In a tragic turn of events, a Missouri man’s 911 call about his girlfriend’s death at a local motel has led authorities to open a homicide investigation due to unsettling new evidence.

Nicholas Ayres, aged 35, is facing charges of second-degree felony murder and first-degree domestic assault following the death of 37-year-old Destiny Dunn. This information comes from records maintained by the Columbia Police and the Boone County Jail.

The case unfolded at approximately 3:22 p.m. on August 12, when Ayres made an emergency call reporting that Dunn was unresponsive yet displayed faint signs of life and appeared discolored. This account was detailed in a probable cause statement analyzed by News Media.

Ayres explained to the dispatcher that the couple had engaged in a dispute while in the shower, which purportedly resulted in Dunn’s fall after he exited, as mentioned in the court documentation.

But as the dispatcher pressed him about Dunn’s condition, Ayres allegedly acknowledged they had been fighting and that she was bruised.

“It looks like I f—ing beat her up and I promise to God I didn’t do it,” Ayres allegedly told the dispatcher, according to the PCS. The dispatcher then instructed him on performing chest compressions.

Officers arrived about a minute later and found Dunn dead, according to the affidavit. Investigators described bruising across her body, including severe bruising to her neck and face, as well as swollen and discolored eyelids.

Police quickly began piecing together what allegedly happened inside the motel room. Neighbors who shared a wall told investigators they had heard what sounded like a physical altercation around 11 a.m. that morning, according to the court filing.

Ayres was taken into custody. During a post-Miranda interview, he allegedly admitted having physical altercations with Dunn on Aug. 11 and Aug. 12, but characterized them as accidental and told investigators he “does not beat women,” the affidavit alleges.

Then investigators searched the motel room.

Police said they found Ayres’ cellphone, and its contents allegedly provided a disturbing timeline stretching from the days before Dunn’s death into her final hours.

One video recorded Aug. 10 showed Dunn without bruising on her face, according to the affidavit. Another recording from later that night allegedly showed Ayres repeatedly assaulting her for more than a minute.

In that video, investigators allege Ayres could be heard telling Dunn to “clean up her mess” as sounds of slapping and punching were captured. Near the end, police said Ayres appeared to grab Dunn by the hair and punch her in the face, knocking her down.

By the afternoon of Aug. 12, the recordings allegedly painted a far more dire picture.

At 12:06 p.m., police said a photo showed Dunn lying in a bathtub wearing only a shirt. A five-second video recorded at the same time allegedly showed her barely moving.

Two minutes later, another video allegedly captured Ayres pacing between the motel room and bathroom while a woman could be heard groaning. About a minute into the recording, investigators say Ayres told Dunn he was “really calling 911.”

“I have to because I’m not going down for manslaughter,” he allegedly said, according to the affidavit.

But the 911 call that followed did not bring police rushing to the motel.

At 12:21 p.m., just 13 minutes after the video, Ayres called 911 and told dispatchers the call was accidental, according to the probable cause statement. He verified his name, phone number and location before disconnecting.

It would be roughly three more hours before the 3:22 p.m. call that brought officers to Dunn.

Police also photographed what the affidavit described as defensive wounds on Ayres’ left wrist and torso.

Investigators ultimately determined Dunn’s death was a homicide, Columbia Police said. In the PCS, an officer alleged Ayres physically assaulted Dunn “to the point she died from her injuries.”

Ayres is being held without bond, according to jail records, and is scheduled to appear in court Sept. 2.

As the criminal case moves forward, Dunn’s family is remembering her as far more than the victim at the center of a homicide investigation.

Her sister, Marinah Hollon, described Dunn in a GoFundMe as a “loving, nurturing, and incredibly sweet person” and a mother whose death has left her children facing life without her.

“She had a beautiful soul and a heart that cared deeply for the people around her,” Hollon wrote. “She was someone who brought love and kindness into the lives of others.”

“No family should ever have to endure this kind of heartbreak,” Hollon wrote.

Columbia Police said the investigation remains ongoing.

The scenario could only be described as alarming mission creep.

Originally established with the noble intention of combating addiction within the Los Angeles community, the nonprofit Tarzana Treatment Centers is now at the center of a controversy. Allegations from whistleblowers paint a concerning image of an entity more fixated on financial gain than on providing genuine help and support.

Reports from the California Post on Monday have revealed that two former employees of Tarzana Treatment Centers have come forward, alleging a culture driven by profit. They describe an environment where making money is prioritized over the well-being of both patients and taxpayers.

Compounding the issue, Albert Senella, the CEO of Tarzana Treatment Centers, reportedly earned a staggering $2.36 million salary in the past year. His opulent residence—a $3.7 million mansion featuring six bedrooms and eight bathrooms situated in Simi Valley—has become a focal point of scrutiny.

This situation certainly raises significant questions. What is truly at fault here?

LA area taxpayers should not be taken to the cleaners by nonprofit executives. And patient needs should not be subordinate to what appear to be personal financial interests.

Clearly, the city and county need to tighten spending controls and provide meaningful oversight of this and other nonprofits that collect millions of dollars from taxpayers each year. Mayor Karen Bass, the City Council and the county Board of Supervisors should also explore setting caps on nonprofit executive compensation tied to taxpayer money.

This is hardly the only example of nonprofit CEO entitlement. In another recent example, Carol Adelkoff, the head of 1736 Family Crisis Center in LA, collected more than $1.6 million in pay over the past two years — while luxuriating in Hawaii.

Serving the downtrodden should be a noble calling, not a path to self-indulgence, and those who treat it as the latter should look for other lines of work.

According to internal documents and messages, the Tarzana whistleblowers wrote things like, “She [a supervisor] is telling me to lie about my billing” and “The only thing they f—ing care about is billing.” 

Yikes.

The insiders also described patients rushed through the process to generate maximum income, not healthy outcomes.

And there have been other red flags: In 2022, for instance, a county audit found “significant fiscal and administrative non-compliance issues” in a contract that paid Tarzana about $26 million over two years. Yet the taxpayer dollars keep right on flowing.

Is it any wonder the city and county spend nearly $3 billion a year on homelessness programs –– only to see more homelessness? Per the most recent official count, homelessness jumped 3.4% in the city and 1.2% in LA County.

LA officials need to end the homeless industrial complex that entrenches homelessness, dependency and dysfunction. Homeless and treatment nonprofits have an incentive not to fix the problem, but to sustain it (or worse) — because more suffering means more funding.

The sad thing about Tarzana is that LA desperately needs to shift away from its emphasis on “housing first,” which absurdly posits that plopping addicts in hotels, at vast taxpayer expense, will somehow solve the homeless crisis.

The city and county should instead address the causes of homelessness, which are often addiction and mental illness.

So “treatment first”? Yes, absolutely.

But not treatment that prioritizes cash grabs over rehab.

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The mystery surrounding who orchestrated the murder of Tupac Shakur is finally being unraveled as the much-anticipated trial opens in Las Vegas. Accused of masterminding the 1996 shooting, the man now faces the scrutiny of the courtroom.

In their opening statements, prosecutors asserted their commitment to demonstrating the culpability of Duane “Keffe D” Davis, once a prominent Los Angeles gang leader, as the individual who ordered the attack.

“Duane Davis wasn’t the person who fired the shots,” explained Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal to the jury. “However, he orchestrated the shooting as retribution for the assault on his nephew. You’ll discover these facts directly from Duane Davis’s own declarations.”

At 63, Davis stands accused of murder involving a deadly weapon, with the alleged intent to further criminal gang activities in relation to Shakur’s death. Although Davis insists on his innocence, branding the prosecution’s case as fictitious, if found guilty, he faces a life sentence.

Palal presented the jury with footage capturing the altercation between Shakur’s entourage and Davis’s nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, in front of the MGM Grand shortly before the shooting on September 7, 1996. The jurors were also shown images of the black BMW that Shakur occupied when the shots were fired.

“You will learn, when the opportunity presented itself for retribution, Duane Davis made sure that the shooters were armed and ready,” Palal said.

They also heard from witness Ingrid Stokes, who was living in L.A. in 1996 but visited Vegas for the weekend. She was in a car trailing the BMW.

“We ran into Suge and Tupac in the car,” Stokes told jurors.

“Did anyone shoot at you?” Stokes was asked.

“Probably, I honestly don’t know. There was a lot of gunshots,” Stokes answered.

Davis, dressed in a blue suit and tie, listened intently as prosecutors claimed he ordered the killing of Shakur as an “act of revenge.”

Some evidence expected to be presented in this case comes from “Compton Street Legend,” a tell-all book Davis published and promoted. But Davis now says he didn’t write it, and claims the book was a ploy to make money.

In an ABC News exclusive jailhouse interview in 2025, Davis denied all allegations.

“I’m innocent. I ain’t kill nobody. Never did ever kill nobody,” he said.

What Davis has told investigators before

In a 2008 interview with a federal task force investigating the killing of Shakur’s rival, the Notorious B.I.G., Davis instead talked about the Shakur shooting. He described handing a gun to the men in the back seat of a white Cadillac that fired on a black BMW with Shakur and Marion “Suge” Knight inside.

As prosecutors played audio of Davis explaining the moment Shakur was shot, members of Shakur’s family, including his stepbrother Maurice “Mopreme” Shakur, sat quietly in the audience, staring ahead.

Palal told jurors Davis held onto a visceral hatred for Shakur for decades that drove him to speak.

He said as early as 1998, the defendant talked to the FBI and admitted he had been in Las Vegas the night of the shooting. He spoke again in 1999 to the FBI and said again he was in Las Vegas then but denied responsibility.

In 2009, he admitted to his role in the killing in an interview with Las Vegas police, Palal said.

“And now 30 years later, we’re going to ask you to finally hold Duane Davis accountable,” Palal said.

Will Suge Knight testify?

Knight, who is serving time in an unrelated case, told ABC News he believes Davis will struggle to convince jurors that his past statements were untrue.

“Everything he said and talked about, he already told on himself,” Knight said.

In the years since Shakur’s murder, what exactly happened in that hail of bullets — and who pulled the trigger — was obscured by a lack of physical evidence, feuding cops and the gangland code of silence. Knight, the only eyewitness still living, was in the car with Shakur when he was shot that night, and told ABC News he is no more willing to cooperate with law enforcement during Davis’ trial than he has been for the last 30 years.

“To actually get on the stand, and point somebody out, it’s worse than taking a gun and shooting that man in the head. Because if you shoot a person in the head, they die once. If you get on the stand and you snitch on that person, they die a million times,” Knight told ABC News from prison earlier this month, ahead of Davis’s trial. “Leave me out of it.”

Legal analyst Joshua Ritter said Knight’s account would be significant if he takes the stand.