Gruesome details revealed in Coast woman’s killing in Facebook Marketplace sale turned deadly

Authorities say Daniel Tenner confessed to killing and robbing a Pascagoula, Mississippi, woman that he had lured to New Orleans area under the guise of selling a cell phone through the online Facebook Marketplace.

When Tenner, 20, of Jackson, Mississippi, allegedly expressed remorse for the grisly Terrytown crime which had been committed in front of the victim’s girlfriend and a toddler, Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office investigators asked Tenner if he wanted to apologize to the victim’s family.

“We gave him a legal pad and a pen so he could write a letter, and he did,” JPSO Homicide Detective Harold Wischan testified Monday during a probable cause hearing in Jefferson Parish Magistrate Court.

Authorities didn’t disclose the contents of the letter they say Tenner penned to the relatives of Morgan Tyrone, 24, who was shot to death during the April 10 hold-up. Tenner is booked with first-degree murder, armed robbery and two counts of attempted first-degree murder.

Blood everywhere

Tyrone and her 22-year-old girlfriend had been shopping for a new cell phone and settled on an iPhone 13 being offered on Facebook Marketplace, Wischan testified. Tyrone and the seller negotiated a $300 price.

Though she’d been searching phones for sale in the Jackson area, the seller revealed that he was actually located in New Orleans, according to Wischan. The two arranged to meet on April 10.

Tyrone, her girlfriend and the girlfriend’s toddler son drove to the 300 block of Friedrichs Road in Terrytown, the location they were given by the seller. They arrived about 10:30 p.m.

The 22-year-old woman told detectives that Tyrone and the seller went back and forth, each asking the other to hand over their part of the transaction first, Wischan said. But Tyrone, who was sitting in the driver’s seat of a mini-van, began to get a “bad feeling” about the whole encounter.

When Tyrone turned to put the money in the vehicle’s center console, the seller, who’d been standing outside the vehicle at the driver’s-side window, pulled a pistol and shot Tyrone once in the head, Wischan testified, spraying blood everywhere inside the vehicle.

The man pointed the gun at the woman and the toddler, threatened to kill them, and demanded the money.

“The surviving victim had just witnessed her girlfriend murdered. She was wearing her blood and brains. She really believed her and her child would be murdered next,” Wischan said.

The woman handed the gunman the blood-stained cash, and he fled.

Tip and confession

Detectives analyzed Tyrone’s cell phone and confirmed that she’d been conversing with a potential seller about an iPhone, according to Wischan. All of the communication was done through Facebook messenger, he said.

Tenner was not the owner of that Facebook account, authorities said. Detectives have spoken with the account’s owner. But Wischan and Assistant Jefferson Parish District Attorney Thomas Block did not identify the person during the hearing Monday.

Wischan, however, said investigators found evidence linking that Facebook account to Tenner, including photos and other social media and digital accounts.

Wischan conceded that authorities can’t say for sure whether it was Tenner messaging Tyrone through Facebook. But Wischan noted that Tenner later admitted doing so.

Investigators tracked Tenner’s cell phone and determined that he’d been in the vicinity of the homicide at the time Tyrone was killed, authorities said.

They later determined Tenner had come to Terrytown from Jackson on April 3 and was staying with someone in an apartment about a block from the murder scene, Wischan said. The resident of the apartment drove Tenner back to Jackson on April 12.

About three weeks after the homicide, the Sheriff’s Office received a Crimestoppers tip naming Tenner as the suspect, Wischan said. The tipster provided quite a bit of information and told authorities that Tenner had been bragging about the killing in Jackson, even sharing a news article about the murder.

Probable cause

The U.S. Marshals Service took Tenner into custody in Jackson on May 17. Tyrone’s girlfriend identified him as the gunman in the case, according to Wischan.

Criminal Commissioner Paul Schneider ruled there was probable cause to continue holding Tenner without bond on the first-degree murder charge. But he ruled there was insufficient cause to hold Tenner on the attempted murder charges, saying there was no evidence of intent to kill.

Tenner was remanded to the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center in Gretna.