On the evening of March 27, 2023, a fire alarm brought first responders to a Rodeway Inn on Route 130 in Gloucester City, New Jersey. Inside one motel room they found the bodies of Tabitha Price, 56, of Gulf Shores, Alabama, and her boyfriend, 52-year-old Steven Smith of Atco, New Jersey. Both had been fatally shot.

Firefighters had been extinguishing a blaze intentionally set in a different room. Detectives quickly identified a person of interest as 53-year-old Vaughn Perkins of Philadelphia and charged him with second-degree aggravated arson for setting the fire. Perkins was later connected to a separate shooting in Philadelphia on March 30, in which two men were struck and one was critically injured, and he was sought by police.

Officers in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania located Perkins the same day; after a brief pursuit and a standoff in which he was reported to have had a rifle, officers shot and killed him when he did not follow commands. As of April 2023 the homicide investigation into Price and Smith remained open and no homicide charges had been filed before Perkins died. Did anyone know Tabitha or have information about her movements before March 27, 2023?