Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The Real Story Behind Netflix's Dirty John...

Episode Date: November 23, 2023

The Real Story Behind Netflix's Dirty John...

The first step was getting rid of my sister and I. He said a few comments about my sister, like shooting my sister with a sniper rifle. If you see Jacqueline, I will dump her in the bottom of the ocean where nobody will be able to find her. Normal people don't say that. I hang out with straight sociopaths, and very seldomly do they say that. So that's not a good sign. He grabs me by the waist. I try to get away from him.

I'm unable to get away from him. He starts trying to cover my mouth because I start to try to scream. I bite him as hard as I can, so he's not able to cover my mouth. I thought I was getting punched, but I actually was getting stats. Hey, this is Matt Cox. I'm going to be interviewing Tara Newell. She is the survivor of the real-life Dirty John case, and we're going to be hearing her story. I really appreciate you guys watching.

Do me a favor. Subscribe to the video and check out the interview. can we start kind of kind of at the beginning like he started your mom and your mom and dad what got divorced yes when i was seven though oh okay yeah and then she started dating so my mom has been married a couple of times we can say that um and so my mom met this guy john mehan on a website called our time. It was for dating singles over a certain age. And so she met him on that website and then had a date with him at this restaurant called Houston's. He came to her house beforehand. Not the safest thing to have someone come pick you up at your house. But she had him do that.

He came in. He looked around. And my sister always catches the ground. rift and like just knows people and so my sister was like he's looking around he is just like you know analyzing our stuff he's seeing what we have right and it was a penthouse too where my mom lived so it was like the top floor it was nice and so this guy is seeing that oh there's financial wealth there then he goes on this date with my mom it's the a great date the best date and then they come back to her place and my mom isn't the type of lady who thinks that if you invite that if you invite a guy up that it's going to lead to something she thinks that it's going to be like oh we're going to talk you know and she grew up very naive in a sense okay

So he came up, he lays on the bed, and he's like, oh, this is so comfortable. And he literally just got out of jail like a couple of days prior. So that's also why the bed might be really comfortable. Right. But she doesn't have any idea of that, right? She thinks he's an anesthesiologist. Oh, yes. And, you know, he's proclaiming to be a doctor.

He's just being the best person. so she tells him that this is making her uncomfortable and please get off my bed he gets enraged with her he yells at her and then he walks out the door i mean that should have been a sign yeah yeah and then so my mom gets a call from him a couple days later maybe the next day or something like that and he calls her and says I'm so sorry I would like to get another second chance will you get another give me another chance and so she ends up giving him another chance and then he just love bombs her from there he does things where he's like always there you know because he doesn't have anything going on other than scamming people not someone not someone who who's working a 60 hour a week job as a doctor. Yeah, you know, he's doing drugs. Yeah. Why was he in prison?

So he was in prison a couple times, I believe. But so the last time was, I believe, I believe it was for stalking someone. Right. Was it like his first wife or something like that? Or was it a girlfriend or something? I believe it was a girlfriend. I need to go back and look into this a bit more, but I believe it was for stalking or like he also sold drugs and that's why he went in the first time. Okay.

And so he sold like he actually had his nursing license at one time and then he would go into that hospital steal the drugs. I believe this was in Dayton, Ohio and he would sell the drugs and take them himself. and then um so one started telling on him then he got in trouble then his ex-wife um who was his wife at the time found out about it and then started also informing because other people were telling the situation and then someone came to her about it okay so she was giving them information after she was approached so eventually he goes he goes jail a few times, gets out, and then he meets your mom. Yes, but I think he went to jail more than a few times, but I'm not quite sure on that.

Okay. Just curious because when I was looking into it, you know, one, it said he was a former, I mean, it said he was a former anesthesiologist. Like I, I had always kind of thought that he was faking that, that that wasn't true. Oh, that was not true. Oh, it wasn't true? No, he was not an anesthesiologist. He said, it said former, but you're saying never. He was just a nurse.

Yeah, a lot of articles, even if they're big articles, will just get a few things wrong. And I remember having comments come in about that. And I was like, yeah, that's not true, but I don't need to go tell everyone. And then I heard, I also heard that the recordings of him threatening, I believe it was his ex-wife, like he was, you know, Like, it wasn't ambiguous. It was like, enjoy your last few days on the earth because this is it for you. You know, that kind of, it was like, like, it was totally threatening. And then the other thing I saw was that one of the times when they had pulled him over and they searched his car or something, they actually found kind of like, like a kidnapped bag.

Like it had zip ties in it and all kinds of stuff. It was like. That was for me. Oh, wasn't it? Yeah. Not, not. Yeah. Yeah.

And then he had like something amount of knives in that bag or something too. Well, he also had like he had a place in the desert in Cathedral City and inside that place was a refrigerator. And then inside the refrigerator was a back back with it zip ties, stuff for chloroform. There was a children's book and I think like duct tape or something like. like that he's got some problems oh yeah no and he was doing stuff since he was little like his dad grew like told him that like oh we're a part of the anesthesia family and so he grew up with that mobster mentality where he needed to like get back at people and stuff and then he was like a little kid like putting ashes into like ash from the ash tray

from the casinos. So he just worked at the casinos. Well, his parent, I believe his family owned the casino. So he would go and he worked there in that environment even, just like kind of grew up with that way. And then he, I believe it was his dad told him to do a stunt where he would eat glass at a restaurant or not eat glass, but have glass in his food. And so they would be. file lawsuits against that. So he also had like all these little lawsuits going on against like individuals, against places. And he, he was just so crazy because when it didn't work his way

with a lawyer too, he would find a way to get them disbarred. So he's always kind of a grifter. Oh, yeah. Okay. So, but so eventually your, so your mom ends up giving him another chance. he's a great guy he's on his a game yeah a game and how does that how does that progress it progresses your sister saw it right away right your sister was like all over him like something's up oh yes and my sister didn't let it go my sister lived with my mom she was telling my mom why are you having this guy here You know, I'm looking into him. He's on this and that. He's seeing other girls.

And then that was just like the start of what she was finding out was just like his dating profiles. And then if you ask around Newport, like you're going to hear, oh, my friend dated him or I dated him. Like I've met several people that have dated him or their friends have dated him. Like he got around. I even met someone at CrimeCon where she said her friend dated him. So he's dating multiple girls. My sister's calling it out. And so my mom doesn't like it.

And my mom thinks, oh, Jacqueline always has problems with every guy I date. So I need to create boundaries. And then she went to go see a therapist. And the therapist was also telling her, you need to create. some boundaries with your daughter right the therapist is hearing her version i mean she's also picking some horrible men oh yes and yeah and my mom you know she needs boundaries with us too we were so close we were so what calling each other like five times a day you know we can call each other once a day or once every other day and that

That's like to the point where we are now, but we didn't need a lot of boundaries as her daughters. I will accept that, you know, but it just wasn't the right timing or situation. So my mom moves to Balboa Island, and then that's when I go to meet John and help her move. How long had they been dating at that point? Two months. Okay. But he wasn't quote unquote, support. supposed to be living there, at least from her opinion. So I questioned that because he was

helping her. Then he was staying there. And then it went from he was living in the desert. And then one day I saw like two weeks after this because I actually went back another week after the first time because I went back for Thanksgiving, but that time I saw like his stuff was in there. His nursing certificate was right on top of the box. And, you know, if he's anesthesiologist, it might seem weird to have a nursing certificate, but I just didn't connect the dots because I don't know that industry. So he's dating other women. It's kind of like a, um, What do they call those, a Romeo scam? Oh.

You know, where you meet other women. They like you. You seem like you have money. And then there's an issue. And then there's a money issue. And they need to borrow $2,000. But because they're driving like a nice car, they have nice clothes. They have been whining and dining.

This woman for whatever, a couple of weeks, a couple thousand dollars. No big deal. Of course, no problem. Well, you don't realize that. He's been whining and dining you with the last $3,000 that he borrowed from someone. Now he's, you know, or use your credit card or whatever it may be. You know, you don't see whose credit card it is. So he's constantly running.

Well, I mean, there's, they call it you a Romeo scam. So you're constantly kind of like, did you see the tinder swindler? Yes, they did. Right. Now, obviously he was, you know, he was, you know, at the operating at this level. But there are guys that will do it at this level where there's a few thousand here, a few thousand there. Because let's face it, if you think he's a doctor and he's buying, you know,

paying $150 for dinners and he's meeting you here and you think this guy's amazing. I'm going to get hooked in with a doctor. I've landed a doctor. He's phenomenal. He's, you know, he's paying for vacations and hotel rooms. And what a great guy. And oh, there's a problem and he needs to borrow $5,000. That's nothing.

Like I'll put her in my credit card. It's no big deal. you know sometimes it's something then sometimes maybe it's a business opportunity but the truth is you don't really know who this person is and and he's taking your money and disappearing and the truth is you gave him the money yeah it's hard to really prosecute those guys because you gave him the money you didn't really know what the money was for there was nothing in writing you she she gave me $50,000 it was a gift now she's mad yeah I broke up with her now she's upset so so it's seems like he was running that but he when he got to your mother he thought he he thought your

mother had money and really sank his uh talons into her so what i'm wondering is like was he paying for things or when i saw him i only saw him probably twice he well i went to dinner with him the first night and he paid for everyone's meal there. But that was California Pizza Kitchen. Right. You know, that's not like mastros. Right. So I'm sure he's taking my mom to probably nicer places and paying for that and assuming, but he also didn't have a car. Right. And his excuse for that was all my cars got stolen in storage. And I think he said he had like a couple of motorcycles or a motorcycle. or something like that and a couple other things but i was like where is the insurance payout

where is all that stuff because i mean if his stuff got stolen and it's all that stuff then insurance is going to give you a loaner car something give you a rental car something like that or at least like i fought for that with my insurance over certain situations and you can always you can always go on just buy a car, you know, and finance it. Like, even if it's like, okay, this is going to take a couple months, you're, you're, you're a doctor. Yeah. You know, you can go go by, go zero down $100,000. I'll refinance it once I get the money or I'll pay it off or I'll trade it in. I mean, you know, so that doesn't really make sense. And the, oh, all my cars got stolen. Like, well, these are really convenient excuses that don't make a lot of sense. Yeah. No.

And my mom is a nice person, too, where she's going to offer to pay for stuff. So that's like the first test, you know, is, okay, I'll pay for stuff because I'm going to seem like a gentleman. I'm going to love bomb her. But because she's offering, I know that, like, later down the road, I get, I'll get that money, you know? Right. Yeah, yeah. So how long was it, like, when did. crack start forming uh i say so the second week that i went there the day before thanksgiving

i was just questioning a lot of things and then he went to the hospital for his arm hurting and i was like that's weird that's a weird thing like it seems like he might take drugs and so his arm might hurt from that and i would like i have friends that that were frequent flyers and been struggling from recovery and everything. So I just was like, that seems like a red flag to me. And then our hairdresser is all the same hairdresser. And he came in and got his haircut by her. And he was extremely pompous.

He was extremely just like kind of flashy in a sense, like all about me. like oh and just talking about things that didn't add up okay so i started questioning that too and everyone was like this guy is not a good guy and that's only after like a few incidences of meeting him so i went back to my mom's new place and i started questioning her she came up um in the doorway and then also my ex-boyfriend was in the room with us and then our dogs and our three dogs were and john comes up behind my mom and starts yelling at me and is telling me you just want your mom for yourself uh you just want her money uh and just saying that i'm jealous and so on and I yell back some effes at him and I say no John that's what you want it escalates to more

yelling and then my mom just kind of asked my boyfriend at the time is like is this what you think and then he's saying you know this is kind of suspicious this isn't normal like some things are off here. And so I didn't know what to do. So I just packed up my stuff and left because we weren't welcome there. And my mom wasn't stalking me. There was the yelling that continued on until we packed up our stuff and left out the door. And then I went to my sister's place that didn't allow dogs. So I had to sneak up the dogs and boxes to her place. And, um, it was kind of hard too because we had like a border collie so we had to get big boxes but we got up to my sisters and my sister's just so angry because she's already catching onto things

and she's been investigating yes so she's texting my mom they're going at it too and at some point the text start to change a little bit and they're going go from you should just jump off a building head first preferably you should just kill yourself and so mother would never say no but in this situation she was just my sister was believing it and i was looking at the wording in the text and i was telling my sister i don't think this is mom because mom wouldn't use this, like, big word here, you know, and so it was hard because I remember holding my sister and she's just crying hysterically because we don't know what to do. And then things kind of escalate from there. And so my mom gets into the relationship with him and then are they married at this point?

So they ended up getting married probably a week later. Oh, okay. Yeah. And in Vegas, too, where I lived at the time. And so that was kind of a like a fuck you to the face. Sorry if I can't cuss. No, you're fine. Yeah.

But so they got married in Vegas and I lived in Vegas at the time. And so they came out there to get married. And it was hard because then that means my mom's in it. And it's going to be even harder to get her out of it now. Right. And we didn't find out about it for maybe a couple months later. I mean, had your sister found, like, found out that he'd been married before, been in jail before. Had she found any of that out?

So my sister also worked in the medical industry. She worked for a plastic surgeon at one point. So she asked around about him. And she didn't know anyone that was working with him. him and no one knew his name and newport is a small town so if he says he's working in newport one of the doctors going to know something or an anesthesiologist in the industry is going to know so on you know so there wasn't anything adding up there then my sister started looking into things and she tried to contact his ex-wife uh she didn't want to have anything to do with us

because she was in fear for her own safety. Did she say that or did she just hang up on you guys? Did she say like, hey, this, I can't be involved with this. I'm scared. Just no reply sort of thing. And, or I think it was like a no reply or just like can't help or like something like that, you know. And I know my sister was disappointed in that. And it just sucks sometimes.

But it is what it is. And if people are in fear for their lives, they need to look out from themselves. Did she run, try and run like a police report or, I mean, like an arrest record or criminal background check? He ended up kind of freaking my other siblings out just because he ended up talking to my niece about the birds and the bees. And she was probably 11 at the time. 1112 so not really appropriate not appropriate and not appropriate it's not your kid like oh yeah and then started showing her i guess videos of twerking and stuff so to me that's a little bit of growing this guy is like a grown this guy's like in his 50s right yeah okay yeah so

when you're a sociopath it or a psychopath it's hard to cut sometimes more like a sociopath but It's hard to know where those lines are because you suffer from, you know, antisocial disorder. So you don't really understand where boundaries are sometimes. Yeah. You act inappropriate because you're acting, you know, impulsively. And you don't, you don't have that ability to start. Like sometimes, you know, like just like with getting mad at your mother, like the next day, he realized like, oh, man, I shot myself in the foot. Yeah.

At the time, it was impulsive. So he picked up the phone and called back. and, you know, try to make, you know, try to fix the situation. And luckily he did. But yeah, you'll, you know, like having been around enough people that fall in the, you know, anti-social scale, then you start to realize that just having conversations with them, that some of them, they just, they just have no idea what good and bad behavior is. Yeah.

And it doesn't, it doesn't even matter how they were raised. Like, this guy could be raised upper middle class and you're just like, like, you say, things, you know? So that's true. I'm sorry, but go ahead. No worries. So he would say that to my niece and then he would just talk about other things that were inappropriate. And my brothers and sisters were like, no, let's not do that. And maybe there should not be some contact going on. We should be supervising them around him. And so. I think Christmas actually came before that and Christmas, I actually had to do therapy in order to even go to Christmas with my mom because she really wanted John there because John didn't have family even though he had two daughters. John, you know, John was a lonely person on that day. So he had to come. So I was, I went to therapy and what we discussed was John who's going to go hang out with the guys. I was going to go hang out with girls and the kids.

John came in the door with a big bag of presents. He went straight to the kids. Right. And then I get emotional because I'm like, that's, he's manipulating me in the situation. He's just trying to piss me off. like he's doing this because he wants to see me like he wants to sting right and that wasn't a part of the plan right like he knew what the plan was he did okay but my mom made excuses for him was like oh i don't think oh Tara you know i don't think he knew that but i'm like no you went home and you

told him the plan because you told me that and you know part of being in that relationship that coercive control relationship is you're going to be bonded to that person and you're going to want to make excuses for them because they're your substance and you know the other person is not and so you know I reacted with that my family actually thought I was crazy for reacting like that and going into the garage and crying and I remember my niece who was was the girl that he told all this stuff to about the twerking and whatnot. So she came in and she was just consoling me and just telling me that it's going to be okay and that she kind of gets a weird feeling about him too and she's a young girl.

Well, intuition is, you know, it's like I do these like these different types of not conventions, but like keynote speaking when I, I'll go and speak and people they'll always ask me about fraud and I'm like you know one of the things that people overlook is just their intuition because they can't put their finger on it like they're like I don't know isn't said anything wrong isn't done anything wrong but I feel like something that's your intuition that you shouldn't ignore your intuition if everything about this person is feeling wrong then the very look at the very least start to really look into it you know don't be so trusting but your mom. is in love and love is such a powerful emotion you know it overrides everything else yeah so true so yeah but like you said you feel something your sister feels something your niece feel something something's not right yeah so after that like maybe a few weeks or a couple or a month after that my family all gets together and hires a private investigator nice yes And then they start looking into things.

They're finding out that he's using different social security cards to, you know, sell drugs, get nursing certificates, whatever. I'm not sure really how he does that. But he was able to do a lot of stuff that I'm like, wait, what? And he was, what else did they find out? They found out all the lawsuits that he had going on. And then my mom actually ends up leaving him because we show her this information. She lives him on March 7th. My aunt also passed away on March 8th, like years before that, from a domestic violence situation.

Her husband shot and killed her. And then he shot himself in the stomach. And then my aunt or my mom, well, my grandma, she went and she was on the witness stand. for the guy for her husband that shot and killed her daughter. So he got less time. He didn't get that much time at all like a couple of years. And so she already has like that pass. And I think like there's a synchronicity between the days because each time she would leave him is the day before that date.

And so she left him and she went to live with my other sister. in Lidera Ranch and did her thing there, but it was also hard living in a kid's bed. And then he got mad at first that she left him. And then he started lobbing her again. And then he told her, oh, I could prove all these things are not me. And my mom also like did see a red flag too because one day there was a letter that came to the Balboa house and it was a letter like from an inmate and then he said that he does like a pen pal with a prison person. He's always got he's got it's always got a story right. But he's never heard about the pen pal thing before, never seen any of the letters, never come up and conversation.

now suddenly he's been battling with people uh-huh yeah so she was like okay so you know she was like oh you know but some things might be true so he admitted to going to jail for like not what he really said he went for though i think it was like something benign that he mentioned you know You're a misunderstanding. Yeah, it's a misunderstanding. It's this, it's that, or he, you know, he did sell, he did make a bad move, but, you know, he's good now and he's going to church. And, you know, so, and my mom grew up in the church. So that's her weak spot.

So she's going to forgive. And he took her to lawyers that, well, one lawyer that was able to tell my mom that all these John Nehan's that he looked up were. different john mehands so he brought her to a lawyer that backed up his story yes was he even a lawyer yes because a lot of lawyers were scared of him because he would go at them like in the juggler not really but like he would go at them and he would get them disbarred and he got a couple of lawyers to spart and it's just crazy because after like everything happens to like i find mess because we had his phone and stuff afterwards we would find messages to this one lawyer and he would like tell this one lawyer his plans sometimes okay yeah so it's like he had just people in his pocket in a

sense. And I think, you know, when they would do these scams too, they would also get confiscated or he would threaten them if they didn't work with him. Right. And so he's been setting people up on lawsuits. So these are slam dunks. Oh yeah. You know, so. Yeah. I've known a couple guys like that. Okay. They set up a like a, it's a slam dunk lawsuit. Like they, from the very beginning, they set it up. And so they've been collecting documents. They've collected evidence. And then when whatever that happens, you know, the slip and fall or the car accident or whatever happens, like they've got it perfectly laid out. Well, I forgot what he, he had back issues, but I forget what it was from.

And so he was collecting money from the government too for that. Right. So workman's comp disability or something or Social Security disability or whatever. Yeah, but he would go play basketball like every Friday or something like. that right yeah well you know it comes and goes yes but so my mom ended up leaving him and then got back together with him and i honestly knew that was going to happen i just had a feeling he's just that good at his game and i was with like a sketchy dude before and i kept going back to that relationship right so it's like you're going to want to go back to it you're going to have that

attachment to them so she went back because he was also able to convince her and in her mind she thought oh my kids will like him eventually right well you would think he would like if he's really i mean obviously he's a scoundrel but if he's a con man you would think that he would be able to get you like him like it's not that hard to get people to like you but see here's the thing he wanted to isolate my sister and my siblings away from my mom because we were also my mom was financially like giving us money and stuff and helping us out my sister had the company with my mom there was a lot of like we were interweaved in her financials right so So if you can get rid of you, then he can take that place.

Mm-hmm. And so the first step was getting rid of my sister and I, but my sister first, because she was the first person also buzzing in her ear telling my mom, something's not right. Then I was the second person doing that. So he's like, oh, no. And he wasn't engaging, like he, you know, didn't ask questions back. He just gave one-ended answers where you're just. like oh how's your day good you know and you're not elaborating on something where normal people

wants you get to know their significant others kits right so he could have endared himself he just sounds just more like kind of like a pathological liar than he than an actual than a con man but yeah because the con man you you want them around you like them they're nice guys they're like wow like you know what a great guy he's a great guy like he's helpful and funny he's always telling jokes he's always he remembers things about me he asks about me he you know what a great guy you know this is this guy's like a pathological liar or something he could in certain situations but he was so disconnected with like the antisocial like later on i talked to a few therapists about him well like a well known therapist like dr romani and she says

like he's a psychopath uh laura richard says he's a psychopath because of certain things he does and he's so well because of the psychopathy checklist but he's so calculated in certain things and my other siblings actually did like him my great Grandma loved him. My grandma was like, oh, my gosh, Deb, I don't know why your kids are acting like this. He's just so amazing. Okay. All right.

Yeah. So he's definitely trying to separate just the two of you. And yeah. And we're like, we're telling my mom, we're looking into him, you know. And so he's just like, oh, these. And he even. You need to get rid of these pesky kids, these, it, my plan would have worked if it hadn't been for you, you nosy kids. Oh, yes.

That's what's Scooby-Doo. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. What always happens at the end is like, you know, what it would have worked out if it hadn't been for you nosy kids. Oh, that's right. Yeah. I do like Scooby-Doo, too.

I watched too much of it, maybe. And Nancy Drew. But. So what happened? So they got back to? together and and obviously things didn't continue to go well so and also he said a few comments about my sister like shooting my sister with a sniper rifle and I like so my mom yeah and he normal people don't say that yeah normal people don't say that I hang out

with straight sociopaths and the very seldomly do they say that stuff like that you know Yeah. So that's not a good sign. No. And he would even say stuff about like, oh, I would. So my sister and my mom, he didn't allow my mom to see my sister. And I think that was part of the agreement of getting back. But I think my mom was like, oh, he'll come around.

He'll come around. And he would tell my mom when she would go see me for lunch. Oh, but if you see Jacqueline, like I will dump her in the bottom of the ocean where nobody will be able to find her. And so he would threaten that. And so your mom just blew that off? Like she didn't take that seriously or? I've known a lot of antisocial personality disorders and so has my mom. so we're just like oh wow okay and you know that is concerning like i would get concerned but

it's when you grow up with looking at like you know if you go to church like my mom's sister was killed there was just that the that guy was in the picture you know certain people would say things and you know his so my mom's nephew or my cousin his that was his mom and then john would say it around him and so he was like that's weird because you know my mom was killed with a gun so don't say that um but my mom just thought that he had that hatred for my sister and that he's not going to act on it he's just joking Okay But normal people don't joke like that Yeah

So they ended up trying to rebuild their relationship They got a place in Irvine together A new place because my mom Rented out the Balboa place And my dad helped her do that And so My mom was like, okay, let's rebuild They got the apartment

They got a dog together Then my mom ended up getting a place in Vegas, a home in Vegas, just because she wanted to start businesses there. And John was wanting her to start a business there, too, because the taxes are great. And my mom was always going to Vegas for work and for model homes. And John was like, let's start this one business. And so they moved to Vegas and we're living there part time. And then I believe the Irvine place, well, my mom actually left him when at the Irvine place one day because it just like escalated to the point where she was trying to, she actually hired a private investigator because she was catching on to light, seeing the light now. Right.

And so she wanted to know all this for herself. So she hired someone for herself and I remember one day actually at lunch sitting there and there was a stack full of like probably like two inches deep of stuff on him. Right. And I remember one paper that she pulled up was him in jail, like a paper on him in jail where he, cut his stomach open and stuff feces in it so that he could go get a drug fix okay and so i knew if he was able to do that to himself yeah hurting someone else would be no problem right so i saw that and my sister and i told my mom oh it's okay to leave john i know he's made threats and stuff but well he didn't make threats about me to be honest because i was always

saying oh if john wants to work it out i'll work it out with him i'm down to talk to him you know i want to communicate and work this out i want to support this relationship mom after we had our fight okay so he never wanted to work out or anything so that also helped because he didn't want to Tara's bad because I was saying this now, he was like, oh, just shrugged it off. And so that always became something in my mom's mind, too, because she's like, Tara is the sweetest daughter. Usually everyone gets along with her in a sense. Right. And she's trying to work it out. Yes. So why isn't this guy willing to work it out okay yeah so she questioned that and then hired the private investigator got all this stuff on him and then she was planning her leave because we also told her it was okay

we can be safe and so one day she ended up just leaving because she got panic she got in a fight with him and then she ended up leaving with like one shoe and just like random clothes she took her stive she went out to the Vegas house with my sister they filmed everything just so they have that evidence that they're not taking any of his things and then they packed up the house they got a call from irvine p.d and he made a call saying that uh to the police and made a report saying that my mom hit him okay and so my mom said that that's impossible because she's in Vegas right now and gave them the evidence that she's in Vegas okay so they dismissed that and just were like okay whatever nothing happened from that and so

it got the stuff out then the lease ended on the Irvine apartment and John moved out to the Vegas house and he well because that's my mom's plan was to like let him stay in the Vegas house that's his area and he had a dog with my mom um he would leave the dog in Vegas and then he would come out and stock my mom my sister and I during that time and we would know that too because later we would find evidence that he would do that and then The neighbors would always call and say the dogs loose, the dog's loose, and then they would put the dog in the house and stuff. So he wasn't there. So, but the dog was.

So we figured, oh, maybe he's at the casinos, but no, he was here stalking us. And then he lit my mom's car on fire and drove it to a different location. and then my mom had a police report on that. The police were kind of slow on that. He had a key. He just took the car and then went and set it on fire. No. Well, like, he didn't have a key.

He would use all these apps to break. Well, like, he would track our phones. He would break into the iCloud and track us and get our information, see our text messages he would find out information about us and stuff that we're doing um then he would call certain places and try to get us in trouble like he called my sister's real estate school and he was saying that she's my sister's doing this and that so um my sister didn't go back to the real estate school and then he called like something on me tried to get me in trouble but i didn't get in trouble with that because I there wasn't a way to get in trouble and then he also one day well like and then he

would use apps to like get into the cars and stuff somehow or yeah so he's just like knew so much and then he one day ran his car into the gate and the car was in my mom's name and he just left the car there like a you know like a housing development like a gated community he ran it into the gate at the gated community and just left the car there so so the police show up they think your mom was driving the car they don't they well they were like it looks like it got stolen right because there's all this trash everywhere he's going to california he's stocking us So I think he's also like sleeping in the van too. So it just looks homeless.

So they don't think it's like, oh, that's weird. And then they also, she also, I think she also had him like on their insurance or something. So she's like, oh, it's my ex-husband was driving that car. But the car was in her name. So she was able to get the car. And so she got that car. and then maybe like a week later something I the dog gets loose and the dog gets picked up by the pound and it has a fever because Vegas is so hot and my mom gives John a few days to get the dog he they keep calling and so my mom ends up going to get the dog and the dog comes and stays with me. because I'm working at a dog kennel at the time, so I'm able to take the dog to work with me.

And so I ended up getting the dog, and then he would come to the back bay and watch me. And then one day he saw me petting two roadies and rich backs. So he called my work the next day, and that was August 19th. And he made an appointment for two roadies and richbacks, but he called my work. called during feeding hour so all the dogs were barking i was unable to hear him and so i didn't get information that i normally would have say a phone number a name um and probably a credit card or something to hold on file for that visit and so the next day comes around i'm also going to the jason Naldine concert that night, so I'm a bit distracted. It gets to the point where the dogs should show up

and there are no show. So I actually go home. I start to get ready for the concert and then I'm able to come back to work a little bit early so that I could leave earlier. So I ended up leaving work early and I leave around like probably like 520-ish p.m. I get to my place. I pull into my gate. My gate is broken. And then I see a guy that's fiddling with a tire iron and my dog is barking with him. And I think it's just a homeless guy.

So I park in the parking spot where I normally park. I get out. I get my dog out. And then I walk by my backside of the parking, the plate of the car. Right. And it's in the parking structure. He grabs me by the waist, looks me in the eyes and says, do you remember me? And then I try to get away from him.

I'm unable to get away from him. He starts trying to cover my mouth because I start to try to scream. And then I bite him as hard as I can. So he's not able to cover my mouth. Then he started. You knew it was him though, right? Right away. When he said, do you remember me?

that's when I knew it was him okay because I honestly I thought it was like a home there's a lot of homeless people where I lived so I was just thinking oh he's just barking at a homeless guy and so I'm I don't need to pay I don't need to have my dog give attention to that right you know he shouldn't bark at someone um but that was John and he knew that he was a threat okay and so my dog was also attacking his ankles. At this time, I thought I was getting punched, but I actually was getting stabbed. And so I brought up my purse to protect my heart before that. And so the knife was also an adult taco bag, so that's why I was unaware.

And it's, when you get stabbed, you don't think you're getting stabbed unless like you see the knife and it's apparent. right so I was able I fell on my back on my shoulder and then I was able to kick the knife out of his hand because at this point it's out of the del taco bag and it's starting to come down on me and so I'm able to kick the knife and it lands on my right hand side I pick it up and I just start wailing on him I watch a lot of walking dead so I held him his head so he wouldn't bite me and then I thought I was stabbing him in the front of the chest but I was actually overdoing it so it was in the back of his shoulders and there was 11 there that I did and then I did the last two to the head I did right here and then the eye which is the softest point of entry to the brain so I tossed the knife I scooted him away from me and then I started to assess the situation. I saw that I had a one inch stab wound in my forearm. I started applying pressure to that. And then I looked around and saw my dog started to eat the

doll taco. Then at this time, a lady came up, asked me, what can I do to help you? I asked her to grab my dog because I thought that the Del Taco could have poison in it because I'm always with my dog and had you been stabbed anywhere anywhere but the arm so later i realized i was stabbed in the chest but i wasn't bleeding profusely in the chest so it didn't show through my clothes so so was it because you had your purse up yes and so it like barely got me there okay and then i also had one to my face but that was superficial it was just it barely graced me it was like a paper cut okay yes so what is he is he i mean you stabbed them in the in the eye socket so it's probably not good like is he is he deceased or is he just bleeding out this did not go his way by the

way. If he's thinking anything, he's thinking this wasn't part of the plan. Oh, no. No. He absolutely did not see that coming. You're tiny, by the way. Like I've seen like the idea that you would fight back in any significant way. And he was a pretty big guy. Oh yeah. He was like call your size. Yeah. Without like the bigger muscles. I mean, the idea that you would be able to get the best of him is shocking. Yeah. Well, and then he took testosterone right before that too.

So he shot up with that. So I think also when you're taking stuff, you're not as well balanced, if that makes sense. Okay. You mean mentally or just physically? Mentally. Okay. You know, you take that testosterone and you're supposed to be enraged. more so where you're not able to breathe and have like your cortisol is going to be high too when you take testosterone

because you're you're making yourself get to that heightened state if that makes sense because you need a large amount of testosterone and adrenaline to get to that state um and so i don't think it works with the brain as well where you're not able to like breathe and think as clear in that attack but he's not thinking this clear in general yeah listen either way you know he's a big guy you're tiny like you you pull it putting the putting the purse up over your chest like super sharp move you know on your part like protecting yourself immediate even though you know you're at the time you were it was kind of just you know instantaneous yeah you're like whoa this is um i mean you got you really i mean i'm not trying to say that you know you're not a a trained you know

you know you haven't taken you know uh training or anything like i don't never but but wow like every like you you got you got a series of really really good moves on your part because that could have gone so bad well and then i just came from the dog kennel so i was wearing rain boots too so that gave me more mass to even kick him with okay and then my dog was attacking his ankle at the same time and you know i what dog is this something tells me this is not a huge dog 32 pounds okay still still this guy's got a knife so well so what happened with him i mean what so he's laying is he laying there is he what's is he just out so he's laying there um i didn't me i don't think I remember this.

I don't remember him breathing after I scooted him off because he did this gas. And I think that's when he like stop breathing. Right. And so he's laying there. Then the person comes up, gets my dog, then other people start coming up. And this guy comes up, asks me, what can I do to help you? then he gives me his sweater. I start to apply pressure with the sweater now. Then this other girl, Skyler, comes up. She's a junior lifeguard. She has the same birthday of me, tells me she's trained in the

situation, just starts asking me questions. And then he goes over to John and starts to give him CPR. are and I start yelling well like the only thing I would say that these people is I told the lady to grab my dog and they told them when they asked me I'm um I think I said I'm Tara that was my stepdad he tried to kill me and I kept repeating that in like loop and so that's why I think she was asking me these questions get me out of that shock and but I wanted people to know that that was the information and that I didn't try to attack him. And I also knew that I needed to give them very little information about the situation because I didn't want to say anything out of shock or just that would make me look like

I did anything. Right. So I kept saying that. So he got revived on the scene by that guy, but he tried to warn him. and I went down the hill I asked Giler to grab my phone and then I called my mom and I said I'm so sorry I think I killed your husband I knew that he would do this and then my mom was just apologizing and saying what what and then she comes there and then I try to call my ex-boyfriend but it went to voicemail or something and then I texted him and I was like a camp

believe you blocked me. John just tried to kill me. And so he calls me back and is like, I'm not, I didn't block you. I'm just out of service right now because I'm working bar rescue. And then so, and then at that time, I like hang up on, you know, finish the call. And then the police are like telling me to also hurry up because they need to take my phone in from me. And for me not to call more people and so I'm like okay just wait and then I'm like I need to call one more person and they're like no you can't and I'm like but my friend's supposed to meet me here for the concert and they say she'll will tell her and I'm like no they won't but oh well and like they didn't tell her until like she showed up to the crime scene and was like what is happening and they're

she's like is this involving my friend Tara and they're like we can't give you too much information and they're like you think i'll be able to go to the concert with her tonight and they're like no so they didn't like say my name for say but they told her they let her know an issue Yeah. And then, so she's like freaking out and being like, what happened to my friend? And I can't tell her. And then I, the paramedics are wrapping up my arm. I go in the ambulance. And then my mom's there at that time. She's holding my dog. And I told them I would sue them if they didn't let me bring my dog with me because I have a doctor's note for him. And I did. I. did have a dog or snow, but I am afraid of needles. So they weren't, I was just like, no, give me my dog and you can do whatever to me. So they ended up getting my dog for me. And then he just laid there the whole time.

He was so good. There's a picture of him in the hospital bed with me, actually. It's like, if you Google that, you can find him. But I let them do whatever to me at that point. Then we get to Hogue in Newport. They interrogate me. They unwrap my arm. And then I told them that I want to wait for my mom to get stitches.

And I didn't know that means that I have to be interviewed for hours on end with an open cut on my arm. Right. So they asked me all the questions. They take pictures of everything. and then finally they're able to release me, but they tell me that my mom went to go be with John when really they told her that she needed to go identify him because he was a John Doe.

Okay. So do you think he was still alive? I didn't know what they were talking about. Well, I know that they took him to global. because they told me that um in like huntington beach or garden grove or something in that area but i knew that if i stabbed him in the eye that he's going to be brain dead whatsoever right so i just went to that hospital and then i saw my sister nicole first because my sister Jacqueline was arguing with the cops, telling them, why won't you let me see my sister?

But she's a bit aggressive, you know? And so I was able to see her, and then my sister told me what was going on where Jacqueline was and where my mom was and that she wasn't going to be with John, that she had to go identify him. And then I was starting to change and then they realized that I had a stab wound in the chest. So I have to actually go to the trauma unit, which is a completely different hospital. And then they tried to send me to the same one as John, but I told them no way in hell. I won't be going to the same hospital that he's at. What if he wakes up and he tries to kill me again?

Um, and so I went to the next hospital and that was a bit traumatic because in the trauma unit, they have to touch me everywhere, like everywhere. Um, make sure that I'm not stabbed. They're poking and prodding me with needles and I'm looking at my mom on the other end and just screaming at the top of my lungs. Um, and it feels like I'm being retramatized all, over again because there's not consent in that situation right and then finally i'm in like a makeshift room and there's so many it's a busy night i think there was like other people that got stabbed there i don't know if i heard a gunshot you know person come in but there was like it was also like the mental war too so people would come in screaming so so I eventually got put into a room, my own room. They had to do exploratory surgery to see if I was bleeding out. I luckily wasn't bleeding out.

And so they discharged me maybe a couple days later or like 48 hours, something like that. But I only spent one or two nights. It was also blurry because I told them to load me up on Aadvin because I I can't be here and I can't deal with the hospital. So I was on, like, a lot of different things. And all I really remember was my dog, oh, people came and visit me, too. Like my boss, because I worked at the dog kennel, the, not the police department, the animal control was right next to them.

and so they heard over the radio what was going on in her mind name so they told my boss I wouldn't be at work the next day and then so my other friend who worked on that street she found out she came to visit me and then my hairdresser came to visit me too so I must have been like two days um if all those people came so and then my dog would come and visit me too but then he would also go visit people in the cancer ward and go be like therapy for them too. Okay. So he was making the best of the situation. Oh, yeah.

And so because, you know, I had the doctor's note and I trained him. He wasn't a trained service dog, but I trained him to those qualifications. So he was really well behaved and he knew what to do. and he just like would go sit next to the person and then they would just pet him and he would just like be their calm energy so he was great and i would i honestly took him to the hospitals before that it would take him to doctor's appointments with me so he was used to those settings okay so i eventually get released and then i start the recovery journey and the healing journey um and then i also like waited a minute to get my phone back because it was in evidence and they were looking through everything and then one day I also got told that my case got dismissed or my that it didn't go anywhere like you know I'm not going to be tried yeah well yeah I mean by this point they've they have overwhelming evidence that you were you were attacked and this is an ongoing thing with

him. So what did your mom have to say? I mean, my mom is just mortified. She didn't think he would come after me. But I always had that speculation he would. I had dreams that he would. I actually had dreams that I stabbed him. So. Oh, wow. That's interesting. Yeah. So I think that those are kind of premonitions in a sense to prepare me for what was going to happen but you know she feels bad but then you have to also understand who this person is right and I always compare these type of people to sharks right you know you can't fix a shark you have to figure out boundaries and to stay away from them right yeah I can I can see that you're not You're not going to reason with the guy.

You're not going to have a good conversation and he's going to go. And suddenly his mental illness is going to magically disappear. And he's going to be a normal person again and say, wow, like, what was I thinking? I'm totally going to clean my act up. Like, that's not going to happen. Right. It's like a, like a sex offender, you know, like there's just, you know, you know, you kind of have to put them aside and watch them and monitor them. but they're probably always going to have those impulses.

And this guy, obviously, he's, who knows what his plan was? Like, take you out. Like, what, you know, like, I wonder what ultimately he was thinking. And why you, why go after you when you were saying you wanted to work it out? I understand you're saying, no, no, my sister and I were an issue. Like, financially, we were an issue. If he could probably get, he's probably thinking you were the driving force behind your mother. leaving him. So if he could get rid of one or two of you, it leaves your mother in a much more

manipulative position. He's able to, she's more malleable, I guess, at that point. You guys are kind of, you're running interference. Yeah. You got to go. And he did try to go to my mom and sister's place the night before my attack as well. But my sister was in a car with a friend and she chased him and then he got on to the exit and then sped off so that's where she lost him so you didn't mention that oh i've you know there's so many right parts to the story but so definitely was going for both of you oh yeah and then in the text messages to the lawyer the lawyer that i think i don't know what they were having a fling or not but like kind of seemed like why would he shared this information with her he told her that he was going to bury us in the backyard of

the Vegas house like me my mom and my sister and it's kind of comical because that spot is under astro turf and it's not that big so I was like where is he going to bury us he's going to have to like chop us up into pieces and I don't was it going to be a traditional there he didn't need he didn't need a six foot by four foot section it wasn't thinking traditional oh i never thought of that until this moment so so what did the lawyer say why is he why is he telling her this like what did she get questioned by the police no because my mom never gave that to evidence it was i was cleared and then you know yeah yeah who's there to yeah he's dead like yeah ill i mean I mean, that's super odd.

It's like, let's just find everything out in a podcast later, I guess. So how did the podcast, how did that evolve? Like who got in contact with you, your mom? I mean, how did this reach the level it did? Because a lot of things like this happen, you know, that, I don't want to say since, you know, this is a very sensationalized version of something that does happen to people, probably a lot, you know? Oh, yes.

So what I'm wondering is how did your, your, you know, version of this story, how did this, you know, get raised to the level of, you know, a podcast? Well, one, even the articles, let's face it, articles, podcasts, and then ultimately, like a Netflix series. Was it Netflix series? Yes. Well, it started off on Bravo first, and then it got sold to Netflix. Okay. So they made pretty penny off it.

So we eventually got started because there was some articles written about my situation, but they couldn't mention my name yet. I had lawyers on all of that and looking out for if my name were to be out there because then they would have hit them with a cease and desist and told them, take down that publication. So I got con, well, my mom got contacted by Christopher Gafford from the LA Times. And then my mom asked me, would this be some, would you want to share your story, Tara? And I told her like, I don't know. And I went and I sat with it. And I was very religious at the time. So I like went to church three times a week. I prayed.

about it and I felt that God was telling me to tell my story and I don't know why I just felt that it would help other people. I didn't know what good would come of it. I didn't even know that it would reach so many people. I honestly thought it would reach maybe a thousand people and that's it or like 100, 200 you know. Right. And then Christopher Gofford starts interviewing with both of us. I'm also living in Austin, Texas at this time because I had to go there for my healing. Things got rough here, so I had to go stay with my sister, do EMDR therapy, and just work on just straight healing. So I was really in, go to church three times a week, you know, but I was really in the place where I felt okay I feel healed enough in a sense where I'm in an okay spot where I think

sharing my story will help and so I shared my story I flew back to California at times to meet with Christopher Gothard and then I think we talked for maybe six months maybe four months something like that and a week before the article's coming out like a week or two weeks before that he tells us that he's turning into a podcast or they're turning it into a podcast and we don't know what a podcast is we're just like okay cool a church sermon thing right and so it comes out and what 2016 I think 2000 well 2016 was when the attack happened okay I think it was 2018 2019 okay oh 2018 yes because like podcasts are pretty new around that time too so there was like you know gen y was out um cereal was out but those were like the top dogs

And so I wasn't really a true crime fan either. I didn't know what a podcast was. So then the podcast comes out and then it blows up. And friends are reaching out to me that I haven't heard of in a while. Random people are. And it's really interesting too because also people are victim blaming my mom and how they started it out was talking about her marriages and like making her seem desperate in a sense and then how they ended it was my mom literally saying don't we look happy together looking at a picture of him and i do believe that is something that happened you know because it's on recording everything but i don't think it's in like that context and like people really get like that attachment and it kind of seems makes her seem a little unstable right so i

you know and then the podcast came out then at we did a live event for dirty john and a percentage at the earnings went towards domestic violence fighting domestic violence i forget which organization though because i worked with so many sense and at that live show i met the producer for um he was the producer for suicide squad and wonder woman he worked for atlas entertainment his name was richard suckle and i'm a huge harley quinn fan so i love suicide squad i read the comic books and so i was just like you want to do my show yes and before all of that too like I was working as a dog groomer and stuff but my ex worked in the film industry so I also like worked as in background a little bit I worked you know I would come on to set with like the indie films and come out to visit be with a

crew so I had that background of TV and film not like hardcore working in it you know but I had that mentality of like, oh, that would be cool to get something made just because I was wanting to be in that industry a little bit still. Okay. So you worked with them? Yeah. So I worked with them. And then they got in contact with my mom, my sister, Tanya. I'm not sure who else because outside of that, I don't know based on people's contracts.

And so they got, I believe Christopher Gothard was involved, though. He had to be involved. And because he's the one that set it up. But so we got made into a Bravo TV series with Connie Britton, Eric Banna, Julia Gardner played me, Juno Tempo played my sister. I think it's funny because Alan Ruck played a lawyer in the show. And I love Alan Ruck from Succession. And then also, when I worked in New Mexico, I met his wife and then heard about his kids and stuff.

So that was just a funny connection. And it was a really great cast. You know, the storyline was pretty good. And it was different from our story, but the same, if that makes sense. They have to change a certain amount of things for television. Yeah, you can, you know, you're trying to shove a hundred screen hours into, you know, eight in a series or whatever it comes to six in a series. Like it's, you've got to make, you have to make certain, you have to combine certain things. You have to eliminate.

You have to make certain cuts. Like some things just don't make the cut. And legality wise, too. Like, I could say this now because like the person that we were a little skeptical about is now. dead and so we don't have to tiptoe around that person anymore but they were concerned about me getting hit by the car by a guy um because that was in the podcast and then they were like we can't really put that into the show because we don't want that person coming after us and so yeah so I had to they had to like say like in the show they were like oh Tara's X

is recovered like a recovered addict and better now and I'm like that dude is not better well he died of um fentanyl actually so definitely not better right okay and then you um when did you meet uh call year and decide that that was you guys were going to do that so i mean how did you know he was like did you find him or was this a you guys were just put together so call here i met him on like march 10th i believe um 2020 and so his podcast partner at the time connected us for the show and then i asked if i could have on my mom as well because i was helping let her out with her book PR and stuff and so they scheduled the interview with me and then my mom came on in between and then my mom and I came back together and like usually I don't like want to stay around for like an interview and like take a

break but I was like okay I'll do that and I interviewed him or I didn't interview him he interviewed me and I was just like who is he like he made a documentary about his own story that's just crazy and then we had a few connections a few friends and so when he went to interview my mom during that period I was texting my friends about him and be like how do you know him like is he a good guy like is he single and just getting all the information and then during my mom's interview too she like could get like the hint that I was like oh who is he and so she asked him flat out like are you single right um and then we were friends after that for like six months and then eventually got together but we like wanted to create the podcast so

that was really important for us and so we had to build that friendship for that too right okay yeah or maybe it was 2021 i don't know it's been like a year and a half so 2022 okay yeah that's yeah yeah 22 20 listen it's almost 20 24 oh that's right right it's just blowing by right so um all right so and now you guys do the uh you you do like the podcast like you did um crime con do you go what's the other one that you guys were going to so we have done crime con we have done true crime and paranormal festival that was in austin that's more of like an ethical true crime like conference and then we are going to obsessed fest in two weeks maybe yes not this weekend but the weekend after and yes i need to get a list from collier so i'm the one that finds all

these festivals and then like contacts the people and like starts you know So I can get a list for you because I don't, I want to go. Like I want to get like a booth. Like, you know, do the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think he knows of all the festivals that are out there, to be honest. Okay. There's one Pacific Western True Crime Festival.

There's going to be a navigating advocacy festival. There's just also more festivals being created too. right because i'm sure it's super popular yeah but have you heard of like um podcast evolution and stuff listen i didn't know i didn't know what crime con i hadn't heard of crime con until a couple years ago okay so you know i don't know anything i just started my podcast like a year and a half ago yeah so i'll yeah because we i put some on our calendar for next year and i'm hoping like it be the same situation but even so i just want to go to this one festival because it's going to be in l.A so why not just buy the tickets and go anyways you know right and then call you and i are good at

like just talking passing out stickers marketing ourselves you know i know i got to i have to do that i have to get um you know i actually have a business card i don't even i think i'd be barely brought in i think we brought a few of them like i need to pack it of them that with like the cute our code, you know, so that people just scan it, go straight to the channel. And, but I mean, I could get like a booth or something or even or talk. Some of them I could talk at. Some of them, it probably wouldn't be appropriate. But yeah, it could be, um, definitely, I wonder how much a booth is.

They're like three, four hundred bucks, right? Like, aren't they? 500 bucks? I don't know. I have to look into it. So I'm going to be honest because of, you know, how. the podcast came to be because of dirty john and everything i am big in those worlds and that podcast has over probably like 120 million downloads now so like i don't pay for much oh you're

because you're a big shot you just say like listen you don't understand i'm a big shot i don't pay people like you pay that you have to pay well i don't know you can always finagle it you know oh listen i'm listen i didn't pay for our tickets beautiful we didn't pay for our tickets that we call i said listen i'm a journalist i work for inside true crime magazine i sent him all my true crime books told them that we were considering writing an article on on it they said of course mr cox how many tickets do you need we said we'll at least lead to two tickets we got it i did interview a bunch of people. And I did start an article. So I might actually finish the article. Actually, I might have to ask you some, you and call you some quotes about your podcast. Because I actually have

the, you know, kind of the bare bones of an article. I just need to go in and incorporate interviews with a couple of people just to talk about podcast and put it up there. So, you know, it's not, it sounds like BS, but it's really not. It's not. It's not. You're really doing it. I am. And I really have an online magazine. It's inside true crime. Okay.

I love that. It's actually a website. I have articles on it and everything. Hey, I appreciate you guys checking out the interview. Please check out the podcast and Survivor Squad. Dare John. We're going to put the links for Tara's social medias in the description box.

Hope you guys liked this interview. I really do appreciate you guys watching. Do me a favor. Consider joining my Patreon. It's like $10 a month. that's nothing. Please subscribe if you're not already subscribed, hit the bell and share the video because that really does help, believe it or not. Leave me a comment. I respond to a ton of them. Thank you very much. See you. I was watching one of your first I, you know, we were contacted.

Then I watched, started watching one of your videos and I was kind of like, that sounds familiar. And then I went and as you were telling the story, I remember and I remember telling my girlfriend as we were watching. I was like, oh my God, I remember watching this like 20 like before i even went to prison i think i watched or maybe it was when i was in prison i watched one of those you know one of the documentary type shows uh i don't think i watched the whole i don't think i'd watched an entire like a two-hour documentary i want to say it was one of those one hour no you probably watched forensic files that yeah yeah okay like everybody else has yeah yeah um yeah so and then i

got to the part. I watched one of the shows where you actually had confronted your father. And I never, you know, I don't know what ended up happening with that. We were, we were like, we were doing like four or five different things at the same time. And I was like, oh, I'm going to interview this guy. I've got to interview this guy. So that's my documentary. That's a murder in Mansfield that I made when I confront him. Forensic files is how a lot of people know me, mostly because I was this kid that was involved in this massive murder trial. And I was like the center of it, all of it. Right. And that's how a lot of people know me.

And then I, in my process, which we're going to get into all this, but I had made a film called a murder in Mansfield because I did all of these things to try to find out why my father murdered my mother. Right. And it culminates in this, you know, sort of scene, which is like right over my shoulder here, of me confronting my father in prison. So, okay, so let's start at the beginning. You were, you know, obviously you were born. I was born. I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in Brinmar Hospital, on February 28th, 1978.

And I, all my family was from Philadelphia, Mainline area. And I grew up, I guess like, you know, like every other kid, I guess I thought I had a really normal life. I think when we're young, we're, you know, we don't, we obviously don't realize what adulting problems are or the situation that we're necessarily in. So my family, right when I was born, we moved from Philadelphia to Pensacola, Florida for about six months. My father was in the Navy. And then we moved to Dahlgren, Virginia, when I was like one year old.

And I lived on a naval base where I grew up for the next four years. in Dahlgren, Virginia. And my father was a doctor. My father was a doctor on that naval base. You know, I grew up, I thought I'd just had like a normal life, normal kid. And it wasn't really until, you know, airplanes laying in the backyard and going to the Chesapeake Bay and, you know, going to preschool and that was my sort of thing. And I had like, you know, I was talking about this the other day with somebody.

I was just filming with Vice. And we were getting into, like, my backstory. And I was like, you know, I do remember, like, good times with my parents around then. You know, I remember really thinking that I was really in a happy family and my dad and, you know, being home more and things like that. And it wasn't really until we moved to Mansfield, Ohio, which is where I grew up, the rest of my life, that things started to change. and when we moved to Mansfield my father had taken a job as a president of a hospital there

and or not a president but like he was like whatever he was running the hospital and he was a doctor who was an osteopath he went to Penn and as to my mother and the thing is is that that was a place where we didn't know anyone right and like I said all my family

families from, you know, Philadelphia. So we were this sort of city folk, if you will, that is, Mansfield is a, is now it's grown, but at that time it was a very small town and is in the Midwest. And it's, you know, it's, they're not used to having people like our, like, like we were, right? City folk in the country. So it was a lot for my mother to sort of relate to and my father. But one of the things that, and this is, I think that you, something you could really understand is, and this is unbeknownst to me. at the time, but it was an opportunity for my parents in a place where no one knew who we were to create a life and to sort of have a little bit of a revisionist history in their lives,

or just sort of create a new character, if you will. And so I think that the persona that both of my parents projected was they came from good, wealthy families in in Philadelphia and, you know, obviously we're Ivy League educated, but they sort of created this facade. And part of that facade was that we were a happy family. And I grew up spending 95% of the time with my mother. I was her constant companion. And I just kind of thought that was normal. And my father, who was a doctor, was always, quote, working. And so I started to realized as we moved to me as well I was five years old six years old seven years old I started to realize that like my father was around less and less like he wasn't home for family meals or he would

just sort of disappear at night I would often find him sleeping on the couch late at night or if I was if I came up in the morning he was he was gone or he was watching up watching CNN Larry king in the middle of the night and I remember just sort of going I don't something something's all off here but maybe not maybe it's just me you didn't hear them they weren't arguing in front of you or anything like that no so my my parents did argue and and my father was a very violent person growing up so my father had a massive proclivity for violence but it didn't really start until I was around seven where he was violent with me and my mother like overtly um I'm sure he was manipulative with her I'm sure they got

in arguments and all these things my father wasn't around a lot you know and he was quote like I said always working And then I started noticing this change in the family dynamic. And I had kids that I was going to school with that were children of doctors that were in single-parent households. So their parents were divorced. I didn't really quite understand how that worked. But I knew that it wasn't great. And I saw the pain that they were going through with the sort of manipulation between both parents and whatnot, bouncing around on weekends.

And but I still was great. for this this family unit that I perceived that we had and over the years my family my father was around less and less but one of the things that we did do we did two things together we would go I would go with him what his medical rounds to the hospitals and I would he would see his patients and I would um I would like tap dance and sing and perform for the people to entertain them right because I was one of those artsy fartsy people so we do that and then we would go on ski trips and mostly would be myself and my father

so I learned how to ski when I was like eight years old we would go up and one of the things I remember if my mother didn't come with us which often she didn't she would stay in the lodge if she did she didn't personally ski she did a couple of times it wasn't really her thing but I noticed that when I would go with my father

it would be like just father and son trip to go up there I noticed that oftentimes I wake up in the hotel room by myself or I would see my father talking to a woman and like I remember one time going to look for my father I woke up and I put my clothes on and was like walking around the hotel looking for him and I found him in a bar like at the ski lounge loud the ski lodge lounge talking to this woman and I was like huh this is weird but I didn't it didn't really think anything of it as I was getting older so nine 10 years old

I started to develop asthma and it was pretty serious and I was not an athletic kid. I was on steroids because of the asthma. I started having a lot of problems. I couldn't play in gym class like I could because it was exercise-induced asthma. It was just really bad, right? Especially during the winter. I think getting bronchitis a lot and things like that. But my father started getting really abusive towards me for not being athletic,

calling me a stupid little fat boy we would play catch in the yard and he'd try to like throw the baseball at my nuts and tell me I was a pussy you know things like that abusive things and I noticed that things were getting more and more contentious between my parents

and there was situations where my father was apoplectic right and he would literally at the drop of a snap of a finger could just he was a rageaholic just you know everything would just hit the fan i remember we were making breakfast on a saturday and i dropped an egg on the floor and he just lost it and he threatened to kill me and made my mother beg for mercy and slammed the door and shattered all the windows um he was just he was just that type of person so i i also grew up

in this situation where besides the trauma that happens later i grew up in a very contentious household of like, you know, I had a tiptoe around, didn't want to set my dad off, right? And I never really understood why that, why he was that way. And he was very Jekyll and Hyde. So sometimes he'd be really, really nice. So, or he would have these rage fits and then he would apologize as most, you know, as most abusers, manipulators, narcissists do. I just kind of thought that was normal, right? Right. No, I know. I, I, like, I understand. I mean, one, being in a very similar household and two i was just thinking i was i was uh as you were saying it i was thinking it's funny like you don't notice that's you don't know there's anything wrong i i'm actually working on a

story with my uh my girlfriend and we're and as we're kind of going through it and like everybody involved in the stories on drugs well you know when you're surrounded by water you don't realize you're in water you know what i mean like a fish doesn't know it's in water so it's the same thing when all you When your only reference is, you know, you've got a sweet mother and a father who's abusive, you kind of assume, well, that's how it is with everybody, right? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So you don't realize how odd it is until you get into a normal situation and you go, wow, my family's fucked up, you know, but, so I know exactly what you're saying.

You just don't see it. No, you don't at all. And it's a, it is a situation where. you just, yeah, you just, you can't see the forest for the trees, right? You don't know you're in water. When you're in water, you don't know your water. I love that. I'm going to use that, by the way.

So I kind of but still thought that I was grateful for my life, right? And my mother was just the kindest, most gentle, a beautiful woman, by the way. and just a kind person to everyone and just really taught me the foundation of kindness. And also my parents didn't suffer fools. Like I was the kid who education was a very high priority in my household. And I was a kid who was, who would, school would end, would get to play with his friends, like you get a week off from school, school, and then go back to summer school and take summer classes and science. art, math, whatever it was, right?

Right. And I loved to learn. So I was like into that, right? And that's how I grew up. And I think a lot of it was, I often wonder what I think back on things is maybe my mother was trying to put me in these things so I wouldn't see certain situations. So if I'm away with friends or at school and doing activities, that I'm not seeing what lies beneath the surface of their relationship, which was my father was a manipulative

consistent womanizer and abuser and I ended up finding out much later in life that my father was having affairs on my mother before even before they got married in 1968 and they had been together since they were in high school he was like maybe 19 I think she was like 17 when they met and they had had a relationship like from the very early stages of their relationship he was he was a womanizer. He built some of the nation's largest banks out of an estimated $55 million because 50 million wasn't enough and 60 million seemed excessive. He is the most interesting man in the world. I don't typically commit crimes, but when I do, it's bank fraud. Stay greedy, my friends. Support the channel. Join Matthew Cox's Patreon. Things really

started to change when my grandparents started dying. So my mother's mother passed away in November of 1987. Her father, who was my pop-up, who I was probably closest to out of all my grandparents, was he passed away January 1988. And he had come to stay with us at the end of his life. And then my father's father passed away in May or June of 1988. And the other person left was my grandmother, who was my father's mother. Now, my father's mother had three children, my father, a middle child who was my aunt, obviously, and then younger son, who was my uncle, who was my godfather, who was very close to my mother. And my mother was extremely close with her mother-in-law, because she didn't really have a relationship, a very good relationship with

her daughter, her daughter was a little bit of a tomboy. My mother was a traditional, beautiful woman, into fashion, into art, into like the high society type of things, you know, loved going to museums. And that was something she really shared in common with my grandmother. Now,

both of my family's backgrounds were poor working class people, you know, and but in this town of Mansfield, they had sort of portrayed that they had different lives. You know, they came from wealthy families

and relations to famous people and things like that, which a lot of them was not true. My father, portrayed this persona that he was a naval war hero and my father would tell these stories to patients to girlfriends to people of like things like going and I remember we were at this country club that we had joined in in Kataba Island which is northern part of the state of Ohio and I remember that we were at this dinner my father was telling this whole story about how he was in his

fighter jet in the South China Sea and he had to eject because he got shot down. He ejected and the ejection latch wouldn't work. So the plane went down in the South China Sea and he had to take his trusty bowing knife, military issue and cut him his way out of the cockpit and then swim a couple miles to shore and get picked up by a search and rescue team days later. It's great story. It's not true. But I grew up thinking that my dad, because he was in the Navy, and I used to watch

airplanes land in our backyard when we lived in Dahlgren. And I thought that my father had flown airplanes. And this is like around the time the top gun comes out. So like 19, it was talking 87, 86, something like that. So my father was very into top gun. And I thought, oh, and he would tell me these stories, right? Because that was something my father was really proud of. Of course, when you're trying to relate to your father, I was like, oh, okay. And I bought it, of course. And I remember his call sign, he said, was bumper, which was my nickname growing up, because when we lived on the naval base, I used to point to the nose cone of the, of the airplanes, and call it a bumper. He used to say bumper. So he said his call sign was bumper. And I remember him telling me,

he's like, oh, they found my helmet. I'm going to get my helmet. I remember asking my father for like years. Did you get your helmet? You get your fighter helmet? Because I thought that would be cool to have, right? I wear my dad's fighter helmet. It's obviously bullshit. My father even told people he flew for the Blue Angels, which is like the Navy's color guard, like the most elite, elite fighter pilots in the world. And there are photographs of my father that he would even have in his office of him with probably more medals on his jacket, on his officer's jacket, than the joint chiefs of staff for the president. I mean, it was just absurd. But again, I didn't know any of these things. Now, I do remember going to the Army surplus store with my father, where they sell those medals.

And I do remember getting some for myself because I was a green beret one year for Halloween. I think the last Halloween I was in there, you know. But it was, I grew up in this sort of facade. And, but I kind of didn't believe it. But really when things started to unravel was around my mother wanted to have, my mother wanted to adopt a baby from China. from Taiwan, specifically, like a two-year-old girl. And I was supposed to go over, this is February of 1989, I was supposed to go over with her to China,

and I got really, really sick the night, like a few days before, really bad asthma. And I didn't go because I probably would have died on the airplane. And my, I was left with my father. And I had never been alone with my father for more than a brief period. of time, right? Or with other people around. That was two weeks that I was with him. And it was absolute hell. He was so abusive to me. And I remember, so my father had a real proclivity for violence and he loved violent movies. And I remember he was watching Commando and I didn't

really like watching those movies growing up. I didn't like to see people getting shot and murdered and things like that. So I would cover my eyes and he would call me a pussy smack me you know could don't uncover your eyes you need to see this this is war I was in the Vietnam War like all this crazy shit my father was me be very clear my father was in the Navy in the ROTC program he never was a fighter pilot he never saw combat he was yes he was in the Navy around when the Vietnam War occurred he never was in in Vietnam he never did any of these things and he never left the United States apparently so but he would tell me these stories stories. I mean, just, you know, as a war hero, decorated war hero, and I'm just, but I, you know,

I felt bad and I believe that I was doing something wrong, right? So this time, very specifically, he would say to me, he was watching these movies. I was in playing a computer game on the computer and I'd unplug the speakers to the computer. So I wouldn't disturb him. Literally was just like trying to be considerer of my father. He comes into the office where I'm playing the video game. It was like Math Blaster or something, if you remember that. And he says, why is there no sound coming through a computer? And I told him, I told him why I unplug the speakers.

And he just lost it. He grabs the speaker wire and he shoves it in my face. He's like, I'm going to fucking stick this in you. He sticks to the back of the computer and he starts screaming at me. He starts taking books and computer games and throwing them at me. off the shelf and screaming at the top of the long. So also my father is six foot four, a good 225 pounds. He's a big dude, you know, and I'm a kid, an asthmatic little chubby kid.

He starts chasing me around the house, making me stop and salute him every time he said, what are you? And I'd have to stop and salute him and say, a stupid little fat boy, sir, and run around and do all these chores. He's just screaming at me. He's throwing things at me. He's whipping me with a belt. and he did that for a period of about two weeks and I remember he and then he then he would stop

and then he would apologize and say it's okay daddy sorry and all this stuff like you know the master manipulator right is he drunk like is he no no so so okay so everybody says that so I want to be very clear my father never drank my father was not an alcoholic and And as far as I knew, didn't abuse drugs. Like, I, you know, I only saw my parents drink on very limited occasions. My mother liked in Arametto Sour. I think my father maybe drank scotch, but like they weren't drinkers. You know, alcohol wasn't something that I noticed in my house.

He went, now his father was an alcoholic, but he wasn't. So he was just a rage-filled human. And I, I, um, So this was the time I was without my mother, you know, and then it's this apologizing back and forth, right? So finally my mother comes back and I'm now aware of like why she's ever like let me be with my father for longer than certain periods of time. And I thought, you know, okay, there's like some real issues here. So she comes back from China. And then flash forward a few months later, it's Memorial Day weekend, 1989. And I go with my father to this barbecue party

and we go like out the outskirts of Mansfield into the country country and go to these people's house and they're like racing quads and they're barbecuing and people were drinking beer and playing volleyball and stuff. And I had never seen anything like this as a kid. Because my mother was very preppy, very properly, as was my father. We didn't really, like, no offense, but like, we didn't, quote, associate with people like that. Like, you know, they're, and not that there's anything wrong with it. I had a blast, by the way, like riding a quad. But I'd never seen anything like that. Dirt bikes, all this. I wasn't aware of those things like this. I would, you know, I raced bikes when I was a kid.

It was like BMX kid and all that stuff. Like, I never, I never saw that, right? And there was a woman there, a young woman. And I met her. her, her name was Sherry Campbell, and I, towards the end of the evening, I'm walking with her daughter, who's a couple of years younger than me, we're walking around the lake and we're like skipping stones and all this. I look back and my father has his arm around this woman. I was like, huh, that's kind of interesting. And we're getting ready to leave and he gives her a kiss on the cheek, which wasn't like necessarily totally out of character because my parents kind I did the, you know, thing that you do with, you know, friends and whatever.

But I took note of it. And I asked my father on the ride back home, I said, who was that woman? And he explained to me that she was a patient and that she was terminally ill and that he was there to comfort her in her health problems. And that's why he had his arm around her because he was consoling her. I was like, oh, that's, you know, horrible. you know um i didn't really think anything of it that was satisfactory enough answer for me on school you know school ends and in june of 1989 it's father's day and my father goes it takes

me to his office and he says um or go to his office we pick up some stuff and he stops to go get a suntan. This is like the late 80s, so the sun tanning is in. And this woman, again, Sherry Campbell, is at the suntan place, just happens to run into us. And she has two radio controlled cars. And she says, hey, happy Father's Day. I got these for you guys. And all this, it's like, oh, yay. And I'm like, of course, you give a kid radio control car. You're his best friend. But I noticed something that's kind of odd. I see a ring on her finger that I recognize my mother was wearing at one point. And it was a diamond. slide ring. It was very unique.

Like it wasn't a standard ring. And I said, oh, my mommy has a ring like that. And she just kind of giggles and she looks at my father. I don't pay it any mind. And as we're getting ready to leave, I get in the car and I look up and my father is full on making out with this woman. And I had never seen that other than movies, right? I thought, oh, okay, something's up.

And my father gets in the car. And so I ask him and he goes, I need you to tell your mother that I took you to the office and I gave you the radio control cars and not tell her about meeting Sherry or anything like that. I need you to do me that favor. And of course, I'm afraid of my father. So I don't want to say anything to him. But I know that something is seriously wrong with this. And I lied to my mother out of fear from my father.

Right. So we go to Zaire that night. And then in the middle of the night, I get very sick and obviously racked with guilt as a kid. Because I never lied to my mother. and the next day I'm playing with the radio control car, my father is not there. And I come in the porch, I'm just so overwhelmed with guilt. And I say, Mommy, I need you to sit down. And I tell her, I say, I think Daddy's having an affair.

How old are you at this point? I was 11 years old. Okay. And I say to her, this is, yeah, 1989. And I say to her, I said, I think Daddy's having an affair. And I tell her the whole story of meeting Sherry, meeting Sherry back in Memorial Day. you know, she got the cars and how she had the ring and how they were making out and all this stuff. My mother said, thank you for telling me. She was upset that I lied to her, but she was

thankful and she understood why my father put me in that position and it wasn't fair to me, and she's grateful that I told her to the truth. She goes in, she makes a phone call and there's a lot of screaming. And that was when I realized that, I realized that, like, oh my God, like some of these other kids, I'm going to be a child of divorce. I don't have this particular, I don't have this perfect family that I thought I had. Despite my father's behavior and despite my father not being around all the time, I still thought I had a family unit intact. And I realized that that's not the case.

So this is, like I said, end of June, 1989. And this is when things really started to unravel. travel. So my parents start to engage my mother files for divorce because unbeknownst to me at that time, my mother and father had a had an understanding, which was my mother had said, you know, my father's name was John, but he went by Jack. She's like, Jack, you can do whatever fuck you want. Don't involve our kid. The moment you involve our kid, that's the line in the sand. And he did. He involved me by introducing me to one of his girlfriends. And that was it for my mother. and she'd filed for divorce

and for the next several months it was getting really ugly and my father would leave little notes in my bed saying I love you buddy and everything will be okay and daddy like basically the victim like mommy's doing this but mommy will come to her senses type stuff that he was saying this and I'm thinking myself I don't know what's going on but like

it seems like you're at fall here buddy because my mother was my most important person to me. I spent, like I said, the majority of my time with her. But it kept getting uglier and uglier. And my father, if any time, I would spend time with my father at this period, at this point, this is towards the end of 1989, we would randomly run into Sherry Campbell. And he'd be like, look who's here. It's Sherry. You're at a Kmart. And she just conveniently, we would just, she thought Sherry was sick. Yeah, exactly. I thought Sherry was going to die. I thought Sherry was, oh, now she's definitely not terminally.

ill. Okay. And because she's still around. Um, so that was a lie. And what happened is, is that, um, uh, yeah, we randomly run into her and he had was like moved in with her staying there. He wasn't at our house hardly at all. He would come back and get things and things. And things were just really, really ugly between my parents. And my father gets nastier and nastier. And this is like around Thanksgiving of 1989, my father is telling me things like he's going to make sure, because I believe my mother finally filed for divorce in November of that year, November, 1989, officially. And my father started telling me how he's going to make sure that I get yanked out of the school that I'm at and go to public school, like all the other, quote, poor kids. And I'm going to, he's going to make sure that my mother and I don't have a house to live in, that, um, that he's going to make sure that my mom is working at McDonald's

and that I don't have enough clothes and that we suffer and that's how I'm going to grow up and he's going to create a beautiful, wonderful life with Sherry and her children and give them everything. This is what he's telling me as an 11-year-old child. And I started noticing my mother's demeanor was really beaten down because unbeknownst to me also was the fact that my father, is a doctor, but the whole reason that my father is a doctor is my mother who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Dentistry and got her dental hygienist degree

was working in Philadelphia in the 60s and 70s, earning $25 an hour to put my father through medical school. And my mother ran all of his books and took care of all the accounting for my father's practice because my father went into private practice after he left the hospital because he was asked to leave because it was womanizing and because he had so many complaints against him, which, of course, I didn't know any of this as a child. So my father starts telling me all these horrific things. So my mother is driving me after picking me up to school. We're going from school, we're going to a restaurant called Bob Evans to eat. And she says to me as we're driving down the road, she says, call your, I want you to know something. I would never leave you.

And I was like, well, of course not, Mommy. I know that. And she goes, if I ever do, I want you to know that your father probably had me killed. And I was like, well, how is that, mommy? And she said, she starts going into this fact that, you know, so my father is Italian. And she said, you know, your father has mafia connections. And, you know, your father just has ways to dispose of me. Who knows if that's even true.

Yeah. based on all the other like you know who knows what he's telling her exactly and you know my mother did know my mother did i ended up finding out eventually like my mother did know her family and there wasn't these connections like at least not that way but there was she was just in fear of her life and i had kind of seen that at that moment like okay something's up so the holidays are here and it's just not a great holiday. You know, Christmas, my father isn't around. Like, he's with his new family, buying them all kinds of presents and stuff like that.

And it's just a whole thing, right? And my grandmother, who's my, again, my father's mother, was supposed to come stay with us for Christmas and have a wonderful holiday. She doesn't come for Christmas. She instead comes for New Year's. And she arrives on New Year's Eve, or December 30th, 1918. 89. And what's interesting is my mother, when they were arriving, she saw my father drive down the driveway. We could see my grandmother was in the car. And she said to her best friend who

she was on the phone with, well, Jack's here with his mother, so I guess he can't kill me tonight. And the irony of all this is that my mother used to say things like famous last words. My mother had a very sardonic sense of humor. Right. So, you know, she used to say like famous last words, but famous last words. So I, my grandmother arrives and we have dinner, whatever. My father leaves and my grandmother and my mom are sitting in the living room and I, you know, I give her everybody a kiss, good night. I give her a hug, night, mommy.

Next thing I know, it's, I'm startled awake by hearing a scream. And I look at this clock, I have this Batman clock on the wall and it's about 3.18 a.m. And then I hear two loud thuds about 60 seconds apart. And between those thuds, I hear my father muttering. I recognize his voice. And then I count 12 footsteps as they walk down the hallway. And I always slept with my door open. And in the doorway, I can see out of my peripheral vision, the two feet stop in my doorway.

and something's telling me don't look up because I firmly believe that if I had at that point in time there's no it's nothing to make the whole little bigger and say she left with the kid yeah because that's actually probably more plausible a hundred percent yeah a hundred percent and the footsteps go away I somehow go back to sleep I wake up a few hours later, I jump out of bed. I run straight to my mother's room, and there's a bunch of sheets that are off the bed. It's in disarray, and I'm looking for blood stains. I'm looking for anything I can find.

I come downstairs, and my father is sitting on the couch watching CNN with a towel wrapped around his waist. I said to him, where is my mother? And he doesn't respond right away. So I said to him again, I said, where is my mother? And he looks at me and he goes, well, Collier, Mommy took a little vacation. And I knew at that moment, it was game one, motherfucker, like you fucking killed her. But I don't really want to believe it, but I'm like, this is what's happened. So my grandmother comes in and my father says to me, my father says, okay, so we're not going to contact the police.

We're not going to contact the FBI. And I thought that was really bizarre when you said the FBI. I'm like, we're in Ohio, like at the FBI. And he goes into this whole story of explaining that the thuds that I heard was my mother throwing her purse at him and that she had come downstairs and attacked him and started screaming at him over the divorce, over money, and threw her purse at him, threw all her credit cards at him, left the house, walked down the driveway in the dead of winter with no coat, and got into a car that was waiting for her at the end of the drive.

driveway and left. Uber? Yeah, 1989. She pulled her iPhone and got the Uber. That whole story doesn't make it. In a town where I don't know very many people in the middle of the night without my credit cards, without anything, without a, yeah.

Without a coat. Yeah. And left her personal vehicle there. Left her personal vehicle there, left her just left her children there, didn't grab the kids just left and so that's already very fishy right and i know my father's lying right because i because once the once he involved me with the sherry with the with the mistress i started realizing that all the shit that my father told me my entire life was all bullshit like my father was a liar and i was like okay so this is the type of person i'm dealing with so i was

i became even closer to my mother during this time between when i discovered that he's a woman or has this relationship to when she goes missing. So our bond only gets stronger because now I believe my mother. I believe, and I see the pain that my mother's going through in this whole divorce and separation and divorce. And I'm just like, this guy's a horrible fucking human being. My father's a real. I've already didn't really care for my father to begin with.

And now I'm like, you're a fucking asshole. And now my mother's gone. And now you're feeding me this bullshit. So my father leaves and my grandparents. grandmother who's there and she's bought the whole story and she's like okay you're not going to call anybody you're not going to tell anybody because he don't want us to tell anybody like yeah that's fucking ridiculous so my mother had just bought a huh it doesn't make sense like you're going to try and track her down at the very of of course and what I what I do is I grab my mother just bought a cordless

phone I grab this cordless phone I go upstairs and I had saved all my mother's phone friend's phone numbers and I had hidden them in a garfield that I had in my room. I grab that list. I go into the bathroom. I locked the door. I start calling everyone. I tell them what happened. I tell them, I can't call the police. I told my father I wouldn't call the police. Call the police. So a black and white shows up at the house a few hours later. And two uniform officers come in and my grandmother's just livid with me, screaming at me saying, your father does that not to call the police. Why did you call the police? I was like, I didn't call the police because I didn't call the police.

and they're coming around but my grandmother is literally helicoptering she is hovering over everything she's telling them to get out get out of the house you don't have a right to talk to this kid but blah blah and i'm trying to like explain to them like my mother would never leave me like like something has happened to her this is the bedroom they're just kind of looking around or whatever turns into a missing person's report so i follow up the next day with my mother's friends and they say this is missing person's case you know we filed a report I'm like, well, it's not, like, she is missing, yes, but something has happened to her. She's dead or she's, you know, locked in a room somewhere.

And, you know, and they all knew that my mother would never leave me because my mother did have friends in town, you know, other doctors, wives and stuff. I had friends growing up, but, but she didn't have a family here, you know, and the family was all back east. And they were also very estranged, especially after my grandparents passed away, which I'll come to find out later, why. but my um so the next day so we have this like it's new year's day by this time and my father's girlfriend shows up and we have this whole like you know pot or pork roast dinner it was just

terrible but earlier in the day what happened is the detective showed up and his name was dave messmore knocks on the door my grandmother again is like you can't come in you can't do this and he's like well i just want to you know have a word is the doctor here no he's not here he'll come back later he's like if i just have a look around he charms his way and i'm like come on in come on him it's my grandmother again loses it and she goes to call my father on the phone i grab him i pull him aside and i say give me your card like my mother would never leave me something's happened to her give me your card i'll contact you i'm going back to school it gives me his business card the next day i go to school the first thing i do is i walk into the principal's office i give her the

hardest. You need to call the Mansfield Police Department. You need to call this guy. You need to get him here. Dave Messmore comes down to my school and over a period of like two or three hours, I lay out the entire history of my mother and father and everything that happened from our whole, the whole situation and the girlfriend and all the details, meeting her, my father's abuse towards me, my mother, what happened on, what really happened on New Year's Day, on New Year's Eve and what I heard and everything and I tell him I said

I'm going to go home because my father won't be home my grandmother will be dealing with my sister if he was adopted from Taiwan I said I'm going to go upstairs and pull the bookshelves out of the wall and look into our crawl space to see if I can find my mother's body or I'm going to start I'm going to start

looking for clues I'm going to see if I can find her one person that she would never leave the house with. I'm going to see if I can find this. And I just started laying out what I sort of plan was. I think he was looking at me like I was fucking crazy. At the time, I'm almost 12 years old, but I'm still 11. He's like this kid, but I was a very articulate child.

And growing up with parents that really valued education, like I wasn't watching television and stupid shit. I was reading books and read my father's medical books for fun. And, you know, our idea of going on a family vacation was go see all these museums. and everything. So education is a really high priority in my household. So I was a well-spoken little kid, and I begin to gather evidence against my father. And over the course of the next 25 days, and today is a very key anniversary date, January 25th for me. But over the next 25 days, I start gathering evidence,

and myself and Dave Messmore begin to put together. and ultimately it leads to my father's arrest, which is on January 25th, 1990. But I start gathering evidence and some of the things that are happening is my father's coming home and he has all these marks and cuts on his hand. So I report that.

He is really sore and he has me rubbed Ben Gay on his shoulders because he was so sore. And he said from moving boxes in his new practice in Erie, Pennsylvania. And I'm just telling the detective everything as all this is transpiring over the next to several weeks but it wasn't until mid-January 1990 my father takes me to his office to go pick up some paperwork and I'm watching my father

like a hawk you know so I don't let him out of my sight right and every night like during this time his divorce attorney is over at the house Dave messmore keeps coming to the house with other and other officers do to want to talk to my father he wants to question my father but he refuses is to talk to him. And I see Dave at the doorway and I, mind you, I'm talking to Dave behind my father's back at school reporting on everything that's going on inside the house. And it's like we have this like thing and he's pretending not to know me and I'm pretending not to know it. It was really weird. It was crazy. But what happens is I go with my father to get these, this paperwork in his office and on the drive back, we stop at a gas station. He walks in the gas station to purchase some

stuff and pay for gas. And I'm watching him through the windshield. I start rummaging through his car. I open up the center console of his truck. And I find two photographs right next to each other. One is of a house that I've never seen before. And the other one is of his girlfriend, Sherry Campbell, with her two children sitting in front of a fireplace that's wrapped in plastic.

So it looks like a new fireplace. And I just kind of put two and two together. Like, this is a new house. She's involved. This is something significant. I say I go to school and I tell Dave Messmore about this. Towards the end of January, so around January 21st, 1990, because I don't hear from Dave after telling him about this house for a couple of days.

I noticed my father's behavior is becoming, he's becoming more and more stressed at home. But oddly, my father is not angry. My father has turned actually into this sort of very powerful. passive person in a lot of ways where I was watching I was playing a video games I got Nintendo for Christmas that year was a fighting game and he saw me playing and he goes I didn't know this was a violent game I wouldn't have bought it for you and I'm thinking myself who is this guy like you're Mr. Violence you're Mr. I cover my eyes when you're watching

Commando and you're angry with me and I'm playing a beat him up double dragon game and this is what you're upset about I was like this is so bizarre but my father comes to me is around January 21st, 1990, and he says, you know, Collier, I know it's been really hard on you, you know, with your mother leaving us. It was always, it was always with him over the course of this sort of investigation. It was everything that he would tell me was, your mother left us. Your mother left us. You know, hopefully she'll come back. We would pray at meals at night for her safety. I mean, it was wacky shit. And I said, uh, I was like, okay. And he said, well, I have a, I want to take you on a, like, let's just do a father and son

bonding trip. And I have a medical conference in Florida, and I'll take you and we'll have it just a father and son bonding trip, and they'll be really great. And I'm thinking to myself, okay, man, every year we would go to Tampa, Clearwater Beach, and we would go for medical conferences. But they were always in the spring. They weren't in the middle of January. End of January.

They weren't right after Christmas because obviously these things are. structured to like families can go on spring break and the kids can go bush gardens and whatever and it's a fun trip right it's clear water and i knew something was up and i the next day i tell dave messmore i call him up and i said this is what's happening and he realizes like because i tell him i was like i'm going to drown the gulf mexico i'm not coming back from florida and he knew that and as potentially the only key witness in a murder case he was very concerned so the morning of January 24th. I get yanked out of my house. I wake up. What's that? Oh, yeah, of course. Please. Please interrupt me. Is this a year later? No, this is, no, this is, this is a few weeks later.

A few weeks later. So it's, yeah. Okay. No, so this has been, so my mother goes missing on December 31st, 1989. This is now like January 24th, 1990. Okay. I thought maybe because, you know, a lot of times of, sure. Homicide detectives or cases, you know, they take forever. Of course. And, and which is very interesting because now that seems to be the process. But this was not the case with my father. So what had happened is, and like I was saying, my father's behavior was becoming, he was more and more passive. He wasn't getting aggressive, but he was very nervous. So I, I began to think, okay, you know, I tell Dave Messmore, I've been telling Dave Messmore, I've been telling Dave Mess for all this stuff.

And then, so they yank me out of the house. Children's services comes in. They say, we're from, you know, child services. You have 20 minutes to pack a bag and get your stuff. And so I started packing my clothes and I say, okay, what about my dog? And they said, we'll come back for your dog. I never saw my dog again. I pack a bag for my sister.

As I coming down the stairs is when I discover the entire house. And my grandma is screaming at these people. The entire house is filled. They're coming in. with men and women in white coats and they've got all kinds of contraptions with them like they're executing a search warrant in my house from my mother's body.

And it was complete mayhem. I get taken to a friend's house from the family's house and I'm not going to school that day. I go and I I'm approached by a social worker comes and I don't know what a social worker is

you know, a caseworker, but I know it's not a good thing. And she basically explains me, I'm going to be staying here for a while. I won't be going back to my home for a while. And they're kind of looking for my father. And I'm like, okay. So that night, which is January 24th, 1990,

I have what is literally the worst asthma attack in my life. And I, I'm pretty convinced that I'm going to die. And I'm in a home. I don't have my medication. I don't have the stuff that I need to breathe, really. I don't know how I made it through the night, but I did. Next morning, they take me to the hospital because I somehow stabilize. They take me in the hospital, and I go to see a family friend who's a doctor.

And as I'm walking into the hospital, the lobby is filled with people, and there's an honor box. You know, honor boxes where they have the newspapers. And I just, as we're walking towards it, I get kind of veered away from it. and go into the room and the doctor's there gives me an injection for steroids I get a breathing treatment and I'm like okay

I can finally breathe and this is January 25th, 1990 and this is when this is when they tell me they say call your Lieutenant Messmore found your mother and then there's like this eternal pause

and she was dead and the first thing out of my mouth was that bastard and then that's when the circus starts so I have a question did you I mean did you are you still you're still you're 11 I'm 11 almost 12 so did you think were you still holding out hope that maybe she was alive or you just kind of knew i knew but in that moment man like you you have that like you have this little like glint of hope yeah in you that maybe what you really know to be true is really not true like they're going to say lieutenant sver found your mom she was you know uh she was

vacationing in the bahamas uh she was in aruba she was uh shopping in toronto and she this and that she was you know, you kind of hope that it doesn't have the ending because nobody wants to think that their mother has been murdered and their mother has been murdered by their father. Right. So my father,

they leave me out of this room and of course I see the honor box, which has Boyle arrested for wife's murder. Wife found, you know, on the headlines. And this was January 25th, 1990,

so 33 years ago. And I, And I'm just like, and I already knew that my life was altered. I was like, this is like, I've officially crossed the Rubicon now. Like, my whole life is over as I know it, like completely over. And I just, it's really hard to explain, or it's really hard to articulate the emotions that come through that. And I think, you know, and I think for you, maybe you can relate on a totally different level. But I think, you know, you were convicted for, you went to prison

for 12 years, right? Yeah, almost 13 years. Yeah. And you, obviously, you committed a crime. You knew you were guilty. You talked, we talked about that. But, you know, there is a finality when somebody, like when the judge, you know, hands, when the judge says your sentence, right? Your, you're sentence to however many, you did 12, 13, but maybe it was like 20 years and you were out for good behavior or whatever it was, right? But when you hear those things, like, you officially know, like, okay, it's no joke. This is like reality is set in. Like, there's no coming back, right? I mean, I'm sure you've had that, you had that experience. Despite your guilt, like, it still hits you like, oh, this is real. Like, it puts a button on it, right? Right.

so I feel like I mean I didn't know exactly what was going to unfold but it was a circus so I go into the foster care system temporarily I'm staying with friends actually I'm not even in the foster care system yet I am temporarily saying with friends my mother's mother comes in time my mother's I'm sorry my mother's sister my aunt carroll comes in town They have a memorial service with my mother's friends. And I testify at the grand jury hearing to indict my father, tell them everything I know. And I help them secure his indictment for my mother's murder. Did you know, I'm sorry, did you know any of the details at that point?

Like, did you? I just knew, Sue, I knew a few things because they started asking me questions about, have you ever seen a blue tarp? around and I said yeah it was on our porch anything else oh there was you know there was this green indoor outdoor like astro turf carpeting that my dad had rolled up on the porch for months in 1989 you know they started asking me have you ever seen this here I was like yeah I saw this yeah I saw indoor outdoor carpet now I didn't know the details of what they had found you know but what had happened was is while I'm having

the worst asthma attack of my life the night before on January 24th they are excavating my mother's body from underneath the basement floor of this house that I had found the photographs of that my father had purchased with his mistress Sherry Campbell and they dug up her body

underneath the basement floor and it was covered with green astroturf there was new bookshelves and they almost didn't discover it. They just happened to see a splatter of concrete on the wall that wasn't cleaned up and then they knew that the floor had been excavated and they ripped everything up and then that's how they dug her body up and it was wrapped in a blue tarp which i saw for months just sitting on our porch so the charge was premeditated murder because my father had planned all this for months right

he bought all this equipment set it out so this wasn't like a a tarp that you had for 10 years for painting one time. He went out and started collecting, bought the house, or had a whole... All of it. All of it. And so I testified at the grand jury, and a couple of things happened. States like, okay, we're going to go with somebody, right? My father's side of the family wants nothing to do with me because they feel very strongly and I'm the reason why my father's arrested.

And they're under this, you know, spell of my father, who is a psychopath and a master manipulator and narcissist, that he's innocent. And now I have somehow involved police and dishonor the family. And I'm the bad guy at 11 years old. My mother's side of the family. Even though the body ends up in his mistress's base. No, no, no, it's not his mistress. It's his house that he bought with her. And she forged.

She wrote her name as, so her name is Sherry Campbell. she's not married to my father. My father's name is Dr. John Boyle. He's still married to my mother. She writes on the documents to purchase the house, Sherry Boyle. And then she puts an N period. Because my mother's name was Noreen Schmid Boyle. So the initials line up N as B.

Right? So if any of they ever checks, it looks like that, right? Because nobody knew what my mother's mill name was, really. So it's this whole thing. So everything was very calculated. And he even asked, and it comes out in trial later, he even asked the real estate agent about lowering the basement floor in this house, which was brand new, by the way, about lowering the basement floor.

But it was at the lake level. So you can't really get underneath the floor too much because of the water level. It'll fill with water, right? So it ends up being this whole, it's a fiasco. So my father's side of the family wants nothing to do with me because I feel that I'm the whole reason that this is all transpired and my father's innocent. My mother's side of the family, my godmother. says to me verbatim this is my mother's sister we cannot take you in because you look like

your father okay so i was there's a whole bunch of really really logical people very very logical and rational people involved in this entire situation and it's very it's it's a very peculiar situation to be in when you are the youngest person in this scenario yet you are the adult. Right. And I'm just dumbfounded. I'm completely devastated that my family has nothing to do with me. And I go into the foster care system,

which I don't know if anyone understands the foster care system in the United States or how it works, but it's fucking horrible, despite the circumstances that's in there. It's just not great. And I, I basically have to, while in foster care, come to terms with the fact that my father has murdered my mother, he's about to go to trial. I'm the key witness in this trial. And even though prosecutors said to me, well, you know, we don't need you to testify if you don't want

to. You don't have to testify. I was like, over my dead body. Because, you know when it goes to trial I'm 12 years old so I turn 12 a month after all this happens after they take the body up and I'm in the foster care and all this stuff right and I really in the nader of my life have to somehow find the courage and the strength to go okay I'm going to do what's right I've been doing what's right for the last several months for my mother for my family, and I'm going to tell the world what I know and face this monster in court. And a lot of people were under the impression that I was, it was like videotape testimony, like you phone in. No, I was in the courtroom. And the videotape is because they were

filming me in court for the news because the trial was televised live throughout the courtroom. And they actually had, it was such a circus that the courtrooms filled up. up every day. It was like the hottest ticket in town. And so they had to put television monitors out in the hallways of the courthouse so people could line up to watch the trial. And of this doctor, you know, who murdered his wife. And my father had a high power legal team and all these things. And, you know, for that time, right? There's no Johnny Cochran. But like for Mansfield, he had a high power legal team. And I just thought to myself, like, the thing is, is that you have two choices you can tell you can do the difficult thing which is tell the truth

face this monster and and honor your mother and do what you know is right or you can do nothing and I realize and I don't know how I realize this but this is all a testament to my mother and how she her upbringing and what she instilled in me but I realized that if I didn't do any of this, there's going to be two things that we're going to happen. One, decades later, when I'm looking at myself in the mirror, I wouldn't be able to live with myself. Second thing is, if my father, you know, if my father somehow gets acquitted and I don't do anything, I'm not going to be able to live with myself. But also the scary reality is when you're testifying against your father and you have somebody who has this type of behavior,

If he gets acquitted, he's going to, my life is over. My life is already over, but now my life is over again. And I'm going to reliving this nightmare every single day of my life. Hey, remember when you try to put me in prison for murdering your mom? Oh, by the way, I did it because there's no double jeopardy. You know, it could be something as simple as that. So I just, I mean, it's a really hard thing to. face. But I did it. And I said, I'm going to do what's right. And I'm going to go in there. And I

testified for two days at trial against my father. And he is still incarcerated to this day. Right. But you still have, how much time did he get? So he got 20 years for aggravated murder, which is premeditated murder in Ohio at that time. And, men a year and a half for abuse of a corpse. But he's on old law, so every time that he wants to be released, he has to go before the parole board and plea his case, and then they can give him more time. It's not like a 20 years and you're out type thing.

What do you mean give him more time? He goes to the parole board and they don't let him out on parole. Exactly. And they keep him inside again. Nowadays, the system has changed from my understanding is where if you're charged with a crime, they just give you a flat rate. So it's a, you know, it's a one size fits all.

Okay, you committed this crime, then this is what you're going to. And on 20 years and one day, you're out, you know, and you're on probation, right? That doesn't, that wasn't occurring when he was, when he was sentenced. So he's still incarcerated, 79 years old. When he goes in front of the parole board, what is, does he still say, oh, I'm innocent, shouldn't be here? or does he say I fucked up

what does he do well well so I had a relationship my father for decades because

I guess we can get into this but from what I understand is you know he still is in denial of it or he's responsible for her death but finally in my film when I finally confront him because I basically I grew up in this town and I was known for

this and I did not want that. I didn't want anyone to know me for anything but who Collier is. And so I basically went off to music school for a few years, dropped out and moved to Los Angeles because I wanted to be, I wanted to tell this story. And I was either like, okay, I'll become a rock star, become famous and tell my story and change the world and help people or I'll become a filmmaker I'll tell my story change the world to help people that's what I end up doing I ended becoming a filmmaker and this whole process for me was trying to understand why my father murdered my mother so in my film a murder man's field I confront my father for the first time and I've had you know I had had a relationship with my father I come to visit in prison all the

time and over the phone phone calls and and and I have 400 some letters and I read them on my podcast moving past murder to expose like narcissism and gaslighting and things like that right but this was the first time I've ever put it to him like you murder my mother and I want to know why and he has this whole story of just that she came down the stairs and she in front of much like he told me in that morning but he left out but he now added the details of he put her, she hit her head on a piece of furniture. And when he came back to her body, she wasn't breathing and he tried to give her CPR. Now, imagine he didn't call 911 or anything like this. Right. But in the film, as I discovered, and through my process of healing, I end up reading

the case file. I found out, I find out that the back of her skull was smashed in, most likely with a hammer. So, and my mother's principal cause of death was suffocation because when they found my mother's body, she had a plastic bag tied around, tied over her head. So my father had hit her in the back of the skull and tied a plastic, like, noosed her up with a plastic bag and she suffocated to death. And my, but my father denies this. And I even ask him, I say, well, how does she get the plastic bag?

bag of her head. He was going, oh, I put the plastic bag over her head. And I'm like, oh, okay. And he's like, I'll put the plastic bag over her head because I didn't want her to look at me. Like, oh, yeah, you didn't while you were murdering her? Of course you didn't. So there was all these really just strange things that he has in his defense. So I guess the first time he was up for parole was in 2010. And I had actually gone to the parole board and vouched for his release for two reasons. One is I wanted to curry favor with him because I wanted to tell this story. I'd always wanted to tell the story. And I knew that he wasn't getting out because there was a laundry list of people that were going against him. And I had no means for him to come live

with me in California. I could barely take care of myself. He couldn't move in with me now. I don't have an ability to take care of someone else. And I just knew it was impossible. But I knew that it would curry favor with him because I wanted his participation to be able to tell this story. And so I would visit him in prison and I would phone calls with him and stuff. And I had a very surface relationship with my father for 25, 26 years. I'm never really getting into the nitty gritty. When he did, when he was first up for parole, he did come to me, he did tell me that he was, quote, responsible for her death because his behavior led to my mother's murder. because my father's always maintained as the one,

you know, the one-armed man or somebody else did there. You know, he's got all these theories, like when he was in prison for years later, he was getting everyone riled up with theories that she was in a Chinese baby smuggling ring and gold smuggling ring and pedophile ring and selling sex slaves and just like crazy, crazy shit, you know,

QAnon type stuff, you know, just so out there. And it's just obviously grabbing for straws, but so I don't know in the parole files what he actually has really said but his story has always been maintained of that he's quote responsible for her death that he pushed her that it was an accident and that's been the whole thing now he didn't give that story a trial he said she left she got into a car and left they got into the fight she threw the purse out of the credit cards no jacket gets down the driveway and leaves which was of course is a lie right so and there was really no circumstantial evidence as far as

like fingerprints and blood in his car as far as I know. I did recently find out that he had rented a cold storage for her body and because he had given his ID so he could store the body while he dug her grave in the house. Well, what about, I'm sorry,

what about the girlfriend that signed for the house? I mean, she signed, I mean, I know that's, you know, that's, you know, like identity, kind of a, you know, she, she had to know something was odd that she's signing for her. And, you know, like she was never questioned. What was her? Well, no, she was definitely a question and she took the fifth of the trial. And my father was going

into business with her uncle, who was a chiropractor, you know, they were going to do disability medicine, which is like workman's comp and things like that. That's what they were going to do together. And he was like a sketchy character from what I understand. understood. But here's the thing is that she told me that she wrote Sherry Boyle because she thought they were going to get married. And he'd always told her that she was separated. He was separated from my mother and they were divorced and all this stuff. But when you're, you know, she was 27, 28 years old when all this happened, you know, when you're in a relationship with a narcissist and a manipulator, like, you know, it's very easy to run mental gymnastics around

someone, especially someone like her. And she, she just believed it, hook, line, and sinker. and she said that he came in before the real estate agent came back in and he told her to put that end period initial in front. And she didn't really understand why, but she just did it. And so she was always under this impression that my father, I mean, for a long time, I had to sort of reconcile with the fact like, did she know about my mother's murder? Because I blamed her in a lot of ways because I was like, not that she caused my mother's murder and that she was a participant in it, but that she was, that she was guilty by association

because my father was having this relationship with her. and that's why she was, that's why my mother was murdered in the first place, which isn't really true. My father is a psychopath and she was also pregnant. So I have a half sister that was born 12 days before my father was arrested. And it's, you know, she was in a position and she thought like she had the whole world on her, at her doorstep. She's going to marry this doctor. She's going to live this amazing life. She's going to start a new life.

She had already been through a series of marriages or in relationships that didn't work. She had two kids from those relationships or marriages, and she's going to marry a doctor. It's like the fairy tale for somebody who's, you know, who's, you know, from the Midwest. I was like, oh, my God, I'm going to have this amazing life, right? And you hit the jackpot. The sad thing is that my father was also hitting the jackpot. He had a girlfriend that was 20 years younger than him. He was having a new baby.

He's got all this money. He's getting ready to make. Somebody told me that my father was going to make $160,000 a year working 10 hours a week at this sort of consultation practice that he was doing in Erie, Pennsylvania. I mean, he had it made. And there was no reason to murder my mother. And if anyone, it would have been flipped because my mother probably was the one who should have killed him because he was winning the divorce because he had all the money. He had restricted her accounts and was controlling everything. But my father had supposedly told my mother, in this, I believe, came out in court

that he told my mother, you're coming to Erie with me one way or another. And my father wanted to have his cake and eat it too, like any good narcissist, psychopath, sociopath, does. And one of the things that, I don't know, I lost my train of thought, but, but yeah, he was able to pull the wool over Sherry Campbell's eyes. Again, it took me a long time to sort of reconcile this and go, okay, she's not, because she's not guilty, she's guilty by association. Right. Do I think that they helped plan my mother's murder? No. I think that my father is just so good at manipulating people and gaslight people.

That, I mean, he's a psychopath. And all of this was just literally premeditated. And carefully thought out, that's the difference between like narcissism and psychopathy or sociopathy. Psychopathy is it has a plan and you're very calm and it's very executed. it's very methodical Jeffrey Dahmer is a psychopath people like that right um and my father's the same way yeah so i always say sociopaths get into a get into a fight in a bar and they immediately get into a argument they immediately get into a fight a psychopath just kind of says okay

goes to a he gets in his car drives to a gas station fills up a thing of gas goes to your house and burns it down with you and your family in it correct correct both not good both not good one has a plan though but one has a plan that's very methodical and very well executed

and that was my father now the fault for all these personality disorders is there also is a massive degree of hubris

that is involved with these types of personalities like dumb cops will never figure this out I can do wherever the fuck I want you know what I mean and that's what my father's attitude was

and ultimately he got caught by an 11-year-old kid right because he was sloppy and because I was determined because I knew what he did and it uh yeah it's um it's fucking wild man when I talk about it and like I said today it's like been 33 years since I found out that she was murdered and he was arrested and it was the trial this entry in my hometown I mean in Richland County, Ohio, it was just, I can't imagine, you know, I think at the top of the conversation you were bantering and we were talking about, you know, crime. And you mentioned something like, oh, it takes years, sometimes these things. I think now if this crime had been committed, you know, there'd be every YouTuber and every TikTok are talking about it, much like they're talking about

the Idaho 4 and this, in a Walsh case and, you know, whatever the case is of the moment, right? And all these people speculating on forums and things, I think that that would have been that would have been what was happening right now, you know, and all this content be floating out there, and it'd probably be years before my father would be brought to trial, right? And now, as you know, the system is all about plea bargains and things of that nature. That's how they get people, right? So who knows? And he would have probably had higher power lawyers that would have done it pro bono just for the clout of the case and this, that, and the other. So there's, you know, when I think about the timing of everything, it was a very swift justice that was dealt. My father was arrested January 25th.

My father was convicted on June 25th. So do you still speak with him? I haven't spoken to him since around 2020, around the pandemic, because his prison was the one that was taken over by the National Guard in Ohio when the guards all got COVID. So it made international news. And so I had communicated with him to make sure he was okay.

Also because my father and I shared the same blood type. And that was when COVID was out. and everybody's talking about blood types and things like that. I thought, okay, I'm asthmatic. Is he sick? Right. And he was quarantined. He had COVID, but he had no symptoms.

I was like, okay. Okay. But no, he's still incarcerated and fairly healthy for a 79-year-old guy who's been eating shitty prison food for 33 years. Do you plan on? Yeah, and I've been slowly like contemplating, you know, reaching out to him again. I mean, I have letters from him, recent letters.

I had a stalker that just, well, I guess it would be almost a couple years ago now, January 2021. She was starting a pen pal relationship with him. Then she would send me her correspondence with him because I would ignore her. Right. So that was fun. There are odd people out there for sure. But it has been, you know, I have spent my life.

life trying to cope with all of this in a way that is healthy and a way that is positive and in a way that is, you know, can affect change in the world. You know, and I started a podcast last year and, you know, it's called Moving Past Murder and I, and I share my personal story and I talk about how these things relate to me. It's, you know, part true crime, part mental health. And I, you know, I share my father's letters from prison. I talk to people. I play like, have all these taped interviews. My father did from prison, like five years after he was convicted of like him spouting these conspiracy theories. And I have new ones that have just come to surface. I find letters. I find people that reach out to me. And, you know, being abandoned by my

whole family and having to grow up in foster care. And I was finally adopted after about a year. I was adopted by a really great family in the area. And they were strangers, pretty much, but they had a very large family of like brothers and sisters. So I had a lot of cousins. And that was a unique experience. And it was really challenging growing up with them in a lot of ways because they took on a kid. I don't think they quite realized what they were getting into, but they just wanted to help. And, you know, we couldn't go anywhere without people knowing who I was. So they had this relative anonymity and all of a sudden they adopt this kid.

It's a whole other thing. And they, you know, so that was a rough go for them growing up. but we have a wonderful relationship now, and we have for decades, you know. Right. And they've been very supportive and very understanding. And even, you know, I remember my adoptive father, I would get these letters from prison from my father,

and he would break them down, and my father would be like manipulating me. He would say things like, oh, I really wish that I could have a filet of fish sandwich right now. I would give anything to have McDonald's. And he was like gaslighting me and trying to, or not gaslighting me, for him because he's incarcerated because my father was always constantly working on and probably

still to this day would be working on trying to have me rescind my testimony he tried for years and i even went as far as my father had hired a lawyer while he was incarcerated for an appeal and had alleged all this new evidence that the body that was in the grave that they that they pulled out from the grave was not my mother's so i gave permission to have that body exhumed and when I was like 16 years old, 17 years old, and gave DNA testing to further prove that it was her just to give my father a benefit of the doubt. Just for my own piece of mind, I wanted to know,

like, is this real? And obviously it was her. Yeah. And then as far as it's coming to Los Angeles, becoming a filmmaker, because I was obsessed with telling the story and finding out at the core of it was to find out why my father murdered my mother

and going as so far as enlisting a two-time Oscar winner to direct this project and then getting into the prison and that was years of my life I spent going back to Ohio, seeing him in prison, getting to know the prison staff. They had a production facility in the prison where he's at now and I would go into that facility, I would go into the actual prison and sit and teach them because they had a production facility, I would teach them how to use editing software and I would help them order cameras and show them how to shoot and show them how to do graphic design and teach inmates this. and then I would sit with my father, like not in the visitation room and just chat with him and then

be teaching these people. And it was just to build this whole bond so I could get in there and be able to tell this story. It was really extraordinary to be able to do that and very cathartic. And even though, you know, confronting my father and asking him, why did you murder my mother, I ended up realizing that it was such a great discovery. because even though people were like, well, you didn't get your answer. You didn't get your why. I'm like, yeah, but I did get the answer. By telling me nothing, you tell me everything because he's a psychopath.

And I think that if my father had told me why, if he had said, I murdered your mother because of X, Y, and Z, that would never be good enough because I'd have even more questions. This way, I'm able to put it to bed in my mind and go, no, you're just, just, you realize when you're talking to somebody like that and you're and this is who they are that you realize that some people are just born evil and my father's one of those people yeah i was going to say if he owned up to it completely you know then there would actually be some atonement or or you know redemption there for him and that's not who he is because the person that does this doesn't ever want that does it mean you I'm saying. He's still trying, even to his dying breath, you know, maybe when he

realize, maybe when he realizes, yeah, I'm not getting out of this, maybe he does it, but I doubt it. But, you know, to that probably go to his grave saying, you know, the one armed man. Well, it was, it was always like what he did say is, and then there's a story of the knife. And that comes out halfway in me confronting him. She came at me with the knife. I didn't know what to do. I'm like with the knife. I want the knife. What are we talking about here? the golden child um i just like oh okay so where did this come from so there's all these stories and there's never going to be you know for him there's never going to be i murdered her because she was in the way of me starting a new life that i wanted or in order to take the

money the money i was going to be making but but she wasn't even winning the divorce that's the thing is she wasn't going to take all this money and even the police were like she had more motive to kill him than he did her he was going to get out of it and have money and new family and a new life. My mother was the one who was going to suffer. I was going to be the one that was going to suffer. So she, you know, him committing this crime was not, it's not logical, but we're not dealing with a logical person.

And the fact that he just still has to have all these reasons and excuses just shows the psychopathy and everything behind me. Because at the core of this, he's a narcissist. He's a psychopath. and he's someone who, it's their fault. It's what she did to me. She was going to divorce me. Yeah, dude.

You impregnated another woman. And you're going to go start and, like, why would she be married to you? And we see this happen all the time, right? This is not something that's new that these people behave like this. And they say, well, you know, and his comment, you're going to come to Erie with me one way or another. she did and my father ultimately wanted to be able to go down to that basement and look down and say i fucking told you so bitch or whatever he was saying you know he wanted to know that she was

right there beneath his feet and that's a psychopath right um so do you have a relationship with your um step sister so my my half sister was so well there's two but it's totally fine um my half sister and i had a relationship up until when i made the documentary she was going to participate and then she decided not to and i had offered both her and her mother a chance to be a part of it and she was actually going to be a part of it and i think her mother convinced her i mean her i don't think she did to not do it but i wanted sherry to be able to tell her side of the story so people didn't look at her and go oh well you're at fault And of course, giving people these opportunities, they don't take them.

And then when something comes out, then they are looked at or they're excoriated for their behavior. And they're like, well, I didn't do this. And it's like, well, yeah, this is my adoptive parent's older. This is why Collier was trying to get you to participate. So you can tell your side of the story. So it chose not to do it. That everybody's upset that people have an opinion about her. Well, guess what?

You didn't tell your side of the story. And I gave you plenty of opportunity to do that. Exactly. Listen, I have the same thing happen all the time. I contact people and they. And then, you know, no, I don't want anything to do with it. Okay. Well, then I'm, and I always explained to it.

then you realize that somebody else, most likely law enforcement, will tell your side of the story. Well, they'll tell your story. And they're probably not going to do it the same justice or tell it from your perspective. Yeah. And then it comes out and they go, you made me sound this way. Are you this or made this or that wasn't true?

And that, well, you had a great opportunity to clear all of that up. You know? so it's so funny too because sometimes it's like like sometimes it's even minor when like when i would read articles about myself i would get all been out of shape and upset over minor details and of course i was before i started writing and now once i started writing i was like eh that's not a big deal eh that's not a big that's pretty accurate i probably wouldn't have said it that way but yeah you know and everybody so I look back now and I think it's about 95% accurate and the few things they got wrong were stupid my Audi wasn't wasn't white it was silver you know you know I mean

it's just stupid like like you don't know anything that my Audi was silver like it's really not crucial what's what's funny is so when you make a film about your life right and and I wasn't really supposed to be in it. I was going to be part of it, and I was going to be shooting it, and then we kind of called an audible at the last minute. And so I'm like, I mean, I look terrible. Like I'm wearing like set clothes type thing, like like a fat grip in anything. But I was, people were like, oh, what was the editing process? Like, and look, I work as a film editor and I edit content and I, you know, I make movies and shit like that. But I was like, I didn't want to be any part of that process because of course, everything would come in vanity. So like what you were

saying, like with the color of the audience, so there's all vanity things. Like, I was like, oh, I look fat here. I sound stupid here. Like, don't, don't put this in, but it's like, that doesn't serve the narrative of the story. Like, and nobody gives a fuck what color your Audi is. No one gives a shit about the sweatshirt that I was wearing. What they give a shit about is the content and what we're talking about, which is amazing in a lot of ways.

But yeah, you know, and sometimes these things can become a solipsistic endeavor. And I'm very grateful that that's not what this turned into because it's a very powerful, powerful documentary. And it's not even true crime. I mean, I'm so new to this world of true crime. crime, you know, discovering all these people and seeing this whole sort of underbelly that exists. I mean, I was, like I said, I was just working with the company, you know, with Vice doing this. Well, where, where is the documentary? So you can, uh, so my, the documentary is actually

on my Patreon. Okay. But I made it with an investigation discovery. You can find it on Amazon. You can find it on Hulu, but, uh, and investigation discovery has it, or Discovery plus now. Um, but it's also my Patreon. People go to my Patreon. You can just subscribe and it's on there and you can get a whole bunch of other content. I've got like, you know, I've got letters for my father in prison. I do episodes of podcast ad free and there's a player there. You can download all the episodes. I think I'm on episode of 74. And there's a whole, yeah, there's a, there's a, there's a bunch of content on there to sort of, you know, shows my life and a lot more of the stuff that I'm doing. And, uh, but yeah, that's where they can find the documentary. So you, are you just

said you have the episodes on the on patreon but do you have your episodes on your your youtube yeah so i have episodes on my youtube and i do ad free ones all on patreon uh but yeah so my you everyone can find me at my website which is call your landry.com uh find me on ticot instagram wherever at call your landry um and you can join my patreon through there but everything is on my website the podcast because my podcast is called moving past murder which was something that i started as a continue of what the documentary was, which was, you know,

I made the documentary. I made that because I was very, very passionate about growing up that when we looked at cases, because I had from a personal experience, you know, the bad guy goes to jail, the victim is dead,

the state gets this restitution, the gavel hits and we say next, like what's next, right? Next case, next case. We never examine the consequences of violence. the consequences of communities on ancillary victims, friends of the victim, family members of the perpetrator and what it's like. And also to expose like, this is what it's like to not only have

your mother murdered, but having it done by your father. So you're both the son of the victim and the perpetrator. There's not a lot of people that are in this world that can experience that and talk about it. So I made the film to show that and to show what healing is like. But also, I do that further in the podcast, moving past murder, to show my process of going through all this. Like I said, it's part true crime, part mental health, you know, and it's, it's me exposing things that I go through. And, you know, I do it on TikTok too, but the podcast is a way to really find me. How, well, on YouTube or just. Yeah, it's on YouTube. It's on Apple, Spotify, where I get a podcast from. Yeah. How often are you posting?

So I do a new episode every week. Okay. Every Friday new episode comes out of moving past murder. Yeah. I have a new podcast. I'm starting called Survivor Squad. We're just getting ready to release, which I host, co-host with Tara Newell from Dirty John. How is it getting guests?

So I have a sort of mixture. I reach out to people or people come to me. They've seen the film. They've heard they've watched the podcast. I've seen the story. And I have so many people, one of the things that is really, one of the things that is really powerful about,

um, making something and being so vulnerable is that that vulnerability and authenticity really resonates with people. And so I get messages out the woodwork of people who have seen the film who've listened to the podcast that it has resonated with. They've just said, thank you so much for telling you. your story because it has helped me so much

in my own personal journey of healing because I never got justice or I'm a victim of sexual assault. Unfortunately, a lot of these people are victims of child sexual abuse that reach out to me because they haven't healed from that trauma. You know, the adverse childhood effects,

the ACEs, as they call it. And they say to me, you know, watching you do this, first of all, they're horrified by what happened to me and they're like, well, I, what I do has happened to me is pales in comparison to you and I'm like well yeah but it's not it's not it's not a try it's not a contest right it's like everyone's trauma affects them only uniquely like no like yeah my shit is so horrific but like that's the exception not the rule

that doesn't discount the way that somebody's been through through their own trauma but I'm so glad that the message helps them and helps them heal and get on that journey and feel that reassured of that journey that they're on to heal themselves because that's a really powerful thing. And I know my mother would love that I was doing that for people. So yeah, it's been, it's been a really amazing journey. But as far as guests, you know, just people reach out to me. They say, I'd love to be on the program. Or I reach out to like, like you, I reach out to them and I say, hey, I love to have you on the podcast, you know, and I think people have interesting stories. And I like to, you know, like I said, it's true crime, mental health.

but I'm trying to steer away from necessarily true crime as this, you know, not the salaciousness of it all. It's more of I want to talk to people who've been through extraordinary circumstances because we've all experienced trauma. We all have. If you were born before 2020, we have all experienced some sort of trauma with COVID, right? That's a traumatic event that the world experienced unless you live in a cave in Afghanistan or something like that.

so there is a there we all have had to deal with certain tremendous circumstances in our life or extraordinary circumstances in our life and how to come through and build resilience and you know I tell people all the time I say you know it's not what you've been through that defined you and this is what I aim to show through all the work that I do is it's not what you've been through that defined you it's what you take from the that and what you do next that defines you. And some people can go through, you know, I had a psychologist tell me when she goes, you know, you're the outlier.

If you were sitting under a bridge in East LA with a needle in your arm saying, fuck the world, no one would blame you. You have every right to do that. But you don't live you that way. And, you know, there are people that can just literally take this up. They're angry. They hate the world. this injustice happened to them

they've been through all this trauma they bottle it up inside they say fuck the world I'm just this is it's not fair I'm just getting and they can be they self harm

they harm others they continue the cycle of abuse not only on themselves but others or you can take that and you can say this I've been through this shit

and I'm not going to let this affect those around me negatively I'm going to turn it into a positive. And look, I'm up here talking about this. I'm far from a perfect person. Absolutely. But I am someone who I feel can look themselves in the mirror every day and go, I've done the best I can, the best I could. Do the best I could when I was younger to honor my mother and carry that through my life and try to be positive. But I'm also a perpetual optimist, which I found out was a trait

my mother had. So it's an apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Yeah, I was going to say it's, it's definitely perspective. Yeah. Life is going to use it as a crutch to fail for the rest of your life. No. Yeah. But listen, so many people do. Yeah. So many people do. What you're doing. You're you're literally taking something that is, I mean, granted, it was something of your own creation, but still you could also come. I mean, how many people come out of prison and re-offend. You know, recidivism is a real thing, you know, and you chose. Yeah, exactly.

Fraud is actually the highest recidivism, right? Really? Yeah. Murder is the lowest. Yeah. Yeah, because most of them get out and they never reoffend. You know, it's usually it's very circumstantial and, you know, of course, they're under the microscope the rest of their life.

And, you know, so, you know, very few people do, they actually get. get out and commit our murder again. I mean, they're out there, but very seldom when does that happen. Yeah. I'm talking about the people that get out. Yeah, of course. Yeah. And then there's, you know, then drugs, then, you know, so it keeps going.

But yeah, fraud's the worst. Interesting. You know, especially because the people that commit fraud have such psychological problems. Like it is all just, it's narcissism and just straight arrogance. And it's so hard to know how to easily manipulate the system. and not do it because you're so desperate to prove how smart you are, you know, which is also why most people get caught, you know, it's hard to just shut your mouth. Like, commit the

crime, shut your mouth. It's not really so much about the money as it is about letting everybody know how smart I am. Interesting. So then you get caught. Well, there you go. Stupid. The same thing that gave you the guts to pull it off is the same thing that is your detriment yeah you know which was definitely you know my you know definitely my undoing was that i just allowed you know just shot my mouth off allowed too many people to know what was going on and included too many people and was not you know nearly as careful and you know it just kept caught up with me and caught out with me and caught out with me you know and then of course every time i got lucky and got away with it i just became more brazen i didn't get away because i was

lucky i got away with it because i'm just that good Now, like, once again, I'm like, oh, this is bad. This is bad. You just got lucky. Walk away. No, no, I'm just that good. Okay. Okay.

So I thought I was pretty clever right up until the judge said, yeah. You're not so clever, buddy. No. Not that clever. Yep. My YouTube channel is YouTube.com forward slash call your landry. My podcast is called Moving Past Murder. I post new episodes every Friday on YouTube and on

Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast from. I also create individual content for YouTube shorts and on my YouTube channel. I'm offering a membership soon. You can find all things, Call Your Landry at www.com. I have a large TikTok following as well. Find me on TikTok at Collierlandry. Everything is at Collierlandry. So check it out.

And thanks for having me, man. I'm super stoked to talk to you, too.