This episode is part one in a two-part series. It discusses crime scenes, homicide, and violence.

Listener discretion is advised.

This is the fall line.

In Austin, Texas, there's a two-story mall. One of a dozen or more like it in a city that size.

You're likely familiar with the type, a brick and concrete structure made up of arches and breezeways.

With low ceiling shops stacked on top of each other, the tenants, the mix of national franchises and small business locals.

Every city has those malls. Maybe your dentist was there, or your nail salon, or your after-school reading program, or local realtor, or your favorite take-out restaurant, or the best place to find back to school shoes.

In Austin, one such shopping center, the Galleria Oaks, sits on North Highway 183 near Research Boulevard and just south of Anderson Mill Road.

Back in 2014, there was a tenant on the second floor.

Grace Language and Cultural Institute offered Chinese language classes in both reading and writing for children and adults, as well as tutoring.

The business also had a fine arts branch with painting and calligraphy instruction for all ages.

Its owner, 47-year-old Xiaojiao Grace Chin, was the language instructor.

Grace worked alongside her husband, Robert Lloyd, who had charge of the painting and calligraphy courses.

Grace also had a young adult son, Jackie, who in 2014 was away at college in California, where he was majoring in art.

Grace missed him, terribly, but she was proud of what he was accomplishing, and she'd just been to visit him at school, which had been good for them both.

Jackie would later tell the Austin American statesman that Grace had spent the entire California trip, planning new classes for the Grace Language and Cultural Institute.

He told reporters, she was that kind of person. That, when she rests, she's still working.

Grace's business was still fairly new. The school had only been open for about a year, but Grace Chin had already been teaching in the Austin area, and for some time.

According to the Austin American statesman, Grace spent some time instructing at, quote, other Chinese schools across Central Texas, before opening her own.

This was in addition to her extensive professional experience back in China, where she'd worked as a college instructor, translator, and a teacher.

Her best friend in Austin, Dan Danjo, would later describe education as Grace's passion.

Quote, Grace studied Japanese language in majored in education during college, but she really loved to teach.

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