Woman Found With Body In Car Crash Charged With Murder - All The Shocking New Details...

[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]

This car crash case just gets messier and messier…

As you may recall from our reporting earlier this week, state troopers came upon the scene of a car crash on the side of the highway in rural Minnesota — and found more than wreckage. The deputies found a dead body wrapped up in the backseat of a car — someone who was definitely not killed in the crash. Deputies observed:

“A human body wrapped in bedding, a mattress, and covered with a tarp with the head of the individual visible. The body was cold to the touch and without a pulse. There was dried blood soaked on the bedding wrapped around the body.”

The driver, an Iowa woman named Margot Lewis (above, left, in mugshot) was arrested. The corpse was later identified as 35-year-old transgender woman Liara Tsai (above, right). And right from the start, cops were on alert, because Tsai’s injuries were NOT consistent with being in a car accident. Now, the rest of the story has come out…

On Wednesday, prosecutors in Minnesota’s Hennepin County officially filed two charges of second-degree murder against Lewis. One charge is murder with intent, and the other without intent, per a new criminal complaint cited by multiple local news sources.

Per the new criminal complaint, via KARE 11 News and others, the vehicle that had crashed at the scene belonged to Tsai. And Tsai’s dog was even in the car at the scene of the crash — with the dog’s microchip information eventually leading back to her Minneapolis address! Investigators quickly obtained a search warrant. When they went inside the apartment, they found what the criminal complaint called “a bloody scene,” with Tsai’s bed specifically “saturated with blood.”

OMG…

The criminal complaint further stated that a “bloody plastic and metal object” was found on the bed. Also, a single steak knife was missing from the butcher block in the kitchen — and couldn’t be located anywhere in the apartment. Creepy AF. Those details would seem to link up to the medical examiner’s report, by the way. After the crash, the medical examiner in Olmsted County quickly determined that Tsai had a “gaping puncture wound” to her neck, with “multiple sharp force injuries” also present across her neck and on her hands.

Tsai was, per the complaint, a “former romantic partner” of Lewis. Tsai’s ex-spouse was interviewed by investigators for background, and told them Lewis was traveling from Iowa to visit Tsai between June 21 and June 29. It was a “sordid and emotionally challenging” relationship, per the witness.

As for Lewis, after she was treated for minor injuries as part of the crash, she was brought to the Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office. There, per the criminal complaint, she was “uncooperative.” She asked to communicate via sign language, though she was not deaf. Apparently she had taken a “vow of silence.” And when it came time for forensic investigators to collect Lewis’ fingerprints, DNA, and other evidence, she even closed her eyes and felt around the room as though she were blind?!?! The docs state:

“Investigators subsequently learned that she has taken a vow of silence and would prefer to communicate with sign language. Once at the sheriff’s office, Defendant sat down on the floor, pulled her knees into her chest, lowered her head, and began to cry. … When officers explained that they were going to collect evidence from her person, Defendant stood up, shut her eyes, and began feeling the floor, walls, and furniture in the room with her eyes closed. As officers tried to guide her to a chair in the room, she became combative, pushing and kicking at officers.”

WTF?!?!

At this point, Lewis is still in jail in Olmsted County. Her bail there has been set at $1.5 million. What a shocking case with so many twists and turns… jeez…

We send our condolences to Tsai’s family, friends, and loved ones.

[Image via Liara Tsai/Instagram/Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office]