When Chance Comanche was pulled out of practice, his teammates hoped that it was good news.

The day was Dec. 15, 2023, and the 6-foot-10 center was having a strong season for the Stockton Kings. Born and raised in California, Comanche was a top-100 recruit in high school and played two seasons at Arizona before going undrafted in 2017. But he found a footing in pro basketball nonetheless. In April 2023, a few days before turning 27, he had played in his first and only N.B.A. game, as a member of the Portland Trail Blazers.

Now, in his second season with Stockton, the Sacramento Kings’ affiliate in the N.B.A.’s developmental G League, he was playing to get back to basketball’s biggest stage, and was one of the team’s best players.

“He was balling,” Jake Stephens, a rookie center for Stockton that season, told The New York Times in May. “We all thought he was getting an N.B.A. call-up. We thought his moment had come.”

So when Comanche left practice that day, Stephens and his teammates didn’t see the black S.U.V.s idling outside the building. They didn’t see the sheriff’s deputies, the police officers and the F.B.I. agents. They didn’t see the handcuffs.

It wasn’t until after practice that the players learned that something was wrong. They were called into a meeting room by Anjali Ranadive, the team’s general manager and the daughter of Vivek Ranadive, a co-owner of the Sacramento Kings. She and Stockton’s coach, Lindsey Harding, broke the news to the team. Comanche hadn’t been called up — he had been taken into custody.

“They told us that Chance was arrested, and that was all the detail that they gave us,” Stephens said. “Your mind immediately starts wandering, ‘What was it?’ I was thinking of something small, like parking tickets. Never in a million years would I have guessed what was coming.”

They found out a couple of days later, while on a cross-country flight to Florida for a tournament. As their plane was closing in on Orlando, Stockton players started to see the news alerts. Stephens saw a social media post. Then a headline. Then a news story, and another. Each additional detail seemed more surreal than the last.

First you read “kidnapping,” and “you’re like, ‘What?’” Stephens said. “And then you read that they found the remains of a body, and that there was another person involved — it’s just one hit after another. You’re looking around on this small commercial flight. Everyone is making eyes with each other. Nobody is saying anything, but it’s clear everyone is thinking the same thing: What happened when we were in Las Vegas?”

The answer to that question won’t come until next year, when Comanche will stand trial on murder and kidnapping charges in the death of a young woman.

But members of the Stockton Kings that season were left wondering: If Comanche did commit these crimes, how was he able to continue playing professional basketball for another 10 days?

“It’s a story where, once you start unraveling it,” Stephens said, “people pull up chairs and start listening.”

Ominous Text Messages

On Dec. 2, 2023, the Kings arrived in Nevada for a tournament and scouting event. That day, according to messages that were later recovered from their devices, reviewed by the Las Vegas police and presented to a grand jury, Comanche was texting with Sakari Harnden about another woman, Marayna Rodgers.

In the messages, contained in court documents, Harnden and Comanche appear to plan Rodgers’s murder.

According to those documents, Harnden would later tell the police that she and Rodgers were both sex workers and that Rodgers had threatened to kill her over a stolen Rolex. According to police interviews, Harnden resented Rodgers because Rodgers had accused her of providing information to the police that had led to the arrest of her own boyfriend.

On her social media accounts, Rodgers, who was 23, listed herself as a Los Angeles native and a former student at the University of Washington Bothell. She posted photos from her job as a medical assistant and wrote that she also worked as a field agent for an insurance company. She posted about her friends, food, dogs and books on faith. She wrote that she missed her parents.

Marayna had struggled to cope after the death of her mother in 2020, her grandmother, Suzanne Rodgers, told The Times. Suzanne said Marayna had steadied herself and had planned to start nursing school in January 2024. “It surprised me, actually,” said Suzanne, who is a pediatric nurse. “When she was little, she was always so afraid of getting even a cut. But I was very proud of her.”

Harnden, 19 at the time, had met Comanche the previous year, and they had dated briefly but had never been serious, according to one of Harnden’s relatives, who asked to remain anonymous on the advice of their lawyer. Comanche and Harnden had remained friends after breaking up and even referred to each other as “twin.” (Through their respective lawyers, they each declined to be interviewed for this article.)

In a statement to The Times, Lance Hendron, Comanche’s lawyer, wrote: “We are aware of public interest in this case. However, it is important to remember that this matter is being addressed through the judicial process, not in the media. All individuals are entitled to a fair trial, and we will respect that process by refraining from commenting on the facts or merits of the case outside the courtroom. We trust that the legal proceedings will bring all relevant facts to light in the appropriate forum.”

At first, the text messages appeared to show Comanche trying to find a third person to kill Rodgers for Harnden. At 4:37 p.m. on Dec. 2, Harnden asked Comanche for an update, and Comanche replied: “Starting my game. I’ll check half time.” After the game, he created a group chat with Harnden and another person. (Prosecutors referred to this person, Travion Carter, as a “basketball friend” of Comanche’s, but The Times was unable to locate him for comment. He does not face charges.) In the messages, Carter, Comanche and Harnden seem to discuss a murder.

By Dec. 4, the plans with Carter appeared to fall through, and Comanche sent a message to Harnden: “I’m not saying do it yourself but if it’s that easy why not knock it out.” He went on to suggest mixing rat poison in Rodgers’s drink or having her overdose on drugs. He suggested that he could break her neck or strangle her.

The following night at 10:06 p.m., according to security footage reviewed by the Las Vegas police and presented before a grand jury, Comanche returned to the M Resort after a game. He visited a teammate’s room and returned to his own room at 10:50 p.m. At 11:21 p.m., he left the hotel with teammates. And at 12:02 a.m. on Dec. 6, he got into Harnden’s car.

Surveillance footage from a liquor store showed Harnden and Rodgers getting out of a Mercedes and buying alcohol around 1:30 in the morning. Comanche later told the police that he was in the back seat of the car at the time. As they drove away, he and Harnden texted each other about how to murder Rodgers.

According to Comanche’s confession when he was arrested, he and Harnden had told Rodgers that he wanted to have sex with both of them while they were tied up. He said that Rodgers had consented to be zip-tied by Harnden, who climbed into the passenger seat to straddle her. Comanche, who remained in the back seat, said he began to choke Rodgers with an HDMI cord. He told the police that he had done so for about 10 seconds, and that Harnden continued to choke Rodgers until she died.

Then, he said, they put her body in a ditch in the Nevada desert and covered it with rocks. They used a towel to move the rocks “so their DNA could not be traced.” Security footage shows them returning to the hotel at 6:15 a.m. According to an arrest report obtained by The Times, Harnden filed a missing-person report with the police later that morning. She would go on to tell detectives that she had been with Rodgers that night and had seen Rodgers get into an Uber for a job with an unknown client.

Shortly after 10 a.m., Comanche texted Harnden some advice: “You got this boo. This the post game interview. Just smile and wave.”

An arrest report noted that Harnden had been crying when she left Comanche’s room a few moments later.

But Comanche didn’t see her tears. He had left the room an hour earlier to board a bus with his teammates. For the next 10 days, he was still a professional basketball player. And he kept playing.

‘Just Really Sad’

At the airport that morning, Comanche sat down with a few teammates for breakfast at Burger King. When they were done eating, they played the card game Uno. He told one teammate that he had been up all night, but it barely registered. After all, they were leaving Las Vegas.

Almost every person who had played with Comanche that season described him in interviews with The Times this summer as a professional on the court who struggled sometimes to put in the extra effort that could elevate him to the next level. He loved video games and board games, regularly showed off his ability to solve a Rubik’s Cube, and was quick with a joke in the locker room or during drills. In a 2018 interview with Action News 5 in Memphis, Comanche said he played to give his mother “an easy life.”

In the Stockton Kings’ next game, in Portland, Ore., on Dec. 7, Comanche played the worst he had all season. Some players remembered that he had been uncharacteristically quiet and irritable afterward.

“That was the only time he seemed off at all,” said Kalob Ledoux, a guard on the team that season. “Otherwise, after games, we’d celebrate and enjoy ourselves.”

During their time in Oregon, the players got to visit the Nike employee store. Some teammates remembered Comanche collecting quite a haul between that stop on Nike’s campus and a later outing some of them took to a row of designer stores in downtown Portland.

“He was just out with us walking the city streets,” said one teammate, who asked to remain anonymous because he didn’t want to hurt his chances of playing in the N.B.A. He added: “It’s two years later now, and it’s still shocking. But it’s also just really sad.”

Comanche’s slump was short-lived. On Dec. 9, he was the team’s leading scorer and second in rebounds in a close loss. On Dec. 12, back in Stockton, he played well again. Before the game, Stephens remembered Comanche as being upbeat. Comanche, Stephens and Skal Labissiere, the three centers on the roster, ended their warm-ups together by taking shots until they sank 10. Comanche made the final shot to win, teasing the other two afterward.

“There’s craziness out there in the world,” Stephens said, “and I guess we all came across it that season.”

If Comanche sensed that the police were closing in on him on the morning of that final practice, he didn’t betray it to his teammates.

“That morning, I was warming up right next to him, doing all our stretches,” Ledoux said. “It was just another day,” he added. “The only reason I can remember it at all is because of what happened next.”

A Confession

As Comanche was carrying on with basketball business that week, the Las Vegas police were searching for Marayna Rodgers. On Dec. 6, Sakari Harnden filed the missing-person report for Rodgers. The next day, two of Rodgers’s friends did the same.

After conducting interviews and perceiving inconsistencies in Harnden’s story, the police obtained a search warrant for her home and car and seized two iPhones and an iPad. Then they saw the messages. On Dec. 13, they arrested Harnden. Two days later, they arrested Comanche. Harnden refused to speak to detectives, but the police said Comanche confessed and even provided a “pinpoint” location of Rodgers’s remains, which until then had gone undiscovered.

The news of Comanche’s arrest, and the details of the crimes he was accused of committing, reverberated back through his life. Teammates and coaches from high school, college and pro teams checked and then double- and triple-checked their messages — and their memories. Eman Rafalian, who played with Comanche at Beverly Hills High School, remembered him walking into a party at Rafalian’s house hoisting a trophy after their team had won a basketball tournament.

“I think he was easily influenced by the people around him, and that’s the only way I can make sense of any of this,” Rafalian said.

Marlain Veal, an American who played with Comanche in Turkey, remembered him as a homesick homebody who never went out — except to visit Veal. They would watch YouTube documentaries together and eat Veal’s wife’s home cooking.

Most members of the Stockton Kings that season were wary of speaking on the record. In the G League, the players aren’t the only ones vying for a call-up — so, too, are the trainers, the coaches and members of the front office staff. With only 30 teams in the N.B.A., jobs are scarce and competition for them is fierce. Making matters more complicated for Stockton members was Anjali Ranadive’s position as the team’s G.M. Many worried that speaking out about Comanche’s arrest would draw the ire of her father, Vivek, the team’s governor.

An article in The Athletic in March detailed how Anjali Ranadive had risen through the ranks of her father’s organization. According to three people who spent that season with the team and spoke with The Times, she decided to re-sign Comanche for the 2023-24 season. One member of the coaching staff remembered that she regularly asked for Comanche’s statistics so that she could champion his chances with the Sacramento Kings.

Codi Simmons, an athletic trainer with Stockton, said that Anjali and Comanche had been romantically involved. Three other people with direct knowledge of the situation confirmed their relationship. “They were the closest two people of anybody in that organization,” Simmons said. “I believe that she liked him more than he liked her. She was with him out of love. I’m not sure what it was on his side.”

A month after Comanche’s arrest — just shy of seven months into her tenure as G.M. — she stepped down to pursue a Ph.D. and focus on her nonprofit. Through a team spokeswoman, Anjali Ranadive declined two interview requests.

For the past year and a half, Comanche’s case has wound its way through the courts. In August 2026, he and Harnden are scheduled to be tried together on charges of murder and kidnapping and related conspiracy charges.

Hendron, who is Comanche’s third lawyer, filed a motion in April to suppress Comanche’s confession, saying that the police had denied Comanche his constitutional right to counsel.

The Rodgers family has not posted an obituary or held an official service for Marayna. “We really cannot put her to rest yet,” said Suzanne, her grandmother. “Not while all of this is unresolved. I want all of this to be in the past, and then she can finally rest.”

The Stockton team has since scrubbed any mention of Comanche from its social media feeds. Its last public reference to him was a one-sentence statement on Dec. 15, 2023, the day of his arrest: “The Stockton Kings, the NBA G League affiliate of the Sacramento Kings, announced today they have released Chance Comanche.”