On September 10, 2022 at 3:17 PM, Amanda Bearden got a notification through Venmo of a $2,385 transfer from her mother, Debbie Collier, with a note that attached "“They are not going to let me go love you there is a key to the house in the blue flower pot near the door.”
Bearden told police that she believed her mother had sent the message and that it scared her. George Cason, an investigator with the Habersham County Sheriff’s Office, told reporters that officials have not determined who sent the message.
Earlier in the day, around 2:17 p.m., cameras outside a school in Tallulah Falls captured Collier’s black Pacifica traveling northbound on Georgia State Route 15. About 2:54 p.m., cameras at the Family Dollar store in Clayton showed Collier enter and buy the tote bag, tarp and lighter, as well as a poncho and some paper towels.
The cashier at Family Dollar she did not think the items were unusual and that Collier “didn’t seem in distress or anything.”
Collier walked out around 3:09 and then sat in the van in the parking lot for 10 minutes before driving away and heading southbound on Georgia State Route 15, Murray Kogod, chief deputy at the Habersham County Sheriff’s Office, told reporters. It was around this time that the Venmo payment was sent.
That was the last time Collier was known to be alive, officials said.
Earlier that day, Collier had left the house in a 2022 black Chrysler Pacifica rental, her 36-year-old daughter, Amanda Bearden, told police
When she didn’t return home that night, her family grew worried and reported her missing. The next day, about 13 miles south of the Family Dollar, law enforcement authorities found a van she had been renting parked along a northeast Georgia highway. It was unlocked, but Collier was not inside.
Athens police notified Collier’s daughter, and a short time later, Amanda Bearden arrived in a hysterical state at the scene, investigators wrote. She started screaming that the van belonged to her mother, according to the report.
When deputies went into the woods to look for Collier, they came upon the trail of items that led to her body — beginning with the tote bag near the uprooted tree where there appeared to be the “remains of a fire,” deputies wrote in the incident report.
Officials declined to say whether there had been other injuries to Collier’s body aside from the burns to her abdomen, saying that they are awaiting the release of the medical examiner’s report. But they have not ruled out the possibility that Collier was alive when she was burned.
Her killer remains at large, and investigators have not yet publicly named a person of interest or suspect.
Collier is survived by her husband, Steven Collier, two children and two stepchildren, as well as a pair of step-grandchildren.
"I will never be able to fully articulate the loss of my mother and what she meant to me," Bearden said.. "She was my longest source of love, support and encouragement. My mother was a very, vibrant and strong soul. She was a person who valued kindness, empathy and understanding throughout her entire life. She went through life recognizing the beauty and grace in everything she saw and experienced around her."
The sum Bearden received the day her mother went missing is "very close" to the amount Bearden's live-in boyfriend, Andrew Giegerich, owed in probation fines, two law enforcement sources confirmed to Fox News Digital. The math, according to the sources, could be thrown off slightly by additional fees.
Two days before Collier’s disappearance, Bearden and Giegerich moved back to Athens from Maryland, where they had been living with her brother, Habersham County Investigator George Cason previously told reporters.
Giegerich told Fox News Digital that the couple had no involvement in the crime and that they were "scared" themselves, sleeping behind barricaded doors as Collier's killer remains unidentified.
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