Fort Worth
A 34-year-old Fort Worth woman was sentenced on Tuesday to six years of probation for helping to cover up a double murder her husband had committed after a Halloween party in 2016.
In an open plea, 34-year-old Tiffany Heath pleaded guilty on Tuesday to tampering with physical evidence in the October 2016 shooting deaths of two men in front of their Fort Worth homes.
Heath was sentenced to 72 months for cleaning up blood in the gun safe and hiding a rifle magazine with green bullets under a bed in their bedroom. She was sentenced to deferred adjudication, which means if she successfully completes the terms of her probation, there will be no finding of guilt, the case will be dismissed and she will not have a conviction on her record, according to court officials.
This took place after her husband, Cary Heath, shot their neighbors, Daniel Haros and Phillip Evans Garcia multiple times with an “assault rifle,” then beating both with its butt. in front their homes on Buffalo Springs Drive in south Fort Worth.
It took a Tarrant County jury less than 25 minutes in September 2019 to find Cary Heath, a former middle school teacher, guilty of capital murder in the deaths of his neighbors.
Cary Heath, who was a science teacher at a Cedar Hill middle school, received an automatic sentence of life in prison without parole.
Tiffany Heath previously told Fort Worth homicide Detective Kyle Sullivan that her husband had admitted to her the morning after the double slaying that he was responsible for the two slayings, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
She also told Sullivan that her husband had asked her to clean the blood in the gun safe and hide a rifle magazine with green bullets under the bed in the master bedroom, states the warrant, written by homicide Detective E.C. Pate.
“Tiffany Heath admitted to Detective Sullivan that she cleaned the gun safe and that she hid a rifle magazine under the bed in the master bedroom,” Pate wrote.
Pate obtained a search warrant for the Heaths’ home in the 900 block of Buffalo Springs Drive in south Fort Worth.
In their search, police found evidence that an effort had been made to clean up blood in the gun safe, as well as a rifle magazine concealed under the bed in the master bedroom, the affidavit states.
Pate wrote that he “believes that Tiffany Heath knew that an investigation was being conducted in regards to the murders that Cary Heath committed” and that she “intentionally attempted to destroy and conceal evidence of said murders.”
Tarrant County records show the couple had been married since July 2012.
Just days after the fatal shooting in 2016, Tiffany Heath started a GoFundMe page labeled “Mom needs help raising boys alone.” On the page, she described herself as a mother of three who is struggling financially.
“My family and I have recently suffered from a very unfortunate event, which has left us in a time of need,” she wrote. “I have been raising my three boys on my own, and take care of everything financially. I am doing the best I can but I am struggling to keep up. Every little bit is extremely appreciated in our time of need.”
Cary Heath was arrested a day after the shootings in the parking lot of Permenter Middle School — where he taught science to eighth-graders — in Cedar Hill.
The killings immediately followed a “friendly and cordial” conversation at a neighbor’s Halloween party, according to the warrant obtained by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 2016, and immediately preceded the suspect saying he would never see his 1-year-old baby again.
Heath and his wife were at a small Halloween gathering at their next-door neighbor’s home in the 800 block of Buffalo Springs Drive. Everyone was standing in the front yard early on the morning of Oct. 23, 2016, when four neighbors came to visit for less than five minutes before walking back home, according to the warrant.
A neighbor said the conversation was friendly and cordial, but a few minutes later, after Heath’s wife and neighbor went into the neighbor’s house, multiple gunshots were heard.
A couple of minutes after that, Heath ran into a neighbor’s house, handed someone his 1-year-old baby and said: “This is the last time I will see the baby. I killed two people,” before running out, the warrant said.
This story was originally published November 09, 2021 3:59 PM.
