For nearly two years, the world searched for Lorie Paige. The 12-year-old vanished from her father’s home in Tallahassee, Florida, in early June 2023. Andrew Wye told police he left for work at 11 p. m.
and returned the next day to find his daughter gone. He claimed she’d been watching TV when he left and that they’d spent the whole day together. Lorie’s life had already been marked by turbulence long before that night. She was born in April 2011 to Andrew, then 22, and Miranda, just 17.
According to her grandmother, Brooklyn Paigely, the two were never a real couple. Miranda reportedly wanted to terminate the pregnancy at six months, but it was too late. After Lorie was born, Miranda moved to Tampa, leaving her baby behind in the care of relatives while she spent her nights out partying. Friends and family said Miranda and her daughter never really bonded.
Lorie was often cared for by her godmother, Daisy Garcia, while Miranda remained largely absent. Andrew, who had a contentious relationship with Miranda from the day Lorie was born, lost contact with his daughter entirely when Miranda packed up and moved states without telling him. Most of Lorie’s childhood was spent in Nashville, Tennessee. At one point, Child Protective Services removed her from Miranda’s care and placed her with her great-grandfather for a short time.
She was eventually returned to her mother, who had by then begun dating a woman named Latanya White. Lorie changed schools multiple times as Miranda frequently relocated for work. She ran away from home at least once after an explosive fight with her mother but quickly returned without incident. In 2021, Andrew reestablished contact with his daughter.
Custody was split 50/50, but since Andrew lived in Tallahassee, Lorie would only visit him during summer break. It was during the summer of 2022 that Miranda called Lorie to say she wouldn’t be picking her up again. She claimed she could barely afford rent and didn’t have a stable living situation for her daughter. She believed it was in Lorie’s best interest to stay with her father.
Lorie was unhappy with the move. While her relationship with her mother was strained, she had friends and family in Nashville she wasn’t willing to leave behind. Andrew enrolled her in Griffin Middle School and promised she’d make new friends in Tallahassee. Lorie didn’t make many friends that year.
She was extremely shy and never wanted to take part in extracurricular activities. One classmate said it was almost impossible to keep in contact with her after school hours because she would self-isolate. Another student claimed Lorie didn’t have social media and wasn’t allowed to use a cell phone. Andrew said he had given her one for a few months but confiscated it when her grades started dropping, claiming she was watching inappropriate content online.
According to him, Lorie spent her days watching television or playing Roblox on his laptop. She remained in contact with her mother while living with her father, but most of their correspondence was via email on the school computer. Miranda claimed Andrew wouldn’t accept her calls or let Lorie speak to her on the phone. Andrew countered that Miranda was being irresponsible and wouldn’t provide him with Lorie’s social security number.
Miranda also grew apprehensive about the time Lorie spent with her grandmother, Brooklyn. According to text messages shared by Lorie’s godmother, Miranda claimed Brooklyn was an unsafe adult who couldn’t be trusted around her child. She accused Brooklyn of bringing home dates and then expecting her to date them too. When pressed for specifics, Miranda wouldn’t elaborate.
In May 2023, Andrew claimed Lorie had a particularly distressing meeting with her mother. He feared Lorie might harm herself and wanted to cut Miranda out of their lives forever. Miranda rebuffed that claim, saying nothing out of the ordinary had happened during the conversation. As the school year drew to a close, teachers began noticing red flags.
A teacher named Nathan George reported Lorie’s behavior to the school counselor after she gave him a note asking if he liked her. He also claimed she would randomly hug him and was unable to regulate her emotions, often crying in the middle of the school day. When confronted, Lorie denied everything and claimed the note didn’t exist. On one occasion, Lorie threw items across the classroom in a fit of unprovoked rage, prompting a visit from Lisa Britt, a counselor from the school board.
Lisa interviewed Lorie and administered a personality test. She concluded that Lorie was likely suffering from depression and had feelings of inadequacy. Students began to question what was happening in Lorie’s personal life. One student claimed Lorie mentioned that the situation at home with her father had grown violent and volatile.
On one occasion, Andrew allegedly whooped Lorie for falling behind in her grades. On another, he approached her at the school bus stop with a belt in his hand. The student didn’t witness the entire event or hear what Andrew said to his daughter. Andrew’s brother, Antoine Wye, claimed that while Andrew could be a strict parent, he cared deeply for his daughter and wanted the best for her.
He also claimed Lorie stayed with him and his family on occasion, and that he observed her watching inappropriate content on the internet a few times. In May 2023, Lorie ran away from home after a particularly bad fight with her father. She was located later that same day. She ran toward a friend’s home after the argument, stayed there for a while, and then went to school later on.
Andrew claimed he texted Miranda while their daughter was missing. She replied, “While your daughter’s gone, call me when you hear anything. ”
On June 3, 2023, Tallahassee police officer Caleb Babb was dispatched to 1229 Continental Court after receiving a 911 call from Andrew. He reported that he left for work at 11 p.
m. the previous day and returned home to find Lorie gone. He said she was watching TV when he left and that they’d spent the whole day together. Officer Babb asked about any inconsistencies in Lorie’s behavior leading up to the incident.
Andrew told him about the time she’d run away, as well as the distressing meeting with her mother. He claimed that meeting was the trigger that started a chain of events in which Lorie was noticeably distracted and withdrawn in the days leading up to her disappearance. The police immediately began canvassing the area, visiting her school, and interviewing friends and family members. Margaret Summers, a para-professional at Griffin Middle School, tried to get the word out about her student.
“I feel like after 14 days, there has to be at least one adult who has seen her or has an idea where she may have gone,” she said. Lorie was considered a missing runaway. She was last seen near the 12200 block of Continental Court, close to Ocala Road and less than a mile from Mission San Luis. Pastor Rudy Ferguson of New Birth Tabernacle of Praise in Griffin Heights helped coordinate community searches.
“We ought to look for her consistently until she’s safe and sound,” he said. He forwarded Lorie’s missing person bulletin to the Frontline Pastor’s Action Council, made up of about 26 pastors. Summers said Lorie had run away before but had always been found within a few days. “Lori, you’re a great student and a great kid, and there’s nothing that you haven’t done well enough.
Just come back,” she said. Brooklyn claimed Lorie might have run away to live with a man named Maurice Jones, the only man her mother had dated that she had ever liked. Miranda and Latanya claimed Lorie hadn’t established contact with them at all. A neighbor of Andrew’s said he didn’t see anything suspicious in the days leading up to her disappearance or the morning of it.
Some students at Griffin Middle School claimed they’d heard rumors that Lorie had been killed and that her body could be found at the airport. Investigators believed that if Lorie were still alive, she would attempt to establish communication with someone at some point. In August 2023, just a few months into her disappearance, Miranda posted a cryptic message on Facebook: “My baby is gone,” with a broken heart emoji. She quickly removed it.
When detectives questioned her, she claimed she meant that Lorie was not with her but that somewhere in her heart she knew her daughter was already dead. Andrew complied with police and allowed luminol testing of his residence, but he was still treated as a suspect. Investigators found it odd that he appeared unmoved when they told him Lorie might have been killed. Despite his daughter having been missing for several months, Andrew didn’t seem too bothered by it.
Miranda wasn’t much help either. She reportedly refused buccal swab testing three times before actually complying. The only reason investigators ruled her out as a suspect was that her cell phone records established she was in the Nashville area when Lorie went missing. Meanwhile, cracks began appearing in Andrew’s retelling of the events of that night.
Police uncovered that Andrew had called into work sick on May 27 and May 29. The geodata from his phone showed he traveled as far as Jacksonville, Florida, around the time Lorie was believed to have disappeared. In February 2024, nearly a year into Lorie’s disappearance, Andrew was called to the Tallahassee Police Department for an interview. When he didn’t show up and wasn’t responding to calls, Brooklyn was contacted.
She told police Andrew appeared anxious a few days before the interview and was infuriated at the suggestion he might have had something to do with his daughter’s disappearance. Later that same day, Andrew reached out to police, saying he would come to the station but only with his lawyer present. In the interview, Andrew went over the sequence of events again. This time, investigators asked more direct questions.
They asked if he had ever disciplined Lorie, and he said he had, but only when it was deemed necessary. They asked him to name any of her friends, and he couldn’t. They asked why geodata from his phone placed him at Jacksonville International Airport around the same time as Lorie’s disappearance. Andrew claimed he went there to drop off a friend named Tim Brown.
When asked for Tim’s phone number, Andrew said he didn’t have it on him. He seemed agitated when investigators pressed for more information on how, when, and why he took his friend to the airport that day. Police were never able to get any information from Andrew about Tim Brown. They even invited his brother, Antoine, to the police department, and he said he had never heard that name before.
Still, Antoine believed Andrew would never harm his daughter. He thoroughly believed Lorie was alive somewhere and had run away from home while Andrew was at work. He believed she was unhappy with how strict her father was and had a pattern of running away when things got hard. Brooklyn also stood in support of Andrew, claiming she knew for certain he would never hurt his daughter.
Simone Robinson, Andrew’s girlfriend at the time, had been away in Louisiana for military training. She claimed she first heard of Lorie’s disappearance in mid-June when she was given phone access again. When questioned about Tim Brown, she claimed Andrew did have a friend named Tim. This was eventually revealed to be a man named Tim Coston, who claimed he had never flown out of Jacksonville International Airport.
Police also learned there were old cell phones and laptops in the home that Lorie would sometimes use to play Roblox. They asked Andrew to surrender those devices, but he refused. Eventually, they turned up at his house with a probable cause search warrant and seized both devices and his Dodge Charger. Andrew was reportedly laughing and making jokes before getting into a co-worker’s car while police were at his home.
When luminol tests were conducted on the Dodge Charger, traces of blood were found around the front passenger seat and front passenger window. The smoking gun came a few days later in March 2024, when investigators retrieved information from Andrew’s devices that showed he’d made contact with an online travel agency. He purchased a one-way ticket to San Juan, Puerto Rico on June 2, 2023. He then traveled to Jacksonville, where he retrieved the tickets, but never made his flight and asked for a refund, which was denied.
Police found it strange that within a few months of Lorie’s disappearance, Andrew had moved homes and changed his cell phone number. They also couldn’t get a direct answer on what he did on the two days he called in sick from work. Tim Brown appeared to be a fictional character. Andrew had also applied for a passport around the same time, despite not needing one to travel to Puerto Rico.
What made investigators even more suspicious was that on the day of his scheduled flight, he called 911 to report his daughter missing. Police then asked Brooklyn to call Andrew with them present. Investigators claimed that while Lorie’s grandmother repeatedly tried to direct the conversation toward the missing girl, Andrew would veer off and talk about his mental health struggles. When Brooklyn told him she wanted to decorate Lorie’s bedroom in remembrance of her upcoming birthday, Andrew ignored the statement and went on a tangent about how infuriated he was that police were treating him as a suspect.
Police were also able to track Andrew’s credit card usage to a pharmacy, where he was believed to have purchased contraceptives in late May 2023. His girlfriend Simone was in Louisiana for military training, and he did not disclose any other women he was seeing. Later that month, police extracted information from an older iPhone retrieved from Andrew’s home during the February 2024 seizure. The cell phone and other devices had been factory reset, but experts were able to pull up data that included searches for “bad neighborhood Tallahassee, Florida” and “Apalachicola National Forest dead body.
” The device also viewed a Quora page where a user asked, “Why would police stop looking for a missing child…? ”
Geodata from the same phone showed that Andrew had traveled to Thomas County, Georgia in the early hours of June 1, 2023. Police traveled to the scene and conducted searches across the area, even on private residences. On April 5, 2025, the remains of a young woman were discovered in thick brush near where Andrew’s cell phone had shown his location.
Several bones of the same skeleton were located and submitted for DNA comparison. On April 11, the results indicated the remains were indeed Lorie’s. Investigators had enough evidence to arrest Andrew later that same day, concluding a 22-month-long investigation. He was formally charged with second-degree murder in connection with the death of his daughter.
According to investigators with the Tallahassee Police Department, Lorie’s murder was intentional but not premeditated. They believed Andrew had gone into a fit of rage and attacked his daughter. State Attorney Jack Campbell claimed Andrew had killed Lorie on June 1, 2023, just a few days before calling 911 to report her missing. The state attorney’s office believed Andrew had sexually assaulted his 12-year-old daughter and had killed her after impregnating her.
They believed he murdered the young girl and then buried her remains in Georgia the next day. Attorney Campbell also revealed that Andrew was being treated for an STD around the time Lorie disappeared. He claimed Andrew had gone in for treatment but would not allow doctors to examine him. This raised suspicion and led several investigators to believe he was looking to get medication to treat someone else.
“Unfortunately, we deal every year with people who do impregnate children, even their own children,” Campbell said. “If he had gotten her pregnant, if he had given her a venereal disease, those would be hard things to explain. ”
According to Tallahassee Police Chief Lawrence Revell, the truth started coming together when they revisited Andrew and asked him to retell the story. “People that are telling the truth typically don’t have problems retelling the truth,” he said.
“People who are telling lies really have a hard time keeping all of those straight. ”
At a press conference announcing the arrest, Revell said, “First and foremost, thank you for being here. Today is not a happy day. Today’s a sad day in the sense that we did recover the remains of missing 12-year-old Lorie Paige.
I told you two years ago we would never give up. I told you two years ago we would find Lori and we would bring her home. I told you two years ago that we would find who did this and we would arrest them and bring them to justice. And today I stand before you to tell you we have done just that.
”
Police Chief Revell provided a timeline. On June 3, 2023, Lorie was reported missing by her father, who claimed she left home with her backpack sometime in the night while he was at work. From summer 2023 to early 2024, detectives pursued hundreds of leads across state lines. Lorie was never located, and the story provided by Wye began to show inconsistencies.
On February 2, 2024, a phone was seized from Wye’s residence, and forensic analysis uncovered questionable internet searches, including queries about remote areas with bodies of water in Alabama and Georgia. In March 2024, detectives shifted their focus heavily toward Wye. In early 2024, based on digital evidence, detectives began searching a remote brush-covered area of Thomas County, Georgia, known locally as a plantation. Multiple searches yielded no results.
On April 5, 2025, following a prescribed burn that cleared heavy brush, detectives returned to the plantation and located human remains. The remains were processed by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and positively identified as those of Lorie Paige. Andrew maintained his innocence, claiming police had the wrong guy and that he would never have harmed his own daughter. His brother, Antoine, set up a GoFundMe shortly after his arrest.
While the fundraiser was taken down since the platform doesn’t condone raising funds for the defense of violent crimes, the original post sought to raise over $100,000 to uncover the “untruths” made by the Tallahassee Police Department and to bring the real person responsible for Lorie’s murder to justice. On June 20, 2025, two years after Lorie’s disappearance, Andrew passed away at 5:36 p. m. while in custody.
According to the coroner’s report, he died of a pulmonary embolism brought on by natural causes. The Leon County Sheriff’s Office confirmed his death late that evening. Staff moved Wye to their medical unit and attempted life-saving measures. He died a little after 5:30 that evening.
Because Andrew died before conviction, the court cannot officially declare guilt. Lorie’s family will be left without the closure of a full legal proceeding. Authorities indicated that unless new evidence emerges implicating another party, the case will remain inactive. Many community members felt a mix of sorrow and relief at the news.
A candlelight vigil and bubble-blowing ceremony were held at the Amphitheater in Tallahassee in remembrance of Lorie shortly after police found her remains. The crowd received candles and bubbles as the song “Human Nature” by Michael Jackson played in the background. The event concluded with a moment of silence. Margaret Summers, the staff member at Griffin Middle School who had spoken with Andrew during the investigation, described the arrest as a sobering conclusion to a painful case.
“It’s a dark ending to a dark, twisted tale. It’s had multiple shocking revelations. This is just the last one,” she said. She claimed she had met with Andrew during the search process and reflected that his behavior had seemed off even when she was offering him comfort.
“At the beginning, she was thought to be a runaway, and I think that initially the ball was dropped,” she said. “But once TPD picked up the ball, they ran with it, and they ran with that ball all the way to the woods in Georgia. ”
Pastor Rudy Ferguson, who helped coordinate searches, expressed mixed feelings. “The way she was found ought to be in our memories for the rest of our lives,” he said.
“It’s also my way of healing, because we have been looking for a long time. And even though we got the news that we didn’t hope for, we got the answer that started the process of closure. ”
