In the winter of 2014, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the life of 38-year-old Paul Brian Rector came to a violent and abrupt end. On the night of Monday, December 15, 2014, Rector was inside a residence on Stuart Street where he had been staying. He and a woman named Amy Lynn Bates, described as his best friend, were lodging in a spare bedroom of a house belonging to Diane Hays.
That evening, the friendship took a tragic turn when Bates, then 29 years old, allegedly shot Rector in the head
while he was in the bedroom. Following the shooting, she is said to have attempted to set fire to the house, a desperate act to conceal the crime. There were two other adults present in the home at the time of the incident. One of them discovered the fire and managed to extinguish it using buckets of water before calling 911.
When authorities arrived at the Stuart Street home just before midnight, they found Paul Rector deceased. Their investigation quickly led them to Amy Lynn Bates, who was found near the scene and taken in for questioning. Bates was subsequently arrested and charged with criminal homicide. She was held on a $1.5 million bond and was scheduled for a court appearance on January 6th of the following year.
