She Won Six Hundred Dollars. Then Someone Shot Her.: The Murder of Furbia Faye Tinsley

A 51-year-old Army veteran won big at bingo on a Friday night, deposited her winnings at the bank, and was found shot twice in the head inside her own car before sunrise. The engine was still running. Her seatbelt was still on. Her purse was gone, but nothing inside the car had been touched. Homicide investigators have named no one in over a decade — but one man who was in that car walked away without calling 911.

In this episode, we explore a phone call Faye made before 5 a.m. that brought her to a street she had no reason to visit, a convenience store surveillance clip showing a man without shoes who told a clerk something so significant that detectives still refuse to repeat it, and a gun linked to multiple Charlottesville shootings that has never been found. Was Faye driven to that block by someone she trusted, or did she go there to confront the truth about her own relationship? The forensic science and the witness accounts point in two directions that cannot both be right.

Case Details

Victim: Furbia Faye Tinsley, 51, U.S. Army veteran living on disability benefits.

Date: July 14, 2012.

Location: 800 block of Prospect Avenue, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA.

Case Status: The murder of Furbia Faye Tinsley remains officially unsolved. No charges have ever been filed. As of 2023, the case is technically active but has seen no public movement in years.

Episode Key Points

- Two spent handgun casings were found inside Faye's locked car with all windows rolled up, yet no one could definitively establish where the shooter was sitting.

- A man who was present in the car when Faye was shot fled on foot, appeared on surveillance without shoes minutes later, and left Charlottesville that same morning without calling police.

- The gun used to kill Faye was ballistically linked to multiple other Charlottesville shootings, suggesting it was passed between individuals before and after the murder.

- Detectives tried repeatedly to bring charges but prosecutors declined, citing a mystery third-party shooter described by the surviving witness — a man no one has ever identified.

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