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On Saturday, September 21, 2002, 19-year-old car enthusiasts Alisson Alvarez and her boyfriend, Joshua Samples, went to the Atlanta Motor Speedway in Hampton, Georgia.
Accompanied by four friends, they were there to enjoy the NOPI National Car Show. In the middle of the event, Alvarez excused herself to use the restroom because she wasn’t feeling well.
“That’s the last time they saw her,” Joe Norton, a retired detective with the Henry County Police Department, said in the “Nightmare at the Racetrack” episode of The Real Murders of Atlanta, airing Saturdays at 8/7c p.m. on Oxygen.
Samples and his friends searched the track for a couple of hours and then alerted security. Alvarez, who’d handed her purse and cell phone to Samples before excusing herself, had vanished. She never returned to the hotel where they were staying.
On Sunday, September 22, Alvarez failed to show up for work. That’s when Samples called 911 to report Alvarez missing. The call was just the beginning of a case that would take a horrible turn.
Who was Alisson Alvarez?
Investigators learned that Alvarez was from Colombia. “When she was 17 years old, Alisson went to Miami to live with her uncle, just trying to live the American dream,” said her best friend, Tatiana Cubillos. “She was very adventurous.”
Alvarez and Samples, 19, met as co-workers at Wendy’s. She eventually moved in with him and his family in Duluth, Georgia, an Atlanta suburb.
“We didn’t really think of her as Joshua’s girlfriend. She was just a daughter,” said Samples’ mother, Margaret Samples.
Samples told police that he and Alvarez “were in love with each other” and that he’d never harm her, said Tom Jones, a senior reporter at WSB-TV.
Samples handed over Alvarez’s purse and phone to police. He also provided them with a recent photo of Alvarez and a detailed description of what she was wearing when she disappeared.
Detectives contacted Samples’ friends who attended the car show to corroborate his account. Because they weren’t with Samples and Alvarez when she left to use the restroom, they couldn’t back up his story.
Detectives dug deeper into Alvarez’s relationship with Samples. On the surface they seemed like an odd couple. “She’s very Catholic with this strict family,” said Cubillos. “But Josh, it’s like another world. He has the tattoos that he was more into the Gothic things, and so they were opposites.”
Police did a thorough investigation into Samples and eliminated him as a suspect.
Detectives focus on the racetrack
Two days into their official missing persons investigation, authorities began a full-scale search of the Atlanta Motor Speedway in an attempt to locate Alvarez.
They focused search efforts on the sections of the speedway that were open to the public. There was a lot of ground to cover, and helicopters aided the search.
“It was like looking for a needle in a haystack,” said Jason Bolton, who was then a detective sergeant for the Henry County Police Department.
The search of the racetrack turned up no leads, so investigators released information to the public on September 25. “Police officers went around and started putting out flyers at local businesses around the racetrack,” said Norton.
One tip reported that a woman matching Alvarez’s description was spotted at a nearby airport on the day she went missing. Further investigation showed that the woman wasn’t Alvarez.
Tip turns the missing persons case upside down
On September 25, a tipster named Brandon Dudley called Henry County 911. He said he recently spoke to someone who claimed to have killed a woman inside one of the speedway’s VIP suites, according to The Real Murders of Atlanta.
The VIP suites and nearby bleachers were closed to the public during the car show, so the initial search team didn’t investigate them. The new information sent the team racing back to the speedway.
Investigators found a sock near one VIP suite that was unlocked. Inside the room they spotted a ceiling tile that was askew. Tucked into the ceiling was clothing that matched what Alvarez was last seen wearing.
In a nearby area of the grandstand, detectives found Alvarez’s body. “She wasn’t clothed, but she had the other matching sock,” said Keith Nichols, who was then a captain with the Henry County Police Department.
Alisson Alvarez’s case becomes a homicide
In an instant, the case became a homicide. Alvarez’s devastated loved ones grappled with the terrible loss.
The initial examination of the body at the scene indicated that Alvarez was strangled. Defensive wounds suggested that she fought her attacker. Drag marks near the body indicated that she’d been killed in the VIP suite and moved to the grandstands.
“They did a luminol test, and it gave an indication that there was some blood in various spots in the suite,” said Tommy Floyd, now retired as Henry County District Attorney, Flint Judicial Circuit.
Brothers Toby and Joshua Dearing named by tipster
Investigators interviewed the tipster, Dudley, who told them that he was hanging out at a Waffle House with Toby and Josh Dearing, two brothers. “Then Josh made the comment that Toby killed a girl at the racetrack,” Norton said.
When they tried to recruit Dudley to help clean up the crime scene at the racetrack, he refused. Dudley wasn’t sure if the siblings were serious about the slaying, according to The Real Murders of Atlanta. But when he saw a missing person poster, he called the tip line.
Detectives learned that Toby Dearing had just been released from prison and worked at a food concession at the speedway.
“We jumped into action,” said Jim Simmons, who at the time was an assistant chief of the Henry County Police Department.
Toby was picked up and questioned at police headquarters. He told them he was working at the speedway and saw Alvarez looking disoriented as she was searching for a bathroom.
He said he thought she was a prostitute. “Police immediately called B.S. on this,” Jones said.
“He went into the story that he was taking her up to the suite for a sexual encounter, and that he couldn’t perform, and he just lost it,” said Nichols. “He just went into a blackout mode and killed her.”
Toby Dearing admits to strangling Alisson Alvarez
Toby then admitted to strangling Alvarez before going back and moving her body and cleaning up the scene with his brother.
Detectives asked Toby why he committed the brutal act, and he claimed that while he was behind bars, his wife had an affair. “All this was about revenge for what his wife did to him while he was incarcerated,” said Nichols.
The medical examiner’s report confirmed that Alvarez had been strangled. Defensive wounds confirmed that she had fought against her attacker. “The M.E. was unable to find any evidence of a sexual assault,” said Bolton.
Toby and Joshua Dearing charged and sentenced
Toby, then 24, was arrested for murder. Joshua, then 20, was charged with concealing the death.
In 2004, Toby took a plea deal and was sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole. Joshua pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence and helping his brother clean up the crime scene. He received five years of probation.
To learn more about the case, watch the “Nightmare at the Racetrack” episode of The Real Murders of Atlanta. The show airs new episodes on Saturdays at 8/7c p.m. on Oxygen.
