Angel Bumpass

This case is one of those that I am sure that will make many of you shake your head asking how it could happen. It is a case in which so very little makes sense from the investigation, to the charges, to the verdict. It is a case in which apparently the jury did not believe the defense, or at least one of them, that their client was innocent, but also did not believe the story that prosecutors gave. How is that you ask? This trial had two defendants, with two very different outcomes.

On the night of January 16, 2009 Linda Bonner returned to her Harrison Tennessee (a suburb of Chattanooga) home and found her husband bound to a chair. He was no longer breathing, which was not a huge surprise considering aside from duct tape being used to bound him to the chair, it was also wrapped around his head covering his mouth and nose. Franklin was known as a “lottery man” as well as the fact that it was discovered that he and his wife sold marijuana in small amounts. It seems it was an open secret that he generally carried a lot of cash on him. The home was in disarray and it does seems that at least some money was stolen. When the autopsy findings were released it was no surprise that his cause of death was suffocation but the report also stated he suffered “blunt force trauma to several parts of his body.”

There did not seem to be any leads in the case. The lead detective, Karl Fields, ran fingerprints from the duct tape and while there were some there, they were unable to identify who they belonged to. Then in 2016 Fields got into some legal trouble of his own. He was arrested on charges of sexual harassment, coaching witnesses and tampering with evidence. I was never able to determine if any of these things had anything to do with the Bonner case, but the allegations alone were damaging. The following year the charges were dropped because there did not seem to be enough “evidence to indict” him, but the damage had been done.

At some point a federal inmate named Nicholas Cheaton, a convicted bank robber, talked to authorities and claimed that his cousin, Mallory Vaughn (in case there is a question this is a man) had murdered Franklin Bonner. He would claim that Vaughn told him that he had “duct taped someone up like a mummy and it went wrong.” It was said that Cheaton described the crime scene and he seemed to be legit. It is unclear if he came forward before or after Fields was fired but it does seem clear that he talked to Fields. We will get back to Cheaton and Vaughn in just a bit.

Periodically the family of Franklin Bonner would contact the authorities and urge them to look more into the case. It appears that after Vaughn was named as a suspect the prints on the duct tape were ran again but there was not a match. Then in 2017 Angel Bumpass was arrested when she had failed to appear at a court hearing for a speeding ticket. Her prints were taken and when the prints from the duct tape were ran once again two of the nine prints came back to her.

When Angel was six years old her mom had gone to prison for shooting a police officer and Angel was raised by her grandparents. She would say the home was a “cold and unloving environment” and left their home when she was sixteen. But, in 2009 when Franklin Bonner was murdered in his home she was living apparently nearby with her grandparents and her grandparents knew Franklin Bonner.... Angel was thirteen years old in 2009. Angel would say she had never met Franklin Bonner and did not know who he was. Her grandfather stated that he did know Bonner and had often been at his home doing small repairs. He would also say that it was possible he had left a roll of duct tape at Bonner's home and that Angel had sometimes used it at his home for crafts and things. It would also be revealed that Angel's grandmother had gotten marijuana from Bonner at least on a few occasions. But, apparently no one could prove that Angel herself had even seen, or heard of Bonner.

Angel was arrested and charged with Franklin Bonner's murder. At the time she was twenty-two, was in nursing school and had two small daughters. But, Angel was not the only one arrested. Apparently authorities knew that no one would believe that this girl was thirteen years old and had overpowered the sixty-eight year old Bonner and been able to bound him with duct tape all on her own. So, they went back and arrested Mallory Vaughn. Investigators, and later also the prosecutor, would argue that Angel Bumpass and Mallory Vaughn worked together to bound, rob, and ultimately murder Franklin Bonner. The only evidence they had against Vaughn was the word of his cousin, Nicholas Cheaton; the only evidence they had against Angel were the two fingerprints on the duct tape.

Prosecutors decided to try both Angel and Mallory Vaughn together and they went on trial in September of 2019. Apparently both sides of the defense argued that their clients not only did not murder Franklin Bonner together, they did not even know each other. Nicholas Cheaton testified that Vaughn had confessed to him but again, that was all that authorities had on him.

It is unclear exactly what each side of the defense argued aside from the fact that their clients were innocent. But, with that being said I will say that aside from there being seven unidentified prints on the duct tape there was also apparently a hair taken from the duct tape that was never analyzed. It is unclear whether the defense knew about this at the trial or whether or not it was even mentioned.

The jury deliberated for about four and a half hours before they rendered their verdicts against both Angel Bumpass and Mallory Vaughn on October 3, 2019. Angel Bumpass was found guilty of murder; Mallory Vaughn was acquitted of all charges. On November 21, 2019 Angel Bumpass was given a life sentence that equated to sixty years. She is eligible for parole in December of 2078.

There has apparently been some movement in the case and appeals filed but we have to keep in mind that just a few months after this verdict was rendered COVID-19 hit the country. For much of 2020 courts were running at a very minimum speed and in many places were closed completely. Case after case was delayed and that backed up the courts even more than they already were.

It appears that it was later said that it was now “believed” that Nicholas Cheaton had learned much about the case from the initial/disgraced detective Karl Fields and that he made up the story because he wanted a reduction in his own sentence. Now, I am unsure if this actually came from a prosecutor or an investigator but I would gander to guess that statement was not made until after Mallory Vaughn was acquitted at trial. In fact, at the trial the prosecutor referred to Vaughn and Angel Bumpass as “buddies.” But, now it seems since things did not end the way they wanted it is being said that Cheaton lied. However, the strangest thing is that obviously the jury did not believe that the two were “buddies” and committed this crime together or they would have convicted Vaughn also. Surely, they did not believe that Angel committed the murder alone at the age of thirteen. But, lets be fair, the only evidence against her were two partial fingerprints on the inside of some duct tape.

This case will be quite interesting to watch in the future. I suspect that appeals will be coming for years in the future and I would not be the least surprise to see this conviction overturned and a new trial ordered.