Transcription
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On this episode of Black Girlan, I tell the story of Tanny Brown, who was 33 years old when she was murdered in Detroit, Michigan, in October 2013. Tanny was a law student and a single mother to three girls when she disappeared on October 28th, 2013. The day she vanished, she dropped her daughters off at her mom's house before going to class. But Tanny didn't come back that evening to pick up her girls, and calls to her phone went unanswered. Two days later, Tanny's SUV was found in an abandoned lot, and her body was inside.
Eleven years after her murder, Danny's killer has never been caught, and her family needs justice. Who killed Tanny and why? This is T's story.
I've gotten several requests lately to cover TNA's story, which I originally covered back in 2022. And that made me realize that many people who are new listeners may have never heard her story. And since two more years have gone by without any answers, I am re-releasing Tiana's story.
Tian Brown had worked extremely hard to create a life of success for herself as the mother to three little girls. She was the perfect example of determination. She had everything going for her, but in 2013, someone decided to take her life from her and her children, and in the process, they destroyed her family. Eleven years after her brutal murder, her killer still has not been caught, and Tiana's family has been struggling to get justice.
Tian was born on December 31st, 1979, in Southfield, Michigan, and was raised by her mother, Cheryl, in Detroit. Growing up, her family said that she was an ambitious, inquisitive child who they described as gifted. In elementary school, she attended St. Scholastica Catholic School, and her mom told Crime Watch Daily in an interview in 2015 that she told her daughter, "Reach for the sky, and wherever the stars fall, that is where you will wind up." And T took her mom's words to heart.
After elementary school, she attended Renaissance High School, where she graduated with honors in 1997. After high school, she attended Wayne State University, where she majored in biological science. After graduating, Tana got married in October 2002. She married a man named Toriano, and together they had two daughters. Even with all of her successes, she believed that her greatest accomplishment was being a mom to her girls. She was a dedicated mom who wanted to be a role model for her children, and like I said earlier, her hard work and determination was the perfect example for her daughters. She was showing them that you can do anything you put your mind to.
And we don't know much about T and Tano's marriage, but eventually, the couple divorced, and she became a single mom. Divorce can be hard, but T was determined to be successful, married or not. Her mom had told her to reach for the stars, and she was not done doing that. After getting her Bachelor's in biological science, she then went to graduate school to earn her MBA and a master's degree in biomedical engineering. When it came to school, TNA was clearly nothing to be played with. She was earning multiple degrees in extremely complex subjects back to back. Any one of her degrees would have given her the ability to secure a decent career, but all three made her a standout, and she was only in her 20s at the time.
Her mom, Cheryl, was extremely proud of her. T had accomplished so much, and she credited her mom with much of her success. Success. Cheryl had always encouraged her daughter to follow her dreams. She wanted her to be successful so that she wouldn't have to endure the struggles that she did. And that's what most mothers want for their children. They don't want their children to make the same mistakes that they did. And nobody's life is perfect. There are always ups and downs, and even when you do everything right, sometimes things still go wrong. But Tian was doing everything in her power to make sure that she created the best life that she could for her and her children, and she was doing an amazing job balancing school, work, and being a full-time mom.
Tian was a superwoman, and she was laser-focused on achieving all of her goals. While earning various degrees, T worked as an emergency technician at Beaumont Hospital. She then worked for a company called General Sterling, where she was hired as a biomedical engineer. At a young age, she had already achieved a lot, and most people in her position would be done. But TI wanted to do more, and not just for herself, but also for her community.
Detroit is no different from other cities, and drugs and violence have destroyed a lot of lives there. TI had been lucky, but she wasn't blind to what was happening around her. And when her cousin was murdered at the age of 25, she was deeply affected by his death and wanted to do something about the violence in Detroit. Despite her busy life, she began volunteering for a local nonprofit called Developing Kids, an organization that provided free after-school and summer programs for children in the city. Tanny had begun as a mentor with the organization but soon became a member of the advisory board, and in 2010, she was elected as board president.
For some, it might seem like TNA had a lot on her plate, but she was balancing it all. After earning her three degrees, she decided that she wanted to go back to school again, but this time it was law school. She had begun working at a patent law firm as a law clerk and had decided to focus on intellectual property law. In 2010, she went back to Wayne State to attend law school. While attending law school, Tiana continued to work as a law clerk, but she also got involved with various organizations on campus. She was a member of the Black Student Law Association and the Intellectual Property Association, and through it all, she remained a dedicated mom to her girls. And in 2009, she gave birth to her third daughter.
By the fall of 2013, Tiana was in her third and final year of law school, and life for her and her daughters was busy but good. Cheryl would often watch the girls for her when she had class, which was a big help for the busy single mother. Her mom said that she had already begun making plans for her graduation.
On October 28th, 2013, TI dropped her girls off at her mom's house, who was living in the Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield at the time. She dropped her girls off at her mom's house when she had class, and so nothing about that day up until that point was out of the ordinary. However, TI was running late that day, and so she did forget to say goodbye to her daughters before she left.
Now, normally, according to Nina, TNA's oldest daughter, she always answered the phone when she called, even when she was on campus. Nina said that at some point that evening, she called her mom, but she didn't answer the phone, which Nina said worried her. She told Crime Watch Daily that she called her mom multiple times, but all of her calls went unanswered. Now, even though she was only 14 years old, she knew something was wrong. She knew her mom would not have ignored all of her calls, and so Nina began to worry. She called her mom and reached out to her on Facebook, but she was getting nothing.
By 2 a.m., Nina was in a full-blown panic. T had not come back to pick them up, and she was not answering her phone or her Facebook messages. And so at that point, Nina decided it was time to tell her grandmother Cheryl what was going on. Cheryl recalled to Crime Watch Daily that Nina woke her up, telling her that she could not get in contact with her mom. And so she said that she got up and decided to drive to TNA's house to see if she was there. She thought maybe TNA had just gone home and maybe she had fallen asleep, but when she got to the townhouse, there was no sign of her daughter there.
And at that point, even though it was almost 3:00 a.m., Cheryl figured that the only other place TI could be was on campus. And so she drove over to Wayne State to see if her daughter was there. Cheryl arrived and drove around the campus parking lot looking for her daughter's car. TNA drove a 2009 Chevy Trailblazer that had vanity plates with her name, but the SUV wasn't in any of the lots that she searched.
After finding nothing in the parking lots, Cheryl went inside the library to see if T was somewhere in there. Cheryl said that she went from floor to floor looking for her daughter, but she was not there. She told Local 4 in Detroit that, "I checked checked every conference room. They have little rooms where study groups are. I checked every conference room, and I couldn't find her."
Cheryl said at that point she began to panic. T was nowhere to be found and was not answering her phone. She had never done anything like that, and so Cheryl began to fear the worst. Something must have happened to T because nothing else made sense. For almost 2 hours, Cheryl searched the Wayne State University campus looking for any sign of her daughter, but she found no sign of her. And so she decided to contact the campus police to report her daughter missing and ask for help. But campus police dismissed her report and told her that TI was probably out somewhere partying. But Tanny wasn't a freshman. She was a 33-year-old third-year law student and a single mother. Why would their first reaction be to say that she was partying? It was also a Monday.
Now, according to Crime Watch Daily, Cheryl went to four different police departments begging for help, and no one would help her. By the next day, news of TI's disappearance had spread to her law school classmates and professors, and they had also begun looking for her. Everyone who knew her knew that she would not just leave, and so everybody was worried. They began to track Tiana's movements from the night before and discovered that after leaving her mom's house, she did make it to campus. Then she was last seen at around 8:15 p.m. in the library, where she was taking an online test. Now, there's no other reported sighting after that, but at 11:00 p.m., Tiana logged out of her computer.
Now, that day, police released a statement to the media requesting information about the missing Wayne State student, but in their statement, they said that there was no evidence of foul play or an accident. The police said, "There's no indication of foul play, but just that she did not return home. This is very unusual for a person that age, family situation, and being a third-year law student. So, based upon that, we just started our search a little earlier."
Now, even though there was no evidence of foul play at that time, it was pretty clear to everyone involved that there was something wrong. For the next two days, TI's family and friends searched all over Detroit for any sign of her or her SUV. Since they knew that she had made it to campus that day, the question was, what happened to her after she left the library? Did she leave alone, or was someone with her? There were surveillance cameras at the library, but unfortunately, they were broken the night that she vanished.
Her family and friends used Facebook to ask for help in locating her or her car. There was even an alert on the campus Facebook page, and flyers were printed and passed out all over the Wayne State campus. But in the hours after Tiana went missing, it was like she had vanished into thin air. Now, I'm sure for her family, the hours after Tiana went missing must have felt like days, searching, looking for answers, finding nothing. Police at the time said they didn't believe that foul play was involved, and even though her family hoped for the best, their fear was that something had happened to TI. And less than 48 hours after she was reported missing, their world would come crashing down.
On October 28th, 2013, 33-year-old Tiana Brown dropped her daughters off at her mom's house so she could attend classes at Wayne State University, where she was a law student. After her class, TI was seen at the library, and she logged out of her computer at 11:00 p.m., and no one ever saw TI again. In the beginning, police didn't believe that foul play was involved, but less than 48 hours after Tiana was reported missing, her family's worst nightmare came true.
On October 30th, police received a call that a 2008 Chevy Trailblazer had been found behind a vacant factory, covered by trees, by two homeless men. And inside the car was the body of TI. She had been shot in the head. When the car was found, Tiana was sitting in the front driver's seat, slumped over the dashboard. She was still strapped into the seatbelt. Cheryl said that she learned of the discovery when her friend called her to tell her that the news was reporting that TI's car had been found.
Nina, TI's oldest daughter, recalled that devastating day in her interview with Crime Watch Daily. Nina said that she remembers the police calling her grandmother and asking her to come down to the station. She said that when they got to the station, the officers took Cheryl and her husband upstairs. Nina was told to wait downstairs. She said a few minutes after her grandmother was taken upstairs, she could hear her scream. She said at that moment, she knew her mom was dead and that she was alone. At just 14 years old, Nina and her siblings had lost their whole world in the blink of an eye.
Detectives told Cheryl that two homeless men told police about finding T's car and led them to the vehicle on the 30th, and all they knew at that point in time was that T had been murdered. The news of her murder quickly spread around the Wayne State University campus, and it was shocking, especially to those who knew her, to learn that one of their own was murdered, presumably after leaving campus. Scared the students there. For her family, the news of her murder left them shattered, especially her oldest daughter, Nina. TI's youngest daughters were really too young to understand what happened, but at 14, Nina knew exactly how much her life had changed and the magnitude of their loss.
T had been the last person that anyone expected to fall victim to this type of violence. She lived an unproblematic life, according to everyone who knew her. So why would someone kill her? Why was her car hidden behind that abandoned building? Two days after TI's body was found, investigators announced a break in the case. Detectives announced that the two homeless men that had led them to her body were arrested. Apparently, after police discovered her body, detectives began tracing Tiana's phone, which was not found in the car, and that led them back to the two homeless men who found her body. They had apparently taken Tiana's phone and money before leaving and reporting her body to police. The men were charged with tampering with evidence, receiving stolen property, and concealing stolen property. They, however, denied any involvement in Tiana's murder, and they were not charged with anything connected to her murder at that time.
Now, although the two men had not been charged with the murder, investigators had hoped that they would be able to solve this case quickly. Even in a city that sees homicides on a constant basis, Tiana's murder was different. However, solving her murder would not be as easy as they had hoped. The two homeless men were named as persons of interest, and they remained in police custody, but in the weeks following their arrest, police were never able to connect them to Tiana's murder. There was little information released about her murder, and besides the two men in custody, detectives didn't seem to have many leads. It's unknown if any evidence was collected from the scene, but whatever investigators had found was not leading them to a viable suspect.
If the two men who had her phone were telling the truth, then that means that she wasn't robbed when she was found. She still had her seatbelt on, and her shoes were off, which indicated to investigators that perhaps T had known her killer. But no one could understand anyone who knew Tiana who would want to kill her. Where had she gone after leaving the library had been a mystery, but police did learn that her cell phone had traced her to Detroit's East Side before she was murdered. But Tiana's mom said that she didn't know anyone her daughter would have known on that side of town.
The trail of evidence dried up pretty quickly, and investigators were trying to find any information about who killed TI. Almost two months after she was murdered, in December 2014, detectives released information about two different men who they believed were persons of interest. These men had been seen on surveillance footage at a gas station convenience store the day Tiana's body was found, and they had used her credit card at the time. Police would not reveal the men's connection to the crime and would only say that they believed that they had information that would help in the investigation.
Investigators believe that TI knew her killer or killers, and so they did question people in her life, her ex-husband and the father of her youngest daughter. Now, during their investigation, detectives had learned that TI and Tano had some issues that had resulted in her requesting three separate protection orders against him. TI had claimed that Toriano had hit her and threatened to kill her. However, all of the orders were eventually dropped, and Toriano told Crime Watch Daily that by the time TI was murdered, they were in a good space. Police did question Toriano and gave him a lie detector test, but the results were inconclusive. Detectives, however, said that Toriano had been fully cooperative, and they did not believe that he was involved in Tiana's murder. Cheryl did not believe that Toriano had anything to do with her daughter's death either.
Now, when Tian was first murdered, investigators and her family hoped that they would find her killer quickly, but weeks turned into months, and TI's case began to go cold. There was no new information released about the investigation, and there didn't seem to be any new leads either, at least none that were public. Crim Stoppers had offered a $2,500 reward for information, and in 2014, that reward was increased to $10,000, but even with the increased reward, it didn't bring her family the answers that they were looking for.
Her mom and stepdad sat down with ABC 7 in Detroit in 2014, and her mom said this about Tiana: "And then I think about all the plans I had. I was going to see her walk down the aisle, graduation, getting a house. Now, none of it's going to happen." Cheryl was trying her best to keep it together. She was now left to raise her granddaughters, and they really needed her. Tiana's family, after a year, was still desperate for someone to come forward with any information about her murder, not knowing who killed her or why. Weighed so heavily.
As the years continued to go by, TI's case became colder and colder. The men arrested for stealing her cell phone were never linked to her murder, and police never located or identified the men seen on surveillance using Tiana's credit card. Despite police at the time saying that they were making movements in the case, years had gone by without any new information about Tiana's murder.
In 2017, investigators told ABC7 in Detroit that tips had slowed down since 2013, but that they were still coming in. The detective working the case also said that they needed witnesses and that they had developed more than one suspect in the murder, but he didn't elaborate further on who those people were or what their connection to Tiana was. Cheryl also spoke to ABC7 in 2017, and she told them this when asked if she believed she will get justice that she deserved: "Sometimes I'm afraid I won't because it's taking so long. Sometimes I wonder, will I still be alive?"
Detectives said that Tiana's case was still open, but the information they had was not enough to make an arrest. As of today, no one has been arrested or charged in connection to Tiana's murder. Detectives have not released any new information since that 2017 interview and have only said that they continue to follow leads, but that has brought her family little comfort. They want justice, and even though life has gone on, T A's murder has left a hole in her family and her children's lives. Whoever the suspects were that police had in 2017 have never been named, and so the question of who killed TI and why remains.
It has now been almost 11 years since Tiana was brutally murdered, and her family still doesn't have the answers or the justice that they deserve. Her three daughters will live the rest of their lives without their mother, and they deserve to know who took her from them. Nothing will ever take the pain of losing Tiana away, but knowing who killed her and watching them be brought to justice can bring them some closure. Whatever police know about the murder has not been enough to lead to an arrest. Tiana's case is still open, and they have long said that they needed the public's help. They believe that whoever killed TI was someone she knew and someone she trusted.
In 2021, in an interview with Fox 2 in Detroit, her mom Cheryl made this plea: "Please, please help us. It's been so hard. It still hurts every single day when I look at her pictures. And, um, I, in my mind, I'm thinking, is it something I could have done? Is it something I didn't do?"
Tian Brown was found dead inside her 2008 Chevy Trailblazer on October 30th, 2013, in Detroit, Michigan. She was last seen on campus at Wayne State University on October 28th, 2013. If you have any information about what happened to Tiana or who was responsible for her murder, please contact the Detroit Police Department. May Tiana Brown rest in peace.
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