing and final sentencing, she was described as sullen, quiet, detached, and showing little to no emotion. And unbelievably, when Jamela's own biological mother Sandra and her stepmother LaDonna, they both stood up in the courtroom and stated that they had forgiven Tiffany. But Tiffany, she kept the same detached and unemotional exterior, even though they've said they'd forgiven her. And then she was led away. They are better people than me. There would be no forgiveness coming from me if that happened to my family.

I don't forgive her anyway. And you know, it's nothing to do with me. So Tiffany Hall, she is serving her life sentence at the Logan Correctional Centre, which is a multi-security level facility for adult women. Jamela's partner, Ivan Collins, he was the father of their unborn baby and the two younger children. The police actually told him over the phone. He said that he was entirely blindsided and the phone call had come just hours before he planned Jamela's baby shower. He said he's been left in complete devastation, trapped in an agonizing nightmare.

And of course, he happily and trustedly handed over his children to the woman that would end up murdering them. Can you even imagine how you begin to understand what this poor man is going through? Hours before he's planned a baby shower for his beloved partner, only to be told your entire family are dead? I just can't imagine. That's his whole world just literally flipped on his head, isn't it? Now, following the sentencing, Ivan completely withdrew from the public eye. He didn't give any further media interviews or maintain a public profile at all.

And we can only hope that wherever he is now that he's managed to find some peace and happiness after everything. Jamella and her children were buried at the Sunset Gardens of Memory. There were three tiny white caskets, and the unborn baby that Tiffany had buried, the fetus was actually exhumed and reburied in her mother's casket so mother and baby could be reunited. Mourners placed teddy bears, stuffed animals, toy race cards, and tributes to the young family. The community came together and raised$35,000, which paid for the funerals, and what was left was given directly to charities to help support the community's outreach program.

And that's really nice, isn't it? Something nice in the wake of all this utter tragedy. So why did Tiffany do this? Alright, so this is a quote. So a criminologist and investigators describe Tiffany Hall as a textbook case of fetal abduction driven by pathological deception and extreme cognitive panic. For Tiffany, having a baby with her new partner in her mind secured his love. But she didn't just tell a lie. She carried the lie on for seven months, altering clothing, gaining weight, and she even had a baby shower.

But as her fake due date grew closer, she began to panic, and according to psychologists, because Tiffany had a very low IQ, she was incapable of finding a rational way out. When the panic peaked, it's believed that Tiffany would have stopped seeing Jamella as a childhood friend and more of a solution. Okay, so there seems like there is some sort of explanation here. And there are cases like this. Stealing the baby out of a womb has happened before, driven by a desire to stay in a relationship. And although it's extremely horrific, there does seem to be something behind it.

But what about what she did to the other children? Why did they have to die? They weren't involved at all. They were with their dad. This for me shifts from being any psychological low IQ or panic induced reasoning. This is just cold, calculating and cruel. She babysat these children. They trusted her. They'd known her their whole lives. It's been said that Tiffany thought the children would know that she was the last person to see their mother. So she killed them to get rid of witnesses. But that's not a reason, is it?

It's not true. Jamela's partner, Ivan Collins, he knew she was with Jamella. So why didn't she try and kill him? She's evil. Tiffany literally destroyed an entire family. She shattered a community, and she absolutely deserves to spend the remainder of her life behind bars, in my opinion. So this episode is dedicated to Jamela and her three beautiful children and her unborn daughter. Thank you for listening, everyone. Please let me know your thoughts on this episode. I'm also looking for case recommendations.

So if you think of a case you'd like me to cover, do let me know. I'm on Instagram at Unthinkable True Crime. I'm very reluctant to start a Facebook group or Facebook page, sorry, I don't like Facebook. So I'm sticking with Instagram for now. But yeah, if you if you think of something you'd like me to cover, let me know, and I'll look into it. Okay, so I'll be back next week with a new episode, and as ever, I like to end by saying in a world where you can be anything, be kind. Take care.

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