Myrtle Beach woman was set to leave her boyfriend. Before she could, she was found dead
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In the summer of 2021, 28-year-old Angela Roberts was ready to leave her long-time and allegedly abusive boyfriend.
Roberts had a plan to get out of Myrtle Beach and meet her cousin, Bethany Colley, in West Virginia, Colley said.
“She had already had her bags packed in the spare room ready to leave. She had called me probably two to three times in the week before she died. . . and she just said I’m really scared,” Colley said.
However, several days before her predetermined exit, Roberts died from a gunshot wound to the head. She was in a fight with her boyfriend, Kody Gaines, when she shot and killed herself, Gaines told Myrtle Beach Police at the time.
At the end of the original investigation, Myrtle Beach Police told Colley they believed it was a suicide — though Colley had her doubts.
“She never acted like she wanted to die,” she said.
The police department closed the case in 2022 but recently reopened it — around the same time The Sun News began requesting documents and interviews with officers. Several documents, like recorded police interviews with Gaines, were denied to The Sun News as Roberts’ death is an open case, according to a FOIA request.
The Sun News reached out to Gaines via his business email, but he did not respond.
No arrests have been made in Roberts’ death.
Given the timing and the couple’s history, Colley is convinced there’s more to her cousin’s death than information provided to police. However it’s unclear if there would ever be enough evidence to indict anyone.
“I just don’t know how well (Myrtle Beach Police) have actually investigated it,” Colley said.
Who was Roberts?
Roberts grew up in Myrtle Beach, graduating from Myrtle Beach High School in 2011. Roberts had a distant relationship with her father but was close with her mother, Colley said.
Colley and Roberts, despite being 10 years apart, spent their childhood together. For a number of years, they lived with their grandmother until Roberts was near middle school age. That’s when her mother got her own apartment, Colley said.
Growing up, Roberts didn’t always see the best examples of relationships.
“We had an uncle that was kind of unruly and drank a lot, and he had a girlfriend that he was always in physical fights with,” Colley said. “That maybe made it difficult to discern what a proper relationship should have been like.”
One male figure she had in her life was Brent Clark, the owner of Thee Dollhouse, a strip club located in Atlantic Beach.
Roberts started a friendship of sorts with Clark as a minor. They first met while she was working at a movie theater in high school. Clark said while going to the movies, he struck up a conversation with Roberts and told her to visit Thee Dollhouse when she turned 18.
After Roberts became an adult, she did indeed take Clark up on his offer. She’d come to the gentlemen’s club to dance, often spending time with Clark. She would go out to dinner with him or attend parties at Clark’s house.
When her car broke down, he bought her a new vehicle, took her shopping and would offer her jobs at Thee Dollhouse when money was tight — not as a dancer but as a shots girl or running the front door.
Clark and Roberts appeared to have a complex relationship. Speaking about Roberts, Clark sounded like he was describing a daughter or niece, but also had an inherent romantic attraction to the young woman.
They remained friends until Roberts’ death. However, the relationship also grew distant when she started dating Gaines when Roberts was about 19.
“She just went goo-goo-ga-ga over him,” Clark said. “She started a relationship with him, and then we drifted apart because I didn’t want to interfere with the relationship.”
An allegedly controlling boyfriend and a failed pregnancy
Roberts met Gaines while they were working at WonderWorks together, Clark said. They began dating in the early 2010s and moved into a home together in the Ramsey Acres neighborhood about a year into their relationship.
Despite their eight years together, Gaines never became close with Roberts’ family. Colley said she doesn’t remember spending much time with Gaines despite being best friends with Roberts.
“He wasn’t very personable,” she said.
As their relationship progressed, Gaines appeared to become controlling over Roberts.
“She didn’t go anywhere without him tracking her,” Clark said. “He had access to all her social media, so she couldn’t do any social media without him either cloning it or whatever.”
In order to get to hang out with her friends, Roberts would lie to Gaines about when her shifts started and show up to Thee Dollhouse hours before she started work. She would then leave her phone and car at the club so it looked like she was there and go somewhere else, Clark said.
Gaines would “grill” Roberts on where she went, according to Clark. There were also reports of alleged abuse, Colley said.
Then Roberts got pregnant.
“She was super excited about it. She’s always dreamed of, like, being a mother,” Colley said.
Roberts and Gaines learned early on that the baby had muscular dystrophy, a genetic disorder that causes progressive muscle weakness and degeneration. Roberts made the hard decision to terminate the pregnancy, knowing the child would have a short and painful life.
The loss left Roberts depressed, though neither Colley nor Clark believed her to be suicidal. She did attend a handful of counseling sessions to help with her mental health.
Not long after losing the baby, Roberts began planning to leave Gaines.
What led up to Roberts’ death?
In the weeks before her death, Gaines told Myrtle Beach Police officers that Roberts became increasingly paranoid. She was worried he had cameras in the house and that he was going to admit her to Lighthouse Behavioral Health Hospital.
Colley received a recording through a Freedom of Information Act request of an interview Gaines had with Myrtle Beach Police right after Roberts was shot and shared it with The Sun News.
“She thought that I was trying to lock her up, that that was the whole point of the counselor was to get her diagnosed with something so I could get her locked up,” Gaines told police in the interview.
Colley recalled Roberts telling her similar stories.
“She was like, ‘Careful, we can’t really say a whole lot. Like, don’t talk loud, because there are cameras in here that are recording,’” Colley said.
Colley said she never saw the cameras, but Roberts knew where they were located.
A couple of days before Roberts was scheduled to meet Colley, she got in a fight with Gaines at their home. Gaines said during the fight, she alluded that she was planning to leave him in two days, he told police.
Gaines and Roberts fought in the living room, where Roberts held Gaines’ chrome gun. He then went back to the bedroom where he started to get dressed, Gaines said in the interview with Myrtle Beach Police.
Gaines told police that Roberts came into the room, got on the bed and pointed her black gun at him. He lunged at her and tried to knock it out of her hand, which resulted in the firearm going off but not hitting anyone, and the pair falling into the space between their bed and dresser. Gaines said he took away her black gun and put it on the dresser, out of reach from Roberts.
He then pinned her down trying to keep her away from the gun.
He asked Roberts where his chrome gun went and she said “over there,” he told police. Gaines said, while he held her down, he looked over and then heard a shot — Roberts had shot herself in her head with Gaines’ gun.
Gaines called 911 and Roberts was brought to the hospital where she later died. Her autopsy, which Colley shared, showed she died from a gunshot wound on the right side of her head near her ear.
Questions about Myrtle Beach Police’s investigation
For over a year after Roberts’ death, Colley received little to no information on her cousin, she said.
“They didn’t give us anything at all during the initial investigation, like they wouldn’t even respond to our emails in the original investigation, and then they closed it as a suicide,” Colley said.
She remembers learning that Myrtle Beach Police closed the case, with officials saying in August 2022 that Roberts killed herself. After the case closed, she was able to request documents about Roberts’ death.
Colley, who has numerous documents, said Gaines’ story of what happened that day allegedly has changed slightly every time he told it.
What’s more is after emergency services arrived, Gaines was left alone long enough to wash his hands, said a police report Colley sent The Sun News.
Since the case re-opened, Myrtle Beach Police have declined to speak about the case or share certain documents because it’s an open investigation, said Randolph Angotti, the department spokesperson.
Colley worries the case has not been accurately investigated. During the initial investigation, the lead detective was changed at least once, as the first officer received a promotion, which Colley worries harmed the efficacy.
“There’s not much in any of the files that (the new detective) put in there, so I don’t think anything really happened with it after (the original detective) got promoted,” Colley said.
The day Roberts died, police searched the house and found over 400 grams of marijuana, $23,000 in cash, four scales and numerous Ziploc baggies. It is unclear who the drugs or money belonged to.
Following her death, Gaines deposited $5,000 from Roberts’ bank account to his own, which her family has not gotten back, Colley said. A police report was filed about the issue on Sept. 21, 2021.
In the days before Roberts’ death, Colley remembers getting calls from Roberts saying she was scared. She thought she should grab what she can and head to West Virginia, not following the original plan.
“I said, ‘I mean you can, but I’m kind of meeting with you in a few days, and we can pack all your stuff up in storage, you know...,’” Colley said. “I really wish I wouldn’t have said that, you know, knowing everything that I know today.’”
This story was originally published May 12, 2025 at 7:00 AM.
