64 YRS Side Chick Brutally Killed Her Best Friend Over A Married Man – CASE OF JOYCE SMAL | HO”

Joyce Anne Small was sixty-four and living quietly in Miami Gardens, Florida.

Joyce had a past that never really sat still: small-time crimes that didn’t seem to catch up to her the way they caught up to other people.

Insurance fraud and grand larceny in 2021.

Petty theft in 2022.

She wasn’t new to bending rules; she was new to being cornered by consequences that didn’t care about excuses.

For the most part she lived alone and kept to herself, but she always carried the same hunger under her routines—the need to feel needed, to feel important, to feel like someone’s “person.”

Then she met Sarah.

Some called her Sarai.

Sarah was homeless, without family support, without a stable place to land.

She floated through Miami-Dade the way a lot of people do when life has taken more than it’s given—carrying everything she owned in a bag, learning which faces were safe and which smiles cost too much.

One evening she came to Joyce asking for shelter.

Joyce didn’t hesitate.

“Come inside,” Joyce said, already stepping back from the doorway.

“You can stay for a bit.”

Sarah’s shoulders sagged with the kind of relief you don’t see unless you’ve been living in survival mode.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“I won’t be a problem.”

Joyce waved that off like it was nothing.

“Just… don’t bring trouble to my door.

That’s all.”

It felt natural for Joyce to do it.

A simple act of kindness, the kind people tell themselves they’ll do if they ever get the chance.

A meal.

A couch.

A break from the street.

Nothing extraordinary.

Except it became extraordinary anyway, because Sarah’s presence filled spaces Joyce hadn’t admitted were empty.

Sarah wasn’t just a person Joyce helped.

She became someone Joyce liked having around.

Sarah started opening up—about where she’d been, what she’d lost, and the quiet humiliations of being invisible to the world.

One afternoon they sat on Joyce’s worn couch, late sun slanting through cheap blinds, the room smelling faintly of laundry detergent and microwave food.

Sarah, guarded at first, suddenly spoke about her childhood like the memory surprised her.

“My mom used to bake cookies every Sunday,” Sarah said, looking at her hands.

“Same recipe.

Same smell.

It made me feel… safe.”

Joyce looked at her like she’d been handed something fragile.

“What kind of cookies?”

Sarah smiled—rare and real.

“The kind that make you think your life might be okay for five minutes.”

Joyce’s chest tightened.

She didn’t say it, but she felt it: responsibility.

Protection.

The urge to keep that little bit of light from getting snuffed out.

It made Joyce feel like she mattered, like her home could be more than a place where time passed.

Their conversations became more than small talk.

They laughed.

They shared stories.

They sat in silence that didn’t feel awkward.

Sarah’s laughter warmed the rooms.

Joyce noticed she looked forward to hearing someone else’s footsteps in the hallway.

Over time, Joyce’s affection deepened.

Sarah wasn’t just someone she helped; she was someone Joyce cared about.

Joyce was proud of it.

She liked saying “my friend” again.

In Sarah, Joyce saw a reflection of her own hunger for connection—something beyond transactions and survival.

Sarah, in turn, began seeing Joyce as more than a benefactor.

Joyce’s house became refuge from streets and from isolation.

Their friendship wasn’t perfect, but it was real.

Sarah would sometimes leave for a few days and return as easily as she’d gone.

Each return felt like a reunion—no pressure, no questions, just the quiet understanding of two people who had found each other at the right time.

Joyce told herself this was what she’d been missing.

Someone to talk to.

Someone to laugh with.

Someone who made her feel like a person again.

That was the second hinge: Joyce didn’t just give Sarah shelter—she gave her a place in her life, and started confusing kindness with ownership.

Because there was something else in Joyce’s life already, something complicated, something she had decided to accept rather than fix.

Joyce had a boyfriend who was married.

It wasn’t ideal, but Joyce had learned to live inside “not ideal.” The relationship ran on unspoken rules: he had his family, she had him—at least when he had time.

Joyce wasn’t naïve.

She knew what it looked like on paper.

But in her heart she had built it into something else, something she could hold.

“He cares,” Joyce would tell herself when the silence stretched too long.

“He just… has a lot going on.”

He was her constant.

Her proof she still mattered to someone.

Their routine included motel rooms—quiet places where they could exist without explaining themselves.

Joyce convinced herself their connection was real, even if it wasn’t public, even if it lived in margins.

Then Sarah entered Joyce’s home, and the air shifted.

At first, Sarah was polite whenever Joyce’s boyfriend came around.

Distant, even.

But Joyce began to notice small changes the way you notice a crack spreading across a windshield.

Sarah asking more questions.

“What does he do again?” Sarah asked one evening, too casual.

Joyce’s eyes flicked up.

“Work.

Same as always.”

“Where’s he from?” Sarah pressed, smiling like it was nothing.

“He talk like he ain’t from around here.”

Joyce laughed tight.

“You asking a lot of questions.”

Sarah shrugged.

“Just making conversation.”

But Joyce felt it in her stomach anyway—that tightening knot that doesn’t need proof to feel real.

Sarah’s eyes lingered a little too long when he spoke.

Sarah laughed a little too much at jokes Joyce didn’t think were funny.

Sarah’s curiosity wasn’t loud enough to be a confession, but it was persistent enough to feel like a threat.

Then there was the phone behavior.

Sarah didn’t hide her phone dramatically, but Joyce noticed she’d set it down fast when Joyce walked in.

A small shift, a small gesture—yet Joyce’s mind grabbed it and squeezed.

“What you always doing on that thing?” Joyce asked one night, trying to sound light.

Sarah looked up, calm.

“Nothing.

Just scrolling.”

Joyce nodded like she believed her.

She didn’t.

The jealousy wasn’t only about Sarah.

It was about fear—fear that the one thing Joyce believed was hers was slipping.

She had built a life around scarcity: scarce money, scarce loyalty, scarce love.

She didn’t have many things she believed she could claim.

That married man—complicated as he was—felt like the one piece of certainty she’d earned.

Now Sarah was in her home.

In her space.

Laughing in her kitchen.

Joyce tried to push the thoughts away.

She couldn’t.

Every question Sarah asked about the boyfriend felt like a challenge.

Every glance felt like a test Joyce was failing.

Joyce began to see Sarah not as a friend in need, but as a rival she couldn’t control.

And Joyce, historically, did not do well with losing control.

That was the third hinge: Joyce didn’t need evidence to feel betrayed—she only needed the idea that she could be replaced.

Finally, Joyce couldn’t hold it in anymore.

One afternoon, after Sarah finished cleaning the house the way she often did—an unspoken thank-you Joyce liked pretending wasn’t expected—Joyce sat down hard at the kitchen table.

“Sarah,” Joyce said, voice firm but trembling underneath it.

“We need to talk.”

Sarah paused in the doorway, wiping her hands on a dish towel.

“About what?”

Joyce swallowed, trying to keep her face steady.

“I been noticing some things.”

Sarah’s eyebrows lifted.

“Like what?”

Joyce leaned forward.

“I don’t know if you been talking to him—my boyfriend—but I seen the way you look at him.

The way you talk to him when he here.

You always asking questions, being too familiar.”

Sarah stared at her, surprised.

“What are you talking about?”

“You know exactly what I mean,” Joyce said, voice tightening.

“Why you so interested? Why you keep asking about his life? It feel like you trying to get too close.”

Sarah shook her head quickly.

“Nothing’s going on, Joyce.

Why would I do that? You overthinking it.”

Joyce studied her face the way you study a lock that won’t open.

Sarah looked calm.

Almost too calm.

Joyce wanted Sarah to sound guilty, to slip, to prove Joyce right so Joyce could justify what she was feeling.

But Sarah didn’t give her that.

“I’m just trying to get by,” Sarah said, softer now.

“I’m not trying to cause trouble.”

Joyce didn’t push further—not then.

There was no proof.

Just suspicion.

But the doubt didn’t leave; it multiplied.

Later that same day Joyce met her married boyfriend in a motel room, the usual place where their relationship could pretend it wasn’t a secret.

Afterward, he fell asleep.

Joyce lay there staring at the ceiling, unable to rest.

She looked at his phone on the nightstand like it was a door to the one answer she needed.

She knew it wasn’t right.

She did it anyway.

Joyce unlocked the phone and went through messages and call history, searching for Sarah’s name like she was hunting a needle in her own panic.

But she found nothing—work calls, texts from his wife, messages from friends.

No Sarah.

No secret thread.

No proof.

Joyce put the phone back and stared at it like it had betrayed her too.

The lack of evidence didn’t calm Joyce.

It sharpened her.

Because if she couldn’t prove it, then the only thing left was what she already believed: that something was happening and it was being hidden from her.

Joyce started watching her boyfriend’s movements.

She started watching Sarah’s movements too.

She made excuses to leave, then circled back, tracking where Sarah went, who she spoke to.

Each time she found nothing, but nothing didn’t mean peace anymore.

Nothing felt like someone outsmarting her.

Joyce began making notes—documenting small details like she was building a case against her own friend.

She didn’t say “best friend” out loud, but that’s what Sarah had become.

The betrayal Joyce imagined felt worse because it was intimate, because it lived inside her own home.

By the end of the week, Joyce’s mind was a storm.

Was Sarah involved with the married man or not? Was Joyce seeing ghosts? Or was Joyce the only person paying attention?

The uncertainty became its own kind of poison.

That was the fourth hinge: when Joyce couldn’t find proof, she started treating suspicion like proof—and that’s when the story stopped being about love and started being about possession.

October 11th, 2023, Joyce arrived near the North Dade Regional Library in the afternoon.

She parked at a distance from the entrance, positioned to watch without being obvious.

Dressed in a pink top, light jeans, flat shoes, Joyce moved with purpose that didn’t look like panic.

It looked like decision.

In her purse, a Smith & Wesson .40 caliber handgun sat heavy, changing the way her arm swung when she walked.

Joyce checked it the way people check something they’ve already decided to use.

She waited near the parking lot, hidden in bushes, watching the library entrance.

She had been tracking Sarah for days, waiting for a “right moment” she couldn’t have explained without admitting what she’d become.

When Sarah stepped out, Joyce’s focus narrowed to a single point.

Sarah walked toward the lot unaware of what was waiting.

Joyce cut across the grass with surprising speed.

Sarah sensed danger before she understood it.

She turned and ran.

Witnesses later described Sarah’s movement as frantic—panic in every step, trying to put distance between herself and the threat closing in.

Joyce pulled the handgun from her purse when she was about fifteen to twenty feet away.

Witnesses said she didn’t hesitate.

The first shot cracked through the air and Sarah stumbled but kept moving.

Another shot followed and Sarah went down, the kind of fall that doesn’t look like tripping—it looks like a body realizing it can’t do what the mind is demanding.

Sarah tried to crawl away.

She turned, begging, voice breaking, hands up—trying to say the words that might reach a friend’s conscience if any part of that friendship was still alive.

But Joyce didn’t stop.

A final shot ended it.

People nearby stood frozen, phones half-raised, mouths open, unable to understand how quickly a daytime afternoon had turned into a forever.

Witnesses would later tell police, “She just walked off calm like nothing happened.”

Miami-Dade Police arrived within minutes, sirens cutting the air.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue pronounced Sarah Gabbor dead at 5:40 p.m.

That time—5:40—became a marker in reports, in interviews, in people’s minds.

The moment a life was stamped into past tense.

That was the fifth hinge: the act was fast, but it had been rehearsed in Joyce’s head for weeks.

About an hour later, police drove a witness to where Joyce Anne Small was, and the witness identified her as the shooter.

Officers approached Joyce.

She was initially uncooperative, face unreadable, body language stiff, as if the situation was an inconvenience rather than a catastrophe.

“Ma’am, we need to speak with you,” an officer said.

Joyce complied, but her calm unsettled them.

No panic.

No frantic explanation.

Just short answers and a blank stare that made people wonder what story she’d been telling herself long enough to make this feel reasonable.

In questioning, Joyce’s guard dropped just enough for the truth to show its shape.

“She was agitating me,” Joyce said, flat, like she was describing an argument over noise, not the end of a human life.

Officers searched for the weapon.

They recovered it near a walking trail north of the library where Joyce had discarded it in the aftermath.

Ballistics later confirmed it matched the bullets used to kill Sarah.

Then the case moved into the legal system quickly, because daylight cases don’t allow much mystery.

Joyce was held at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.

Charged with first-degree murder.

Held without bond.

A public defender, Ailen Penate Hernandez, was appointed.

The central issue became Joyce’s mental competency.

Experts were consulted to determine whether Joyce was fit to stand trial and whether she had the capacity to understand the consequences of her actions at the time.

As of now, no official diagnosis has been publicly released.

In the community, reactions split the way they always do when something horrific happens close to home.

Some neighbors described Joyce as quiet, reserved, the kind of person you’d pass in a hallway and barely remember.

Others said she’d seemed like a woman with deep emotions and frustrations built up over time—someone who could carry resentment like a purse and never let anyone see what was inside.

The prosecution was expected to argue the act was cold and premeditated: tracking, waiting, approaching, shooting, walking away.

The defense would likely examine whether Joyce acted in emotional distress, whether her reality had warped into something she couldn’t control.

And hovering behind all of it was the question investigators couldn’t close neatly: the married man.

He wasn’t publicly identified.

He didn’t pull the trigger.

But his presence sat in the story like a shadow.

A relationship built on secrecy.

A triangle made of half-truths.

Two women believing they were owed something that was never truly theirs to own.

As of June 2025, the case remains unresolved.

Delays have stalled what many assumed would move swiftly.

The longer it sits, the more the community fills the silence with speculation.

Was Joyce driven by a single emotional snap? Or was the decision made long before October 11th, rehearsed in notes and suspicion and the slow conversion of friendship into rivalry?

Detectives asked anyone with information to come forward, urging tips to Miami-Dade County Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477.

Public interest stayed high.

The questions kept circling because the “why” still felt too thin for the “what.”

Some people began wondering whether Joyce had ever truly seen Sarah as an equal friend.

Had Sarah been a person Joyce cared about—or a person Joyce controlled? Joyce took Sarah in, offered shelter, but over time kindness blurred into something darker.

The line between affection and ownership got dangerously unclear, and in that gray space, someone died.

For Sarah’s family and anyone who knew her, the lack of clean answers became its own kind of pain.

Grief is hard enough; grief with uncertainty is heavier.

They weren’t only mourning Sarah’s life.

They were mourning the fact that her last moments happened in public, with strangers watching, with no chance to understand why a friend became a threat.

And then there was Tanya—Darnell’s widow in another story, the kind of woman who finds boxes and secrets in attics.

In this case, it wasn’t an attic, but it was still a box people kept opening: Joyce’s past, Sarah’s vulnerability, and the married man’s silence.

It made people ask the same uncomfortable question in different ways: when someone “rescues” you, do they always want you safe—or do they want you close?

Joyce’s history showed she wasn’t unfamiliar with crossing lines when she believed she could get away with it.

But this wasn’t fraud.

This wasn’t theft.

This was a life, and a crowd, and a parking lot, and a library card lying on concrete like a tiny witness.

That library card—Sarah’s—was photographed, bagged, logged like everything else.

Evidence doesn’t cry, it doesn’t argue, it doesn’t explain motive.

It just sits there and proves what happened.

Later, people who had known Joyce replayed the beginning: Joyce opening her door to Sarah, offering a meal, offering a couch.

They replayed Sarah’s smile when she talked about childhood cookies and safety.

They replayed Joyce’s need to feel important.

They replayed the unspoken reality of the married man—how secrecy can make people feel chosen when they’re actually being managed.

Sometimes the most dangerous relationships aren’t the ones that start with violence.

They start with “I got you.” They start with “You can stay here.” They start with “Don’t worry, it’s just us.” And then, slowly, they become a cage built out of emotion and entitlement.

In the end, October 11th didn’t create the obsession.

It revealed it.

And the thing that makes this case so hard to hold is that it’s not about strangers.

It’s about familiarity.

About betrayal that doesn’t come from the outside, but from someone who already knows your routines, your weak points, and which door you’ll walk out of next.

When Joyce walked away from the library lot, witnesses said she looked calm.

Not because nothing happened—because in her mind, something had finally been resolved.

That’s what obsession does.

It turns human beings into problems.

It turns friendship into territory.

It turns a married man into a trophy.

It turns suspicion into justification.

And it turns a public place into a private execution.

Now the court system moves the way it always does—slow, procedural, careful.

As of June 2025, people are still waiting for resolution, for an official narrative that fits the evidence and explains the “why” without excusing it.

But for Sarah, there is no delay and no appeal.

Her story ended at 5:40 p.m.

outside a library, in daylight, near a dropped card that proved she was there to borrow books—not to become a headline.

That was the final hinge: Joyce opened her door to Sarah to feel needed, and closed the story in public when “needed” started feeling like “owned.”