Latasha Norman's Stepdad
Appearances
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
By the time we got to Yazoo, Mississippi, I get another call from Marquis. And he says that he's with the campus police and he's filed a missing person report. They did search the school at that time. The dorms and stuff. When we got there, nobody knew. Nobody seen anything. She just disappeared.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
I told her to go to the campus police and report to have it documented.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
We had been there all that day on the 14th, and we hadn't got no answers.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
When I first appealed for help on the Jackson State campus, they set up where I could speak. The sheriff there did. And it was media there from everywhere. If you can hear us, we want to let you know that we love you. And that we're not going to stop until we know something. Because it happened on a black college campus. So it draw even more attention. But I'm not shy to mic.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
Even before that happened, I had took a media class. It was almost like God had prepared me for this. I went on every talk show, radio show, TV show, news show, anybody that would listen to me.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
Tasha had a class at one o'clock and she got out of class at 2.20 and she just disappeared in thin air. She never made it back to her dorm, she never made it to her car.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
I was willing to be a man and stand up and fight for them, protect them. It's my job.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
I raised Latasha. And I told them when I first came here that I was not going to leave Jackson until I found my child. I missed Tasha. My wife missed Tasha. And we hope that they'll hear something from her real soon.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
We hadn't got no answers. The police, well, they really weren't accomplishing much.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
They interviewed me, the investigators, and they wanted to know who we thought might have had some involvement in it. I told them, check out her new boyfriend. After she became missing, I became very suspicious of him. I didn't trust him. He jumped the gun and filed a missing person report for we can't even get to town.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
I had told him I was on the way and I was like, why you didn't give us the opportunity to get there and do this? It seemed like he was hiding something. He seemed like he was nervous. When he brought her home, my baby son had a game that night. And so she come home to watch her baby brother play in the ball game. Then he introduce her to her new boyfriend.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
And there was a little disagreement between him and Latasha's cousin. After the game, he wanted to go back. So I thought maybe him and her got to arguing or something on the way back home, and he might have tried to retaliate against her or whatever.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
Marquis was telling me that the FBI was questioning him. And I told him I knew. And me and him had some choice words. And I told him if I found out that he had something to do with it, it wasn't going to be nothing nice. Our relationship really kind of ended right then.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
That's the first time we knew that an incident had happened. That she had filed this report against Mr. Cole. So she never did tell us. I mean, I cried. I was hurt. I couldn't believe it.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
At that time, we thought she had broken the relationship off with him because she had found out that He had another young lady pregnant.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
LaTosha Norman is my stepdaughter, but I consider her as my daughter because I raised her from a child.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
We had hope. We had faith. We had belief. We was determined to stay in Jackson until we find her.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
All we could do then was just come home. Because there was nothing else in Jackson that we could do.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
I hate to this day that she got tangled up with this young man. My wife was so broken. I was just bitter, just disappointed. And to be honest with you, I wasn't pleasant. It didn't take much to make me go off. And that wasn't nice, I thought that was ugly. I had to ask God to take this bitterness, anger from me.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
Mr. Cole was still trying to say it was an accident.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
LaTosha, she never exposed that to us. She kept it here. I think she was ashamed of it.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
That's the only time I seen him show emotion. Then them big crocodile tears come down. He apologized to us, but the damage had been done.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
Well, we went before the state Supreme Court. God has granted us this victory two years ago. And we have faith and we believe that he won't reverse it. And they ruled in his favor, saying that it was a mistrial because the judge didn't put consideration for manslaughter on the table for the jury to choose from.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
Stanley Cole was offered a free trial. So me and my wife had to go back to Jackson and meet the DA. Well, we just wanted justice, but we didn't want to go back through the trial. She didn't want to go back through it, and I didn't either. And on the way down there, we had this conversation. We gonna offer him a 40-year plea. No parole, no probation.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
Her dream was to go to Jackson State. And their name was known as Jackson State the Normans.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
And he accepted it, because it was better than the deal he had at first. And I realized I had to forgive him. I had to release him in order to release myself.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
It ain't all been bad. A lot of good has come out of this, man. But you got to take the bitter with the sweet.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
God want to use LaTosha Light to shine a light on teen domestic violence. Domestic violence is nothing new. See, for so long, this is like a taboo in our community. People don't like to talk about it, but we have to talk about it.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
Well, after her death, they wanted to do a walk in her name. And we've done it for the last 15 years. All the proceeds goes back into the LaTosha Norman Center.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
Life has had a great impact. Her legacy lived on, man. She was an angel of God. She's one of his angels.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
I would tease her. I would call her Miss Jackson State. She had no problem being admitted there.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
Jackson is approximately an hour and a half from Greenville.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
On orientation day, after we had moved her in, I know she was ready for us to go, but my wife wasn't ready to go. She wanted to mop. She wanted to wipe everything down. She wanted to make the bed. That was her excuse to linger around, you know. My wife had had a child before she graduated from high school. She had to work. LaTosha was living her dream. And it was almost like
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
My wife living her dream through LaTosha. LaTosha was getting an opportunity to do a lot of things that my wife never had an opportunity to do. So we encouraged LaTosha to excel.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
He bought her a life-size teddy bear and gave it to her and I think he stole her heart that way.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
Latasha, her dream was to go to Jackson State.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
I think she wanted to make something out of him. And so she helped him get into school down there and she was taking up accounting and he was taking up criminal justice.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
She wanted us to meet Marquis. And so he brought her home to watch her baby brother play in the ball game the 10th of November. We seemed to be all right. But they went back that night, and that was the last time we saw her alive.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman
Every night, my wife would talk Latasha back to her dorm. This particular night, she couldn't get Latasha. When we woke up November 14, 2007, the phone rang. It was her new boyfriend on the phone. Because my wife had called him, asked him had he seen Tasha. And he said he hadn't seen her since the night before. And she handed me the phone and I talked to him.