Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Federal Informant Holds Dealer Hostage (How She Escaped)

Episode Date: December 25, 2024

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I felt more safe with scarier types of men. He had tracking stuff on my phone. I couldn't reach out to family, that this man was gonna be a villain in my life. I'd never had anybody be that cruel. All right. Sorry. My dad is biker, had biker friends,

biker-affiliated friends, and I, even at a young age, I feel like I glorified anything that was on the end. other side of it. We were in an urban area where I feel like that impacted who I was in my juvenile years quite a bit. It was a rough area that I grew up in. But I grew up really just not having any ambition. I don't remember having any ambition to be better than anybody I was around. It just felt like I was destined to do something wrong. I feel like, you know, there wasn't really anybody that was guiding me to do better. It was.

It was very bizarre looking back now that I'm a parent about how I, there wasn't anybody like pushing me really hard for school or pushing me to like figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. It was just, I was just kind of like kids are meant to be seen, not heard type of a thing. Ultimately, he kicked me out from being kind of a troubled youth kid. How old was that? I was 15. What was the trouble?

I kept getting in trouble. He and I were clashing his lifestyle and my lifestyle and his lack of giving me any freedom. my grades, my getting in trouble, fighting, whatever it was. Looking back, I do believe that I had, I became a bully so that I wasn't getting bullied, which was interesting because I didn't realize that I was like a follower until I became older and had a teenage daughter, and I realized like I was kind of a schmuck of a kid. But he kicked me out, and I went back to my mom's in a small town in West Virginia,

and that in itself was kind of a nightmare. because I was accustomed to New Bedford, Massachusetts. I talked funny. I had a different perception of what people were like. And then I was the new kid, and it took me no time to just gravitate towards other people that were similarly broken to me. Right. And I definitely.

The misfit crowd. There's that in high school that sometimes they're golf, sometimes they're, you know. Yeah, my mom thought that I was trying to find, like, the bad boy, but it really had nothing to do with I feel like I craved some type of strange toxic masculinity based off of like my relationship with my dad. I feel like I really just liked people that were doing, not doing things wrong, but I felt more safe with scarier types of men, I guess I would I would say that carried, that stayed with me all up until Mike, really. But in West Virginia, I realized that people are a lot different than Massachusetts. Massachusetts, you could get into a fight. Nobody's going to call the cops.

People aren't telling on each other up there the same way as they were in West Virginia. And I realized quickly I was going to be getting in trouble. And I did. I ended up definitely getting in with the wrong crowd, which is very typical. But I loved it. I enjoyed being in West Virginia because it was easier to, like, make fast money in West Virginia. I just developed into, man, I just... What's fast money?

What do you mean make fast money? Well, so I had never know. I, when I left New Bedford, I drank and taken some clodipins or something. But when I got to West Virginia, I'd never been in an area, especially at that age, where people were really, like, doing drugs. Like, I didn't grow up around drugs. I didn't grow up seeing people use drugs. I'm like, I'd never really been around people that were selling drugs or doing drugs until I got to West Virginia. And it was, I'd never made money before either.

I mean, when I got there, it was two months before I turned 16. And then during my, while I was 16, we started selling pills, friends and I started selling pills or selling their parents' pills. and it started a over a decade journey that you know that we're here to talk about today you know um when you say pills you mean just any colonnopins vitamin pergsa zana yeah the whole the whole thing and i mean i believe that my entire drug addiction was like my karma for helping other people's drug addictions long before i had my own because i mean I didn't, you know, you don't care when you're out there doing shit like that to people. You don't realize you're doing something to people.

You're just getting some money. And that's kind of how it went. I was functional. I don't believe that I was an addict until much later because something else I learned in West Virginia was about the existence of meth. All right. I had never heard of speed before. In Massachusetts, I feel like there was like some crackheads. But like I'd never heard of speed in my life, West Virginia.

In my 20s is when I was exposed to speed and manufacturing. And that's when my life took a complete spiral. Is there, are they, like, is this someplace like they're making it there? Or are they bringing it in from Mexico? We were making it. Oh, okay. Yeah, no, not that stuff. Okay.

But I had already been, I had turned into, I broke the cardinal law and I was doing my own supply when it came to pain pills. And that went on for many years. and then we were sourcing from the pill mills here in Florida. So when they shut them down, everything changed in West Virginia, and they started making people go to pain clinics, and it wasn't as easy to get pain medicine. So around the same time that I quit,

well, not quit doing pain pills, but graduated into H. It was when I started to date a cook and learn the ropes of shake and bake, which is, or anhydrous cooking. And I had very little understanding of how dangerous being around that is. And because of that, I was diagnosed with COPD and emphysema in 2019 when I was 33. Okay. I thought I was, again, you were going to say like explosions or like everybody I know. You see the scars, though, those scars on my face.

You want to recover to makeup. Those are from a lot, from lie from one. Yeah, I was going to say everybody I know that has been in that process at one point or another. they thought it was completely safe and then suddenly boom they get it just splash something on him and they've got a i have a buddy who has a big old wilted up burn i mean and guys it on their neck guys it on their face it's it's awful at some point you miscalculate oh yeah oh yeah and it was um it was a volatile relationship it's uh which i believe was you know because we were using drugs um he'd actually thrown a two-liter bottle that he was working, he was cooking at me before.

It was just, it was very, I can't believe that I stayed, but that that drug had a grip on me. And in West Virginia, there's no, like, good guy, bad guy. It's like, there's no, like, cops and robbers. It's like the cops there will pay you to tell on people, even if you're a junkie or you're a tweaker. Like, they'll give you money to do it. So it's a whole different world over there.

And so there was always, like, investigations or people trying to, like, find the guy I was with. We had, I didn't know that we were running for two years, but we were until I got raided. The cops had showed up to his mom's house. And I didn't even know that his mom's house had a basement. It was this, it was a house that was probably condemned. They're still in this house. And the cops show up, and my ex-boyfriend had a breathing problem, probably the cooking of the meth. And I was like, run, you know, and he can't.

So the cops came in there, and they questioned us about some other unrelated situation. And they were looking for his brother. But when they left, his brother came upstairs from that basement, and he was down there cooking speed upstairs. Oh. Like, and I, and at that point. He didn't know they were there? No. Oh, okay.

But they were looking for him. Right. We were just like upstairs, just existing in this, you know, his poor mom, I've have so much guilt for what we, for what we put his poor mom through, awful. I should have stopped living that way, maybe at that point, but. Maybe. But that's not what happened. You know, we, we continue to to cook for two years because when you're-

And you're cooking there? Everywhere. Okay, sometimes he goes to a motel. Sometimes we're here. I didn't participate in his motel cooking because absolutely not. We go, we go various people's houses. It's crazy because when you're manufacturing meth, you don't have like all these people above you.

You have like whoever got you the boxes. Like that's it. You give them a gram. They don't care. And you know what I mean? It doesn't matter. And I think that's what made it easier for me to be like, oh, this is a great business decision because you only got to pay this tweaker off like just a little bit and everything's

fine. And you could pull it a couple times. so one box you're pulling three batches like um but it didn't scare me yet i don't remember having fear until much much later um so the cops are looking for the brother are they but they're obviously not looking for him at this point i thought i couldn't believe that they didn't arrest him he was wanted out of ohio at that point he didn't show up to go due time because he had gotten trouble for cooking in ohio yeah you think that would be you'd think that would be you'd think What do they call it?

Extraditable, you know, offense. Yeah, no, they, you know how in some states. They'll put a warrant out for you, two states over, and then they find you in this state, but they're not going to, they're not going to pay to bring you back. That's true. They're like, yeah, we've got to catch this guy in the state. Yep. He, we ran for two years, and like I said earlier, I didn't really believe we were running

because we were just out there. We were just out there and doing whatever we wanted to do, and it didn't seem, He didn't seem particularly phased by it. So I thought, hmm, you know, and, but our relationship was heavily impacted by the fact that we were running. He was a lot more stressed out than I was. Our being raided was an actual nightmare. I, we had got this really tiny, like a little house, garage house thing. And the rule was couldn't cook there.

That was never that. I had already began the process of my kid's dad having my daughter because it wasn't that she was taken from me. It was that I was very aware what I was becoming and I asked him and my mom like I'm I'm fucking up like I can't have her with me. So he had her and that was the only house I was allowed to like have her at other than my mom's house. I was able to have her at that particular little garage apartment and so cooking there was like out of the question. And um, so So I had decided that I was going to leave. It was fucked.

It was getting violent, more me than him. And it was getting, you know, more and more scary to just exist in that relationship. So I tried to leave. Ultimately, that didn't work because he was, he had tracked my cell phone to one of my best friend's houses. And his brother called me and was like, if you don't go back and, you know, come out the house. it's going to be a Broadway musical at your friend's house. Like, you need to just come on, and he's been up for this many days, and he's been doing this, and, like, you need to just come on.

And I'm like, fuck, you know. So I leave. We go back to the house, and I think, fuck, this is just my life, right? We're there for, like, I don't know, the evening. And in the morning, on the cameras, I see, I mean, the DEA, the state police, the task force them we have the cameras you know every good tweaker has a camera but and they surrounded the house and I remember like my blood pressure rising to where you hear like a n yeah because you're like fuck here it is like this is this is what's happening and it was almost

as if my boyfriend had vanished it was like he was sitting beside me and then he was just gone and I remember thinking this is going to this is happening I watched the I don't know if it was the DA or the state police, one of the two, clip my camera. And I'm like, oh my God. And they start banging on the door. And my dog, the love of my life, my dog is flipping the fuck out. And so, and I know it maybe wasn't the right decision for other people that I did this, but I don't care. I love my dog. I was like, can I please? Like, I'm like, can I let my dog out? Just let me let my fucking talk out. Like, just let me out. Because I know they wanted him. It really was about him. You know what I mean? They wanted.

to get him out of there because it was like multiple states and guns and meth and whatever. So they let me let the dog out. And when they let me out of the house, because I wasn't sure if they were going to arrest me yet, I got out, they ended up like getting him out of the roof somewhere in the installation. But going around that little apartment, it was surrounded, you know, guns drawn, different suits, people in this color suit, that color suit, different vehicles. It was one of the most intense moments of probably my life. Ultimately, they arrested him that day, and they came back for me a week later.

So how did they get to him, like, did they have him on, like a control by? Did they have him? He was wanted, and the landlord, who we thought was their friend, wasn't. And the landlord was complicit in, like, what was going on, other parts of his property, in the way of manufacturing, but he told. He'd also told me that he didn't think I was going to be in the house because I had left for those four days. So I think that he was just informing and was hoping to get him.

Originally, they had found some type of trash because those four days I was gone. Apparently, he had cooked in that little garage. On July 18th, get excited. This is big! For the summer's biggest adventure. I think I just smurped my pants. That's a little too excited.

Sorry. Smurfs. Only date is July 18th. I was not there for that. So when it came down to us dealing, because we had to be, we were indicted and all these things happened. And they, the speed, I shouldn't test positive, even though we had, like, decided to, like, take pleas. And, yeah, they came back and got me a week later. Same thing, or they just bang on the door or wait for you to pull up or?

No, I was just, I was still there. I was at a, so. I'm saying it was the same type of raid? No, no, no, no. Just bang on the door. No, no, no. They just came back to the same property. There was multiple different little, not houses, like the trailer here.

It was just a typical hills, like a hauler area with a bunch of just like one bedroom here one bedroom here, the garage apartment, and this guy just was renting it to everybody that was kind of supplying, I think, his own drug habit. We got indicted on manufacturing, conspiracy to manufacture, and maintaining a dwelling for the sale and consumption or something of controlled substances. But ultimately, they only charged me with the maintaining a dwelling, because my name was on the house and they charged him with the manufacturing and it was uh it was crazy originally i was looking at three to 15 and i thought fuck you know and he uh had not the maintaining over the

dwelling because i really wasn't there so all the surveillance that they had i was not there for that i had to this is a state right is it was a state charge or federal you said it was it was yeah they were there because of his his his oh Ohio charges. Yeah. The DA. I was going to say, well, also if it's a, if there's, if it's related to a drug task force, sometimes a DA will be a part of those task force, but they almost always go state. Oh yeah. It was definitely the state police, the tasks of the narcotics task force, the DEA, um, it was, it was, it was scary. It was definitely scary. And you would have thought that I would have, I would have stopped that life then. Right. And, and, and I didn't. I'm the only

person i know that that was hit with a year for a misdemeanor and that was the maintaining at the dwelling yeah okay i still had to do time over over a misdemeanor people are just like getting out all over the place on felonies and i had to go to time that that judge because i wouldn't tell on him um that was a mistake my lawyer was so mad he was so mad well yeah and he's already going in prison yeah he ended up doing seven years because he had to do ohio and then west virginia time That's silly. Oh, awful. My lawyer is pissed.

But, yeah, so they gave me the year, and he wouldn't give me the year in a day. So I could go to prison, prison. I had to do that whole time in county. So if you don't get a year and a day, do you still get good time? Yeah. Okay. I think in Florida, or was it the Fed? I think in the Fed, if they give you a year, but they don't give you like a year and a day,

then I think in the Fed, you don't get good time. So you end up, if they're like a year and a day, well, then you do. eight months or nine months but if they give you a year you do the whole year they allowed me to work it off to work like five months of my time off um and and in and in and county but what's what's crazy is like all i was the only i do you know anybody that had to do actual like a little bit of time on a misdemeanor no ridiculous um no the first time you get in trouble you practically don't do time for a felony a lot of times it depending on how much depending on the crime but i mean a lot a felonies. First felony, I got, first time I got arrested and got a felon, I got three years

probation. No shit. My mom still says, well, you've got felonies. I actually don't. Actually don't, but, you know, yeah. County in West Virginia is like, I would hate to get in trouble in other states because West Virginia was like easy, be easy. It was not, you know, like terrible. And I have a lot of friends. I have friends in the feds out in California. And there's, it's just incredibly different to get in trouble, I think, in the state of West Virginia. And every state's different. I get people in the comments who are like, that's not how it is. That's not.

It's like, stop it, bro. Like, you're in, you know, you're in a Wisconsin or you're in, like, this guy's talking about being arrested in Georgia, you know, like every state is different. It's very different. Some states will give you 20 years. I know a guy that got 20 years. He did three years. You know what I'm saying?

And it's like, they're like 10 years suspended. You only have to do this much for. For this. If you take a drug program, you get off this month. Like, you know, you start adding up. Like, the guy did three years on a 20-year sentence. Then you have other guys who get seven years. And they do every single day of the seven years.

And then in some states, I hear these guys talking about, you know, playing, you know, PlayStation or Xbox. And they have a TV in their cell. And it's like, are you out of your fucking mind. I have friends right now that are in there. They have a G-shock watch. They have a PlayStation. It's amazing. It's amazing.

Yeah, that's that's. That's, that's, I mean, good for them, but it's so unfair. Good for them, but it doesn't, it doesn't exactly make them not want to go back. They're like, oh, just go back, you know, see my friends. But West Virginia, it was like the cops were under, well, the cops, the correction officers were underpaid. So they were easily manipulated. Yeah, you know. But I will say that it didn't make me like a better person being in there, but it definitely, you know, was.

you know, was, it was an experience. It wasn't a very long experience like what you've had and a lot of my friends have had. But, you know, you make the most strangest of connections in jail because people are underpaid. It's, the guards are easily bought off. I had a friend in the street that would give this lady guard pay her like 50 bucks and she'd bring me a big league chew thing full of tobacco.

Oh, yeah. And that's probably worth 500 bucks or a thousand bucks. Listen, it was crazy how much, you know, how far tobacco would go or just one suboxone strips. People coming in there are sick. It was crazy. And it's what's sad looking back is how I really thought I was going to like, I would tell my family I was going to change.

I'd never been like away from them like that or my dog. But I really did think that I was going to turn it around when I got out and I didn't. and I have friends in there that with all their felonies kept calling me a misdemeanor wiener the whole time I was in there. Did you go? Yeah. Like seven months maybe. Nothing important, you know.

Did you go to a halfway house or they just let you out? They let me out because I was a trustee. Yeah, I worked. Oh, yeah. I think that people really benefit from probation. But even if they would have offered it to me, I would have stayed until they would have let me out because I already knew, like, what I was in the way of, like, drug addiction.

I'd make everybody go to, a halfway house like about you know what I'm saying like to me well I mean I guess that's not necessarily true some people they have family and they have the means that it doesn't but to me sometimes when these people are like oh yeah he didn't get he got two months we're only given a two months halfway house this guy's been locked up 20 years he has no family you think he's gonna get a job save up enough money you know in two months to get himself back on his feet like I'll tell you what he's gonna he's gonna he's gonna he's gonna get a buddy to drive him down the street and wait outside the bank, he's going to rob a bank and get back in the car.

Absolutely. He's going to rob somebody. Yeah. I've seen that happen over and over again. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Where guys are in the halfway house robbing banks and people are like, you know, oh, he's a, he's horrible. They gave him two months halfway house. What, you couldn't, he didn't have a job for a month and a half. Like, you got two weeks to have a job. He got one paycheck and he went and robbed the bank. Like, what's he going to do? Two months isn't going to change. You know, it's not, it's not long enough. I actually don't think that I have many friends that were in halfway houses after prison very

along either in West Virginia. I think every state is, some states have the ability to do it. Sometimes it's like, oh, we'd love to give you a year halfway house, but there's no facility that the most you can get is a month and a half or two months. So, you know, some states are designed for it. Some states aren't. Yeah. California and New York, you know, the more liberal states probably have, probably give

you more halfway house because they're probably helping to transition you more. Yeah. But then the other, also the problem with that is people take advantage of that. Oh, yeah. I would say, you know, anything you do for inmates, they tend to try and ruin it. They, you know, they take advantage of it and it ruins it for the people that really need it. That's very true. I feel like there is a lot of people that do need the rehabilitation afterwards because I don't think that, like, those places are really rehabilitating anybody.

Oh, no. You have to make an extreme effort on you. You have to have a lot go, go right. So when you got out, what did you do? Would you go back to your your, your, your, or like, where did you go? Do you have a friend to stay with? While I was in there, my mom had decided she was going to divorce my stepdad and she was going to move to Florida.

And I had made such a negative impact on her. And during those years that I talked to her while I was in jail and she was like, I'm moving to Florida. Don't fucking follow me. Oh. So, okay. And so when I got out, I was still able to go home. to my stepdad's house and I stayed with him until I actually left for the state of West

Virginia. He's, um, I have my dad and I have my stepdad, my former stepdad, but he's like my primary, uh, like traditional father-daughter relationship and more friends with my biological dad, but, um, I stayed with him for the following almost two years and I somehow was worse afterwards. After getting out, I was just worse. My drug addiction worsened, needles came into play. Because prior to my going to jail, I wasn't a needle user. I had used them, like, maybe once or twice. But I didn't realize I had become a full-blown, like, junkie until I was, like,

sharpening needles on a match bog so that I could hit and was like, okay, fuck. I think everybody else knew I was junkie before I did. You know, probably for a good, good while, because I'd been doing drugs continually since I was like 16. H will make you not just like a perpetual criminal, but it'll make you like a dumb-ass criminal. Like you'll do the dumbest things, you know, to get just a little bit, to add to the piece to get what you're getting. And my friend, one of my best friends, and I have huge guilt issues about it.

But he was such a successful dealer locally there. a little younger than me. He's still one of my best friends. I love him to death. But I would rob him. I mean, we were selling grass. I would like take way more than I should have. And I'm trading it to my other buddy over here so that I could fund my habits. So, you know, a lot of my friends were in the street doing all kinds of shit to stay on to not be sick. And I was, you know, robbing my best friend too. Are you able to work at all? Or is this your primary thing? It's just going from... I just started a legal job. And it had been since 2005 since I had a legal job for over 30 days.

You mean just now? Just last month is the first legal job I've had. So when you got out, this is all you're doing. You're scraping together. It's all I did beforehand. It's all I did after it. Yeah, it was just, you know, corner cutting, selling this, selling that, you know. So I had really good connections.

And I was able to use one to pay. for the other and just one of those things where looking back, I'm grateful because I didn't have to do things that my other friends were doing like with their bodies and things like that, which I don't know that, I mean, that could have just as easily been me if I didn't have access to the amount of grass I had. IV drug addiction. That'll shake your soul up, that stuff. I don't know how many addicts you have had on this on your show.

Yeah, a few. I'd say 50% of the people I interview. You know, like, I don't have really an understanding of it, but clearly it's an issue. It was, it was just warped. It was a very warped experience to be like that. Oh, I was going to say, like, are you selling it at all? Just the grass. Because when the needle became part of my life, and I tell people this even now, that you don't, it really makes you the worst version of your.

like the absolute worst version of myself, like when I look back and see the videos or just think of like the ways that I treated people or the absence from my kid, wow, like I couldn't fathom being like that now. But back then, I mean, I was just, it was the most important thing to me was making sure that I had what I needed to not be sick. What are the videos you mentioned that you had taken videos? So when I was like four, my grandma surely got me a, diary and I always journaled for some reason documenting was so important to me and I think it I think in part it had more to do with I needed to get out how I felt somewhere because really I wasn't super expressive about like feelings to anybody you know and um whenever cell phones got

video capabilities I started to video just video journal I wasn't posting them that wasn't the plan was never to post junkie videos on on the internet but um when I began isolating after jail, I videoed all the time because I didn't have anyone other than my dog that I was actually really like talking to, which sounds awful, but it's true. But so I videoed and I video day after day. And I just kind of assumed that I wasn't going to make it out of that house, out of that particular basement, my stepdad's house, and that somebody would have my phone with my Google Drive and they would see all these videos where I'm talking about what's going.

on and maybe explain more of what happened. Every time I tried to quit using dope, I'd video the withdrawal. I mean, it was just a journey. The first four years in my recovery, I couldn't watch them because it was just, it was too much for me. And then four years in, I saw that recovery challenge, hashtag recovery challenge and started watching these videos. And then I started sharing these videos. And that's what I do now with my platform. But I have. all that content because I just... The new BMO ViPorter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks, more points, more flights, more of all the things you want in a travel rewards

card, and then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMO ViPorter MasterCard and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit bemo.com slash VeeM. E.I. Porter to learn more. Fucked up, sitting in a bathroom or in a basement, like just videoing how I thought, how I felt, literally using a lot of the videos I have, I can't share because I'm injecting

or, you know, I'm overdosing. There's terrible videos. It's been really, it's been a huge tool for me in recovery, for sure. So, so real quick, so you had gotten out, you're at the, you're at your, you're at your, stepfathers, you're actively, or your, what do they say, active in addiction? Yes. Do you get arrested again? No. No.

How long ago was that? What year was that? That was 2017. Well, when I left West Virginia, it was the summer of 2017. I got out of jail and the end of 2015. Okay. What, so that goes on. So at some point during this, that's when you said there was the Facebook.

There was that challenge. No, four years later. So in 2021, yeah, 2021 is when I started sharing the videos. I'd already been in recovery. I already quit using. When did that happen? When do you decide? Like, after you got out, how long do you go before you said, like, what was there a catalyst where you said?

Yeah, there was a catalyst. This isn't working for me. me yeah there's there's a big catalyst and what's funny is like when i was driving we were driving here i was like you know just thinking about different things that i wanted to talk about and what i don't ever talk about on my platform is really like the big catalyst um so we'll talk about that so um my poor stepdad you know just dealing with bringing me back to life and all the junkie shit i was doing in his house was just terrible he he leaves house gets foreclosed whatever and um um i get offered a job out west by this man and um he worked in the cannabis industry not that man but he works in he

worked in the cannabis industry and what i didn't know then was that he was uh you know rumored to be a federal informant i didn't know at that point so he comes to west virginia he was actually the primary source of my buddy i was robin right it was his his his connections So he was like, you know, move out west. I'll give you a job. I have a cannabis company. Like, you can stop shooting dope. Like, we'll get your kid back.

And, you know, all sounded fucking great, right? So I move to Oregon. This is the summer of 2017. I moved to Oregon. He was like, the sun and the moon set with this guy's ass. I just thought, this is going to change my life. He had this facility, employees, cars, and he was just so nice. And he was like, we're going to do this.

You're going to change your life. I'm going to put you in a position to be successful. Cool. So I go out there for a couple weeks and I'm like, this is what I want to do. Like this is, this is it. Everything's going to change. Go back to West Virginia. Get my dog.

Go back out west. I'm out there a couple months before I really realized that the needle thing that we were, that I was told wasn't going to be going on. He was also a junkie. Like I knew he'd done pills, but he was extremely successful, like a very functional addict. and things really took a turn. Again, looking back, I think he was probably very stressed out by his life. The catalyst that began my being like,

okay, maybe I need to fucking stop doing this, is out of nowhere, he became violent. I mean, I didn't see it coming. I would have never moved across the country if I thought for one second that this man was going to be a villain in my life. He was very cruel. I'd never had anybody be that. Cruel.

Sorry. All right. I usually have. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thank you. Sorry, this is the best I got out. That's perfect.

I cry at least three times a week, maybe four times. It's healthy sometimes, right? I'm sorry. He was such a bad person He knew that I was extremely I don't know if you're like a dog person Or anything like that But I'm like

Love my dog Like he passed away in February I have a huge tattoo of my leg Of him, my whole shin is this dog Like he I credit my life being saved In part to my dog But he Had my dog out there

and he would, like I'd have to put my dog's a big pit bull in a different room so that he could knock me around. And if I would fight back, he would threaten to harm my dog. So it became a very psychological thing. And how it helped me get off of the needle specifically was he was so volatile. And he would leave out like full rigged, full needles, full hypodermic needles, full of H. And leave him out. And then he would leave the house. and he would come back

and I wouldn't have done him but he would beat my ass like I did and it became this very strange obstacle course it was awful and then he'd beat my ass for I've never had anybody be that mean to me he had tracking stuff on my phone I couldn't reach out to family

I mean it was very it was awful and as this is going on he's losing his company People are running for the hills. I mean, people knew more than I did about what was going on in the West Coast. So while I'm not doing the drugs and I'm trying to stop using the drugs, my brother dies. My brother, I tell people trauma didn't lead me into addiction.

Trauma led me out. My brother, he got cancer when he was 32. Oh, wow. And he'd never done a drug in his life. He never did a. He wouldn't even jaywalk. My brother and I were very different. Best, best guy ever.

Never did anything malicious to another human being his entire life. And then he ends up with cancer. A very aggressive lung cancer. And while I was out west, he dies. And that rocked me. And all he ever asked of me, the six months, I mean, while he was in hospice, I came to see him in Florida when he was in hospice.

And, you know, the months before that, like after he was diagnosed, he was just like, oh, well, you just got to pull your shit together. like you can't do this to mom she can't lose us both like what the fuck are you doing you know and um so when he died i was out there and you know getting my ass pete and all these all these like factors were aligning to where it was helping me like get the mindset that i needed to kind of stop this fucking this narrative well fast forward to november of 2017 I wasn't able, I don't want to say I wasn't able to leave him, but I was afraid. I was afraid of him.

I was afraid of what he would do to my dog. He would get in trouble and nothing would happen to him. It was like the most bizarre thing that I'd ever seen. What do you mean get in trouble? He was getting arrested by the cops. Yes, in several states. And I will never, like, I don't have any, his widow, he's passed away now, but his widow and I are very close and none of it makes any sense.

So November, 2017, we were supposed to, he was losing his company. So we were supposed to pack up all the things in his facility. And we were supposed to go to West Virginia. We had a hotel in Dundee, Oregon, me, him, and this other man. And I had taken my dog to the vet down the road after he and I had gotten to a fight. And when I went back, everything was gone. He was gone My everything was gone

He took my tablets He took my phone I mean and the room was paid For another three days He was gone And left me there With my dog But you know

Left me there And I was supposed to be On that trip with him Because I wanted to go home I wanted to go to West Virginia He gets busted in Nebraska In Lincoln, Nebraska With $1.1 million

Worth a shit from his facility He was out the next day And the other guy was out the next day the other guy to like six months like later in life he gets busted again you can go when we get off here I'll you look this guy up he gets busted again in Pittsburgh on 420 nothing happens whole bunch of shit gets busted he gets busted in West Virginia nothing fucking happens and I'm like what the fuck is really going on here I mean is he cooperating with the with the larger federal investigation or something yeah so I believe and this is

just from his wife and I and his people he's screwed over which the man you met earlier was it's so crazy the full circle moment for he and I the candy bar thing but also that was somebody that he had screwed over too right um he was two miles away from me where I was getting my ass beat out west and I didn't even know him and he was two miles away from where I was stuck at in Oregon the man you met yeah the guy you're with now yeah and um so he how they met was he was randomly was in a cannabis cup I believe that the feds placed him in a cannabis cup or the secret cups that they had out there for cannabis

I don't know if you're familiar so before it became medicinal and legal out there they would have like underground cups for cannabis where like different growers and different producers of oil would go out there and they would have people testing their strains a work show okay they win they win like a cup for the best yeah okay okay yeah yeah Yeah, and he just kind of appeared at one of those events, and then he was at the next one and the next one.

But nobody could vet him, you know, so looking back, I mean, it's all very, very sketchy. Because the only thing is, like, if you were like an informant with the DEA and you were to get busted in Michigan driving through with, you know, with 200 pounds of by the local cops, then you would, you know, you might get busted and then you might just say, hey, here's something. that my DEA handlers? Yes. And then they'll make a phone call to that. How much was it? What happened? Okay, listen, that's a part of our investigation, let the guy go.

And then you get let go. You might spend the night in jail. It was bizarre. You might get to let go right there on the highway. No matter where we would be, we could go to a Hilton. No matter if he had money or not, we could go to a Hilton, we could get into a Hilton. And we were on planes just being reckless, traveling with things we should not have been traveling with.

And we were just getting right through security. No one gave a shit. And I don't know what factors in any. of that or what was dumb luck or or what but in the that house that um i was primarily being assaulted in there there was two different people that came there to stay there like out of nowhere and i was a snoop and i went through the one man's belongings and he was a federal snitch was paperwork like i literally saw his paperwork and i remember telling my boyfriend the time like hey this guy's a fucking snitch like we're going to get in trouble you're going to get in trouble for sure like oh no don't

worry about it, no, you know. And I, you know, so that was kind of an inkling that something was weird because would they place another one with another one? Like, how does that work? And I have no idea. They're looking into a larger, you know, they may have multiple informants working with them or on the, even on the payroll. I know a guy that was an informant on and off for 10 or 15 years worked with the FBI, worked with the California Task Force. Yeah. They're paying him. and these guys are you know all kinds of stuff happens that you would legally you think oh no no they're not allowed to do that yeah they are to you know to provide their their credentials they'll they'll steal dope from one person sell it to somebody else they'll do it you can mind the FBI agent wouldn't put himself in that position necessarily but his informant will do all those things absolutely and be buying and selling buying and selling for months to build for his you know was it, Bonafetes, the create, you know, and, and so now he's got the credentials, and now these guys are just like, they're ready to deal in, you know, a hundred pounds of this

and 100,000, millions, and now they get them to enough where, boom, now we're busting you, and one informant might be working with another informant, and there might be three of them that are all kind of working together, vouching for each other, yeah, I need you to vouch for this guy, I'm bringing him in, you need to vouch for him. Okay. That's crazy system. His widow told me, Because I didn't, we didn't like much know too much about each other. And then when we did, we became very good friends. It was like kind of a nightmare that we were both in.

But she said that their house had been raided in 2015. So it's two years before I went out west. And, you know, nothing ever came of it. So I'm assuming that he got busted that point. And then switched. Yep. And then what's crazy is in 2019, they decided to charge him. for the 2015 stuff so i'm assuming he didn't deliver on his end correctly or something i don't know

no that's absolutely like i mean they'll have you work for four or five years yeah and you're promising and promising you're giving this given that and then he was playing him yeah i don't want to say they'll double cross you because typically these guys bring that on themselves like they'll continue to to sell and they kind of know yeah a lot of times they know you're doing something on the side because like i know we're not paying you enough and i know your business is failing and but you know you kind of give as long as you can get away with it every once in a while they'll help you out a little bit but then at the when it comes down to closing out the indictment and everybody goes to jail then they'll use all that against you and you're like well but I

helped you yeah but you also got caught doing this and this I mean it was a list of things he ended up they put out a warrant from the 420 arrest um in Pittsburgh or his hair at Harrisburg and um i knew where he was i knew that he was in a nursing home and he had lost his leg and he was just like his addiction went south like when i left out there it was just it was bad so he ends up in a nursing home with these warrants and and whatever and they ended up releasing him to his wife after the nursing home and she came home uh with their little son and uh winter of 2019 and somehow without his wheelchair he was in his shower face down water on him cold frozen vegetables all over his body no drugs anywhere but he had died of a drug overdose so

somebody was in that house nothing ever came of it nothing ever came of it there was no charges about whoever was it was in there with him but he ended up dying he was very menacing to me all up until almost the end of his life well i mean you're not going to believe this the police don't put a whole lot of effort into, you know, people to die of overdoses or, no, I don't think that either. Somebody was here. Something happened. He could have.

Maybe he brought this stuff himself. I don't know. Yeah, there was nothing. There was no drugs there. I mean, either it was just like a friend or who knows, who knows, who knows. But he, he crossed a lot of people. He did a lot of people wrong along the way. But when I, oh, I'm sorry.

So when I get, when he strands me out there. I was just going to say. So how do you get out of this? hotel room. So he strands me out there. I had a friend working on a pot farm in southern Oregon. And I had another friend and my aunt, I wouldn't even be senior talking if it wasn't from my auntie Sue that let me come to her house because everyone told her not to help me. They're like, no. But I was stuck there for about a month and a half after the fact. And so I went down to this little pot farm and where I found some fellow tweakers. I had stopped doing H. But continued to do

speed until I literally got on a plane. I found some very nice people somehow. I mean, truthfully, if I wouldn't have found the nicer people out there, I don't know what would have became of me in the middle of this, like, in the middle of absolutely nowhere in Oregon, a place called Selma. It was just in the middle of nowhere. I found some nice people, and, you know, I stayed there for the month, and then I finally got out of there and got to Florida, December 5th of 2017 um and i had like one blip of a relapse on the 26th of january of 2017 and then i stopped and then that that was it i hadn't used to i hadn't used again after that um but that that man continued to menace me even after i got to florida he had googled my family members in florida you know

google you can find anybody's information now and he showed up at my aunt's house and And it was insane. Is he missing the leg? Not yet. He still, he still had his legs. And what had happened was I had, I had quit using and I had very quickly after I got to Florida, became pregnant with my existing daughter's father. We're in the middle of a divorce right now.

We've been married for 20 years. We're in the middle of divorce right now. But he basically, because I made the decision to change my life, he was like, I'm going to bring our daughter down to see her and you know let's let's do this the right way and so i get pregnant like two seconds into recovery and so when he showed up to florida a couple months later and i was pregnant um i was too afraid of him to then tell him i didn't tell him it was his i just didn't tell him anything just let him assume whatever he was going to assume and um i even went to the police station in Daytona with my mom trying to press charges on him for like stalking and all these

things and I'm showing them all the stuff on Google and they didn't do anything for me they didn't do anything for me it was absolutely it was it felt so hopeless he was he would hire these random like go and sit in front of my auntie sue's house and just and I don't it was it was so scary that it was scaring my family and I thought he's never going to leave me alone. So I don't wish death upon anybody, and I'm sad for his family that it led where it did, but I would be looking over my shoulder the rest of my life because of him, you know. So what happened to him?

He got arrested or? No, nothing legal. Well, they decided to charge him for what happened for the raid in 2015, which, again, I don't know the ends and outs of the federal informant thing, but I do know that. they were charging him for his original raid and all those years later charged him for the original raid which was like kind of crazy um he yeah he was in the nursing home for a while and then went back home to his wife who was basically just taking care of him they weren't like you know um and then they found him dead a couple months later which is you know it's sad that they had to find

him like that but convenient yeah um yeah yeah right so what happened with you, if you're still in Florida? Like, do you, did you get a job? Did you, how are you surviving? No, I stayed, I began my years of being a hermit, I suppose. I, and I'm currently now, I mean, I'm a full-time student, but then I was trying to put the pieces back together from being just such a, such a piece of shit, and trying to get back into my family.

So my auntie Susan let me come to her house, and me and my pit bull, you know, and we're just, we're battered. We have a crazy stalker guy, you know what I mean? I'm just off the heels of coming off meth. I mean, I've been on drugs all these years. It was not the smartest decision on her part, and people really were not nice to her about it. But had she not have given me the space to heal, I would have went back to West Virginia and my drug addiction would have cost me my life for sure.

But I stayed with her for about, almost two years, I had met the man that you'd met because he was one of the businesses that my abuser had screwed over many years ago, and I was broke. So I was trying to essentially sell this man's business information because I had the whole Google Drive, all the documents. I had everything. And I thought, and I mean, I was desperate. I was broke and I was off the heels of drugs. So my brain was still very schemy. And so I was trying to sell his information and reached out to him. And then we began talking,

and he would come and see me every, like, two weeks for about a year. And then I moved out with him to Denver when he was working for a cannabis company out there. And since then, we've been together almost, there'll be seven years next year. So it all kind of full circle happened, but it wasn't until, and he was very supportive. He was very much like, you want to work, work, don't want to work, don't work, don't work, you want to go to school, whatever you want to do, like, um, his, his mom was a former addict, not him, but her and I. So I think he had like a different understanding of it. He was very, very supportive, um, of me. And then ultimately, I didn't want to be like a captive woman or

whatever. So I started going to school in January. And I start my bachelor program next year. And now, only now am I starting to build my own career because staying, home and all those things wasn't it's not what I want to do it's what I it's what I needed and I'm grateful for the grace that he gave me to be able to kind of rebuild who I am in those years afterwards the aftermath of that because um I don't use words like clean and sober because they're not my words some people are very protective of it and I'm and I'm glad that they are I used cannabis the first for almost five years of my recovery as my harm reduction method I had already abused everything else, methadone, spox, and all the things.

And I wish that I would have quit smoking after I was diagnosed with emphysema and COPD. That would have probably been smart. But I only quit smoking last year. And I definitely give a lot of credit from my recovery to cannabis. A lot of people, you know, they're like, oh, you're not sober. You're right. I wasn't. But as far as harm reduction goes, I got my kid.

I'm a great mom. I mean, I'm back in my family. family trust me, I have house keys, the people's house, you know what I mean? Like, everything changed and I'm never going to not be an advocate for cannabis and ever. So what do you want to get your degree in? What do you want to do? Like, what's the goal there? Well, originally I was going, so I have like four more classes and I have my associate of arts just to start because I really didn't know what I wanted to do. I went to community college, got an AA and then went to USF for two years. Like that's it. Real like community college was way better than USF?

really because they don't know who you are there's you know there's a hundred guys in the class there's 50 there's but in a community college there's there's 20 people like you can talk to your you can talk to your online oh really oh see i stay home i'm saying you can actually talk to the yeah the um what do you call the uh professor and everything where if there's 150 guys or 80 guys or something like you don't know who you are no and then yeah do you you only learn at the pace of the class type of thing right um i'm almost done with my associates i I originally wanted to go into accounting just because he has a lot of businesses. And I thought, well, let me just get behind it and do these things instead of having to hire somebody.

Like, let me do it. But going into debt for the bachelor's degree for something that I'm going to make like $40,000 a year for us, not going to work for me. So my current Bachelor plan is information technology and do some cybersecurity and do some computer stuff. And he wants me to go into finance because I have such an interest about it because I was never good with money. And so I am taking some finance classes, the principles of financial accounting next year, just to affirm my electives, just to see how I feel about those. So my bachelor program is still kind of up in the air, but I know that I'm going to have to do a bachelor program to. I don't know. It's not that I have to do it, is that I needed to show myself I had my brain operated still after being.

Yeah, I mean, getting an AA doesn't, it's not much. It's not enough. Yeah, it's not. Not enough. Yeah, if you say I have a BA, they almost don't care what the BA is in. At least it says, hey, I set a goal. I hit the goal. That's what my mom kind of said.

It doesn't even matter a bachelor. It is. Just go get it. And I'm like, all right. You know, so I'm on that path. And I'm a homeschool mom. Now my son's been homeschooled for about a year and a half, which is really fun. For me, we belong to a local co-op where it's like 30 kids and we get together like once

or twice a week. And because I'm deeply distrusting of public school. systems, and I'm grateful that I get to keep him home. You know, it's a different world we live in now. When my daughter was younger, I'm like, hell yeah, we're going to send her to school. She's going to love this. She's got a great time. You're going to make friends and all these things.

And then over the last 18, 20 years, it's like, I'm not sending my kid to public school. Right. There's no chance. Or private school, any of it, because it can happen anywhere, and I'm not, I'm not into it. So he does very, very good. He actually starts, um, we have a, a subscription to this thing called bits box is coding for kids and they teach you how to code and make little games it's game form so this kid's going to be coding he just started he loves it

so um it's crazy to go from running from a scary man and being a tweaker and junkie to being like a homeschool mom that's a student because i would have ever thought that i could do it what about your social media like when did that start so when i participated in that recovery challenge so it's continued since then yeah um total on all platforms have a little bit over 200,000 followers but i don't i'm not the best with upkeep with it like sometimes i'll go hard for a couple months and post and post and sometimes it's like i don't want to just be the girl that stopped doing doing drugs. It becomes daunting for me because um people want like uh get out of their people want to get out of their addiction quick and they want to know what I know what magic method I have and

it's like I had to get my ass beat my brother had to die and all these things had to happen for me to find the mindset it's not one of those things where you can be like hey this is a playbook and you can do this that's just not how it works well I mean you can always just diversify the content that you're putting up yeah what happens is you get a base of people that like you and they're following you and they're rooting for you. Yeah. And so if you deviate from that path every once in a while, sometimes those videos do great. Like every once in a while I'll do a video that is, you know, like, let me just sounds silly,

but you know, it's about like aliens or something. Love that. You know what I'm saying? So everybody's used to this one thing and then they hear me have a conversation where I think to myself, like nobody's watching that video where you're talking about a guy who's going to tell you all about how he was in Area 51. You know what I'm saying? And he knows that the aliens are true.

you don't know he's only to listen to this but then that video get 200,000 views and you're like oh my god and then guys are like oh you should do more of these and then I'll do another one a week later and it gets 50,000 and then you do another one and it gets 12,000 you realize so every once in a while jumping out of that is okay um I did one on uh actually I did a couple on um oh this was before the election on uh basically I was talking about like a uh you know a a Civil War. Like, are we at the edge of a civil war in this country? And both those videos did amazingly

well. Completely what, I want to say, a complete diversion from what I currently do. Right. And maybe the next few videos I would have done, I did one the other day where this guy's just telling me about some unsolved, two unsolved crimes. And it's not

one out of ten. I don't know if you know Utah, they rank them for the, for the creators creators right word yeah whatever you know in this content created the studio so on my end I can see where my videos rank

like in the last 10 videos does this one rank first second third and this one's at six but it's also in the first 24 hours it's gotten almost 20,000 that's wow which is great it's like six fifth or six anyway but that's great and it's

a diversion from what I typically do yeah so you can you could do something like hey, something about, hey, here's how I got health insurance. Hey, here's how I did this. Hey, after recovery, this is not something that I started doing. And people that have been following you will jump on that and be okay with that. And then you can go back and talk about something else.

And you could slowly move that audience. Like, I don't ever plan on moving outside of true crime. Right. I have interests that I'll talk about. Right. I've done stuff on JFK. Love that. You know what I'm saying?

Little things that I'm interested in, but I'm not going to. I'm super interested in like World War II. I'm not going to do a whole series on World War II because I think I'll lose people. But you could do, you could even do financing. But listen, this is what I just found out and such and such. And here's something like, did you know if you put away just $100, you know,

this is how much you'd have in X amount of years, whatever? You know, you could figure that out. You could, and then you could see what works and what doesn't work. And maybe you take that your channel in a slightly different direction. Yeah, I like to. watching the videos, you know, and they have no idea about your background. Yeah. I mean, they're going to look at the tattoos and say something's going on.

Oh, believe me, I catch a lot of shit for these tattoos. I'm sure you do too, buddy. But, yeah, but still, and then when they go back and look at it, they're like, oh, man, that was a great video, and they go back and look into your older content, they'll be like, holy shit, this chick's been through some shit. I wasn't going to say, the other thing to do is interview other people. That's been suggested to me before. It's, listen, it's, it's, it's, it's super easy.

This is a joke. Because, think about it, I don't have to know anything. Like, I just, I just do the same thing. I start at the beginning and I start talking and then, you know, listen, I can't tell you how many times I've been interviewing somebody. And halfway through, they'll, they'll say, yeah, yeah, you know, and this is when this happened. I'm like, oh, my God, like, are you serious? Like, I'm in total shock. And you can see the person looking at me like, you don't have a fucking clue what's going on with my story, do you?

Like, you don't know anything about me. And I don't. And then you, as they talk, you're like, oh, I think I heard about this guy. As he's telling me the story, but it should be, and you can use Streamyard. It's not like you have to have a setup. You can just do Streamyard, which is, sorry, which is like a Zoom platform. You just pay for it. They just need a camera.

That's it. That's it. They need a camera. You've seen the interviews. Yeah. That's it's Streamyard. Well, Streamyard is the one we use because it's really. really easy like there's other ones like um riverside and and zoom and stuff but this one i guess

they're all kind of designed for content creators um but this is one that specifically is pretty easy and it's very i mean literally within three minute within like three i click three buttons and then i just sit there and wait for the other person to show up you know yeah it emails them something they click on a link it goes they show up boom they're there and then it does it on three different it gives you three different feeds your whole feed their whole feed and then a combination you can just go with the combination like if you said i don't i'm not going to edit this thing i'm just going to use the combo where it's your side by side but if as you get further into it you can say you know what i'm going to do every time i talk i'm going to have it just be my feed

every time they talk it'll just be there then we're both kind of talk and i'll do the middle you know you start editing that's what what my editor does that's awesome you almost it's almost indistinguishable i like that being in like just like this i noticed that on your platform how i was like oh i think that's maybe not in person like that one you can tell yeah yeah it's good it's good because you get to have these conversations you can do a 30 45 minutes you upload it and before you know it that whole you kind of conscript that your followers but watching these videos and maybe your platform changes especially it seems like it's easy to do it if you're not relying you can take those kinds of risks if you're not relying on the monetization of your platform to pay your bills.

Like I would get these people there will say like, bro, you should do this. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I should scrap everything I'm doing and do a man in the street and start going around every day and talk to people in the street. Like, bro, I got a platform that's working. And this is what people expect of me. Right. You want me to scratch all that? Yeah, no. No, that's just silly.

But that's what you could do. And it's easy. I think that's a great thing. I'm going to remember that stream yard because it's been suggested to me before because I have friends. Something I did learn in the aftermath of my cluster fuck was I didn't have it as bad at any. I have friends and people that I've met through my platform that I've had really terrible lives. Like really awful shit has happened to them. And that just wasn't the case for me.

Like I just like curiosity killed the cat type of thing. I just like drugs. Like the way they made me feel. I liked, you know, doing, I just, I don't know. Like, I think that there was something fundamentally missing that made me just be so intrigued by being in the wrong path or with the wrong people or being the wrong version of myself or whatever. But I did, while you were talking about that in the beginning

and you were talking about the health care thing and made me think of two things that I had came here intending to tell you about because they're just funny. I don't know about funny. I shouldn't use that word. They're not funny. Um, okay, maybe they are, but I was, listen, like the thing I like about most of the people that come here, or if you know, they really kind of just gone through, you know, had some shitty

things happen or with, which they 99% of the time bring it on themselves unless they're innocent, yeah, is that they have typically have super dark humor. Oh yeah, you almost have to. Yeah, yeah. To get through it, you have to have a really dark sense of humor. I mean, I was only able to change because of accountability. If I wouldn't have really done, dissected the role. I played in every single fucking thing that happened to me. I would have never survived my bullshit. I really wouldn't have. But yeah, um, something. Nobody's going to survive. Blame in everybody else. No, if you're still pointing fingers, it doesn't work. You just don't change that way. But, um, you don't evolve that

way. But something, two things that did happen during my incarceration that are just like strangely fundamental. I'll start with the not as funny one first. So, so when I was in there, I was bored because, you know, there's nothing else to do. And, um, I had decided to get, like some tattoo pokes. So when I would work at night cleaning up the jail, which is disgusting, you know, just disgusting. I would get like a paperclip or a staple or whatever it was. And we would burn like butter or chest pieces and whatever. So like five months into that journey, I go down to medical because they had done blood work on me. And they don't have to have like bedside manner in there. They don't have to do that. And they told me that I had hep C. And they told me

that I also had Hep-A. So I'm crying because you can't run to Google when you're in there. And I'm like, Hep-A, what the fuck is Hep-A? And they're like, oh, this is a self-sustaining facility and there's fecal matter in the water. You won't test positive for it when you're out of here. I thought, fucking getting me right now?

Like, I can't have soap and, and I'm literally drinking shit water. Like, what do you mean? So about four months into that sentence, this is the funniest story. And I've never told the internet about it. So many years ago, my path started crossing with this particular girl. She'd read my little online blogs during the MySpace years or whatever. And like our paths kept crossing.

It was very bizarre. Well, I'm sitting in jail, sit in the pod, and that same girl comes in. And she knew who I was from reading my little website or whatever. And we had kind of developed some type of a friendship over the years, but not in person. just whatever so um she when she got out her and my kid's dad began a relationship and it was a very chaotic thing i was a junkie she wasn't she was in there for violence i was you know what i mean it was a very very different thing her and i had a very very volatile relationship um after i had my son with him she had a son with him and i had decided based on losing my own brother that my

beef with her was not important enough to keep our kids away from each other. I didn't want my kids to lose a brother because I couldn't get along with this woman, you know. So her and I started kind of a bond. Well, 2021, because I do genealogical research for people. I love it. I've taken class. Like, I love genealogy. And I thought, you know, I came to West Virginia. I was like, hey, those kids are on sale. Why don't you test you and your son? Because I thought, test her son so we can really see if he's you know like biologically ours um because i had my daughter tested so i thought yeah why don't you guys test and see kind of like what's going on like whatever it'll be cool i'm trying to like manipulate her into it basically so she tests herself and not her son

and she's my cousin really she's my third cousin she matches with me my mom my grandma my brother's account my daughter she's my cousin what a strange turn of events yeah that she's my cousin she ended up doing some like time time because she's a little violent but yeah but i told her the other day i was like i was like i'm thinking about telling them about that because that it's just the funniest thing and she's um we had such a hard journey but um yeah she's my family did she ever test uh no but they they had legal paternity done and yeah so i mean i would have been related to him anyway right so um he didn't think it was super funny when i called him like hey he didn't think it was funny at all.

But her and I get together at least twice a year, get the kids together and stuff. But, yeah, that was something that definitely formed during incarceration. She was an interesting character. But she's actually still in Ohio, in West Virginia area, is doing her thing. But can you... I had a brain fart. It's all right. You think it.

Can you think of anything? else you want to talk about yeah yeah I can how long is it been so what oh I don't know it's it's hour and 20 okay but it's oh this yeah let's talk about how did this is one of these a cover up oh you know you have a good eye well it's just that the scarring the the inside of the the what is it a sunflower it's darker usually I see them lighter am I I mean it's it's a it's actually a very interesting journey so when I um through my intravenous years I injected into my neck and so in 2021 I was I was in Tennessee for a small period of time because he was doing something hemp related whatever and I scheduled with a Daytona artist

we put it together for two months what I wanted it needed to be she's a great artist I don't I couldn't believe she half asked me the way she did but I flew down to Florida and because I told her I was sick of looking in the mirror and seeing track marks like I needed to cover I need to cover it with something beautiful whatever so I come down here she half ass me so bad scars me up in the middle the original this has had nine sessions on it

she was she's one of the best artists and that day she was I don't know what was going on with her that day but so I scar up real bad it was all fucked up it wasn't what we planned at all it's not what she was capable of either. Like, she's got amazing work. And a couple months later, I thought, man, so I messaged her boss. I said, I'm not trying to, like, cause an issue. I'm just asking, like, do I got to eat this $400? You know what I mean? And he was like, no, I stand behind my shop. You come in next time you're in town and I'll help you. So I get there. He adds a bunch of other random shit, and he said that he'll only

help me as long as I could sit. Well, that shit sucks because it's your neck. So I thought, it's interesting because when she was doing my neck, I'm telling myself, like, these are the last needles that are going to go into your neck and jokes on me because it's not. It's like such karma. But he didn't make it much better,

but then a friend of mine owns a tattoo shop in Daytona, and she's been working it for the last, like, year and a half. So she's been trying to fix it and add color to it, and it's not done now. It's just been an ongoing journey. She's been covering up all the decisions that I made in my drug years. She's covered, I have horrible tattoos.

Do you have any that you're super embarrassed of? Oh my God, I have really, really bad ones. This is a cover-up. Oh, I can see it. Yeah, I... You probably wouldn't notice unless you stared at it. I was in, I was... This was before, like, hard drugs.

I had a friend that was like, you ever taken triple Cs, like Corsetan, like the heart medicine? Yep, mm-hmm. And I woke up when he hit my elbow. That's what was behind this. And then this terrible tattoo, the first time that I had, like, hooked speed successfully, I dated it. I dated it. And this says, ain't no quit in my system.

Ironically, this was... I have a buddy who says all the time, ain't no bitching me. I dated it, and it just so happened to be the day of the Boston bombings. I didn't know. And my mom got married on that date two years. later. So when I first came to Florida, she was like, you got my marriage date wrong. And I was like, oh, no, buddy, you got it wrong. I did that myself because that's what happens when you give a tweaker a tattoo gun. But, yeah, I have some questionable ones. My knuckles are probably

my favorite tattoo, but I've had this one since 2008. It says, and she does prevail, but if I lost these fingers, it says that she does evil. And I did that one by myself, because, you know, great decisions is like a lady because you know yeah I was the whole and my son hates my tattoos he's six he hates him he hates him so much and I feel bad because what am I supposed to do now right what do you do well this doesn't look bad I just not as bad the only reason I notice that it's because it's it's so dark right here the circle's dark that's the only thing that I thought that what if that's a cover up yep because it was she had had scarred you know it heals funny there too but she had, it had this massive scar in it.

So she's been trying to, like, add white. Now she's been trying to fix it, but. What's the, is that a three? No, it's the breathe sign. It's like supposed to be Sanskrit, but the reason I got this version of it is because it's the entitled Westerners version of just breathe from the Sanskrit symbol.

Okay. Yeah, which that was a questionable one, too. So the tattoos were going on while you were in addiction. Long before I was an addiction. And then since then you've, you've. I've been trying to fix them. since then. It's pretty much been a couple years of just, like, cover-ups and improvements, because I would have never chose any of this. My kid's dad is Mexican-American, and I don't know

what in my Caucasian brain made me get two sugar skulls on both sides of my arms back in, like, 2007, 2008, but I can't do anything about those. They're pretty big, but I think I would have always got tattoos. I just think that, you know, tattoos when you're inebriated and chemically you're changed, it just isn't the same. I've made some really terrible decisions. I got that one. It's funny because I didn't do a bid. I didn't do like a bid like you. I didn't do that, you know what I mean? But I still got a face tattoo when I was incarcerated. It's an anchor, but what's... You got some little anchors? You got anchor to you? Yeah. So what was, well, my reason for it was, Well, I'm a fan of anchors anyway.

I'm from the whaling city capital of the world. But I, for the anchors for me is like I would mentally like drop an anchor when things were good. Like you just want to remember certain moments or certain lessons. And anchors were always something that I kind of associated with it. So in jail, I'm just like, all right, well, you know, this is a lot. This is a lesson. This is the only time that, you know, yeah, it didn't exactly change my life at all. But some people thought it was a tear drop.

And I'm like, get serious. Yeah. No, it's absolutely not a tear drop. No, thank you. I probably wouldn't have done all of this. If I was pushing 40, like I am now, I maybe wouldn't have made the decisions. But, you know, that's life, I suppose. Those are young people decisions.

Yeah, and. It's fuck that. I'm never going to stop doing it. I'm never going to stop now. But my son, I have to be like, you have to accept people the way that they are. I was like, this before you. Like, this isn't something I can change. He's not a big fan of him at all.

And I got my dog tattooed after he passed. My dog was so fundamental in my life changing. Because if it was just a matter of me getting out of Oregon, that wasn't enough. You know, me getting him out of Oregon was more important to me. It was insane how important he was to my journey. I don't have ever been attached to an animal like that. But I feel like growing up, I learned more about humanity from animals than the majority of the humans than I was around.

Sorry, I just look at my wife. Is she like, she desperately wants a dog? I would be lost. They are the canine equivalent of Xanax. And I'm not on medicine, but like without them, I probably would consider it. I love my dog. so much losing him was um next to losing my brother was the worst time in my life and that's

crazy considering the things that I've put myself through yeah that was tough um something to be sad about unconditional love of of an animal though yeah yeah no first of all we don't own this place secondly jess will leave for eight or ten hours and I'll be stuck here with the dog and if we have a, like, what am I going to do? I can't have a dog walking around. I can't have a dog barking. So you're thinking, oh, well, you put him in the garage. Like, I'm going to put him in the garage for eight or ten hours. He's going to be barking. Those little French bulldogs, that's all they do is bark. They do bark. They're, they're extremely angry little devil dogs that you hear them and they're, and they don't stop. It's like, oh, he'll, like if it's a kid, you put him in

bed to go to bed, he'll cry for a little bit, but he'll go to sleep. They don't do that. It'll be hours and hours and hours. They'll just keep going. They're hyperactive. Or you put what? Then you put a shock all around. See? That's another problem. You know, we don't have a backyard that's fenced in.

It's fenced in, but our part isn't fenced in. Yeah. And then he could be out there barking and you know, you know, it's like wait another year. Yep. We'll have a house. We'll be able to set it up so that he has an area. Yeah. And then love it, love it, love it.

Because when mine died, when my big one died, his name was Mooh, he was amazing. um we already had another one and then my or you know Mike was like we can't run a rental like you can't get another pit bull like we can't we can't do that and he works close to um some people that they're not like sleazy breeders I'm very adopt don't shop but he had an employee that was affiliated with these menonites or whatever and then he showed up with a little shish and poo puppy he's cool he's cool like I never thought I could love a little dog and he's just he's pretty funny But you do have a dog in the rental. We have three.

Oh, you just said you didn't have a dog. Right. Like over the last month, we ended up with the puppy that he brought home. I was like two months ago. And then his brother is on a journey in California. So we got custody of his dog, like on the day before Thanksgiving. So now we have a corgi, a shish and poo, and a bully. It's a very strange group.

But they don't really bark. We got lucky with that one. because I would hate it. I would hate it. Yeah, it'd be too much. I can't. Do you feel like doing this is cathartic for you in any way when you interview people? I think, I mean, maybe, you know, like there are things that I was hoping, like, I would be able to talk about that wouldn't make me emotional if you talk about them enough.

Like, that's what I had a psychiatrist tell me that. That's never happened. Really? That's never, you know, so there are things that if it comes up or I start thinking about in any way, I immediately get upset. And I always thought to myself, well, it'll be okay because that'll happen for a few times and it will go away, and then I'll be okay with it. I can talk about it.

Right. And where other people can talk about horrific things. Yeah. And it doesn't affect them at all. But, yeah, there are some things I would think would make me feel better. But it's never, it's just, listen, it's been, what, four years now? It hadn't happened yet. So I don't think it's going to happen.

But I like talking with people that have shared him. You know, I don't take interest. I really have a hard time taking interest in other people. But other people that have crime stories. And I'm super curious on like how it started or why it kind of started. And then how they hit a wall and kept going. hit a wall and kept going, you know, alter there, like, okay, well, this, how do I get around that? And I'm interested in how people figure things out. And, you know, in the end, it's like,

you have an amazing story. Like, and I would say this, that, you know, if you were, and everybody's got a story, right? But if you were, you know, if you went to high school and got decent grades and you went to college and then you married your college sweetheart, you had three kids, and you got the job you're supposed to have and you taught soccer and like that's a great guy like that's an amazing person you know who's like middle class and like wow like what like i think that's great but that's not really somebody you do that comes here and does a podcast and i don't know and unfortunately i don't know that there's anywhere that that person goes and does a podcast that people pay attention because that person has had what you know what should be everybody's life right right

that's like a decent citizen but that guy doesn't have like this amazing life that people want to sit down and go oh my god you know the guy that's working um driving a forklift eight hours a day yeah wants to listen to these because he's a responsible citizen so he wants to listen to the things and the behaviors that he might have thought about or come close to yeah but didn't do or maybe he did but he's recovered and he wants to know that he's not alone which is like kind of like going to AA, right? Right. Like, you go to AA, not for the support.

You can get the support anywhere. You go to be around other people that have a shared experience to let you know, like, it's okay. Like people fuck up and they get back on their feet and they live their life and that's okay. Because a lot of people, and I like surrounding myself with those people because, like, I don't have any friends that aren't, aren't fuck-ups. Like everybody, you know, like I always say, like losers have the best stories. You know what I'm saying?

Like, like nobody who's been super successful in life has an amazing story. You know, it's like you're, it's interesting when you have challenges, things fall apart. You've claimed bankruptcy twice. Yeah. You've, you know, even that guy, if he's never done anything wrong, he's claimed bankruptcy, almost lost his company, he started over, he had to borrow money, he's losing sleep, he's sick to his stomach, you know, he's been, you know, even those guys probably have have some amazing stories, you know, those super successful guys, you know, you take Elon Musk or

somebody like that, like, wow, like, what an amazing story. What an amazing story, yeah. But it's so rare, you know. Like, and I can't relate to that. So I like this. I like knowing that there are other people that have made even worse decisions in me. Makes me feel a little bit better. I'm like, wow, like, I'm a fuck up.

But I never did that. Like, I never, I never, I never robbed a charity, you know what I'm saying? You know, for whatever reason. Like, there are those people that you're like, oh, my God, you broke into your uncle's house. And you know what I'm saying? Who was helping you. Right. And you stole, you sold the family heirlooms.

whatever and you're like oh wow so but you know like those are those are and they're you know and typically these people have super funny sense of humor the same kind of dark senses sense of humor that I have right I I tend to notice if you're at a party and somebody says something extremely kind of semi inappropriate let's say or dark or something like I tend to be one of the few people that are laughing the only other people are laughing are people that have like been arrested or gone to jail or Don't do something horrific. Yep. And so I like those people.

I don't, you know, the other people, you know, they're good people, but. Can I mean? Yeah, especially like recovered misfits or recovered people that have made, you know, they're not criminals anymore. They're not doing this anymore. It's like it's more relatable. Yeah. Yeah. I have a common interest or common experience with that person.

It doesn't even matter. They could be a drug addict. They could be a guy that robbed of the bank. They could be a guy that did a white collar crime. Right. You know, it's really, the crime in and of itself doesn't, doesn't really, I'm curious about it, but I think the person that comes out of that experience is what's interesting, as long as they have come out of it. Like, you know what I'm saying?

You, I don't think I've interviewed anybody that hasn't kind of gotten past it and moved on. Like, I'm not sure what would happen if I interviewed that, the people that were like, actively addicted and I've known people that are like just outside it's only been a few months like there's a couple of guys that have been talking I'm like oh when was this and then and you're talking you realize like oh wow this guy just stopped you just stopped you this has been a few months the beginning right and you're like oh wow like you know you're making it sound like you're oh I'm done I'm good you don't sound like you're like maybe you know but and I and I might not have even, if I had really thought about it and knew the whole story, I might have been like,

yeah, bro, I don't, you know, don't know how over this you are. But I like it. Like I said, I like it. I like these people, like the people. And so I find interest in them. I can talk to them. Right. But for most people, it's a five-minute conversation.

Oh, yeah, this and that and this and that and that. And you're like, oh, hey, man, that's great. Good for you. Wow, those are great. All your kids are adorable. And then we're pretty much done here. Right. Like, you know, let's wrap this up.

But, you know, other people, but if you've been through something, I can sit there and listen for hours. That's awesome. I think it's great that you give people an outlet because. I don't think you can tell somebody's story in, you know, 30 minutes. Somebody's, you know. No. And I've gone on those podcasts.

They're like, yeah, yeah, I need, I need 30, 45 minutes. And I'm thinking, you're going to get a very glossed over, you know, 30,000 feet in the air view of this story. Yeah, your story is wild. So wild ride. But also I think it's interesting. There's certain people that just listen, they, they're long-to-sense truck driver. Yep. And they can watch, they watch two podcasts, you know.

They'll watch two hours here, an hour and a half here. And they love them. So I think it's great. Really, other than yours, Marks and Joe Rogan, I don't really cause. Oh, no, I watched Theo Vaughn, but I don't, you know, what are you going to do? I love Theo Vaugh. I love Theo. You know what's amazing about him?

And I remember, oh, God, what was her name, Barbara Walters? Oh, Barbara Walters. She was interviewed one time by, like, it was like when she was kind of like, you know, retiring. Right. So they did an interview with her. And the interviewer said to her, it's funny, I almost think this, they must have planned this. Because her response was so fast. They said, who do you think the smartest people you've ever interviewed are?

She was comedians. And they were like, they went comedians. they said you've interviewed scientists lawyers everybody doctors yeah and she said yeah but comedians she's like you have to be so smart and so fast and theo vaughan has mixed being a complete knucklehead yeah but he's so he's got to be so funny i mean i'm sorry so smart yeah he's so fast and he comes up with these ridiculous jokes and he's so comical and i think you know you really are you're not a you're not an idiot at all like you're brilliant like he yeah and he has conversations with brilliant people and yeah exactly he's he's he's very entertaining he's yeah i would have to

say that he's he's one of my favorite comedians um well he's not yeah he said he's not just comedian he really covers a lot of bases with what he does on the internet yeah well the the comedians are taken over all podcasting like they all the massive podcast or whatever that's his name right Andrew Schultz. Yeah, and... That guy's funny. What is your mom's house, right? I watch that Kai Sinat a lot, too.

Tim Dillon? Tough, Tim Dillon. He's hilarious. I don't think I know who that one is. Tim Dillon? I'll have to look that one up. Yes, he's another outrageous. Outrageous.

Yeah, he's hilarious. I'll have to watch. I probably have seen him, and I just can't put a face to it. And he, Tim Dillum's gay, right? he's gay. Oh, wait, that sounds more. He's overweight. Okay, I think I might know.

Talking to him, you'd think he was redneck, like kind of like a redneckish, you know. And then, but as you talk, you know, and then you find out later like, oh, he's actually gay. And it's like, okay, that totally, that's a whole other aspect of that I never saw coming. That's all. But he's, he's hilarious. I love a good company. He's been on Joe Rogan a few times, right? I love Joe Rogan.

And I'm glad that you do stuff with Airy. of 51 in conspiracies and stuff because that's that's the sweet spot too i feel like i that's all it's on my youtube algorithm and stuff like that i love that stuff yeah that's my buddy dandy that's all he does now is conspiracy stuff like it whether it's mk ultra or you know aliens or yep or the declassified stuff from the cia website yeah i'm one of the people that prints it off because i'm afraid they're going to reclassify it yeah yeah but but yeah i think i am going to interview people I think that would be a lot easier then that's a that's an avenue that you can you know what I'm saying and you have something that's relatable and and you

could you'll have and there's a like if you were to stick with you know people that had drug stories not that you have to but you know obviously could do anything but there's there's tons of of those also there's I don't probably women would but it had similar stories would reach out and then there's a platform you do one a week yeah you know or you could do you know do a two interview and you cut it up and release part one part two that's two a week and then you do whatever your other your other content in between that next thing you know you know six months from now your channel's making a chunk of money and you're like oh wow yeah because i've not maybe i don't

maybe i don't have to get this bachelor's degree yeah i'm gonna go in debt a little more for that bachelor's degree but i mean yeah i think that's good that'll be the next plan of action i feel um i want it and i mean just curious so i'm glad that you allowed me to come on your podcast because I don't have like this crazy time in jail or prison. I don't have like I haven't done the kind of time that a lot of people have done for a true crime podcast. I think it's really cool that you let me do that. We have people. All kinds of people. Well yeah, some of them have even gone to jail. So I mean it's like do you have an interesting story? Can you tell the story? Right. And then I've always kind of what I say is basically I would rather have a crackhead that's

been in four car chases and had a, you know, 10, you know, silly arrests that doesn't really have, like, a story story, but he can tell his story. Right. You know what I'm saying? As opposed to a guy that stole it $190 million who's got this massive amazing story, but he can't tell it. Right. Like, he just can't, you know, and I've had those guys that come on and you're like, wow,

you know, and they tell their story. And you're pulling, it's pulling teeth to get the information out of them. And they, and then in the end, it's like. And then you have somebody else who's robbed a couple of banks, never really made any money, kind of been just a drug addict his whole life, in and out, a little tiny stints in jail, but absolutely hilarious, can tell the stories, can admit when he's been an idiot and, you know, where they're like, listen, you think that was stupid, listen to what I did this time. And then you're like, you know, and there's that self-effacing humor.

Like, I love those guys who will own up to. lay it out um uh what was it uh it was funny when i met boziac in in prison i said to him uh he had heard we were in line and somebody had asked what i was locked up for somebody was like gawd you get you get her up for this i said yeah i got arrested for this i might charge with this this this this this and i said aggravated identity theft and he goes and he was standing in front of me turned around he goes that's what i was locked up for yeah i went really i said i just kind of thought drugs because of all the tattoos yeah and he goes He goes, what made you think that?

You know what I'm saying? But I realized like, like, oh, wow, like this guy's not taking himself seriously. Yeah. But every time I saw him walking through the hallways, he walked around like, like he was a tough guy. Like he had this, he had this gate, the gangster gate, like, I'll swing on you, but in a second. But then as soon as we would step away and get in room, he go, okay, so listen, this is what happened. And he started, I was like, like, this is like a different, like two different people. And he would talk about how, oh, one time like this, one time this happened.

happened, you know, I took off running, my brother did this, I did this, he turned around, like, what the fuck happened? You know, it's like the elements. Yeah, he had all these silly kind of funny stories that it was like a, but that's, that's what those are, those are the guys that realized like, that was a knucklehead thing to do. Or, you know, now I look back and think about all the things like I'm like, you had isn't it weird how like your past contributes to like what you're doing now and my past contributes to what I'm doing now?

Like, I don't know what I would have really. been doing if I wouldn't have fucked up first. Oh, yeah. I can't imagine, but making the same decisions. And what's funny is all those fuck-ups, you know, maybe it's age, maybe it's experience, or maybe you just get older and you become more patient. But I can't imagine making the same decision. When I look back now, I'm like, for all you had to take back, you had 40 or 50 rental units.

Yeah. You had this, you had that. You could, you know, like you're making $10,000, $15,000 a month. just collecting rent, you know, like, what were you thinking? Like, you know, like there's so many times that I, and of course, now it's, you know, I think I think in a much longer, a much longer plan when I make decisions that I did then, whereas to me, it wasn't a quick turnaround and if I couldn't get all the money in five or six months or something like that.

But what about the point? Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot different. I do think without all the fuckups, because, you know, I don't think that I had ever, not like gratitude in the sense of recovery, but I don't think that I ever experienced gratitude or accountability until after I was able to like get out of the trouble I'd put myself in.

Yeah. So I do have that now. And I think that I wouldn't have had it without the mistakes or it's just been existing. I was going to say it's funny too, going to prison. You could always tell the guys that were coming right back. It was always the guys that were walking around blaming everybody else. Yeah, point fingers. This fucking snitch and this fucking cop.

This happened to me. They did this. it's like you're coming back to present bro yeah you're coming back you're planning your next indictment right now i can hear it and talking about it all in there too and then that comes back and bites i have some friends that are still doing time from just talking their shit inside or they're they're walking out with other guys that connect with it's like what are you doing like this business decision yeah like you're getting out so you just got three you're walking out with three or four connects yeah like you're just getting right back into it you know but this

I'm going to do it right because there's a right way to do it. Yeah, and then they don't send them to the halfway house, so it's very quick. Hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching. Do me a favor if you, if you like the video, hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this. Also, leave a comment, share the video. We're going to leave all of Courtney's links, although it sounds like there's a link, just one link tree link, but we're going to leave that link in the description box.

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