DENVER – The 1993 murder of Tammera “Tammy” Tatum in Longmont will be the featured in the Season 3 premier of Investigation Discovery’s “Killer Instinct with Chris Hansen,” which first airs Sept. 5.
Tatum was killed inside her home alongside her year-old daughter, Sadie Medow, who is now 24 years old and will talk about the case and what it was like growing up without her mother in the episode.
The lead detective in the case, Bruce Vaughan, will also talk about the case and how it affected him over the 13 years he investigated it.
Rudy Gaytan was charged in 2009, and pleaded guilty in 2010, to second-degree murder for strangling Tatum to death after DNA evidence linked him to Tatum’s death.
He was already in prison serving more than 70 years on a rape conviction from 1996, in which he tied up his Longmont neighbor’s 19-year-old granddaughter at knifepoint before blindfolding and raping her.
Gaytan had been a friend of Tatum and her husband, Jim Medow. Medow and Gaytan went to Tatum’s funeral together.
And the affidavit for Gaytan’s arrest on the murder charge said that he may have been inside Tatum and Medow’s apartment for three days without either of them knowing.
Sadie Medow told Denver7 in 2009 that it “hurt a lot to know all the details” of her mother’s murder, which she learned by attending Gaytan’s court appearances.
Gaytan, now 56, remains imprisoned at the Sterling Correctional Facility and is serving life in prison.