Gabriel Boykins (Hamilton County Sheriff”s Office). Background: The forested area where the remains of a mother and daughter were found in Chattanooga, Tenn. (Google Maps).
A Tennessee man will spend the next several decades behind bars for brutally killing a mother and her young child.
In June, Gabriel Fitzgerald Boykins, 50, was convicted by a Hamilton County jury on two counts of murder in the second degree.
On Thursday, the defendant was sentenced to 45 years in state prison. The court handed down a 20-year sentence for the death of 40-year-old Tamara Church; a 25-year sentence was imposed for the death of her daughter, Aquarious Church, 8. The judge overseeing the case assessed the sentences to run consecutively, or one after another.
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Emotion ran high during the sentencing hearing, according to a courtroom report by the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
“Is there any greater cruelty than a child watching her mother be hurt or a mother watching her child be hurt?” Hamilton County Criminal Court Division III Judge Amanda Dunn said during the Thursday proceedings. “One of them watched the other die.”
The since-condemned man maintained his innocence during an allocution but reportedly showed no emotion as he learned his fate.
During the trial, however, the state offered a more compelling narrative.
On May 19, 2020, the victims’ family reported them missing – the day after the mother’s 2004 Honda Odyssey was found set ablaze on Lynnbrook Avenue in the Ferger Place neighborhood of Chattanooga.
The ensuing investigation would be long and difficult, the result particularly painful and distressing for their family and the community.
In late July 2020, after a 51-day search, their remains were found on Greenwood Road in a forested area adjacent to a major cemetery – using cellular location data to track the mother’s last-known location. The length of the search and time’s concomitant passage destroyed a great deal of evidence about the crime due to the state of the bodies.
But law enforcement learned enough.
The mother had a broken bone in the neck area likely from continued strangulation, authorities said. She also appeared to have been punched in the face – causing blunt force trauma. The daughter’s death was described as something like an afterthought by the judge – who said her skull appeared to have been stomped or crushed.
“The back of her skull was in pieces,” Dunn intoned on Thursday.
While a motive was never offered, prosecutors alleged Boykins and Tamara Church previously had a relationship. The judge recounted arguments and incidents of alleged abuse between the pair.
In July 2020, police found evidence that a large pool of blood had been washed away in the duplex where Boykins lived, according to Chattanoogan.com. Earlier that month, the defendant was found by police with another of Tamara Church’s young daughters – still alive – in his care. Later, surveillance footage showed a man with Boykins’ build walking away from the burning Honda – and heading in the direction of the man’s duplex.
The state’s first effort to convict the since-condemned man was unsuccessful. In November 2024, a hung jury said they could only agree Boykins was guilty of tampering with evidence.
During the sentencing hearing, the court addressed the limits of formal justice – telling the Church family no sentence would ever result in the two slain individuals coming back.
“I know you loved your family very, very much,” the judge said.
Volunteer State court records show 44 cases against Boykins dating back to 1995.
