A Trans Woman Posted On Facebook That A Married Man Hadn’t Paid Her, Half An Hour Later She Was Sh*t | HO

It was just after dawn, the kind of gray Virginia morning where the cold sits low to the ground and people’s breath hangs in the air. On the dash, the clock read 6:09 a.m. when the be‑on‑the‑lookout alert pinged again: gray 2012 sedan, plate ending in 4K2, possibly linked to a shooting in Church Hill four hours earlier. Registered owner: Darius Coloulton, Richmond address, South Precinct.

By 6:12 a.m., two units from South Precinct turned into a modest apartment complex on Glenwood. Frost still clung to the hoods of parked cars. In the lot, just where the system said it would be, sat the gray 2012 sedan, a thin layer of ice on the windshield.

“There it is,” one officer said.

They approached the ground‑floor corner apartment listed on DMV records. One knocked.

“Richmond police,” he called. “Mr. Coloulton, open the door.”

Inside, they heard fast movement. A scrape. The metallic click of a window latch.

“Window!” the other officer shouted, moving toward the side of the building.

A second later, a man came halfway through the first‑floor sash. He leapt, hit the grass hard, stumbled, then ran toward the lot. Two officers were already there, cutting him off. He made it maybe ten yards.

“Get on the ground!”

He went down, palms on the asphalt, heart pounding so loud he could barely hear them. Cold cuffs snapped around his wrists.

“Name?” an officer demanded.

“Darius,” he said, breath fogging. “Darius Coloulton.”

He was 35 years old, a warehouse lead for a regional distributor called Meridian. He carried a phone and a worn wallet with $187 in cash folded neatly by denomination. No weapon.

From the now‑open apartment door, a woman appeared in a daycare uniform shirt, hair half‑done, eyes wide.

“What’s happening?” she asked, voice shaking. “What are you doing to my husband?”

“Ma’am, step back,” an officer said. “Your husband is being detained under probable cause in an ongoing homicide investigation.”

“Homicide?” she repeated. “No, there’s gotta be some mistake.”

Her name was Nia Coloulton. Thirty‑four. Daycare shift supervisor. In the corner behind her, a toddler bed peeked out, tiny blankets printed with cartoon characters. A corkboard held daycare schedules and a finger‑painted American flag.

Nia agreed to go downtown.

“Our daughter’s at my sister’s,” she said, voice hollow on the drive. “She wasn’t here. She wasn’t here.”

Back at the apartment, the crime scene unit stepped in at 7:20 a.m. Standard furnishings. A small dining table, couch, TV. In the bedroom closet, on the top shelf, an empty pistol box. In a kitchen drawer, a receipt for 9mm ammunition dated three weeks earlier.

No handgun in sight.

At 8:05 a.m., in an interview room at South Precinct, Darius asked for a lawyer and said nothing else.

Sergeant Lionel Price, lead on the homicide unit, started his baseline like he always did: identity, money, phone.

Darius’s cell went into an evidence bag. The gray sedan was towed to the forensic garage. The BOLO that had started all this—shots fired at an apartment on North 28th Street around 11:36 p.m.—hung in the back of everyone’s minds.

At 9:40 a.m., Nia sat at a metal table under fluorescent lights, a bottle of water untouched in front of her. A camera recorded.

“We met at a church event nine years ago,” she told detectives. “We got married that same year. We don’t have records. No arrests. No police at our house. He works nights at Meridian, fifty hours a week. I’m at BrightSteps Daycare on Hull Street. We’ve been behind on rent a little, car repairs. But he’s… he’s a good man. He’s quiet. Very routine. Protective of our daughter.”

“Does he own a firearm?” a detective asked.

“Yes,” she said. “For home protection. It’s registered. Kept in a lockbox in the closet. I haven’t seen it in months. He doesn’t carry it on him, not that I know of.”

“Any extramarital relationships you’re aware of?” the detective asked gently.

“No,” she said quickly. “Absolutely not.”

The interview stayed calm until they slid a printed screenshot across the table.

It showed a Virginia driver’s license on a cell phone screen. Name: DARIUS COLOULTON. Underneath, in bold white letters over a black background, a caption read:

“Married men who don’t pay get named. This man didn’t pay me.”

The account name at the top: @RelleVance.

Time stamp: 10:42 p.m. the previous night.

“Is this your husband’s license?” the detective asked.

Nia stared at it, color draining from her face. She pressed both palms flat on the metal table.

“Is this real?” she whispered. “Is that actually online?”

“It was,” the detective said. “The post’s been deleted.”

“I don’t… I don’t know who that is,” Nia said. “I’ve never heard of any ‘Relle Vance.’ I don’t know why his ID would be… why would someone do that?”

The detectives didn’t tell her the other part yet. They didn’t say that the victim from Church Hill was believed to be the same person who’d posted that screenshot.

They were still waiting on confirmation from the medical examiner’s office.

When digital forensics finally cracked into Darius’s phone under a warrant, the contact list had a name saved as “Relle V.” The number matched a line registered to a 29‑year‑old black trans woman named Michelle Vance, known to friends and clients as “Relle,” who lived alone in a one‑bedroom on North 28th in Church Hill.

The chat history sprawled back five months, starting with a profile match on a dating app known for discreet adult arrangements.

The early messages were blunt and efficient.

“What’s your rate?”

“$$ and what you want, I don’t do overnights.”

“Cash, no pics, no public.”

“No photos of my place, no hanging around my building.”

Darius paid in cash, met her two to three times a month. Geotags and PIN drops lined up with her building. Nia’s later interviews confirmed she knew nothing about any of it.

Bank statements told their own story—small cash withdrawals on evenings that matched message threads.

Through the winter, the pattern held. Arrange, pay, leave. No Valentine’s hearts, no goodnight messages, just agreed times and boundaries.

By March, one side of the conversation changed.

Darius began texting outside scheduled visits.

“How’s your day?”

“Work is a lot. Home is loud.”

“You get me in ways nobody else does.”

Relle responded with cool distance.

“We keep this professional.”

“Don’t catch feelings.”

“I’m not your therapist. I’m at work.”

She kept a ledger in her notes app: dates, amounts, cancellations. Later, investigators would download that backup from her cloud storage.

The last full chat before the shooting started on February 10, 2024.

At 9:12 p.m., Darius wrote:

“Wanna see you tonight but I’m short.”

Michelle replied with her standard rate.

“No discount. No IOUs.”

“Come on, we’re past that now,” Darius wrote. “This is more than business.”

“No pay, no meet,” she answered.

Then her side went quiet for 41 minutes.

At 10:05 p.m., a new message popped up from her phone.

“Just so you know, I got a pic of your license saved,” she wrote. “For my safety.”

Investigators later found the original photo in her gallery: Darius’s license propped on the bathroom counter in her apartment, captured while he was in the shower months before.

“Why would you do that?” he wrote back.

“Because married dudes lie,” she replied. “This is my insurance.”

The argument escalated, digital fingerprints turning into motive.

Between 10:08 and 10:49 p.m., their phones latched onto the same Wi‑Fi network—the one in Relle’s building. Location data pinned them inside her apartment.

At 10:42 p.m., from her device, the photo of his license went up on her public social media profile with the caption calling him out for non‑payment.

For the next forty minutes, that post sat in the digital world, accessible to anyone who followed her. Her friends saw it. A few commented. Screen grabs were taken. Names and screenshots would become evidence later.

Based on traffic cameras, Darius’s sedan pulled back into the Glenwood lot at 11:02 p.m.

Inside the apartment, Nia remembered him standing in the bedroom doorway, scrolling his phone. His jaw was tight.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Work drama,” he said. “Got a last‑minute call. Gotta go in.”

She heard the soft clunk of the closet lockbox closing.

“You’re going back out?” she asked. “It’s almost 11:15.”

“Won’t be long,” he said, already halfway to the door.

The digital trail picked up where her memory ended.

Between 11:15 and 11:25 p.m., his phone left their home Wi‑Fi and reconnected through a tower serving Church Hill. City cameras caught the gray 2012 sedan heading east.

In Relle’s building, two residents later told detectives they heard insistent knocking.

“Open up.”

“Take it down now.”

The male voice was low, angry. They didn’t open their doors.

Inside her apartment, Relle’s last text was short.

“Deleted it. Check.”

The timestamp on the deletion log: 11:33 p.m.

The first 911 calls hit dispatch at 11:36 p.m.

“We heard shots.”

“Somebody’s screaming.”

Officers arrived at 11:42 p.m. to find the door unsecured.

Just inside, near the entryway, lay Michelle “Relle” Vance, bleeding out on the laminate floor, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

Two gunshot wounds to the chest.

No gun.

Her phone was on the coffee table, screen dark but unlocked. Detectives later watched the ghost trace of a deleted app notification flicker in the logs.

The post was already gone.

At 11:56 p.m., across town, a gray sedan pulled into the lot of a 24‑hour diner on Broad Street. Inside, security cameras recorded Darius sliding into a counter seat like a man finishing a shift.

He ordered a burger and fries. A Coke. He ate slowly, shoulders hunched, eyes on his plate. The receipt put him there for 23 minutes.

The tape caught one small detail: after paying cash, he folded the remaining bills and tucked them back into his wallet the same way they’d later be found.

Automated traffic systems tracked his car heading back toward Glenwood around 12:40 a.m.

By then, the homicide detectives had his DMV picture on their screens. When they froze the diner footage, the face matched with a confidence score well above Richmond PD’s threshold.

After his arrest, three search warrants went through: the Coloulton residence, the sedan, and both seized phones.

In the precinct lab, GSR swabs from Darius’s right hand and jacket sleeve lit up for lead, barium, antimony—classic gunshot residue.

Down in the forensic garage, they popped the trunk of the gray 2012. Under the spare tire panel, wrapped in a BrightSteps daycare towel, lay a compact 9mm handgun.

The slide was still slick with fresh oil. The magazine was seated, five rounds inside. Two spaces empty. Chamber clear.

The serial number traced straight back to the handgun registered in Darius’s name.

Ballistic work later tied the gun to two shell casings recovered near Relle’s body. The breach face marks and firing pin impressions were like fingerprints.

In the glove compartment, an ATM receipt showed a $200 cash withdrawal at 10:36 p.m. from a machine less than half a mile from Glenwood. Cameras saw the sedan pull away from that ATM and head east—toward Church Hill.

In Relle’s apartment, detectives lifted a partial thumb impression off the inside door knob. Latent print analysis showed it lined up with the pattern of Darius’s right thumb. DNA swabs from the same knob came back as a mix: her as the major contributor, him as the minor.

Tiny fibers clinging to the metal matched the polyester weave of his jacket.

On her kitchen counter, a torn bank envelope with his right index print sat empty. The cash that had been inside was gone.

Forensic analysts working late pulled the browser history off his phone.

Searches between 12:10 and 12:40 a.m.:

“how to remove gunpowder residue from hands”

“how long does gsr last after firing”

“how to delete post quickly”

It was all there.

The next day, Nia came back in, the circles under her eyes darker, her movements slower.

“He was mad when he saw something on his phone,” she told them. “But he didn’t yell. He just went real quiet. Said it was work. I didn’t check the lockbox until later. The latch looked bent. The gun wasn’t there.”

“Did you know a Michelle or Relle Vance?” they asked again.

“No,” she said. “I swear to God, no.”

They believed her. Her timeline matched the digital one, and nothing placed her near Church Hill that night.

The medical examiner’s final report confirmed what they already knew from the scene: two shots to the chest at close range—about two feet—front to back, slightly downward. No defensive wounds on her hands, no foreign DNA under her nails. Toxicology showed no drugs or alcohol she hadn’t been prescribed.

Time of death: between 11:33 and 11:38 p.m.

The deletion log on her phone put the removal of the post at 11:33.

Her last act was taking down the warning she’d put up.

The case went to trial in Richmond Circuit Court as Commonwealth of Virginia v. Darius Coloulton in late September 2024.

The indictment: first‑degree murder, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, and robbery.

Jury selection took two days. Twelve seated, two alternates, all told to set aside outside noise and judge only what came into that room.

The prosecutors started with the post itself.

They showed the jury a printout and a screen capture from a forensic image of Relle’s account—Darius’s license on a screen, her caption calling him out, the 10:42 p.m. timestamp. They walked them through the deletion log at 11:33 p.m., the same minute emergency calls started.

Then they layered on the city.

License plate readers tracked the gray sedan from the ATM to Church Hill to the diner to Glenwood. Time stamps scrolled on the screens in front of the jury, lining up with text messages and Wi‑Fi pings.

The firearms expert explained how breach marks and firing pin impressions work, projecting microscopic images of the casings found at Relle’s apartment next to test‑fired ones from Darius’s gun.

“In my opinion,” he said, “these casings were fired from that specific firearm and no other.”

The trace analyst held up a case file.

“Fibers from the inside doorknob matched the polyester of Mr. Coloulton’s jacket,” she said. “DNA from that knob shows a major contributor consistent with Ms. Vance and a minor contributor consistent with Mr. Coloulton. A fingerprint on a torn bank envelope on the counter also matches his right index finger.”

They played the diner footage: Darius alone at the counter less than a half hour after shots were fired, eating, paying cash, folding the money back into his wallet, looking for all the world like a man grabbing a late‑night bite.

“This is not a man in shock,” the prosecutor said. “This is a man building a story of normalcy, thirty minutes after killing someone in her own home.”

The medical examiner walked them through Relle’s injuries, careful not to reduce her to just a body.

“Two shots,” she said. “Front to back, downward angle. That angle is consistent with the shooter standing over the victim while she was seated or lower to the ground. No defensive wounds. No signs of a struggle that would support self‑defense. No other significant injuries.”

Toxicology ruled out any scenario in which she was disoriented enough to have mishandled a weapon.

They called Nia.

She sat stiffly, fingers twisting a tissue.

“Did your husband say anything that night before he left?” the prosecutor asked.

“He said he had a call from work,” she replied. “That he had to go.”

“What did you see when you later opened the closet?” the prosecutor pressed.

“The lockbox latch was bent,” she said. “The gun wasn’t there.”

“Did you ever meet or speak to Ms. Vance?”

“No,” she said. “I learned her name from the police.”

On cross, the defense tried to poke holes, but Nia’s grief and confusion rang true.

When it was his turn, Darius did not take the stand.

The defense argued emotional disturbance.

“My client was humiliated,” his attorney told the jury. “Exposed on social media. His family’s stability threatened. He went there to talk, to fix it. It escalated. He panicked. This wasn’t planned. It wasn’t lying in wait. It was a man pushed past his breaking point.”

The prosecutor stood for closing and returned to the timeline.

“He didn’t just drive straight from his house to her place in a blind rage,” she said. “He stopped at an ATM at 10:36, took out $200 in cash, then drove there. He brought his registered firearm. He argued with her. He demanded she delete the post. She did. Then, within minutes, he shot her twice in the chest, took his money back, wrapped the gun in his daughter’s daycare towel, and went to a diner for 23 minutes to eat a burger and act normal.”

She let the silence sit for a beat.

“That is not a snap,” she said. “That is a sequence.”

The jury deliberated for five hours.

They came back with guilty on all counts: first‑degree murder, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, and robbery.

At sentencing, the Commonwealth asked for life.

“He betrayed his wife, lied to his family, used a gun he claimed was for protection to kill someone in her own apartment because she dared to say his name on the internet,” the prosecutor said. “He tried to hide his tracks, then sat in a diner while she bled out on her floor.”

The defense asked the judge to consider a lesser term, citing shame, fear, and cultural stigma.

The judge looked down at the man in the suit with the neatly folded hands.

“Mr. Coloulton,” she said, “you were given every chance to walk away. You chose, again and again, not to. You chose to bring a gun to a woman’s home because she asked you to pay what you owed and because she refused to be invisible for you.”

She sentenced him to life imprisonment for murder, plus three years consecutive for the firearm count and ten for robbery.

Life plus thirteen years.

Outside the courtroom, friends of Michelle “Relle” Vance stood under a gray sky, candles gathered at a small vigil. A printout of her last selfie—smiling, long lashes, hoop earrings catching the light—was taped to a poster board next to a little rainbow flag and a hand‑drawn sign that read: “Say Her Name: Michelle ‘Relle’ Vance.”

On social media, the screenshot of her original post—the one that had been up for forty minutes—circulated again, this time as part of news stories and memorial threads.

“She tried to protect herself,” people wrote. “She documented. She spoke up.”

It hadn’t saved her life. But it had recorded his name.

The same image that once threatened his secrecy became the piece of evidence that tied him to her forever in the eyes of the law.

In Richmond, the gray sedan with the flag sticker on the plate was eventually auctioned off, stripped of the case file attached to it. The little daycare towel went into an evidence box. The phones went into cold storage.

In the city records, the case closed with a line: “Commonwealth v. Coloulton—judgment entered.”

On North 28th Street, the hallway outside Relle’s old apartment filled slowly with other people’s sounds again—doors opening, packages dropping, kids running past. But late at night, neighbors who’d heard the shots still thought about the last words heard through that thin apartment door.

“Delete it now.”

She did.

The internet remembered anyway.