This episode discusses violence, murder, graphic drug use, suicide, and autopsy.

Listener discretion is advised.

This is the Fall Line.

On Memorial Day 1985, 15-year-old Tyra Garcia left her home in Ventura, California for the last time.

It had been a hard few years for Tyra.

Her close-knit family had gone through the shake-up of her father's affair and subsequent move and his distance from the family.

She was living with her sisters and brother and mother and feeling at loose ends.

She'd been closest with her dad, and now she barely saw him.

Tyra had always struggled in school, but she'd regularly attended and studied.

Because she had a learning disability, an IEP was in place, and her sister, Tanya,

tells us that teachers were supposed to closely track Tyra's progress.

But, according to Tanya's memory, that hadn't been the case.

Tyra's grades had suffered during her parents' break-up, and she'd had to repeat eighth grade at an alternative campus.

That's why she was back at Boinehae as an ninth grader at 15.

It was her new start, but with a new start came new friends.

And according to Tyra's sister, Tanya, it was a very different crowd than her little sister was used to.

Tanya was a few years older than Tyra, and spent part of 1985 away at Job Corps training, but when she wasn't town, she saw changes in her sister.

Tyra was coping with the upheaval in their home life in the way that many teenagers would.

She stayed out late. She experimented with alcohol and drugs.

She even had a scare one night on her middle sister's 16th birthday that landed her in the hospital.

Tanya told us that Tyra, who was terrified of needles, had been convinced to let someone shoot her up with something.

Tanya is still not sure what it was, and Tyra had a very, very bad reaction.

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