Savannah was pronounced dead at the scene after Gil—the jogger—found her. The coroner later determined that she died from a blow to the head. Two blows to the head, actually. Someone hit her with an unknown object twice, and then left her there to die.
Lucy was initially thought to be a second victim, not the perpetrator. She’d also suffered significant injuries.
However, police found no evidence of a third person at the scene. An autopsy showed that the scratches on Savannah’s arms were from Lucy’s fingernails, and the bruising appeared to be in the shape of Lucy’s hand. When witnesses began to come forward with what they’d seen at the wedding, the narrative around Lucy changed.
I spoke with Nina Garcia about what she saw between Lucy and Savannah that night.
Nina:?????????????A bunch of people saw Lucy and Savvy fighting at the wedding, yeah.
Ben:???????????????What do you mean by fighting? Can you describe what you saw?
Nina:?????????????I came out of the bathroom and Lucy and Matt were making out in the hallway. Savvy looked pissed.
Ben:???????????????Savvy looked pissed about Lucy kissing her own husband?
Nina:?????????????Yeah. And Savvy, like, cleared her throat, and they stopped. Then Lucy tried to say something to Savvy and Savvy let her have it. I couldn’t hear what she said, but it was super tense.
Ben:???????????????You didn’t hear anything at all?
Nina:?????????????No. And I didn’t see it, but I heard that later, when Savvy and Lucy left together, Savvy was still angry. People saw her yelling at Lucy and slamming her car door. There was clearly a situation happening there.
Lucy has insisted, from the very beginning, that she has no memory of Savannah’s murder. In fact, she claims to not remember anything from the night of the wedding at all.
Here’s Colin Dunn again, Savannah’s date to the wedding.
Colin:????????????Yeah, Lucy says she doesn’t remember anything after leaving her house that day. She doesn’t even remember arriving at the wedding, I guess.
Ben:???????????????So, what does she remember? From what you’ve heard.
Colin:????????????She remembers getting in the car with Matt to leave for the Byrd Estate. But then nothing else? I didn’t even know amnesia was a real thing. I thought they made that up for TV.
Ben:???????????????It’s a real thing.
Colin:????????????Weird, man. Anyways, yeah, they had me go talk to Lucy a couple days after she got out of the hospital.
Ben:???????????????Why?
Colin:????????????They were like, trying to get Lucy to remember what happened that night. Matt had told her some stuff, but he was really wasted. I can hold my booze. My memory was all right.
Ben:???????????????Were you okay with that? With going to talk to her?
Colin:????????????Yeah, whatever. I felt bad about—well, you know. The whole thing with that woman in the car. That wasn’t cool.
Anyways, I went over to the Chases’， because Lucy was staying with her parents. I asked her to tell what she did remember, and she said, “We met in the parking lot and we all went in together and found our table,” and I was like, “No, we didn’t.” And then she just started sobbing, which was really weird.
Ben:???????????????Sobbing?
Colin:????????????Yeah, so apparently someone else had seen Matt and Lucy talking to another couple in the parking lot, and they’d thought it was me and Savvy. They’d told the police that, because at the time, they were trying to put everything together, so it was all important, you know? But that person got confused or was like also wasted or something because we actually got there later. Lucy and Matt were already sitting at the table when we walked in.
Ben:???????????????That upset Lucy?
Colin:????????????Like, for real upset. Totally freaked me out. I thought she was going to pass out or something. Kathleen and Don told me later that Lucy had said she remembered walking into the reception, with Matt and me and Savvy. Like she had created a whole new memory around the bad information? I think everything went to shit after that. Lucy couldn’t tell what was real and what she was creating to try and remember.
Ben:???????????????Did you believe her, when she said she didn’t remember anything?
Colin:????????????I don’t know, man. She was putting on a hell of a show if she was lying. I sort of believed her after people told me that amnesia wasn’t just a TV thing.
The thing I don’t really get is—wouldn’t she remember something eventually? Like after the head injury healed? That’s suspicious to me, man.
Something stuck out to me during my conversation with Colin—he said that he went to see Lucy just two days after she got out of the hospital. He went there specifically to try to help her re-create the night her friend was murdered, which seems like a huge amount of stress to put on someone who just suffered a head injury.