CPS Faking Drug Test Results Lead To Her Kids Getting Murdered

Tyler Christopher Payne was born on November 15th, 2001 in Long Branch, New Jersey to parents Jamie Hallam and Christopher Payne. Both parents had a volatile life led by drug use. Chris’s mother Socorro was diagnosed with brain cancer shortly after he was born and died when he was around 14 months old. His father Forrest was often absent and spent much of his time drinking.

When Chris was 6 years old, Forrest a woman named Patricia who brought two daughters into the family. Although Chris initially struggled to accept his stepmother, the two eventually grew close. Patricia later recalled taking Chris on fishing trips and to the movies. As a teenager, he enjoyed soccer in Little League Baseball.

She also remembered how enthusiastic he became while volunteering at a nursing home for a school project. According to Patricia, Chris enjoyed spending time with the residents so much that he continued reading to them even after the assignment had ended. But Chris got involved with the wrong crowd in high school and started experimenting with drugs.

Patricia and Forrest enrolled him in various rehab programs and counseling and reportedly went so far as to take out a second mortgage on their home to pay for it all. By 1994, when he was just 15 or 16 years old, he had racked up a string of misdemeanor charges including family violence, drug offenses, and alcohol-related violations.

 Jamie met Chris in Arizona in 2000 and the two began a relationship. Short time later, she found out she was pregnant. This is when Chris started showing his true colors and became increasingly violent towards her. Jamie realized that she needed to get away from him, so she left Arizona and went back to New Jersey where Tyler was born on November 15th, 2001.

Jamie later called Chris to tell him that he had a son. Somehow, Chris convinced Jamie that he had changed. He wanted her to move back to Arizona and make a better life for her, himself, and their new son. Jamie moved back to Arizona. For a few days of being back together with him, she married Chris on January 25th, 2002.

She soon was pregnant again, and just like before, Chris became violent. He would often throw lamps and books at her. On one occasion, when someone noticed her black eye and asked her about it, Chris interjected saying that she had simply walked into a door. The couple welcomed a daughter on October 18th, 2002, in Tucson, Arizona, whom they named Ariana Socorro Payne.

Right after her birth, Chris put Jamie back in the hospital. She was holding their newborn daughter when Chris stormed into the room, complained about Tyler, who had been crying. Yelled at Jamie saying, “Do something with him.” Jamie told him she would get to Tyler after putting Ariana to sleep, but Chris got angrier.

 He yelled, “No, now!” and head-butted Jamie in the face as she was carrying their baby. Jamie’s nose was broken, but she managed to keep hold of Ariana despite how hard she was hit. By the time Chris walked out of the room, Ariana was covered in her mother’s blood. Jamie went straight to the police, got a restraining order against Chris, and for the next 3 years, Jamie lived on her own with the kids.

 She filed for divorce and got full custody of them. Chris did not make any attempts at contact. Although Jamie struggled being a single she had a lot of fun with Tyler and Ariana. Tyler loved cooking and watching Scooby-Doo. He was also really close with his sister, who loved coloring and drawing. Ariana had a book bag where she kept all of her drawings.

 She would take that bag everywhere with her. According to Jamie, Tyler and Ariana had smiles that could light up any room, and their laughter was contagious.  A few weeks before Christmas of 2005, when Jamie was baking cookies for her children, She got a call from her ex-husband, Chris, completely out of the blue. Around that time, Chris was about $19,000 behind on his child support payments for the children.

When Jamie heard Chris’s voice on the line, her stomach dropped. She hadn’t heard from him since the divorce and had no idea what he wanted. Still, she didn’t hang up and listened to Chris, who sounded pretty reasonable on the call. He explained that he had a new girlfriend, Reina Gonzalez, with whom he shared a son.

By this time, he was working for Score Alternative Transportation Service, where he helped people get to their appointments. He’d built a reputation as a compassionate worker there. Just like before, Chris promised that he had changed. Before ending the call, he told Jamie that he wanted his children, Tyler and Ariana, to meet their brother.

Jamie thought that maybe taking the kids away from him had given him the shock he needed to sort himself out. She arranged to meet at a local park, and Chris arrived with his young son. Jamie introduced him to Tyler and Ariana, simply saying, “This is Daddy.” He crouched down and held his arms wide open. Tyler and Ariana sprinted straight to him and then took off to play.

When it was time to leave, Chris took her aside and told her, “Thanks for today.”  Over the next few weeks, Chris called Jamie in order to talk with his kids. After a month, Jamie trusted him enough to send the kids over to him and his girlfriend, Reina, for the night. That stay went really well, and Jamie was happy to see her children getting to know their dad.

 Few weeks later, Chris called and asked if he could have the children for a whole weekend. Jamie agreed. Tyler already knew what he was bringing. He told her, “I want to take my Scooby-Doo DVD to show my brother.” Chris wasn’t home at the time she dropped them off, but Reina was there to greet them. Jamie gave the kids a hug and told them that she loved them and to behave.

Following day, Jamie called to make sure everything was going well. The children sounded happier than ever. Ariana excitedly told her about the new clothes she’d got from her dad. Both children fought over the phone to tell their mom about how much fun they were having. The next day, Chris called Jamie and told her that one of his co-workers kids was having a birthday party.

 He asked Jamie if he could have the kids for one more night. Though Jamie was reluctant, she agreed. Another day passed and Chris wasn’t ready to hand the children over. Jamie waited a few days, but Chris was constantly making excuses. She became suspicious, so she rightfully called the police and went to his house.

As the officers went to talk to Chris, Jamie waited outside. When they finally came out, they told her that CPS had an open case against her. Chris had apparently gone to social services and accused Jamie of being an unfit mother. The police also told her that if she returned to the house, she would be arrested.

 Jamie frantically tried to reason with the officers, but her words fell on deaf ears. Despite having full custody, she was barred from seeing her children, and surprisingly, it wouldn’t be until the following year until she would get any answers.  After more than a year of no contact with her children, in February of 2007, Jamie saw a news report about the body of a little girl found in a storage unit.

It was the same storage unit she shared with Chris when they had first gotten married. Jamie had a gut feeling that it had to be Ariana. She called her mother, Linda, who reassured her that she was just overthinking and that both of the children were fine. But the next day, police officers came to her home. They started the conversation with a formal apology, saying that her case had slipped through the cracks.

The officer told her that they had found her daughter, Ariana, dead in a storage unit on East Prince Road. For a moment, Jamie was so shocked that she couldn’t say anything. When she finally managed to say something, she asked about Tyler. The officer said, “We think he’s also dead, but we haven’t found his body yet.

Your ex-husband and his girlfriend Raina have been arrested in connection with the discovery of Ariana.”  Jamie learned the full extent of what had happened to her children during the trial. Soon after kidnapping Tyler and Ariana, Chris began using heroin and other drugs with his girlfriend. Raina watched the children while Chris was at work, but in April of 2006, he was fired because of his drug use.

 So, Chris began selling drugs to make money. He’d also grown increasingly violent towards Tyler and Ariana. Chris kept them locked in a closet. He fed them sandwiches once a day and barely gave them any water. For about a month, he stopped feeding them entirely. Raina later claimed that she tried to sneak food to Tyler and Ariana whenever Chris was away.

 However, despite seeing the children’s condition worsen day by day, she never contacted the authorities. According to her testimony, she was afraid of losing her son with Chris. By late June, Tyler and Ariana were reportedly being kept inside a bedroom closet full-time. Chris would occasionally check on them, but he rarely ever let them out.

 Children were never properly bathed and were forced to use the closet as a bathroom. Sometime in August of 2006, Ariana died from the severe neglect she had faced. According to Raina, Tyler was still alive at this time. The time she died, Ariana was so malnourished her bones were visible through her skin. When Chris checked on the children and discovered that Ariana had died, he placed her body inside a Tommy Hilfiger duffel bag.

After Ariana’s death, Tyler was left alone in the closet. About a week later, Raina said she went to check on him and found that he had also died. She later claimed that Tyler had an open wound on his head from a belt buckle injury Chris had given him weeks earlier. Some point afterwards, Chris and Reina moved out of their apartment on West 36th Street, leaving the children’s remains behind.

 About 2 weeks later, Chris went back. He pulled Tyler’s body from the closet and sealed it inside a garbage bag. Then he loaded both children into a single blue plastic storage tub and hauled it to a storage unit on East Prince Road. That September, he and Reina were evicted from the apartment. The unit sat vacant after they left.

Later trial testimony, Chris’s stepmother Patricia said that Chris had also tried to take advantage of her mother, who was 90 years old at the time and suffered from Alzheimer’s. Chris asked her for money claiming someone had broken into his apartment, but in reality, he was asking because of his eviction.  After Chris fell behind on payments for the storage unit, the facility’s general manager inspected the contents and discovered a large blue rubber maid container.

There was a pungent rotting smell coming from it. When she tried to move it, she heard liquid inside. Some of it leaked as she lifted the tub towards the dumpster. The manager grew suspicious and called the police 2 days later. Inside, the responding officer found the Tommy Hilfiger duffel bag where Ariana was kept sealed inside the tub.

Her remains were badly decomposed and it took investigators days to identify her and connect her to Chris. On March 1st, 2007, Chris was arrested and charged with Ariana and Tyler’s murder. His girlfriend was also arrested on one count of CA. Later in May of 2007, she faced additional murder charges for both cases.

8 days later on March 9th, 2007, officers returned to Chris’s vacant apartment. There was a rotting smell coming from the 6 by 5 foot closet where Tyler and Ariana had spent their final weeks. The carpet had soaked through with bodily fluids. Blood had dried on the walls. Larvae covered the floor in the closet.

Cut into one wall was a small square hole packed with human hair and feces. According to Jamie, there was also a hole the children had clawed into the wall with their fingernails trying to escape. Outside, there was a large stain on the floor. The detectives also found some more blood in a storage shed on the balcony.

Based on the evidence, investigators believe that Tyler’s remains ended up in the same dumpster that Ariana was almost dumped into and that he had been hauled to the Los Reales Landfill in Tucson. A search was conducted, but he was never found.  During a 5-hour interview with Tucson police, Chris alleged the children had starved themselves to death.

 He said, “They were freaking me out because of how skinny they were getting, and I didn’t want anybody to know that because then they were going to take them away from me for good.” The detective asked him why he hadn’t called 911 for help. Chris replied saying, “Sir, it wasn’t about medical care, sir.

 They wanted to be with their mom.” Chris also said that he tried all sorts of things to make Tyler and Ariana eat. He even alleged stealing food like pizza, which he thought would appeal to the children. He said, “I would just take them the food, man. They wouldn’t want to eat. I’d put it in front of them, and we’d try to sit down and watch TV, and they would throw it.

 They would get mad, and they’d kick and scream. It was a constant battle with them.” He also claimed he did CPR on Ariana for more than a day after she died. Initially, the prosecutors were seeking the death penalty for both Chris and Reina because there were aggravating factors in the case, including multiple minors as victims, and that the murders were committed in such a cruel heinous manner.

An autopsy also showed that 3-year-old Ariana had a broken shoulder bone along with 12 broken ribs. Her body also showed several other injuries along with some that were partially healed. This showed that Chris had been physically harming Ariana over a prolonged period of time. First, Raina claimed to be completely innocent.

 She said that she had just gone away for a week and after returning, never saw the kids and suspected they might have returned to their mother. However, she changed her story. On August 25th, 2008, Raina pled guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in exchange for two concurrent 22-year sentences. She also agreed to testify against Chris.

 She said, “I know he wasn’t giving them food or water. I told him what he was doing wasn’t right, and he told me not to worry about it. That these were his children.” Moments before Judge Paul Tang announced the sentence, a letter from Raina was read aloud in court. Raina had written about feeling heartbroken and ashamed for her role in the children’s deaths and said that she had dedicated her life to God.

Jamie wasn’t present at the court for Raina’s sentencing. Instead, Chris’s stepmother, Patricia, spoke as a victim representative. She said, “As far as I’m concerned, the sentence given to Raina is very light.” Patricia argued that Raina should have been given two consecutive prison sentences of 22 years at the very least.

When Judge Tang explained the sentence was part of the plea agreement reached with the prosecutors, Patricia said she understood. However, she remained critical of Raina. She said, “I also understand she lies. There was a lot of testimony at trial she lied about.” Patricia added that Tyler and Ariana’s murders continued to affect the family, particularly whenever she sees Chris’s surviving son.

 She said, “It’s been devastating. Every time I look at him, I’m reminded of what’s happened.”  Chris’s trial began in February of 2009. The evidence against him was overwhelming. Faced with the possibility of a death sentence, Chris’s defense team tried to shift much of the blame onto Raina. His attorney, John O’Brien, argued that Chris’s troubled upbringing had left lasting scars.

Chris lost his mother before he was two and grew up with a father who was largely absent. The defense argued that his childhood had shaped who he became. Attorney O’Brien also argued that Chris’s relationship with Raina contributed to the tragedy. He described her as emotionally dependent with low self-esteem and argued that their relationship was a factor in what happened to the children.

He told the jury, “He did not choose to be an addict.” However, several family members took to the stand to testify that Chris had always had support. One had nearly lost her house after using it to post bail for Chris in an unrelated case where he didn’t show up to court. She didn’t lose her house, thankfully, as the other witnesses against him also didn’t show up and the case was dismissed.

A roommate who moved in with Chris and Raina that June also told the court that she never once saw Tyler or Ariana and assumed that they were living with her mother. She did hear noises coming from behind the bedroom closet door on at least one occasion. Neighbors in the building had no idea two other children were even living there.

Prosecutors contended that while Tyler and Ariana were being locked up and starved, Chris continued to openly care for his son with Raina. The trial also laid out the full extent of Chris’s drug use, which began at age 15. During the two months he tortured Tyler and Ariana, he was using heroin up to four times a day.

The defense argued that his addiction and troubled past should spare him from the death penalty. When he was given a chance to speak at the trial, he maintained that both Tyler and Ariana were a danger to themselves and had simply died on their own. In March of 2009, after 3 and 1/2 hours of deliberation, a Pima County jury found Chris guilty of two counts of murder, two counts of concealment of a dead human body, along with three counts of CTA.

On April 1st, the jury returned a death sentence for each murder. Chris showed no emotion as the verdicts were read. He was sent to death row, where the case was automatically appealed, and that appeal was eventually denied. As of the date of this recording in June of 2026, Chris remains on death row at the state prison complex in Florence.

No execution date has been set.  Jamie blamed the death of her children on the state and sued CPS and the Tucson Police Department. CPS case worker named Cindy Groutman testified that she inspected Jamie for child neglect back in October of 2005. Although Tyler and Ariana were dressed appropriately and appeared healthy during her visits, Cindy still suspected that Jamie was using drugs because she had sores on her face.

Jamie acknowledged past drug use, but said she had been clean since 2003. She took a drug test, which came back negative, but Cindy chose to record it as positive anyways because Jamie had taken 3 days to provide the sample. February 6, 2006, Cindy called Chris and asked him to seek custody of the children.

 Cindy didn’t know Chris was already in contact with the children at the time, and she never met him, never ran a background check, and never asked him to submit to drug testing. While the case against CPS was still ongoing, Jamie was booked into the Pima County jail on suspicion of possessing crystal meth and drug paraphernalia. According to Sergeant Dessio Hopper, she was seen leaving a suspected drug house with two men in a car.

The car was pulled over about 2 miles away for a traffic violation. When the officers searched the vehicle, they found 18 and 1/2 grams of meth. Jamie’s defense attorney, Jorge Franco, argued that she didn’t have any knowledge about the drugs. He said, “Whatever drugs were found in the car when it was pulled over were not hers.

The drugs were in the trunk and they belonged to the driver who agreed to take them home. The moment it sounds like the facts really aren’t known and she may have been keeping bad company which may or may not have been in her control. Until the facts are known, no one should be passing judgement.” Whatever Jamie does is not going to change the fact that CPS is responsible for the deaths of her two children.

Charges against her were dropped shortly thereafter. Eventually, CPS settled the case for $1 million in damages. Case against the Tucson Police Department was dismissed in 2010 by Pima County Superior Court Judge Carmine Cornelio. In a nine-page ruling, the judge wrote that the police didn’t have any evidence that there was a high probability that substantial harm would result from their failure to remove the children from Chris Paint’s custody and care.

The ruling also noted that the first and only sign that something was wrong in the Paint household appeared in mid-April of 2006 when a relative had noticed that Ariana looked dirty and scrawny. Judge Cornelio wrote, “Given the lack of temporal connection between the time of TPD’s visit to Chris Paint’s apartment on March 9th, 2006 and any evidence concerning the abuse and neglect, plaintiffs cannot establish causation between TPD’s actions and the abuse of the children.

”  While the trial was still working through the courts, Jamie and the community gathered to say goodbye to Tyler and Ariana. Jamie organized an open sunset memorial service on Saturday, August 25th, 2007 at Adair Funeral Home on Tucson’s northwest side. Holding back tears, Jamie released two doves in memory of her children.

 A small table at the funeral home held a Scooby-Doo stuffed animal, a pair of yellow boots, a shiny silver purse, and a toy motorcycle. A slideshow on the back wall showed Tyler and Ariana smiling, playing in the water, dressed for Halloween, eating birthday cake. Pastor Steve Main of the Northwest Community Friends Church spoke.

 He said, “Obviously, there is more than enough blame to go around and we’ll let the legal system sort that out, but today we can say they are in a safe place.” He continued, “There is no such thing as words we can say to cover your pain. The whole Southern Arizona community has been touched with your loss.” Jaime also read a few pages from the children’s book Goodnight Moon as she had read to Tyler and Ariana.

She said, “I just want to read it one more time.” Jaime also wrote a poem for her children which read, “They were the sunshine of my days and the starbeams of my nights. I loved them dearly on Earth when they were alive and just so much more in death.” Ariana was cremated and her ashes were given to her family.

After the memorial, Jaime continued to write and speak about her children. She wrote about the day Ariana’s body was finally released to her. She said in part, and I quote, “She was wrapped tightly in a blue blanket. Don’t open the blanket to look at her, she’s not the same, I was warned. I took her tiny body in my arms.

When I felt the fragile weight, tears streamed down my cheeks. I swear she was barely heavier than when Chris had hit me, but I’d vowed he’d never hurt me again. My baby, I murmured, my poor sweet little baby. Eventually, someone came and gently told me that it was time to leave her. I couldn’t let go.

 I left her once, I’m not going to leave her again, I screamed. But all the tears in the world wouldn’t bring her and Tyler back now. At just three and four years, their lives were over. Finally, I forced my fingers to uncurl, and I gently laid Ariana down. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. They shouldn’t have died. That’s why I’ve set up a charity called the Miles Pain Foundation in their memory.

We help people who have lost their child or who are going through similar experiences to pay for headstones or offer support. I’ll never get to hold Tyler or kiss him goodbye. But I’ll never let go of the memory of my tiny angels, like they never let go of me.