"Master Manipulator" Who Faked Pregnancy to Orchestrate Murder Offers New Details from Prison

Tommy Brown, of Fort Worth, Texas worked as a janitor, having taken over his father’s contract cleaning business in 2004, as previously reported by Oxygen.com. Through his job, he met Connie Moreno, with whom he was in an on-again, off-again relationship for more than a decade.

However, that didn’t stop Brown from seeing another woman. As featured on Snapped, Brown was also involved with Rodriguez, who, beginning in 2002, was serving a 10-year prison sentence for aggravated robbery, according to The Dallas Morning News.

Prosecutor Bill Vasser said Rodriguez was a “master manipulator” who pretended to be a home health care worker when she responded to an ad placed by an 82-year-old man. On Rodriguez's first day on the job, she tied the elderly patient with a phone cord, assaulted him, and ransacked the home, Vasser said in the 2021 Snapped episode.

Rodriguez was released from prison in 2011, and she was a part of Brown and Moreno’s life, according to Brown’s sister, Andrea Brown.

By 2013, things between Brown and Moreno were reportedly strong, and the two decided it was time to have a baby. That spring, the couple enlisted Rodriguez to act as a surrogate for their future child, and according to Brown’s loved ones, Rodriguez claimed she was pregnant in April.

"[Brown] said that they were intimate once for the sole purpose of having a child,” Andrea Brown told Snapped.

Brown and Moreno split once again, and later that year, Brown was dead.

On September 7, 2013, Andrea Brown found her brother dead in his east Forth Worth home, face down in the hallway just outside the bathroom, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. His hands had been tied behind his back with a shoelace, and a white bag covered his head, and it was determined — partly based on when neighbors last saw the victim — that he had been dead for two days.

Authorities told Snapped that the killer or killers viciously beat him with the porcelain cover of a toilet tank.

“He had bruises and contusions all over his body,” Vasser told Snapped producers. “Part of his head was split open. I mean, his face looked like he had gotten into a fight with Mike Tyson. It was one of the most savage beatings that I’ve ever seen.”

The Tarrant County Medical Examiner listed his cause of death as asphyxia and blunt force injuries, according to the Star-Telegram. 

Missing from Brown’s home was his television and his wallet, which contained his identification and bank cards. At the scene, investigators discovered two sets of shoe prints “with distinctly different tread patterns,” pointing to the possibility of two killers, attorneys outlined in 2018 court records on Rodriguez’s behalf, filed with the Court of Appeals, Second District of Texas, and reviewed by Oxygen.com.

Brown’s Toyota pickup was also nowhere to be found, but it transpired that it had been impounded between the time of Brown’s death and when police responded to the scene.

Inside the impounded vehicle, investigators found a bus ticket in Rodriguez’s name and a trash can filled with bloody items, including part of the lid used to beat the victim, as featured on Snapped.

On Sept. 6 and 7, Brown’s bank cards were used at several locations between Texas and Mississippi to buy gasoline and medications.

On Sept. 10, police tracked Brown’s missing phone Braylon Ellis’ mother’s house in Snelville, Georgia, and Rodriquez and Ellis were arrested for murder.

Braylon Ellis, 12 years Rodriquez’s junior, “fell head over heels in love” with Rodriguez after the pair met in early 2013 on a Greyhound bus in El Paso, said Ellis’ defense attorney, Tim Moore, according to the Star-Telegram.

“If they had not met on that Greyhound bus, this probably would have never happened,” Moore said of Brown’s homicide.

On the night of Sept. 5, 2013 — the date the murder took place — Rodriguez not only told Ellis that she was carrying his unborn child, but that Brown had been physically abusive toward her, as Ellis described during Rodriguez’s trial. Together, they hatched a plan for Ellis to “beat [Brown] up” while Rodriguez stole items from the home, as outlined in court records.

Rodriguez used a spare key to gain entry into Brown’s residence when he was not home.

Ellis was unarmed — a point his defense attorneys would use as evidence that he had no intention of killing Brown — and lay in wait until Brown returned.

“If you want to kill a guy, you take a gun, or a knife or a weapon,” Moore argued on behalf of his client, according to the Star-Telegram. “You don’t get into a fistfight. And you certainly don’t tie him up while [he is] still squirming around.”

Rodriguez watched as Ellis waited for the victim to come down the hall and initiate the surprise attack. She even handed Ellis a pot to carry out several blows before Ellis wrapped Brown’s head in a bag as he died.

It turned out Rodriguez was never pregnant with either man’s baby.

A mountain of evidence, including Ellis's D.N.A. on the broken toilet tank lid, helped a jury find Ellis guilty of murder. According to prison records from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (T.D.C.J.), he is serving life at an Abilene, Texas prison and will be eligible for parole in 2043.

Meanwhile, Rodriguez, also convicted on murder charges, is serving life without the possibility of parole at T.D.C.J.’s Dr. Lane Murray Unit in Gatesville, about 120 miles south of Fort Worth and 100 miles north of Austin.