Affidavit: Timeline leading up to Terry Miles’ arrest in Colorado
KRDO NewsChannel13 obtained on Thursday the criminal complaint affidavit laying out a timeline that led up to Terry Miles’ arrest on Wednesday night in Colorado.
Miles is facing kidnapping charges after he took off with two young girls from Round Rock, Texas.
Lili Griffith, 14, and Lulu Bandera-Magret, 7, were reported missing after Round Rock police did a welfare check on their home and found their mother, Tonya Bates, dead by blunt force trauma on December 30. No one else was at the home and Tonya’s Hyundai Accent was missing.
Officers reached out to Tonya’s mother, who said that Tonya had two young girls and a roommate named Terry Allen Miles.
Around the same time, Miles’ mother received a text from Miles using Lili’s cell phone saying, “Mom I left with the kids and came home to something bad I think Tonyas boyfriend. I cant talk now tonya was involved in some bad stuff I will talk to you later when im safe these guys are crazy Mexicans.”
Investigators were able to track Lili’s cell phone to a cellular tower in Lubbock, Texas on December 30, 2017, at 5:43 a.m. (CST). That same day, close to 10 a.m. (MST), that same phone was pinged between cellular towers in Clayton, N.M. and Grenville, N.M.
Lulu’s cell phone was found in a wooded area near a Walmart in Round Rock on December 31. Surveillance footage from the store showed Miles entering the Walmart at 12:15 a.m. on December 30 and buying camping supplies including:
10-person tent 1 adult sleeping bag 1 children’s sleeping Various types of rope 2 tarps
On January 1, 2018, Round Rock police contacted the Clayton, New Mexico, Police Department to see if they had gotten any tips on Miles. Officers said images of the license plate connected to Tonya’s Hyundai were captured on an automatic license plate reader near Raton, N.M., traveling north on I-25 towards the New Mexico and Colorado border on December 30 at around 12:14 p.m. (MST).
Sometime that afternoon, Miles was caught on security footage at a Safeway in Trinidad, Colo.
On January 3, 2018, various tips led the Las Animas County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado to find the Hyundai near the town of Cuchara, Colo. in Huerfano County. Miles was taken into custody and transported to Denver. The two girls were driven to Pueblo and should be returning to family in Texas soon.
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