In the summer of 2007, a visit home to Brockton, Massachusetts, turned fatal for 27-year-old mother of two Carlita T.T. Chaney. On August 16, 2007, while staying at her children’s paternal grandparents’ home during a visit, Chaney was shot once in the head and killed as she lay on a couch. The shooter was her ex-boyfriend and the children’s father, Amaral Montrond.

Their relationship had ended in 2002 and remained troubled. Chaney had moved to South Carolina and in 2006 provided information that led to Montrond’s arrest in connection with a Brockton shooting; ten months later Montrond was out on bail. The night before the killing, Chaney told her sister by phone that Montrond had called her a snitch; less than an hour after that conversation Montrond shot her, killing her instantly.

Following an eight-day trial in November 2009, a jury found Amaral Montrond guilty of first-degree murder and related firearms offenses; he received a mandatory life sentence without parole. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court later affirmed the conviction. Did anyone in Brockton at the time notice tensions between Chaney and Montrond or see them together during that visit?