It started with two people who simply vanished.
In early May 2021, Eugene Simpson’s sudden silence unsettled his family. At first, they told themselves it wasn’t unusual. Eugene had disappeared before — short stretches when he wouldn’t answer his phone or check in. But he always came back. Always called eventually.
This time, he didn’t.
What triggered real concern was his absence from a family barbecue on May 2nd in Great Falls, South Carolina — the kind of gathering he never missed, especially when his children were involved. The event was hosted by his cousin-in-law, Melissa Simpson. Eugene had promised to stop by, spend time with his two young kids, and catch up with family. Everyone was waiting for him. The kids asked about him all afternoon.
“He was supposed to come,” Melissa said. “He told us he would be there. And when he didn’t show up, we just… we knew. We knew something had happened.”
They called his phone. No answer. Texts went unread. As the hours passed, hope turned into dread.
That missed barbecue — ordinary, even forgettable under other circumstances — became the first undeniable sign that Eugene was gone. Not lost. Not hiding. Gone.
Around the same time, York County authorities received a request for a welfare check. The call concerned Thomas Hardin, a 35-year-old woman who hadn’t been heard from in days. Hardin lived alone in a modest apartment in York, South Carolina.
When officers finally arrived and forced their way inside, they found Thomas Hardin (a trans-identifying woman) lying dead on the floor. She had been shot multiple times. The apartment was oddly untouched — nothing stolen, no signs of forced entry, no struggle. The scene suggested a killing that was deliberate, cold, and deeply personal.
Police didn’t know it yet, but these two cases — a missing father and a murdered woman were connected. They would soon trace both back to one unlikely source: a woman named Adrienne Simpson.
Adrienne, 34 at the time, was Eugene’s estranged wife. Their relationship had been turbulent for years. They were no longer living together but still shared parental responsibilities. There was always tension between them, but never anything that pointed to what was coming.
What investigators didn’t know — at least not right away — was that Adrienne had taken up with another man, Tyler Terry. Terry was just 26 but already had a lengthy criminal history including robbery and assault.
Terry was romantically involved with Thomas Hardin in which police would later learn and the love triangle, driven by jealousy and resentment, became one of the central motives behind the violence that followed. Adrienne had reportedly grown furious over Terry’s continued relationship with Thomas. Whether it was betrayal, possessiveness, or something darker, something snapped.
The first major clue linking Adrienne to the murders came when investigators found her credit card near the scene of Hardin’s killing. That discovery set everything in motion and the chase was on to catch the killers.
By May 17, police had eyes on Adrienne and Terry driving through Chester County and a local deputy moved in to pull them over.
Instead of pulling over, Terry slammed his foot on the gas — and within seconds, gunfire erupted from inside the moving car. With one hand on the wheel and the other gripping a revolver, he fired through the windshield as he tore down the highway at more than 100 miles per hour, bullets flying while police gave chase.
What followed wasn’t just a car chase. It was a rolling gunfight across rural South Carolina. Terry, behind the wheel, allegedly fired a rifle through the windshield as he sped down Highway 9. Officers returned fire. The pursuit stretched more than 30 miles, a violent blur of screaming tires and split-second terror.
Eventually, the car crashed.
Adrienne was arrested on the spot. Terry managed to leave the vehicle and fled into the woods, barefoot, armed, and dangerous. For the next seven days, he would elude one of the largest manhunts the county had ever seen. More than 125 officers searched dense forest and swamp. Helicopters were called in as well as sniffer dogs who managed to lock in on his scent.
Residents were ordered to lock their doors and schools canceled classes. Sheriff Max Dorsey gave daily updates, describing Terry as “the most violent man I’ve ever encountered.” At one point, Terry was caught on a surveillance camera at a nearby business. He had broken in, stolen a gun and shoes, and vanished again. The fear in Chester County was palpable. Terry had become a ghost — one carrying a loaded weapon and an appetite for destruction.
With Terry still missing, investigators turned their focus to Adrienne.
At first, she kept her answers vague. But when detectives confronted her with mounting evidence, she began to open up.
Eventually Adrienne admitted that she had helped lure Eugene to his death. According to her version of events, Eugene thought he was meeting with her to talk about their children. Instead, he was ambushed and shot — his body dumped in a roadside ditch, where it would lie undiscovered for more than two weeks.
She said she drove Terry to Thomas Hardin’s apartment as well, though she insisted she didn’t know he was going to kill her. “I just drove,” she told police. “I didn’t know what he was going to do.” Investigators weren’t convinced. The emotional entanglements — the jealousy, the romantic history — were too complex to untangle with a shrug.
And then she said something that stunned detectives: she and Terry hadn’t stopped killing. They had gone on the run — and they had killed more people along the way.
Just three days before the shootout in South Carolina, Terry and Adrienne were in Missouri.
On the evening of May 15, in University City near St. Louis, 71-year-old Barbara Goodkin and her husband Stanley were driving home together. It was late, but not unusual — they had just left a small gathering. They never saw the other car pull up beside them. Shots rang out from the passenger window and Barbara was struck in the head. Stanley, sitting behind the wheel, was also hit — the bullet passed through his chest but was deflected by his cell phone. Miraculously, he survived.
Tragically, Barbara died in the hospital the next day.
Less than an hour later, Dr. Sergei Zacharev, a 58-year-old anesthesiologist, was shot and killed outside a hotel in Brentwood. He had just stepped outside for air. The randomness of the attack made it even more horrifying as nothing was taken. There was no robbery.
Zacharev left behind a son. His colleagues remembered him as lighthearted, compassionate, and deeply devoted to his patients. “Always smiling,” one nurse wrote. “Always looking out for others.”
After a forensic examination of the crime scenes, the police ballistics squad eventually matched the weapon used in both Missouri shootings to Terry.
The final victim in the spree was 25-year-old Danterrio Coats. In Memphis, Tennessee, police say Coats pulled over to help a couple who appeared to be having car trouble on the side of the road. Adrienne flagged him down. As he stepped out of his vehicle, she allegedly pulled a gun and shot him through the window. Coats collapsed in the street.
His death, like the others, was pointless — a life stolen for no reason beyond impulse.
On May 24, one week after the crash and manhunt, Tyler Terry was found curled up in the woods, dehydrated and exhausted. Police reports said he didn’t resist arrest.
In interviews with police, he confirmed much of Adrienne’s story — but added that she was far more involved than she had admitted. “She shot too,” he told them. “This wasn’t just me.”
When asked why he did it — why they did any of it — Terry reportedly smiled and said, “What would Harley Quinn be without the Joker? She’s the reason I do what I do.”
Rather than drag victims’ families through years of court proceedings, prosecutors across South Carolina, Missouri, and Tennessee reached an agreement: both Terry and Simpson would plead guilty in all jurisdictions. In exchange, they would be spared the death penalty and sentenced to life without parole.
Terry entered his pleas in July 2023 and was sentenced to multiple life terms plus 155 years. Adrienne followed in October 2024, pleading guilty to murder, assault, robbery, and weapons charges. Her sentencing was set for later that month.
At the hearings, family members of the victims addressed the court. Stanley Goodkin, whose wife was killed beside him, said Terry “should be sentenced to a burning, torturous death.” Dr. Zacharev’s brother added: “You’re going to prison for the rest of your life to die. Be proud of yourself.”
In the end, there were no big revelations, no manifesto or explanation. Just a shattered trail of grief, spread across three states and five families.
Eugene Simpson. Thomas Hardin. Barbara Goodkin. Sergei Zacharev. Danterrio Coats.
They didn’t know each other. They had nothing in common. But their names are now forever linked by two people — drawn together by chaos, bonded by cruelty, and swallowed up by their own warped idea of love.
Even now, police say they can’t be entirely sure that the killing spree stopped with those five. Investigations remain open. There are still unanswered questions.
“What they did between South Carolina and Missouri, we may never fully know,” one investigator admitted. “But we’re not done looking.”
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