He Was Family: The Chilling Truth Behind the Austin Drummond Murders
True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews
Tony Brueski
4.2 • 612 Ratings
🗓️ 8 August 2025
⏱️ 24 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
When police found a baby abandoned on a stranger’s porch in rural Tennessee on July 29, 2025, they didn’t yet know the full nightmare waiting 40 miles away. Inside a Lake County home, four family members were found dead — James Wilson (21), Adrianna Williams (20), Cortney Rose (38), and Braydon Williams (15). The only survivor? That baby girl, the daughter of James and Adrianna.
The suspect, 28-year-old Austin Drummond, wasn’t a stranger. He was dating the family’s eldest daughter — making him Adrianna’s half-brother-in-law, Braydon’s brother-in-law, and Cortney’s daughter’s boyfriend. This was no random act. Investigators say it was a targeted attack.
Drummond’s criminal history runs deep — armed robbery, threats, even an attempted murder charge while behind bars. But after the killings, he didn’t run alone. Police say three people — Tanaka Brown, Giovonte Thomas, and Dearrah Sanders — helped him stay hidden during a week-long manhunt. Brown faces evidence tampering charges. Thomas was already in jail on unrelated charges when his role came to light. Sanders, just 23, was arrested days before Drummond’s capture.
This episode dives into the tangled web of relationships that made this crime possible, exploring Drummond’s deep ties to the victims, how he allegedly used that access to carry out the murders, and the friends who allegedly risked everything to help him vanish. We break down the manhunt, the arrests, and the unanswered questions: Why spare the baby? How far did the accomplices go? And what was the real motive?
Join us as we uncover the betrayal, loyalty, and manipulation at the heart of one of Tennessee’s most disturbing murder cases in years.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A Better Help ad. |
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| 0:07.6 | I struggle most weeks to get up, get myself up and ready and go to therapy or whatever. |
| 0:13.0 | Even like to open the laptop to talk to, my therapist sometimes could be really difficult. |
| 0:17.4 | But I do it because I realize how important it is for me to continue to feel good. |
| 0:21.8 | Because I felt the best I've felt in a long time through therapy. |
| 0:24.9 | Learn more about online therapy at betterhelp.com. |
| 0:28.7 | A better help ad. |
| 0:30.6 | Lewis Capaldi partnered with Better Help to get word out about how important therapy can be. |
| 0:36.6 | I struggle most weeks to get up, get myself up and ready and go to therapy or whatever. |
| 0:42.2 | Even like to open the laptop to talk to, my therapist sometimes could be really difficult. |
| 0:46.6 | But I do it because I realise how important it is for me to continue to feel good. |
| 0:51.2 | Because I felt the best I've felt in a long time through therapy. |
| 0:54.1 | Learn more about online therapy at betterhelp.com. to feel good. I felt the best I felt in a long time through therapy. |
| 0:57.9 | Learn more about online therapy at betterhelp.com. |
| 1:01.2 | This is Hidden Killers with Tony Bruske. |
| 1:03.5 | Here now, Tony Bruske. |
| 1:07.1 | Here we go. |
| 1:08.5 | Austin Drummond. |
| 1:11.9 | That's what we're going to talk about again today. |
| 1:19.1 | I'm going to talk about his relationship to the people whose lives he allegedly took. |
| 1:30.7 | And his relationship to these other people that have also been charged and arrested in relation to him. What roles did they play? |
... |
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