Murder Plot Twist With 2:45 A.M. 911 Call

Phone screen showing 911 emergency call in progress.

The most chilling detail in the Tepe murders is not the gunshots, but a 2:45 a.m. phone call that almost turned this young Ohio family into a domestic-violence headline they did not earn.

Story Snapshot

A “domestic dispute” 911 call at the Tepe home came from a party guest, not the slain wife, according to the family.
Spencer and Monique Tepe were found shot to death in their Columbus home; their two children were inside but unharmed.
Police say it was not a murder-suicide, found no weapon, and saw no forced entry, pointing toward an outside killer.
A person of interest was caught on video near the home, and the family is fighting to keep false abuse narratives at bay.

A late-night call, a deadly morning, and a dangerously convenient narrative

On a spring night in April 2024, a woman at a Columbus, Ohio home dialed 911, hung up, then answered a call back from dispatch in tears, saying “me and my man got into it” and insisting nothing was physical before canceling officers. Months later, that same home became a crime scene, with dentist Dr. Spencer Tepe and his wife, Monique, found shot to death while their two young children were left alive inside. The connective tissue between those events has become a battleground over truth and reputation.

Columbus police discovered the bodies on December 30, 2024, after Spencer failed to show up to work at his dental practice — a red flag his employer described as wildly out of character. A concerned friend who went to the house for a welfare check called 911 at 10:03 a.m., reporting a body and blood visible near a bedroom. Officers found both Spencer, 37, and Monique, 39, dead from apparent gunshot wounds, with no weapon recovered at the scene and no sign of forced entry.

What the 911 label got wrong about the people who lived there

Public records later showed that April call from the Tepe home had been logged as a “domestic dispute,” exactly the kind of tag that, in a double homicide involving spouses, invites quick assumptions about a violent household. The audio, obtained and published by Fox News Digital, captured a distraught woman but no mention of Spencer or Monique by name. Dispatch logs did not identify the caller, listing her only as an “unknown female.”

After that 911 audio hit the air, the Tepe and Khosla families released a detailed statement that undercut the emerging domestic-violence storyline. They said the caller was not Monique, not Spencer, and not anyone who lived there, but a guest who had attended a party at the house and was upset about her own relationship with “her man.” According to the family, neither Spencer nor Monique were involved in a dispute that night, and the argument captured on tape was entirely about the guest’s separate relationship. For a conservative audience that values due process and personal responsibility, their pushback matters: a government code on a 911 screen is not proof of sin in a dead couple’s marriage.

Inside a rare double homicide with children left alive

Police have already said the case does not appear to be a murder-suicide, a conclusion reinforced by the absence of a firearm at the scene and the lack of forced entry into the home. Those details point away from the easy “husband snapped” trope and toward an outside actor — someone the couple may have known well enough to let in, or someone who had access without breaking in. Columbus detectives released surveillance video of a person of interest walking near the Tepe home around the time of the murders, asking the public to help identify the individual.

That combination — spouses killed together, children spared, no weapon recovered, and an unidentified person caught nearby — fits less with random chaos and more with targeted violence, at least at this stage of what remains an open investigation. The family’s insistence that the only prior 911 call involved a guest’s relationship drama, not an assault between Spencer and Monique, reinforces that this case cannot be lazily filed under “another domestic gone bad.” Common sense says investigators should focus on who had access, motive, and confidence to walk into a quiet home and leave two parents dead and two children alive.

How media framing and dispatch codes shape the story of a dead family

Fox’s reporting did what crime journalism often does: highlighted a “domestic dispute” call at the same address, then paired it with the later double homicide. That framing practically begs readers to connect dots that may not exist. To its credit, the same outlet also published the family’s clarification that the April caller was a guest, not Monique, and that the argument did not involve the couple at all. That dual presentation shows a tug-of-war between the sensational power of a label and the sobering force of facts.

From a conservative perspective grounded in fairness and limited government, the Tepe case is a textbook warning: bureaucratic shorthand like “domestic dispute” can stain a family’s name long after they have lost the ability to defend themselves. Dispatchers use broad categories to organize calls, not to adjudicate guilt. When those tags get ripped from context and amplified on national platforms, they can overshadow what police are actually saying — that this appears to be a double homicide with an outside perpetrator, not a tragic culmination of a violent marriage.