Tyler Tessier Admits He Shot Pregnant Girlfriend Laura Wallen

ROCKVILLE, MD — The Damascus man facing murder charges for allegedly killing his pregnant girlfriend said he shot her in the head because he was afraid he buried her alive after she struck her head on a porch post, according to reports.

Tyler Tessier, 33, was charged with first-degree murder for the death of Laura Wallen, 31, who was a teacher at Wilde Lake High School in Columbia.

The disappearance of 31-year-old Wallen, who lived in a condo on Rolling Meadows Way in Olney, prompted a search that was widely publicized last September. She was four months pregnant when she was reported missing on Sept. 4, 2017. Her body was found in a shallow grave in a field in Damascus on Sept. 13.

In prosecution filing obtained by WTOP, Tessier "admitted to helping Ms. Wallen 'disappear.'"

Wallen was allegedly upset because she was having another man's baby and she was worried she would lose her teaching job, WTOP reports.

Tessier “told detectives this was all done at Ms. Wallen’s insistence because she needed to ‘disappear,'” assistant prosecutor Donna Fenton wrote in filings.

Court filings show Tessier originally told police that he and Wallen were kidnapped by "several African-American men in Olney at Ms. Wallen's home" and "were forced to drive to the field in Damascus in the defendant’s vehicle, where the men proceeded to shoot Ms. Wallen."

Tessier later recanted and told police he got into a fight with Wallen at his temporary residence. He said Wallen tried to attack him with a pair of scissors. Tessier darted away from Wallen and she "ran into a wooden post on the porch and collapsed."

Instead of calling the police, Tessier said he believe Wallen died from striking her head on the porch post and decided to bury her in the field.

“When he grew concerned perhaps she was not deceased and that he had buried her alive, he stated he shot her once in the back of the head, to ensure she wasn’t suffering,” prosecutors said.

A week after Wallen's disappearance, her parents joined Tessier at a press conference coordinated by the Montgomery County Police Department to help find her. Her family offered a reward for information.

Police later said the decision to include Tessier in the press conference, while he was considered a person of interest, was strategic and done in concert with the family, to see what Tessier would say.

For the week that Wallen was missing, police said Tessier paid several visits to a Damascus property in the 12400 block of Prices Distillery Road where a farm was surrounded by acres of woods and open fields.

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When police searched the area, tire tracks led them to nearby location where they found the body on Sept. 13, 2017.

Authorities said Wallen had been shot in the back of the head, and they charged Tessier with first-degree murder.

Because the unborn child was not viable outside of the womb, Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy told media that Tessier was indicted on one murder count rather than two in Wallen's death.

Now, Wallen's parents are advocating for a change in Maryland law that would protect all unborn children if the mother is murdered, regardless of how far along she is in the pregnancy.

"A monster with one bullet killed two generations of our family," her father, Mark Wallen, said at a press conference at the end of January in Annapolis.

A new bill, which is called "Laura and Reid's Law" to recognize the teacher and the name she had selected for her unborn child, would amend the definition of homicide when it comes to killing a fetus so that it includes "a fetus at any stage of development that is carried in the womb."

Homicide is the leading cause of death among pregnant women, according to a study from the Maryland Department of Health, which found it usually occurs in the first three months of pregnancy, with firearms the most common method.

Tessier's 10-day trial will begin on Sept. 4. He faces life in prison without parole.

Photos of Tyler Tessier and Laura Wallen courtesy of the Montgomery County Police Department.