Background: Apartment surveillance footage shows victim Fasil Teklemariam (green arrow) entering his Washington, D.C., apartment in 2024 with murder suspect Audrey Miller. Inset top left: Tiffany Taylor Gray. Inset top right: Audrey Miller. Bottom inset: Foot impressions on the floor in Teklemariam’s home appear after investigators apply Amido Black ink. All photos courtesy Metropolitan Police Department.
Police have arrested and now charged two women, Tiffany Taylor Gray and Audrey Miller, for the April murder of Fasil Teklemariam, a 53-year-old man from Washington, D.C., who was hit over the head, stabbed repeatedly and then had his thumb cut off and allegedly used by his killers to access his accounts and spend his money on Uber ride-shares, marijuana and alcohol.
Gray, 22, a resident of Prince George’s County, Maryland, was arrested on July 1 and charged with first-degree murder and armed felony murder. She is currently being detained in Maryland and is expected to be extradited to Washington, D.C., to face the charges.
Publicly available court records show Miller, 19, was arrested on June 21 for first-degree murder and armed felony murder as well. Though a preliminary hearing was scheduled for Miller on Tuesday, court records show it was vacated and rescheduled for July 30. She is being detained in Washington, D.C.
In an affidavit reviewed by Law&Crime, one witness who claimed to have overheard Gray describing involvement in Teklemariam’s murder said the victim was Gray’s “sugar daddy” but police have not been able to verify this claim.
Prosecutors allege Teklemariam was killed on April 1 though his body was not found inside of his bedroom until April 5.
A police affidavit notes that his family tried calling him for several days and when they could not reach him, they contacted police. The victim’s phone had repeatedly went to voicemail. Police said they spoke to one of Teklemariam’s friends who informed them that the last time he had seen Teklemariam enter the apartment building was on April 1.
Other witnesses later helped police identify Miller and Gray as familiar faces in the apartment building as well.
Police said when they found Teklemariam he had been hit on his head and stabbed multiple times. His right thumb was also gone. His thumb was never found. There was also evidence that the apartment had been scrubbed down in an attempt to remove any hint of the murder but officers said those efforts weren’t fruitful: impressions of bloody footprints and other stains were uncovered at the scene once a special ink was applied to Teklemariam’s floor.
But thanks to a litany of security cameras in his building and the surrounding neighborhood, investigators said they were able to piece Teklemariam’s murder together. An affidavit also shows that authorities identified five total suspects including Gray and Miller. The other three suspects are Black males and only one has been positively identified to police as of Tuesday, a 34-year-old man who Gray has allegedly described to others as her “play brother,” records show.
Typically, the term is used to describe someone who is not biologically related but familiar.
No charges have been filed against the other suspects at this time.
Footage from Teklemariam’s apartment on Peabody Street in Washington, D.C., showed that on April 1, he met Miller outside and brought her into the home willingly. Similarly, other security footage from that same evening appears to show Gray and her “play brother” parked outside of Teklemariam’s building before finally entering it.
It was an unwitting resident who let them in, police said.
Police say other footage clearly shows the women and the other suspects coming in out of Teklemariam’s apartment after the period in which investigators believe he was murdered. They are frequently seen “carrying items” to a car they had parked just near the apartment, police said.
From April 1 to roughly April 5, Gray and two of the unidentified males went back into the apartment and accessed it by using Teklemariam’s key fob. Police say as they hauled out their loot, other evidence suggested they may have been driving his Toyota RAV4 as well.
Police said the suspects finally started to show up at Teklemariam’ building with face masks or face coverings two days after the murder.
An affidavit says that it was witnesses who helped identify not just the women to detectives but even the bags they so brazenly carried out of the dead man’s apartment.
Three weeks after Teklemariam was killed, a witness came forward to tell police that they could identify the women and knew that they had “cut the decedent’s finger off.”
This person told police that Gray went by an alias of “Taylor Greene” and that Teklemariam was her “sugar daddy.”
The witness claimed to have “overheard” something about Teklemariam being stabbed and further, that they overheard Gray describe police reports about the murder to her “play brother” and express shock that authorities found out so quickly.
The same witness told police Gray was seen using Teklemariam’s thumb to obtain money from his accounts and confirmed she used the funds to buy Uber rides as well as “weed, and alcohol.”
The case broke open for investigators when they also learned that Teklemariam had filed a police complaint just a year ago alleging Gray had used his cellphone to steal $1,800 through one of his cash apps.
Attorneys for the parties did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
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