The Death of Lauren Agee: Accident or Murder?
This is one of the most frustrating cases I’ve ever learned about. A Young woman’s death was considered an accident, when all signs are pointing to homicide. Three of her friends are the only suspects, and they all claim to not have been involved, yet none of them showed an ounce of sympathy, and didn’t even attend her funeral.
Lauren Taylor Agee was a 21 year old girl born on August 19th, 1993, in Biloxi, Mississippi. She lived in Hendersonville, Tennessee with her mother Sherry, stepfather Michael, and three siblings, Allison, Jordan, and Joshua. Lauren was described as a beautiful, hilarious, energetic and bubbly person who had a huge zest for life. She was super passionate about sports and dancing, and had a lot of medals from gymnastics. She would copy music video dances and re-create them, and was even offered a dancing scholarship for college, but turned it down so she could major in criminal justice. She had a lot of friends, a boyfriend, and her life was going in a very positive direction, until the summer of 2015.
On July 24th, 2015, Lauren attended an annual wakeboarding tournament called WakeFest in Center Hill Lake, Tennessee. She went with three others, her best friend Hannah Palmer, Hannah’s boyfriend Aaron Lilly, and Chris Stout. Hannah later says that she didn’t know Chris very well, and Lauren had never met him until that weekend. WakeFest is known for being a big event that involved a lot of partying and drinking, which will aid in the speculation of events surrounding Lauren’s death. Lauren’s mother Sherry didn’t really like Hannah that much, and felt like she wasn’t really a good friend to her. Hannah was the kind of friend that kind of just called her up to hangout when she was bored, or when she needed something, otherwise she wasn’t really there for her much. When Hannah would get together with a new boyfriend, she would pretty much forget that Lauren was even around. But despite how she felt, Lauren was still happy being her friend, and she really wanted to attend WakeFest with her, so Sherry agreed to let her go. However, she had a strange feeling about the whole thing, and felt really worried about the whole thing. Deep inside, she just felt like something was off about everything, but chalked it up to being paranoid and gave Lauren a big hug and let her go. That was the last time she would see her daughter alive.
Lauren and Hannah met the two men there and spent the day drinking, watching watersports, and partaking in cliff diving. The whole place was not very well supervised, but this particular activity was dangerous and not well regulated. The drop was pretty high, and there were a lot of rocks in the area, some of them being very well hidden and hard to avoid when the waves were crashing over them. When it was Lauren’s turn to jump, she avoided all of the visible rocks, but once she was approaching the bottom another rock became visible, and she banged the back of her head on the rock. She was out of it for a little while and had a small possible concussion, but she was okay and was able to carry on with the rest of the day. The group went out to a bar later that evening and footage was captured of Lauren and the others inside the bar, where Lauren was being her normal energetic and lively self. The footage showed them leaving the bar at 2 AM, heading back down to the docks, where they’d take the boat to get back to their campsite. The group had actually chosen a very dangerous and isolated campsite that could only be reached by boat. It was really dark while they were sailing their way back, and Lauren could be heard in a video saying, “we’re going into a death trap.” The campsite was particularly dangerous due to the sleeping arrangements. Hannah and Aaron slept in a tent together, while Lauren and Chris were forced to share a hammock. Not only did this make Lauren uncomfortable due to not knowing Chris at all, but also because the hammock was hung dangerously close to the cliff’s edge. There was a 35 foot drop into the water on one side, and a 90 foot drop on the other. Nonetheless, she got into the hammock with Chris, and everyone headed off to bed. It’s important to add that this land that they were camping on was NOT an official piece of land owned by WakeFest. There were no signs or fences or anything to regulate the area and its lack of safety, because it wasn’t WakeFest’s responsibility. There were official areas where people were supposed to camp in, in cabins on actual campsites. It was actually kind of common for people to camp in that area, as it’s nearby and somewhat easy to get to, and the owners of WakeFest knew about this, but again, not their land so they couldn’t do anything about it. That being said, Lauren assumed they were going to be in one of the cabins and was surprised when she heard the plans had changed, but went along with it anyway as she didn’t really have much of a choice. She did try to go around and ask others if she could camp in their cabins, but didn’t have any luck. She even ran into an old friend, Cassie Franks, who has been to the festival a few times already, and has camped in that area once before. Cassie said that she hated camping there, felt super unsafe, and swore to never camp there again. The land around that area is very unsafe and in order to get to the top, you need to walk up very steep and very rocky land. There’s a long rope tied to the tree’s so you could hold onto and prevent yourself from falling. Climbing and paddle boating is very hard to do sober to begin with, imagine how difficult it is while drunk. Unfortunately, Cassie’s cabin was full and Lauren wasn’t able to stay with her.
Body Discovery and Awful Investigations
Early morning the next day, July 26th, Hannah woke up and went over to the hammock to check on Lauren, and she wasn’t there. Hannah woke up Chris and asked her where she was, and Chris replied that she had woken up in the middle of the night but didn’t know how long she’s been gone. Hannah claimed that she started looking for her right away, and as she was looking she noticed that all of Lauren’s personal items such as her flip flops, purse, and phone, were all still at the campsite. During a later interview Hannah states that Lauren would never leave without those items. The group never reported Hannah missing or anything, and just assumed that she walked off to get a head start on the day and would be back soon. That was until around 4:20PM, when two fishermen found Lauren’s body floating in a cove. The fishermen were terrified and immediately notified authorities.
It’s important to know that where she was inside the cove was not somewhere where she could have just fallen herself. It was too far from where their campsite was to have been able to accidentally fall from the hammock and land there. Her body also wouldn’t have been able to be carried there by the current, as it was proven that the current was going in the opposite direction during that time. It was simply impossible. After the authorities were contacted, the two men brought the officers to where her body was located. At this time, the ONLY people who knew about the body’s discovery were the fishermen and the two police officers. Before police could even reach her body, they saw a man paddling in a canoe towards the direction where they were going. The officers told the man to stop and head back, and the man responded, “but that could be one of our friends over there.” That man was Aaron Lilly. So considering that this news was not shared to the public yet and as I said before, those four people were the only ones to know about the body, and the police themselves haven’t even seen the body yet, how did Aaron know that there was a body inside the cove? Let’s say that somehow he was told by another person who somehow saw the body or knew about it, why did he assume that it was Lauren’s body? Why didn’t he call the police if he was genuinely concerned? Why was he trying to get to her body before anyone else did?
Lauren’s body was removed from the water and sent in for an autopsy. The results showed that she had double the legal limit of alcohol in her system, and that the cause of death was blunt trauma to the head and possible drowning. Investigators assumed that she had just fallen out of her hammock due to the alcohol, and her death was ruled an accident. This is where the case starts to get confusing. After the autopsy results were given, two different people told Sherry that they did not believe that Lauren fell and drowned. They think she was killed by someone. Those two people were officer Chris Yarchuk, the off duty officer who saw the group leave the bar at 2AM the night before, and Forensic Scientist Mark Gillespie. During an interview with MTV, Mark stated that her injuries were not consistent with what would’ve happened in a fall. Lauren did have bruising, but she would’ve had much deeper bruising with a fall that high. She did have a few minor scrapes, however, she would’ve had a lot of severe cuts, scrapes and lacerations, which she didn’t. Her clothes were also in perfect condition, but would’ve been torn during a fall. But most importantly, there was NO water in her stomach or lungs at all, which would’ve been if she had truly been drowning.
After hearing about this, Sherry contacted a private investigator, Sheila Wysocki, to help with the case, and she’s been working on it since 2016. Shelia is very good at her job, and became a PI after she helped police solve the murder of her college roommate. Sheila states that if you look at the autopsy report and look closely at the crime scene photos and her injuries, you’ll notice that they’re not adding up. She stated that there was hemorrhaging in her neck, and clear signs of strangulation. It’s also really important to know that the initial investigators on this case did not take the proper course of action when sending her body in for an autopsy. There was a bite mark on Lauren’s breast, which is a very common sign of sexual assault. However, this bite mark in particular was a little strange, as she was bitten vertically, as if someone reached over her and bit her. Due to this evidence the officers who first saw the body told the other officers who were sending the body in for an autopsy that they should do a rape kit on her. However, no rape kit was ever done, and no swabs or DNA tests were ever taken either. The reason the police gave for not going through with the autopsy was because she was wearing a tampon, and since she was wearing a tampon they thought that there was no possibility that she could’ve been raped, which was very far from true. Rapist’s will NOT care if someone’s on their period or not, but the wild thing here is, Lauren wasn’t even on her period when she died. It’s argued that Lauren could’ve put in this tampon as a “just in case” situation, but it’s also argued that the rapist put the tampon there as a decoy, to make police think exactly what they thought. This theory is also supported by the fact that the clothes she was wearing weren’t even her clothes. Sherry claims that she has never seen Lauren wear these clothes at all, and not even the bra she was wearing was hers. It also looked like she didn’t even dress herself, as the strap of her bra was all tangled up, which is super uncomfortable, and most women would not walk around like that all day. There were also three clasps on her bra, and only the top clasp was strapped in. Initial pathologists heard all of these theories about the possibilities of being raped and strangled and argued that they did not believe that these injuries were from foul play. They believe that the marks on her body, including the bite mark, wasn’t a bite mark at all and that she received these marks from hitting the rocks on her way down the hill. They also argued that the crushing of her throat was not from strangulation, but that her throat probably came into contact with a rock when she hit the bottom and that’s what crushed the throat. It was also determined that the crushing of the throat was not severe enough to be the cause of death, and which makes people think this was done during sexual assault. Other injuries included a broken nose and broken fingers, which could’ve been done while falling off the ledge, but would have also been done while trying to fight off an attacker. Private investigator Sheila Wysocki also believes that she was raped due to the two huge bruises on both of her thighs, which she believes came from the attacker as he kneeled down on her legs to keep her from moving.
Even though her death was officially ruled as an accident, so many people believe this was not an accident at all, not only due to the information I gave above, but also because her body was found floating. When someone drowns, their bodies are normally not found floating, they’re found underwater. They sink due to the water filling up their lungs. This doesn’t happen in every single drowning case, but it does happen in the majority of cases. The fact that she also didn’t have water in her lungs and stomach, like forensic scientist Mark Gillespie said, makes people believe that she didn’t die by drowning, and she was dead before she hit the water. The next alarming piece of evidence was the mark on her stomach in the shape of a triangle. People state that the triangle on her body lines up with a mark you would get if you were pinned down on the edge of a canoe, which is what they used to get back and forth from their campsite. This is a little unclear because it would mean that her upper body would’ve been in the canoe while her lower body was in the water, and even though she was only 105 pounds, it would still cause the canoe to tip over. Unless there were two other people in the canoe at the same time, one sitting at the end and the other in the middle paddling, the canoe definitely tipped over. This information further supports the theory that her friends were involved with her death, as there were three of them. Sheila and Lauren’s family also did over 50 test drops with a mannequin that was the same height and weight as Lauren, and dropped them over the edge of where she was sleeping to see where they would land. The results showed that most of the mannequins got tangled in the thick brush going down the cliff, and even if her body did happen to get to the bottom of it, her body would’ve had to roll over several feet of rocks before landing in the water, and it would’ve had to float around a 35 foot bend in order to reach the cove, and it was already determine that the current was going in the opposite direction during that time.
“Friends” and Their Suspicious Behavior
After Lauren’s body was discovered the police interviewed Hannah and the rest of the group. They were never being questioned as suspects, the police just wanted to find out more information about who Lauren was and the events leading up to the last time they saw her. Officer Ryan Melanson interviewed Aaron and Chris, and stated that the men seemed very nervous and anxious throughout the interview, and also stated that they showed no sympathy whatsoever. Hannah also kept changing up her story, saying that she saw Lauren with an older man on the canoe before heading to bed, and that she also thinks she was planning on meeting up with her ex boyfriend (she was in a happy relationship already, and this ex boyfriend was never brought up before in this case). Chris also stated that Lauren was planning on meeting up with someone later that night, but she didn’t give them any information about who it was. Hannah also mentioned that she could have fallen off the cliff when going to the bathroom, as they didn’t have any outhouses, so they chose a specific area to do that in. This theory was ruled out as they tested the fall with a mannequin in that area, and she definitely would’ve lived if she had fallen in that spot. After the group was done being questioned, they all went along with their plans and continued to drink and party for the next two days, as if the death of their friend never even happened. It was also reported by other people at the festival that they noticed there was a campfire being lit up around that ledge, however, no one could prove who’s campfire it was or what they were doing with it. It could’ve been a normal campfire, but it also could’ve been the group’s campfire to burn evidence.
Police then started to interview people who knew the group, and interviewed Lauren’s friend Cassie Franks, who she saw at the festival the night she died. Cassie happened to actually be Aaron Lilly’s ex-girlfriend and told police that he was very aggressive and physically abusive, and that was the reason they broke up. She showed police images of her injuries that were inflicted by Aaron, which included bruises and bite marks, just like the ones found on Lauren’s body. However, the bite mark on her breast isn’t officially believed to be a bite mark, and is documented as just a mark from her falling. Lauren’s other friend, Jade, was also questioned even though she wasn’t attending WakeFest, she had been texting Lauren all night right before she died. Jade told police that Lauren was telling her that she wasn’t having any fun, and asked Jade if she could come pick her up because she wanted to go home. Jade said she didn’t want to come pick her up that night because it was very late and dark, and she didn’t really know how to get there and wasn’t comfortable trying to figure it out in the dark. Hannah actually told police in her initial interview that Lauren wanted to go home and was willing to drive home while drunk, and that was the reason why they took her keys from her. It also so happened that other people at WakeFest told police that Lauren was venting to them about wanting to go home because Hannah and the others were being really mean to her. It’s believed that Lauren was never planning on driving herself home drunk that night, as she asked multiple people to bring her home, and it’s speculated that the group took her keys to annoy her instead of helping her. Although it’s also speculated that they really did take her keys for her own safety and she just felt like they were being mean as she was drunk and didn’t have a clear mind at the time. The last person who was interviewed didn’t have any connection to the group at all, but just happened to be in the area on the night she died. His name was Chris Brown, and he was camping near the lake with his wife and kids, which happened to be around the same lake where WakeFest was. He told police that around midnight he saw a man swimming towards him and said, “I saw a young man climb up on the dock. The young man appeared extremely distraught and worn out. He was spitting up water for several minutes. The young man told me that he almost drowned when he swam back from the camping ledge to the dock.” The man that he believes he saw was Aaron Lilly. He thought it was Aaron not only because of his physical appearance, but also because the man he saw was wearing knee length american flag print swimming shorts, which is what Aaron was actually wearing at WakeFest, even though these shorts are pretty common. Again, Chris Brown’s account is not believed by everyone due to the time differences in his story. He claimed this happened at midnight, while there was evidence that Lauren was seen at the bar with her friends at 2AM. So it could be that Chris had just gotten the time wrong as it was late and he didn’t know the exact time, or he simply forgot and wasn’t paying much attention to it, or it could be all made up.
The Aftermath and Wrongful Death Lawsuit
After the group returned home from WakeFest, Chris posted a photo on Instagram with the caption, “best weekend ever.” None of them even attended Lauren’s funeral, not even Hannah who was apparently her long-term best friend that she loved so much. A couple months after this whole ordeal, Hannah and Aaron moved to Florida together, and it was around that time that mean comments about Lauren and the circumstances around her death started coming out online, including a lot of false statements. Private Investigator, Sheila, tracked the IP address which led to where Hannah and Aaron live in Florida. Sheila decided to go interview Hannah and Aaron once more and videotaped the interview. Hannah talked about the weekend leading up to her death once again, and claimed that she didn’t think Chris had anything to do with it. It’s also seen in the video that Hannah received a phone call from Aaron during her interview, and even though Sheila couldn’t hear the whole conversation, she does believe she heard Aaron telling Hannah to “stick to the story.”
Sherry filed a $10 million dollar wrongful death lawsuit in 2021 against Hannah, Aaron, and Chris, however all three of them used their Fifth Amendment Right to not testify, and the judge ruled that there wasn’t enough evidence for a wrongful death lawsuit to move forward against Hannah Palmer, and the civil suits against Aaron and Chris are still pending. After the wrongful death case was thrown out, Hannah made a statement saying, “the profound sadness I experienced when learning of the death of my best friend, Lauren Agee, has only been approached by the painful allegations I somehow contributed to her demise.” Even though she showed no sympathy, continued to party on after her death, didn’t even show up to her funeral, and started to bash her with mean comments online really showed how heartbroken she was over the loss of her so-called “best friend.” Hannah and Aaron have since become engaged.
This case is still currently listed as an accident, but Lauren’s family and her supportive investigators will not stop until they find out the truth. I hope one day Lauren and her family can get the justice that they deserve.
