Last Friday, rapper Tay-K ’s sister, Kayla Beverly, shared a video on Instagram of her winding up a conversation with someone saved in her phone as “Taymor’s Attorney.”

After the call ends, she turns to a woman — presumably her and the rapper’s (real name Taymor McIntyre) mother — and says, “Your son coming home!”

The video sent shockwaves. McIntyre is currently serving not one, but two decades-long prison sentences (though they run concurrently, not consecutively): 55 years on a murder charge stemming from a 2016 home invasion in Mansfield, Texas that turned deadly; and 80 years for a murder in a fast food parking lot in San Antonio the following year.

So how is someone scheduled to be in prison for the rest of the century on the verge of “coming home”? Is his sister right, or does she have false hope? We dug deep into the details of both cases in an attempt to come up with an answer.

Before we go any further, a note. Complex repeatedly reached out to both Beverly and to Tay-K’s attorney John T.…