The call came in at 1:30 in the morning on April 17th, 2017. Leon Trip, Janelle Carwell’s stepfather, told his wife Tanya that a friend’s car had broken down and he needed to go help. The strange part was that he was taking Janelle with him. Janelle had just turned sixteen.
She was a straight-A student who wanted to become a nurse, then a doctor. She ran a church youth group and mentored younger kids. She was the oldest child, the responsible one who cooked meals and handled the household chores when her mother was too tired to move. But Tanya had been tired for years.
When Janelle was young, Tanya told the family she had cancer. From then on, Janelle stepped up. She did it without complaint. She loved her mother.
Then came Leon. Tanya had started writing letters to Leon while he was serving time for assault and battery. He had a long record of felonies, including aggravated assault and aggravated stalking, both involving his ex-wife. Still, when he was released, they got married in 2015.
Leon presented himself as a good stepfather. He was charming and supportive at first. He changed quickly. The arguments started early and never really stopped.
Leon controlled everything. He kept Tanya away from her friends and family. Janelle stopped being able to reason with her mother about the situation. When Janelle expressed her concerns, Tanya always took Leon’s side.
People at school noticed the difference. Janelle started showing up late to homeroom. She stopped doing homework. She pulled away from her friends.
Her social life faded. When classmates asked her what was wrong, she got quiet and changed the subject. Then, on the morning of her sixteenth birthday, she vanished. Tanya called 911 to report her daughter missing.
She said Leon and Janelle had gone to help his friend and just never came back. She claimed she had no way of contacting her husband after she made the call. That story didn’t sit right with investigators. Why would a sixteen-year-old girl volunteer for something like that?
And where was Leon? Search teams combed through woods, drainage ditches, and abandoned buildings. Helicopters with infrared cameras flew over miles of land. Police dogs followed trails that all went nowhere.
In the meantime, Tanya went on Facebook Live with a family friend, pastor Angela Harden, and told the world about her cancer and her grief. She asked for donations to help find her husband and her daughter. But the more investigators looked, the less her story held together. Tanya gave inconsistent statements.
At times, she said Leon and Janelle left willingly. Other times, she claimed she feared for Janelle’s safety. Those contradictions kept sending the search in different directions. It cost days and valuable leads.
Neighbors told police they’d heard loud arguments coming from the house. One witness said they saw Leon loading tools into his truck late at night, just hours before Janelle was last seen. Then came the tip: Janelle was spotted in Clearwater, South Carolina at 1:30 a. m.
, carrying a backpack. She had declined a ride from a stranger, saying she was waiting to meet someone. Tanya never told police about that sighting. Days later, Leon was caught on surveillance at a grocery store in Atlanta, alone.
Police put out a flyer. Leon Trip was officially wanted for kidnapping. Tanya went on news shows, crying and pleading for her daughter’s return. When reporters raised the possibility of an inappropriate relationship between Janelle and her stepfather, Tanya laughed and dismissed it: “He married to all this prettiness and he going to run away with our daughter?
Come on now. ”
Weeks turned into months. Leads went dry. The story faded from the headlines.
Back in Augusta, police started looking closer at the couple. Cell phone records and witness testimony contradicted Tanya’s timeline. Then, on May 23rd, 2017, authorities tracked Leon down at a U-Haul facility in DeKalb County, outside Atlanta. The truck was packed with everything they owned.
Tanya was sitting in the passenger seat. They were ready to disappear. Both were taken into custody without a fight. During questioning, Leon first told detectives he’d taken Janelle to Atlanta, given her cash, and told her to catch a bus home.
Then he said he had never gone to help his friend with the car at all. The stories kept shifting. Tanya was no better, deflecting questions, contradicting herself, claiming she knew nothing. But there was evidence.
Texts recovered between Leon and Tanya showed they planned to “handle Janelle” and get their stories straight. The pair had also used an app to try to make fake IDs after she disappeared. Still, prosecutors didn’t have enough to charge them with murder. On March 8th, 2018, a citizen made an anonymous call about human remains found on Golden Camp Road in Richmond County.
The property was a vacant, foreclosed home. Dental records identified the body as Janelle Carwell. The autopsy showed blunt force trauma and possible asphyxiation. Ligature strands were found near the body.
The timeline became clear. On the night of her birthday, Janelle was lured into the truck with the promise of helping with a broken-down car, then driven about twenty miles north to Clarks Hill, South Carolina. In a remote area, Leon restrained her, killed her, and called Tanya. Together, they cleaned the scene, moved her body under cover of darkness, and buried her in a shallow grave near their home.
In 2023, backed by DNA from the ligature, cell tower data placing both defendants at the dump site, and soil samples matching Leon’s truck to the grave, the state reindicted the couple. The death penalty was dropped in favor of life without parole. At trial in 2024, prosecutors presented evidence that Leon and Tanya had actually tried to hire someone to kill Janelle on three separate occasions, starting back in 2015. Leon’s defense claimed Tanya was the mastermind.
Tanya’s defense claimed she was manipulated. Neither showed any remorse. A GoFundMe was set up for funeral expenses. The church Janelle had attended held a memorial that drew hundreds of people.
Her funeral took place three days before her seventeenth birthday at Great Young Zion Baptist Church. Investigators admitted the case had major early flaws. Janelle was treated as a runaway for nearly a week, delaying the search. Leon’s truck was found abandoned halfway between Augusta and Clarks Hill early on, and it wasn’t taken seriously enough.
Advocacy groups still use her case to push for better training on missing persons, especially minors. Leon and Tanya Trip were both convicted of murder and concealing a death. They will spend the rest of their lives in prison.
Janelle Carwell was buried three days before her seventeenth birthday, next to the work she never got to finish.
