Murder or mistake? Families seek answers 7 years after truck plunged into Florida lake

ALFORD, Florida ― Tarina White and Billy Pullam stopped by a small bar near Compass Lake in rural Jackson County, Florida, before disappearing into a rainy Friday night in their Dodge pickup truck.
By all official accounts, that beer run on April 1, 2016, was the last time Billy, a carpenter and former preacher who struggled with addiction, and Tarina, a God-fearing woman who tried to keep him out of trouble, were ever seen alive or heard from again.
Less than 48 hours later, two fishermen on Compass Lake noticed something on their depth finder as their boat approached the landing. After spotting the top of a vehicle submerged in 12 feet of water and fearing the worst, they called the Florida Highway Patrol for help.
Troopers made a ghastly find once the truck was retrieved from the lake: two “clearly deceased” people lying inside the cab. FHP identified the dead as Tarina, 46, and Billy, 60, both of the small town of Alford, Florida.
At the scene, an investigator with the State Medical Examiner’s Office found both bodies stretched out on their backs, Tarina across the floorboard and Billy across the bench seat. He observed “no injuries” to either but noted several opened and unopened beer bottles inside the cab. He also found a syringe in Billy’s shirt pocket.
Ultimately, both FHP and the medical examiner ruled their deaths accidental drownings. An investigation by the Highway Patrol, which couldn’t determine who was behind the wheel, found that the driver got disoriented in the dark and rain and ended up in the lake.
“(The occupants) failed to extricate themselves ... and subsequently sustained fatal injuries in the form of drowning,” FHP said in a traffic homicide report.
But nearly seven years later, Tarina and Billy’s families still don’t buy that story. They first shared their fears with investigators the day their bodies were discovered.
Though they don’t know exactly how or why, the families believe Tarina and Billy were killed and that their truck was pushed into the lake with the bodies stashed inside. One theory is that Billy, a meth user, got sideways with people in the criminal world and was killed along with Tarina, who didn’t use street drugs.
In the months and years since, the families pleaded with FHP, the sheriff, state prosecutors, the medical examiner and others to investigate further. Kimbra Williams, Tarina’s younger sister, enlisted a private detective, independent pathologists and lawyers in hopes of getting the case reopened.
One doctor consulting with the family opined that accidental drowning was “extremely unlikely” and that Tarina was probably asphyxiated. The pathologist noted her body was found in a "striking" position ― with her arms folded across her chest as if she’d been placed in a casket.
“Tarina’s not here to tell her side of the story,” Williams said. “I’m her voice. I’ve got to speak for her. If we don’t try to find out and get this case reopened, who’s going to do it for her?"
Highway Patrol finds 'no indication' of foul play
FHP spent months investigating, speaking with acquaintances and eyewitnesses who last saw them alive and conducting a crash reenactment at the lake using Billy’s truck. According to FHP reports, Billy and Tarina spent April 1, 2016, working in Dothan, Alabama, before returning to Alford.
They were last seen between 8-9 p.m. at the Trading Post, the small bar and package store less than a quarter-mile from the boat landing. Witnesses said Tarina and Billy came in, bought two six packs of beer and left.
From there, investigators said they turned onto a road that drops down to the landing and dead-ends at the lake, entering the water front-end first at “a low speed.” The two-door truck drifted out into the water and sank to the bottom.
The truck was in neutral and facing shore when it was found. However, investigators said lake currents spun it around and that the gear stick could have been knocked out of drive with "minimal force." The passenger's side window was rolled up, but the driver's side window, which had a broken hand crank, was ajar at the top.
In the crash reenactment, conducted at the request of the medical examiner, FHP noted that once the truck rolled into the lake, water rose "almost immediately" to a high level on the outside of the doors. Within 30 seconds, water began flooding the passenger compartment. The whole vehicle submerged in two minutes and 31 seconds, with the inside completely filling with water four seconds later.
Investigators found that poor weather and a lack of lighting caused Tarina and Billy to become "disoriented" and unaware that the truck had gone in the lake until water began pouring into the passenger compartment.
“Due to the force exerted on (the) doors by the surrounding water in conjunction with (an) inoperable driver window crank the only available means of egress would have been the passenger window,” the FHP report says.
The report doesn’t explain precisely why Billy, who was a good swimmer, or Tarina, who couldn’t swim, didn’t get out in time. However, investigators suggested that Billy, who had high levels of meth in his system, and Tarina, whose bloodwork was clean, simply panicked.
Dr. Jay Radtke, state medical examiner for the 14th District, ruled both of their deaths accidental drownings, with “methamphetamine intoxication” a factor in Billy’s death. FHP concluded the crash itself was the result of careless driving, a traffic infraction, and closed the case.

“This violation was determined to be the sole cause of (the vehicle) entering the water which was the proximate causation of the untimely deaths,” the FHP report says. “At the conclusion of the investigation ... it was determined there was no evidence which was indicative of either foul play or a criminal violation.”
Pathologist: Murders staged to look otherwise 'very reasonable to consider'
Dr. Daniel Schultz, a forensic pathologist working pro-bono for Tarina’s family, came to a near opposite conclusion after reviewing autopsy reports. Schultz, a former medical examiner in Florida, Michigan and Ohio, found that both deaths were likely “stealthy” homicides, Tarina by strangulation and Billy by “undetermined” violence.
In a 2020 consultative report, Schultz wrote that Tarina and Billy were found as if placed in “very neatly oriented ... peaceful positions” in the truck, Tarina with her head at the passenger side and her feet at the driver’s side and Billy the other way around. Tarina was in a “perfect deathbed position,” with Billy situated somewhat similarly.
Schultz, founder of Final Diagnosis, Inc., a private autopsy firm in Tampa, Florida, also said Billy and Tarina would have had enough time, according to FHP’s reenactment, to escape the sinking truck. He noted the window crank on the passenger side was fully operable.
“Ms. White was found to have no intoxicants and no compelling injury or natural disease at autopsy,” Schultz wrote. “A non-intoxicated, alert individual would have had those 2 minutes and 35 seconds to exit this vehicle. It is this consideration that makes an accidental drowning extremely unlikely in my opinion.”
Schultz added that Billy wasn’t under the influence of a sedative that would have prevented escape and downplayed the meth found in his system, seeing no reason it contributed to his death “given the big picture here.”
He raised the possibility that spots in Tarina’s right eye were the result of a type of hemorrhage seen in strangulation and smothering cases. He also said abrasions on her neck were possible ligature marks.
“Circumstances and positioning of both fully clothed individuals make dual homicide (staged to look like a murder-suicide or accident as it was deemed) very reasonable to consider (and thus further investigate),” he wrote.
Medical examiner says family's consultant 'flat wrong'
But Radtke sharply criticized Schultz’s findings when he and other officials sat down to discuss the case with the family and their experts in 2020. Glenn Hess and Lou Roberts, since retired as state attorney and sheriff, attended, with Schultz and another pathologist for the family, Dr. Laura Hair, participating over the phone.
Radtke, who produced four pages of notes from the meeting, wrote that Schultz wasn’t at the scene, the autopsy or the reenactment. He said his report had “many discrepancies, inaccuracies and overreaching statements” along with findings based on artifacts and shadows in photos.
“I tried to convey that the findings ... were not diagnostic of a homicide, but rather conjecture after the fact and in many cases just flat wrong,” Radtke wrote. “I explained to the family that I was concerned with his review and all of its inaccuracies, as it seemed he was just trying to placate them in their desire for this case to be a homicide.”
The medical examiner said spots in Tarina’s eye were common and not in her eyelid, where he would expect them in an asphyxia case. He said marks on her neck were obvious skin folds.
He dismissed what Schultz called “casket hands,” saying they were no different from hundreds of cases he’d seen. He also said Billy had a “near lethal” amount of meth in his system but low levels of amphetamine, indicating the meth “was just recently consumed.” He said both occupants probably panicked.
“It was pointed out during the discussion," Radtke wrote, "that in a panic, someone who cannot swim may be doing everything they can to keep water out of the vehicle, which includes keeping the window closed."

However, Radtke acknowledged it was "an unusual case," which was what prompted the reenactment. He called Hair's opinion of an "undetermined" cause and manner of death "very reasonable."
Two months after the meeting, Hess wrote Tarina’s family saying there was no evidence of a homicide outside the “speculative” testimony of their pathologists.
“Neither one can answer the hard questions of who, how or why these victims were killed,” he wrote. “While I appreciate their insight, that will not suffice to make a criminal case. I am sorry I cannot present a brighter picture, but I just do not see anything to work with.”
Family attorney: 'They're not going to give up'
Billy and Tarina spent that last Friday they were known to be alive installing a pump in a woman’s basement. The woman later told the family’s private investigator, Karl Knight, that both were “very pleasant” and that Tarina mostly handed Billy tools.
When they didn’t show up for work the next day, Billy’s daughter, Bonnit Pullam, and others began a search that became more frantic as the hours passed. After Tarina’s purse, with her glasses inside, turned up with no other sign of her, the families got even more worried.
“She would never, ever leave her pursue behind,” said her mom, Bernice Gray. “That I do know."
The families don't believe that lake currents spun Billy's truck around or the gear shift was accidentally pushed into neutral. They said Billy had $1,000 in cash on him and Tarina had two full prescription bottles in her purse, but the money and the pills were never found. Knight, the family's investigator, learned that after they went missing, word spread through the grapevine that they had been murdered.
Williams, a correctional officer, said the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the sheriff's office should have conducted an investigation into her sister's death rather than FHP, which doesn’t typically investigate murders outside of highway shootings.
"Normally when two bodies are found and you don't know how they died ... FDLE is called out," she said. “None of that happened.”
Fred Flowers, a Tallahassee attorney representing Tarina’s family, wrote FDLE, the Highway Patrol, Gov. Ron DeSantis and others last year asking to reopen the probe. FDLE said it had no authority to “interject into local law enforcement matters,” and FHP said it reviewed the case but decided not to reopen it.
Flowers also filed a circuit court action against the State Medical Examiners Commission and Radtke last year seeking to amend Tarina’s death certificate to list the cause, manner, place and time of her death as “undetermined." The agency recently moved for dismissal. But Tarina's family hopes that if they prevail, it will trigger a new investigation.
“They’re not going to give up," Flowers said, "until they can get some peace of mind."
Tarina's mom: 'I want them brought to justice'
Bonnit Pullam said her dad and Tarina never would have driven into the lake only to "sit there and die." She acknowledged her father made bad decisions sometimes. But she said he would have given his life to save her.

"There’s a lot of things that could have went wrong with him," she said. "But he was still my dad. And he still deserves answers. But Tarina was ... 100% innocent. And I do believe that foul play was involved. I'll always believe that."
Tarina's mom keeps her bedroom in their Cottondale home the same way she left it, with her Bible, its worn pages barely attached to the spine, on the bed along with old newspapers, letters and notes.
"Lord I trust in you, only you," Tarina wrote on the back of one envelope. "I might be a little weak along the way, but I am still strong. I am walking by faith but not by sight. Thank you Lord for keeping me."
Gray, 79, said she misses her daughter dearly. The two of them went everywhere together: church, shopping, appointments. When they were apart, Tarina called “every hour on the hour” just to check on her.
“She loved to go to church,” Gray said. “She loved the Lord. Sometimes in her room in the morning time, I’d open the door and she would be on her knees praying. And I know something happened to her. Whoever it was, I want them brought to justice.”
Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com and follow @JeffBurlew on Twitter.