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A Leon County jury convicted Paige Vowell on April 27, 2018, of first-degree felony murder and other charges in the killing of Hoyt Birge in Tallahassee, Florida, and she was sentenced to life in prison. Vowell, 28 at the time of her arrest, was the first of eight people charged to stand trial. She was also found guilty of two counts of kidnapping to inflict bodily harm, terrorize or facilitate a felony, and accessory after the fact to first-degree murder.

Birge, 32, lived in Tallahassee. Prosecutors described him as an acquaintance whom Vowell contacted on the night he was killed. In May 2017, she invited him to her house on Mission Road on the pretense of a drug sale as part of a plan to rob him of ten pills. Other people were waiting there. Birge and Peter Tournay, who had accompanied him, were held against their will. When Birge resisted, he was struck repeatedly in the head and neck with a small carpenter's hammer and then shot. His body was put in the trunk of a car that was left at the U Club Apartments in Tallahassee, where it was found. The killing occurred on May 9, 2017. Tournay survived and became the state's main eyewitness.

Vowell was arrested on May 10, 2017, on a charge of accessory after the fact to a homicide and held at the Leon County Detention Facility. She was later released on $25,000 bond and failed to appear in a Wakulla County court matter. A grand jury indicted her on October 19, 2017, on first-degree murder and kidnapping. At the Mission Road house, a crime scene detective found blood on a wall and floor and a heavy smell of bleach. Evidence showed blood had been cleaned from two couches, a futon and a toilet. A rug had been burned in the back yard, and receipts in Vowell's purse showed purchases of a rug, cleaning supplies and shirts. Tournay testified at her trial.

During her interview with investigators, Vowell presented herself as a witness to what happened rather than a participant. The date of the interview was not given, and the detectives who conducted it were not named. Vowell later gave a proffer to prosecutors and testified in her own defense at trial. A postconviction court found that she withheld information during the proffer against her lawyer's advice and had used methamphetamine before it.

On November 8, 2019, Florida's First District Court of Appeal, in case 1D18-2018, affirmed the murder and kidnapping convictions but vacated the accessory after the fact conviction. The court held that a person convicted as a principal to a crime cannot also be convicted as an accessory after the fact to that same crime. The life sentence stands. Vowell later sought postconviction relief under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850, arguing that her life sentence was a manifest injustice compared with her co-defendants' shorter terms and that her trial lawyer failed to prepare her for the proffer and her testimony. The trial court denied the motion, and the First District affirmed that denial on September 11, 2024, in case 1D2022-3840.

Four co-defendants were tried together and convicted in September 2018 of third-degree murder and related counts. David Howard received 30 years; Page Briggs, 30 years; Stanley West, a 30-year minimum term as a felony offender; and Patrick Berrane, 40 years with a concurrent 10-year term. West was acquitted of carjacking. Vicki Strickland was acquitted of accessory after the fact. Jesse Fox and Britteny Guthrie were awaiting trial as of September 2018. Their outcomes are not established.

The video is a police interview-room recording that runs about 85 minutes. It contains the interview itself and opens with a short narrated introduction naming the people involved.

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Part 2 of 2 of the recording described above.