But detectives were not satisfied. They returned again to Brittany’s description of the alleged attack, asking how Tyler looked, what he said, and exactly how she tried to get away.
Brittany said Tyler was screaming things that made no sense. She remembered him insulting her, threatening to “teach” her a lesson, and accusing her of causing his behavior. She said she repeatedly told him she was doing nothing and urged him to go back to bed.
She also said she screamed in hopes that Jordan or someone else would hear. Yet Jordan had already told investigators that Brittany’s plea for help after Tyler was injured was what woke him. He had not reported hearing a fight, repeated screams, or a gunshot beforehand.
Detectives kept Brittany focused on the physical mechanics of her account. They asked where she was standing, how close she was to the bed, whether she could reach the nightstand, and whether Tyler ever released her before grabbing her again. Brittany could not give precise distances and repeatedly said she was only trying to get away.
The investigator offered a possible explanation instead of accusing her outright. If she truly believed she was being strangled, he said, reaching for a weapon could have been an instinctive attempt to stop the attack. She did not need to have planned to shoot; perhaps she grabbed the pistol hoping Tyler would back away. Brittany still resisted adopting that explanation, insisting that she could never imagine wanting to hurt him.
Her emotional language also shifted back and forth. One moment she described Tyler as irrational, aggressive, and repeatedly choking her. The next she emphasized that he was gentle and kind and that the behavior she described was not really him. When asked whether alcohol transformed him, she pointed to the earlier incident months before and said he had been extremely intoxicated then as well.
The detective asked what Tyler had been saying during the alleged attack. Brittany recalled insults, threats to teach her a lesson, and accusations that she did not understand. She said she was telling him to go back to bed and screaming loudly enough that she hoped Jordan would hear. But Jordan's account remained that the first sound to wake him was Brittany calling for help after Tyler was already down.
There was another problem. The physical evidence visible on Brittany did not appear to match her description of repeated life-threatening strangulation. Investigators did not observe bruising or scratches around her neck, and they did not see the kind of broken blood vessels in or around the eyes that can sometimes accompany strangulation.
Those observations did not, by themselves, determine everything that happened. But taken together with the changing account, Jordan’s statement, and the firearm at the scene, detectives believed the self-defense narrative was not supported by what they were seeing.
Tyler, by contrast, had a swollen and darkened eye noted while emergency personnel were working on him. Investigators increasingly believed Brittany had shot Tyler and that the physical struggle had not unfolded the way she described.
The physical observations were handled as one part of a larger picture rather than a single definitive test. Investigators knew that not every strangulation allegation produces identical marks, and the source does not present the absence of visible injury as proof by itself. What concerned the detective was the combination of few visible signs, Brittany's uncertainty about how the gun became involved, the absence of the loud struggle Jordan said he never heard, and Tyler's statement identifying her before he lost the ability to communicate.
The swollen eye observed on Tyler also complicated the account. Detectives had to consider when that injury occurred, whether it came from the same confrontation, and whether it fit Brittany's description of being the person under attack. The investigation therefore moved away from treating her later account as an automatic self-defense explanation and toward testing it against every available source.
Brittany was taken into custody and held while the case moved forward. Her bond was set at $750,000. The investigation continued for many months as detectives spoke with friends and acquaintances who knew the couple and tried to understand what their relationship had actually been like.
Those interviews became important because Brittany had portrayed Tyler as someone who could become dangerously violent when intoxicated. Detectives wanted to know whether anyone else had seen that side of him. Instead, according to the source account, several people described a pattern in which Brittany became aggressive when she drank.
One of the people contacted was Marissa, who had known Tyler for several years after meeting him during visits to Key West. She did not know Brittany nearly as well, having met her only a handful of times. But she had spent time with Brittany within days of Tyler’s death and remembered the encounter clearly.
Detective Scott Costa of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office called Marissa and asked about Tyler and Brittany’s relationship. Marissa explained that during one recent afternoon, Brittany arrived already heavily intoxicated and drove them to a local bar called Hogfish.
At the bar, Marissa said Brittany became emotional and angry while talking about a former boyfriend. She spoke aggressively about how much she hated the ex and made disturbing comments about wanting to kill him. At the same time, she cried about how much Tyler had helped her and how deeply she loved him.
Marissa became worried about Brittany’s level of intoxication. She did not want Brittany driving again and tried to arrange another way home. Her boyfriend, DJ, offered to get them an Uber, but Marissa ultimately made sure Brittany contacted Tyler and asked him to pick them up.
Brittany repeatedly dropped her purse and had difficulty managing herself. At another nearby spot, Marissa intentionally kept the drinking limited because Brittany was already so intoxicated. Brittany continued talking about how Tyler had saved her life and how happy she was to be with him.
Marissa personally spoke to Tyler on the phone and apologized for asking him to come get them. She remembered him responding kindly, saying he would come pick them up without complaint. When Tyler arrived, Marissa said the situation became uncomfortable almost immediately.
As they walked through the parking area, Brittany suddenly ran and jumped onto Tyler’s back. It appeared playful at first, but Tyler nearly fell because he had not been expecting it. He reminded Brittany that she had done something similar before and had nearly caused him to fall badly.
According to Marissa, Brittany instantly became angry. She insulted Tyler, punched him in the arm, and challenged him about not being able to carry or pick her up. Marissa tried to defuse the tension with jokes because the behavior made her uncomfortable.