Charlotte Man Claims He Killed Girlfriend After Fight Over Text Message: "Controlling"

When Bianca Tanner disappeared from her Charlotte, North Carolina home on June 8, 2014, the elementary school teacher left behind her three-year-old son. It was her live-in boyfriend, Angelo Smith, who reported her missing to 911 around noon that day. Family and friends were immediately suspicious.

“This totally is not her,” said Cerise Richardson, Tanner’s sister, on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins, airing Saturdays at 8/7c on Oxygen. “She’s not going to leave her son and not come back. Especially with no communication.”

Smith told police that he and Tanner got into an argument around midnight after he received a text message from an unknown number that referred to him as “Sweetie.” He said she left the house — leaving behind not only her son, but her phone and car — and he hadn’t “heard from her or seen her since.”

“She’s gone. Vanished. He didn’t act very nervous or upset that she’s missing. And that was questionable,” said Charlotte Det. Tim Jolly on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins. “But in this situation, [police] didn’t see evidence that a struggle or fight took place.”

It took police nearly a month to put together the pieces of what happened to Bianca Tanner — and it all led back to her relationship with Angelo Smith.

Bianca Tanner met Angelo Smith at a party during the fall of 2013. She was recently divorced and sharing custody of her toddler.

“So Angelo, he came in as Prince Charming on a white horse, and everything she thought she needed and wanted in that moment is who he was,” Richardson said.

Tanner and her son even moved in to a new place with Smith. But soon after, friends and family told police, Tanner began to question her relationship.

“Recently, Angelo was becoming short-tempered. More controlling,” Richardson said. “He wanted to monopolize all her time outside of her and Jared. He didn’t want her attention to be with anyone else.”

Six months after they began dating, Tanner went missing. Although the text to Smith did turn out to be from a wrong number, police found things weren’t adding up with his story about what happened to Tanner.

“We found in the trash can a note pad,” Jolly said. “A written-out statement, basically verbatim, that Angelo gave missing person detectives on June 8. Pretty much like he was rehearsing his interview for missing persons… and that to me was very odd.”

Smith had also been accused of physically assaulting girlfriends in the past. “From the college, there was records showing that he’d been arrested on the campus for domestic violence. Maybe something did happen that night when they got into an argument,” Jolly said.

Additionally, the phone data from Tanner and Smith’s phones showed Smith was lying. "The initial interview never mentioned that he left the apartment or anything. Angelo stated that he was there the whole time," Jolly said.

However, data showed that on the night Tanner disappeared, her and Smith’s phones were both in an area approximately 30 minutes away from their home.

When confronted with his phone data, Angelo Smith admitted to police that after Bianca Tanner left, he went to his fraternity brother, Lawrence Briscoe, for help.

“Lawrence told him, ‘Well, if Bianca’s missing, where’s her son, Jared?’ And Angelo tells him he’s back at home in the apartment,” Jolly said. “Lawrence told Angelo that he should go back home and report her missing to the police department.”

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But police didn’t believe Briscoe was telling the whole truth. They were proven correct when Briscoe called police weeks later, ready to confess.

“Lawrence said Angelo had come to his house and Angelo made a comment to Lawrence that he had screwed up this time and gone too far,” Jolly said. “That he had choked Bianca. And Bianca was laying in the kitchen, on the floor.”

Briscoe further confessed that he and Smith drove back to the home, carried Tanner’s body to the car, and disposed of her body in a wooded area near Briscoe’s home. Early in the morning of July 3, 2014, Bianca Tanner’s body was finally found.

Police received physical evidence of Angelo Smith’s guilt when they got a warrant to use a UV light on his body.

“It popped out like a bright light. You can see the bruising and the impression of a hand on his forearm,” Jolly said. “And then there was a bruise in the web of his hand. In between his index finger and his thumb.”

“They used scientific processes to determine that the stages that bruising goes through that it aligned with the timing of her disappearance,” Charlotte Det. Rosalynn Harrington added on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins.

Confronted with the new evidence, Angelo Smith once again changed his story, and claimed that when he got the text message, Bianca Tanner became angry and pulled a gun on him.

“And then Angelo stated that he took the gun from her, and she started fighting with him again, and he started putting her in a chokehold,” Jolly said. “Eventually she went limp and he laid her on the floor…And there was no evidence of that. And she’s never owned, been around, or had anything to do with a gun.”

In May 2016, Smith reached a deal with prosecutors, and pleaded guilty to manslaughter. He was sentenced to 26 years in prison. In 2021, he died by suicide behind bars.

“Do I think he meant to kill her? That’s still up in the air for me,” Jolly said. “I think he meant to hurt her. To let her know that he was the boss. And unfortunately, it cost her her life”

Lawrence Briscoe was sentenced to three to six years in prison.

Watch all-new episodes of Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins on Saturdays at 8/7c on Oxygen.