Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
The case of Lori Paige is one of the most disturbing and heartbreaking true crime stories to come out of Florida. In June 2023, the 12-year-old from Tallahassee went missing, sparking a massive search that lasted nearly two years. In 2025, her remains were tragically discovered in the woods of Thomas County, Georgia, leading investigators to uncover shocking truths about what really happened.
It was April of 2025,when investigators returned to a remote plantation in Thomas County ,Georgia.
The ground had recently been cleared by a prescribed burn, brush, and debris reduced to ash,the land landscape stripped bare in a way what had been hidden for nearly two years.
Among the blackened soil and tangled roots ,detectives discovered human remains,4 days later , tests confirmed what many in Tallahassee had feared and prayed against since June 0f 2023.
The remains belonged to 12 year old Lorie Paige ,a middle a middle schooler who had vanished without a trace.
Tallahassee Police Chief Lawrence Revell stood before the community and reminded them of the promise he had made at the beginning.
” i told you 2 years we would nevre give up , i told you two years ago we would find Lorie and we would bring herhome, i told you two years agowe would find who did this, and we would arrest them and bring them to justice”
The words carried weight because because the man accused of taken Lorie’s life was not a stranger , not a neighbor , not an outsider…
…It was her own father, Andrew Wiley,the same man who had called the police on June 3rd,2023 to report his daughter missing.
But why would a father harm his child?what really happened in the days between June 1st and June 3rd,when Lorie was last seen alive and when Andrew first dialed 911? and how did nearly two years of searching questioning ,and waiting finally lead back to him?
What unfolded next would not only shatter that promise of stability ,but also reveal the depth of human wickedness and how sometimes the greatest danger does not come from strangers in the shadows, but from those closest to our hearts.
Lorie Annalise Paige was born on April 14th, 2011 to 22 year old Andrew Wylie and and 17 year old Maranda White (also referred to as Miranda Paige in some reports)
From the beginning, her life carried the weight of instability,her grandmother,Brooklyn paige,later described her as a bright child who seemed unusually self – sufficient for her age,she could read by the time she was four, and she never caused trouble in the home.
She was quiet and reserved , often shy around adults, but with friends,she became alive, especially when talking about the things she loved Roblox,YouTube videos and the little worlds she created for herself when she needed an escape.
But Brooklyn also described how Lorie’s early years were shadowed by her mother’s indifference,Miranda had wanted to end the pregnancy late and when she couldn’t, she moved on as though motherhood had been forced upon her.
She left Lorie alone for long stretches of times , sometimes sleeping through the day and leaving food on low shelves so her daughter could fend for herself, and when Brooklyn moved to Tampa to be closer she was stunned to see how little supervisopn Miranda provided .
Friends and relatives noticed the same thing,there was never really a bond between Miranda and her daughter,so it was often often others who stepped in to care for Lorie.
Her godmother ,Daisy Garcia, spent long hours with her, and Broklyn shouldered much of the responsibility.
At one point,child protective services even removed Lorie from Miranda’s home and placed her with her great- grandfather.
That arrangement was temporary, and she was later returned to Miranda, but the pattern of instability continued.
Lorie spent much of her childhood in Nashville , Tennessee, where Miranda relocated frequently in search of work.
Each move meant meant a new school , a new adjustement, and the loss of any sense of permanence.
And in Nashville, Lorie’s frustration sometimes boiled over.
Records from the Youth services and Runaway Bureau ,showed that she ran away at least once after a fight with her mother.
But she returned the same day.
Neigbors later recalled explosive arguments between Miranda and Lorie with Miranda’s partner, Latana wihte, admitting that she often she tried to stay out of the screaming matches that erupted in the home.
Through it all , Lorie was described as bright , but she was also carrying resentment,she felt abandoned by her mother and relatives worried she was capable of harming herself.
Yet,she still had ties to friends and extended family in Nashville,and in her own way, she tried to hold on to the pieces of stability she did have.
By 2021, Andrew had reestablished contact with his daughter, custody became split, but because he lived in Tallahassee,Florda,their time together was limited to summer visits.
That changed the following year when Miranda,overwhelmed by her financial situation and constant moving,told Lorie she would not be picking her up at the end of the summer .
She said she could no longer afford rent and didn’t have a stable place for Lorie to live, and she believed the constant relocations were harming her daughter’s educations,so Lorie stayed in Florida with her father and Miranda signed over custody to Andrew before the 2022 to 2023 school year.
For lorie , the move was painful , she may not have had close relationship with her mother ,but she had friends, routines ,and familiar surroundings in Nashville,leaving that behind for Tallahassee was something she never truly accepted, Andrew enrolled her at Griffing middle school and told her she would make new friends,but Lorie remained shy and withdrawn.
Teachers noticed she avoided extracurricular activites and classmates later said it was difficult to stay in touch with her after school .
she didn’t use social media, she wasn’t allowed to keep aphone and she seemed to retreat into herself.
so by the time she began her new life in Tallahassee,Lorie was carrying more than just the ordinary struggles of adolescence, she carried years of neglect ,disrupted schooling,frequent moves, and a deep reluctance to start over again.
And when her father promised her stability, the reality was that Lorie entered this next chapter already vulnerable,already isolated, and already unsure of where she truly belonged.
At Griffin Middle School in Tallahassee,the signs that Lorie was struggling became increasingly difficult to ignore.
She had entered a new environment where she hardly knew anyone, and while her teachers described her as shy and withdrawn, they also began noticing behaviors that raised concern,Nathan George , one of her teachers,remembered how she slipped him a note asking if he liked her,it was a small act,but it was out of place for a 12 year old who had always kept to herself and it immediately suggested that Lorie was searching for affirmation in ways that were not typical for her age.
and it wasn’t just the note, she would sometimes break down without warning ,crying in the middle of class,unable to explain what had triggered the reaction.
On other days,her emotions turned into the opposite direction, she flew into fits of anger, throwing objects across the room, leaving her teachers startled and unsure how to calm her down,this outbursts were not simply about misbehavior,they hinted something deeper, something troubling that was pressing on Lorie beneath the surface.
So the school counselor, Lisa Britt, was brought in, she conducted an interview With Lorie, asking her questions about her home life, her feelings, and her sense of self.
She also administered a peresonality assessment, the results results pointed toward depression and feelings of inadequacy,Lorie seemed to believe she wasn’t good enough, that she lacked worth , and the counselor recognized these was not fleeting adolescent moods, but signs of something sustained and seriou.
However, what Lorie told her friends may have revealed even more.
In conversations between classes, she confided that life at home with her father had grown harsh and at times violent, she said she was being mistreated and that discipline often came in the form of a belt.
One classmate recalled Lorie mentioning that her father had approached her at the bus stop carrying a belt in his hand, a detail that left her peers unsettled even if they hadn’t seen the full incident themselves.
These disclosures added weight to the emotional volatility her teachers were observing, then came May of 2023 when the tension in Lorie’s home life seemed to spill over completely.
After a heated fight with Andrew, she ran away,she didn’t disappeared for long,she first went to a friends house, stayed there briefly, and then turned up at school later that same day,but the event left a mark, it confirmed what teachers already suspected.
Lorie was not just battling inner turmoil,she was also desperate to escape from her immediate enviroment, and her strained relationship with her parents only made matters worse.
While she was now living full -time with Andrew, she still tried to keep a line open to her mother , Miranda, but Andrew blocked her calls and limited their communication t emails sent through a school computer.
For a girl already struggling with feelings of abandonment and depression, this restriction deepened her isolation, so , although Miranda and Andrew constantly accused each other of being the irresponsible parent, the one thing that remained clear was that Lorie was caught between them,with neither side providing the consistent care she desperately needed.
And as the school year edged towards its end, the red flags surrounding Lorie were no longersubtle,they were bright,unmistakable signals of a child in crisis,signals that would soon intersect with events far more alarming than anyone at Griffin Middle School could have Imagined.
So , on the morning of June 3rd ,2003, The Tallahassee Police departement received a 911 call from Andrew ,his woice was steady ,but carried the urgency of a parent reporting a child missing.
Officer Caleb Bab was dispatched to the address 1229 continental , Andrew explained what he said happened the night before.
According to Andrew,he had left home for work at around 11p.m on June 2nd when he returned the next morning, he said his daughter was gone.
Lorie’s backpack was missing and he believed she had slipped out sometime during the night while he was away, he told the officer that when he had last seen her,she was sitting on the couch watching television and he insisted they had spent most of the day together before he left for his shift.
But Andrew didn’t stop there, he reminded police that Lorie had already tried to run away once in May after a heated fight between the two of them .
He also mentioned what he called a distressing meeting she recently had her mother, Miranda white, claiming that the conversation had upset Lorie enough to alter her behavior, he painted a picture of a troubled child, easily rattled and capable of slipping away on her own.
So, investigators began Treating Lorie’s disapearance as a potential runaway case.
The first hours were critical , and officers canvased the neighborhood,checked with nearby schools and spoke to her classmates.
Flyers were circulated almost immediately and the community was asked to keep their eyes open for the 12 year old girl,and the community did respond.
Pastor Rudy Ferguson of the New Birth Tabernacle of Praise, a local leader who didn’t know Lorie personally ,fellt compelled to step in.
He forward Lorie’s missig person bulletin to the frontline Pastor’s Action Council,a network of more than two dozen church leaders in the area.
As days stretched to weeksed into weeks,speculations spread,and with it came rumors,students whispered to each other that Lorie might have been killed and that her body could found near the airport.
Investigators chased every lead,but none of this stories held up , Lorie remain missing, and the unease only deepened, then, in August of 2023, Miranda white posted something on Facebook,that drew immediate attention.
The message was short and cryptic,written beneath a broken heart emoji.
” my baby is gone”
How ever, within hours, she deleted it, but not before investigators noticed, when questioned, Miranda explained that she hadn’t meant to confirm her daughter’s death,instead, she said it was her way of expressing the feeling that Lorie was no longer with her and that deep down she believed her daughter might already be gone.
Through the summer of 2023, Police Departement poured its energy into the case ,detectives followed hundreds of leads,many of them stretching across state lines, and they coordinated with agentcies from Georgia to Tennesssee.
But none of those leads brought Lorie home.
Each search ended without results, and the more time passed ,the more investigators began to notice troubling details closer to home .
Hovever , on of the first red flags came from Andrew himself, detectives noted that his demeanor seemed unsually flat ,even when confronted with the possibility that his daughter might no longer be alive.
For a parent whose child had been missing for weeks,his lack of visible concern felt off, he appeared calm , detached and almost unmoved,which struck officers as inconsistent with the gravity of the situation.
But suspicion wasn’t directed at Andrew alone, Lorie’s mother , Miranda was also scrutinized ,investigators requested a standard cheek swab for DNA comparison,but Miranda refused not once,not twice, but three separate times before finally complying.
Her reluctance drew attention ,but when her phone records were analyzed they confirmed she had been in the Nashville area at the time Lorie disappeared.
those records effectively cleared her as a suspect, even if her earlier hesitation left investigators frustrated.
So attention returned to Andrew and with it came the discovery of inconsistencies in his own timeline.
In the days leading up to Lorie’s disappearance, Andrew had called in sick to work twice,once on May 27th and again on May 29th.
His explanation for those absences was vague and when investigators pressed him for details about what he had done with that time, his answers shifted,it became harder for detectives to trust the consistency of his account.
Then came another red flag, Andrew’s unexplained trip to Jacksonville.
Geoloccation data placed him in the area around the time Lorie went missing which contradicted the picture he had painted of an uneventful routin.
When asked why he had traveled there , Andrew gave an explanation that immediately raised eyebrows,he said he had driven a friend , someone named Tim Brown to the airport.
But when investigators tried to follow up,they ran into a wall ,they couldn’t locate anyone by that name connected to Andrew.
His own relatives ,including his brother Antoine,said thay had never heard of a Tim Brown.
Later,police did identify an acquaintance named Tim ,but he confirmed that he had never been dropped off at Jacksonville international airport.
The story simply didn’t hold up, and it left Andrew looking even less credible as detectives pressed harder ,they also drewd in family members for support.
At one point they asked Lorie’s grandmother, Brooklyn Paige, to call Andrew while investigators listened in, the hope was that a candid conversation might reveal something new about Lorie’s disappearance ,but instead of focusing on his missing daughter, Andrew steered the conversation back toward himself.
Brooklyn tried to talk about Lorie,about decorating her room for her upcoming birthday,about how deeply everyone missed her but Andrew deflected, he spoke instead about his frustrations,his anxiety, and how upset he was at being treated as a suspect.
To the investigators listening in,it felt like another moment where his priorities were not where they should have been, the investigation was no longer just about a missing girl,it was becoming piece by piece an inquiry into wheter her father had been telling the truth at all.
By early 2024,investigators knew that the only way forward was to go deeper into Andrew Wiley’s digital footprint, so on February 2nd, detectives executed a search warrant at his residence and seized his phone along with several electronic devices.
What they found inside those devices began to unravel the story Andrew had been repeating for months, a forensic sweep uncovered distrubing internet searches that dated back to the very days surrounding Lorie’s disappearance.
He had typed in phrases like” bodies of water ,Alabama,Georgia, and Appalachiccola National Forest dead body.”
He even searched ,” where do police look for missing kids?”.
each query added weight to the suspicion that Andrew wasn’t a desparate father trying to find his daughter,but a man planning how to conceal what he already done.
And the phone wasn’t only source of concern,investigators turned to Andrew dodge charger , and the vehicle told its own story.
During a forensic search ,officers found a pistol ad ammunition tucked inside but what truly caught their attention was a bottle of cleaning spray,its labe specifically advertised its ability to remove blood and in a case involving a missing child, that detail carried chilling implications.
Even stranger, the factoryissued floor mats that should have been inside the vehicle were missing altogether.
so the Florida Departement Law Enforcement crime lab was brought in and samples from the chargers carpets were sent for testing.
The result confirmed what detectives feared , Lorie’s Paige’s blood was embedded in the fibers, It was no longer just suspicion or circumstantial evidence,it was physical proof that something violent had happened inside her father’s car.
Meanwhile , techicians worked to recover data from Andrew’s other devices, he had attempted to erase his digital trail by factory resetting old phones and laptops, but experts were able to restore fragments of what he had tried to conceal, among the recovered information ,were more searches about remote wooded areas in Alabama and Georgia.
Reinforcing the idea that Andrew had been scouting places to abandon his daughter’s remains,and then came the financial evidence,investigators traced Andrew’s credit card purchases in the days before Lorie disappeared, and one of those transactions raised new alarms.
Records showed that he had purchased contraceptives, specifically plan B.
this fueled suspicions that his abuse of Lorie might have been sexual in nature and that he had been preparing for the consequences of what he had done.
spring 2024
Detectives were holding a collection of evidence that shifted the case from speculation to substance,however, the story wasn’t finished ,each new discovery didn’t just answer questions ,it raised new ones.
If Andrew had gone so far to erase his tracks,what exactly had happened to Lorie in those final days of May and early June 2023?
And where had he taken her after she vansihed from her home?
Those questions would push investigators back into the fields and woods of South Georgia, where the most important breakthrough was still waiting to be found,based on digital evidence recovered from Andrew’s devices detectives turned their attention to South Georgia.
In particular,one location stood out, a remote , brushcovered stretch of land in Thomas County , known as a locally as a plantation , it was a rugged terrain, thick with undergrowth, and the kind of place someone might choose if they wanted something hidden and left undisturbed.
So, in early 2024, search teams moved in,they brought dogs, forensic experts, and community volunteers, they combed through,the plantation in multiple sweeps, guied by location data from Andrew’s phone, which had pinged in the area around the time Lorie disappeared .
But despite of work,nothing surfaced, the ground was too dense ,the brush too heavy, and the evidence,if it was there, stayed buried.
Then, more than a year later , the land itself provided the break that investigators needed.
On April 5th , 2025, a prescribed burn was carried out on the property.
Flames cleared away the thick , tangled brush that had hidden the ground for so long, and when detectives returned to the site, they finally saw what had been there all along.
Scattered in the ash and soil were skeletal remains, the discovery halted everything,for nearly 2 years, Lorie Paige had been listed as missing, her story trapped in uncertainty.
But now, with the remains found in the same area Andrew’s phone had tracked to, the search had given way to a recovery, the remains were sent to Florida Departement of Law enforcement for processing.
And on April 11th,2025, the results came back.
The DNA confirmed what investigators had both expected and dreaded ,the bones belonged to 12 year old Lorie paige,so after 22 months of searching, Lorie’s disappearance was no longer a mystery.
She had not run away , she had not vanished into the night on her own, her body had been abandoned in a Georgia field , left to weather time and nature until the fire cleared the brush away.
And with that confirmation,the investigation turned from searching for a child to holding her father accountable for what had been done to her.
When the investigators pieced the physical evidence, the digital trail, and Andrew Wiley’s behavior, the question of why became unavoidable.
Prosectuors believed the answer was darker than anyone had anticipated.
Court records suggested that Lorie had been subjected to abuse and not just physical discipline,investigators uncovered purchases and searches that pointed toward SA and possible even a pregnancy.
It was a possibility that explained why Andrew might have turned against his daughter in those final days.
So, when state attorney Jack Campbell addressed the case publicly, he did not shy away from the disturbing implications.
He said plainly,” we had evidence of the fact that he was seeking out what’s called Plan B,which is an abortion drug.”
The timing of that purchase aligned closely with Lorie’s disappearance, and it reinforced the belief that Andrwe had been covering up more than just a crime of anger.
Then there was the matter of his medical history, around the time Lorie vanished, Andrew sought treatment for a sexually transmitted disease,but when doctors attempted to perform a full examination, he refused.
Prosecutors later argued that this refusal was another attempt to avoid leaving behind evidence because treatment records might have revealed more than just his own illness.
So, the theory prosecutors built was chilling in its simplicity,they believed Andrew killed Lorie on June 1st,2023 in a moment driven by both fear and self- preservation.
They believed he disposed of her body the very next day in the Thomas County Plantation field and then on June 3rd he picked up the phone and reported her missing,presenting himself as the concerned father.
By the spring of 2025, with Lorie’s remains identified and the trail of evidence secured , Andrew wiley was formally charged.
The count was second degree murder , a charge that acknowledge the killing was intentional but not premeditated in the legal sense.
And while the charge would never bring Lorie back,it marked the point when the story of her disappearance officially became the story of her murder.
On April 11th,2025, nearly 2 years after Lorie Paige was first reported missing, Andrew Wiley was arrested.
Detectives who had worked the case from the beginning finally placed him in custody, and the community that had been living in limbo now saw the first clear sign that justice might be on the horizon.
Then less than 24 hours later , he apeared before judge Anthony Miller.
The courtroom was quiet as the charges were read , but the judge wasted no time making his position clear-bond was denied and Wiley was ordered to remain in custody while awating trial.
Interrogation of “SuperDad” Andrew Wiley at his Georgia Home .
Judge Miller also granted the prosecution’s request to bar him from contacting several members of Lorie’s family , citing the potential for intimidation and conflict.
But even within that family ,the case was already causing deep divisions, while prosecutors laid out what they believed was overwhelming evidence, Wiley’s brother, Antoine took a different stance.
He launched a GoFundMe campaign,claiming Andrew was innocent and and that the police had targeted the wrong man,The fundraiser sought more than $ 100,000 to pay for a defense, though the platform eventually removed it because of its policies against funding violent crime defenses.
Still , the effort underscored how fractured the family had become.
Prosecutors ,however,remained confident, They had Lorie’s blood and Andrew’s car- carpet , internet searches that matched the disposal site and phone records that traced his movements into Thomas County on the exact days Lorie disappeared.
And beyond the forensic evidence, they had a motive that prosecutors argued made sense of the entire timeline.
The fear of exposure after sexual abstar C, the possibility of pregnancy, and the panic that followed.
However,on June 19th,2025, just weeks after his arrest, Andrew Wiley’s case took a sudden and irreversible turn,while being held in the Lyon County detention facility ,he collapsed without warning.
Staff rushed him to the medical unit and for several minutes, officers and medical personnel attempted life -saving measures.
Then , on June 20 th ,he was pronounced dead.
The cause , according to the coroner, was pulmonary embolism , a blood clot that had traveled to his lungs,officials described it as a natural death,not the result of foul play or violence.
However , Andrew’s sidden passing meant that the criminal process , which had taken nearly 2 years to build , would never reach its conclusion,there would be no trial, no corss- examination,no chance for a jury to weigh the mountain of digital evidence,forensic results,and prosecutorial arguments.
And because the case ended without conviction, the court could not formally declare him guitly ,so ,the file was closed and the pursuit of justice that had driven the investigators, prosecutors, and Lorie’s community was cut short.
For many , it felt like the final chapter had been written too soon, leaving behind more questions than answer and denying Lorie’s family the closure of a courtroom verdict.
In the weeks after Andrew Wiley’s death, Tallahassee turned its focus back to Lorie paige, candlelights vigils were held in her honor ,and one gathering at the amphitheater stood out .
Community members were given candles and small bottles of bubbles.
And as Michael Jackson’s human nature played softly in the background , people lit their candles and released bubbles into the night sky.
It was a simple gesture,but it carried weight, a way to remember a girl who had spent her short lfie searching for stability and love.
So the story of Lorie Paige closed not with justice in a courtroom but with candles, bubbles, and reflections.
She was a bright , shy , self -sufficient girl who had been failed by the people around her, she deserved safety and stability,instead her life ended in neglect, betrayal, and unanswered questions.