MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - The Sniper, The Blonde and The Beefcake (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

One September night in 2006, a man left his office in upstate New York and walked across the nearly vacant parking lot to his truck. When he climbed inside the driver’s seat, he instantly noticed that the back left of his vehicle seemed to be sagging slightly. But before he could figure out why that was, he thought he saw something moving in his peripheral vision off to his left. Reflexively, he turned and looked out his window into the dark night, and there, only a few feet away from him was a shadowy figure looking right at him. Then, whoever it was began to raise their hands...For 100s more stories like this one, check out my YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @MrBallenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

One September night in 2006, a man left his office and walked across the vacant parking lot towards his truck. When he climbed inside the driver's seat, he instantly noticed that the back left of his vehicle seemed to be sagging slightly. But before he could figure out why it was doing that, he thought he saw something moving in his peripheral vision off to his left. So he turned and looked out his window into the dark night, and there, only a few feet away from him, was a shadowy figure who began to raise their hands. While most of you will figure out what is going on early in the story, I would encourage you to stick around to the very end, because at the end, there is a very disturbing plot twist that is the primary reason people even know about this case. This story contains sexual content as well as graphic violence, and so listener discretion is advised. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark,

and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, just as the five-star review button is about to blow out the candles on their birthday cake, lean in and blow them out yourself. Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Ballin podcast wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. man in question hadn't actually sailed before. Oh, and his boat wasn't seaworthy. Oh, and also tiny little detail almost didn't mention it. He bet his family home on making it to the finish line. What ensued was one of the most complex cheating plots in British sporting history. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts,

or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. I'm Peter Frankopan. And I'm Afua Hirsch. And we're here to tell you about our new season of Legacy, covering the iconic, troubled musical genius that was Nina Simone. Full disclosure, this is a big one for me. Nina Simone, one of my favourite artists of all time, somebody who's had a huge impact on me, who I think objectively stands apart for the level of her talent, the audacity of her message.

If I was a first year at university, the first time I sat down and really listened to her and engaged with her message, it totally floored me. And the truth and pain and messiness of her struggle, that's all captured in unforgettable music that has stood the test of time. Think that's fair, Peter? I mean, the way in which her music comes across

is so powerful, no matter what song it is. So join us on legacy for nina simone okay let's get into today's story 46-year-old Thomas Montgomery was a company man. For the last 12 years, he had punched a time clock at Dynabraid Incorporated, a factory in upstate New York that made high-quality power tools, from industrial-grade sanders to wheel grinders. So, when Thomas woke up on a Monday morning early in May of 2005, his routine that day was pretty much the same as it had been for the more than 500 Mondays that had come before it.

Hearing the alarm go off at around 5.30 a.m., Thomas automatically reached out an arm and shut it off before the sound could wake up Cindy, his wife of 16 years, who was sleeping in the bed next to him. Then Thomas got up, grabbed his work clothes, and headed for the bathroom. Fifteen minutes later, he was walking down the upstairs hallway of his family's modest two-story house, past the bedrooms of his two daughters, one 12 years old and the other 14. After getting downstairs, he walked into the kitchen where he grabbed a cup of coffee and a quick bite to eat. As he sat at the kitchen table having his breakfast, he saw the family dog, Shadow, waiting at the back door, her tail slapping side to side. After he was done with his food and drink, Thomas pulled on a light

jacket and a ball cap before opening the door and following Shadow outside into the chilly morning air. Fifteen minutes later, the dog was fed and back on her dog bed, the coffee cup and dirty breakfast plate were in the sink, and Thomas was climbing into his car and getting ready to back out of the driveway. But first, Thomas had to reach over his belly to pull on his seatbelt, and as he did this, he was reminded that he was a good 25 years and 50 pounds away from his physical prime, back when he was a U.S. Marine. Thomas had never seen combat while he was in the military, but his six years in the Marine Corps still gave Thomas a deep sense of pride, especially considering the fact that at the time,

the United States Marine Corps was undertaking some of the most dangerous missions in the U.S. war against terror in Iraq. Pulling his mind back to the present, Thomas finally buckled his seatbelt, then started the car engine and backed out of the driveway onto the quiet residential street on the outskirts of Buffalo, the second largest city in New York State. After tuning the car radio to his favorite sports station, Thomas then headed north to pick up New York State Highway 5, which would take him to Clarence, New York, where Dynabraid was located. Settling back into the driver's seat, Thomas made the uneventful 12-mile drive from Cheektowaga, the town where he lived, to his company's factory

and their surrounding sea of parking lots. Thomas found a parking spot shortly before 7 a.m., and then he hopped out of his car and walked inside the building to join the line of other Dynabraid machinists, all getting ready to clock in, put on their clear plastic safety glasses, and get to work. Eight long hours later, Thomas had clocked out and was back in his car headed home. In about half an hour, he'd be walking the dog again, and when that was done, he'd be taking his two daughters off to swim practice at the local swim club, where he spent so much time that the club had asked him to be its vice president. But as Thomas made the 20-minute drive back home,

his thoughts had skipped ahead from swim practice and then dinner to how he planned to spend that evening. For years, Thomas had lived for his Friday nights. That was when he and some buddies from work got together to play poker. However, recently, Thomas had discovered a new hobby, one that was more exciting than poker and one that he could enjoy every night of the week. Thomas had discovered an internet website called pogo.com. Launched in 1998, Pogo was a platform that offered everything from Scrabble and Monopoly to card games like Blackjack. If you signed up for a membership like Thomas had, you could skip most of the ads. Players used tokens rather than real money, but you could exchange those tokens

for rewards and prizes of real monetary value. Players created usernames and online profiles, and not only could they play games against each other and with each other, but they could also use the chatroom feature on Pogo that allowed them to message other players in their game, as well as other Pogo users that were outside of their particular game. While some of the chat rooms were technically listed as being just for kids, and there were other digital rooms that were just for adults, in reality, Pogo generally relied on its members and players to self-enforce the age restrictions. Thomas was aware that the site was used primarily by young people. He and his

wife Cindy were both active in their local church, and as a Sunday school teacher himself, Thomas overheard his students talking about pogo all the time. Thomas also knew that one of his younger co-workers at Dynabraid, a 22-year-old named Brian Barrett, was also a big pogo user. In fact, it was Brian's offhanded mention of the site that had led Thomas to check it out in the first place. But after Thomas signed up for the site, and he saw how much fun it was to get to play cards every night, he quickly stopped caring about the fact that he was likely one of the oldest people on there. In fact, he didn't even think about it. He hopped into different games and chat rooms without so much as looking at the age restrictions on them. So back on that Monday night in May of 2005, after Thomas had

walked his dog and taken his kids to swim practice and had dinner, after all that, he shooed his two daughters off of the family computer in the living room, and with his wife Cindy sitting nearby in her usual spot on the sofa watching TV, Thomas made himself comfortable and logged into Pogo. Just typing in his screen name, which was Marine Sniper, gave him a sense of satisfaction. Thomas had never actually been a sniper in the Marine Corps, but the name reminded him of his glory days in the service. Usually on Pogo, Thomas would just go straight to the Texas Hold'em poker rooms, but tonight he decided to play a little blackjack. But Thomas had hardly started looking at his first hand when he heard a ping and saw he'd gotten a direct message from another player with the screen name Tall Hot

Blonde. Her private message just said to him, you're in the wrong room. This room is for kids. Thomas had a moment of panic. He hadn't checked to see whether this chat room slash game room was for kids or adults, and suddenly he wondered what would happen to him if it was revealed that he was a 40-something-year-old man playing with kids. Would he be kicked off of Pogo? Thomas did not want that to happen. Thomas loved Pogo. Playing these online card games and chatting with random strangers in the chat rooms had become an escape from the daily drudgery of his job and his routine. It also took his mind off the fact that in the last year or so, he'd had more and more problems

with impotence, and that had put a strain on his marriage. His wife, Cindy, wanted to talk to him about it and spend more time together. Thomas, on Cindy, wanted to talk to him about it and spend more time together. Thomas, on the other hand, wanted to just ignore it and be left alone. So it didn't take Thomas long to decide how he was going to respond to Tall Hot Blonde's message. A second later, Thomas, aka Marine Sniper, wrote back, Don't worry, I'm 18 years old. What about you? How old are you? While Tall Hot Blonde didn't tell Marine Sniper her real name, she did tell him that she was a 17-year-old high school senior who lived in western Virginia.

She liked sports, and she played on her school's softball and basketball teams, and she wasn't sure yet what she was going to do after high school. And what about him? She typed. Are you really a sniper? Sitting there in front of the computer screen, Thomas felt a sudden intense rush of excitement. The question had given him a very unexpected thrill. He would never meet this girl. And here he had an opportunity to play the part of his much more interesting and exciting and exaggerated younger self. So Marine Sniper told Tall Hot Blonde that, yes, well, soon he would be

a sniper. He was a Marine recruit for now who went by the nickname Tommy. He was about to start boot camp soon, then he would go to sniper school, and then after that he would deploy to combat in Iraq. By the time Thomas had shut down his computer two hours later, Tall Hot Blonde had sent him pictures of herself wearing a small yellow bikini that showed off both her curves and her flat belly. She'd eventually told him that her real name was Jessica, but she went by Jessie, spelled J-E-S-S-I. She had one brother, and her family lived in a small house in the backwoods of West Virginia, where nothing exciting happened, at least not since she had come in first place in a local beauty contest back in 2002. As Thomas turned out the downstairs

lights and went upstairs to join Cindy in bed, he kept seeing those pictures of Jessie. With her wide smile, shoulder-length straight blonde hair, and long tanned legs, she more than lived up to the promise of her screen name. Thomas was already secretly hoping that the next time he logged on to Pogo, Tall Hot Blonde would be waiting for him. Thomas was still thinking about those pictures of Jesse when he woke up the next morning. And as soon as dinner that night was over, Thomas headed straight for the family computer. A minute later, he was on Pogo. Despite telling himself that this time he was just going to play a couple of hands of

Texas Hold'em and then log off, Thomas kept clicking on his Pogo chat feature inbox, hoping he would see a private message come through from TallHotBlonde. And he didn't have to wait long. As soon as he saw the words, Tommy, is that you? pop up on his screen, Thomas felt that same thrill course through him that he'd felt the night before. And this time, there was no hesitation at all. Thomas began to add one lie after another to the fantastical story he told Tall, Hot, Blonde about Marine Sniper Tommy. After that, every night over the next few weeks, Marine Sniper and Tall, Hot, Blonde told each other intimate details about their lives.

While the real Thomas Montgomery still got up early every morning to go to Dynabraid and spend eight hours making components for power tools, in the evenings he became the man he had dreamed of being. While Thomas was overweight and balding, Marine Sniper was 6'2'' tall and 190 pounds of pure muscle. While Thomas came home after work and walked the family dog and took his daughters to swim practice, Marine Sniper had the broad shoulders that Jessie had said she liked, along with a black belt in karate. While Thomas wore glasses and covered his bald spot with a

ball cap, Marine Sniper looked a lot like a younger red-haired version of Hollywood heartthrob Harrison Ford. Soon, Jesse and Tommy had moved off of the Pogo chat feature and had started emailing each other and using Yahoo's instant messaging feature. Jesse's instant messenger name was Peaches0617, while Thomas went by Tommy Loves WV Fox. WV Fox stood for West Virginia Fox, clearly an allusion to Jesse. When Jesse finally asked Tommy to send her a picture, Thomas sent the headshot of himself that was taken almost 30 years earlier when he had graduated from boot camp. Even though it seemed fairly obvious that his picture was very out of date, Jesse didn't care. She was totally infatuated. And her fascination only grew

as Thomas started concocting a tragic and hard luck backstory for Tommy that would make Jesse feel protective and sympathetic. According to Thomas, Tommy's father had also been a Marine, Tommy's mother had died of cancer, and that had been such a terrible blow that Tommy's life had gone completely off the rails. In fact, his decision to join the Marines and become a sniper was so he could finally just make a fresh start with his life after a high school cheerleader had threatened to ruin his life by accusing him of rape. When Thomas told Jesse that before meeting her online, his plan had been to commit suicide in Iraq, Jesse had begged Tommy to stay alive for her sake.

Jesse worried endlessly about Tommy's safety, and she told him again and again that despite whatever mistakes he had made in the past, she was proud of him and would always stand by him. After reading that, Tommy told Jesse that the Marine motto, Semper Fidelis, which means always faithful, should be their motto too. Over the next six months, both Thomas and Jesse would become completely obsessed with their relationship, to the point where it was the only thing either of them ever thought about. Unlike 46-year-old Thomas, who struggled with impotence, 18 year old Marine sniper told Jesse that he had

nine inches worth of endowment. Meanwhile, Jesse sent Tommy dozens of pictures of herself. However, none of them were her in the nude. She was always wearing clothes or a bathing suit. But to Thomas, the hours he spent wondering what was under those bathing suits made her photos even more enticing. There was one picture in particular, the camera peeking up under her miniskirt from behind, that really stirred Thomas's imagination. Within weeks of meeting each other, Thomas and Jessie were having virtual sex every night, and Jessie was telling Tommy that she loved him. Whenever Thomas's wife, Cindy, walked over to him and asked what he was doing on the computer, Thomas would immediately click out of the chat and insist that he was just

playing online card games. And because Cindy was always asleep by the time Thomas eventually came to bed, she wasn't aware of the fact that Thomas was routinely staying up until two or three in the morning telling Jesse all about what his, quote, snake would like to do to his, quote, foxy lady down there in West Virginia. And when Cindy did try to talk with Thomas about spending more time together, one of the remedies that their minister had suggested when they sought help for Thomas's impotence, Thomas told her that it was her nagging and her criticism of him that had led to his impotence problem in the first place, and so he didn't want to spend more time with her. He wanted to spend less time

with her. Shortly after Marine Sniper and Tall Hot Blonde's online relationship had become very sexual, Thomas informed her that he had graduated from Marine Boot Camp and was now on active duty, and before long, he would be shipping out to Iraq. This is when Thomas introduced to Jesse his totally made-up father and former Marine, Tom Sr. His role would be crucial to keeping the Marine sniper fantasy alive. With the creation of Tom Sr., Thomas would be able to keep his daily connection to Jesse, who would be able to chat with Tom Sr. whenever Tommy was busy being an active-duty Marine. And Tom Sr. would be able to pass her messages along to his son when Tommy eventually deployed to Iraq. In addition to speaking with Jesse every day online, either as Marine Sniper or through Marine Sniper's dad, Tom Sr., real-life Thomas also started calling

17-year-old Jesse every day of the week as he drove to and from his job at Dynabraid, claiming that those were the only times he was off-duty from being a Marine. But even this added layer of connection to Jesse wasn't enough for Thomas, and in time, Thomas started to act very jealous. Whenever he noticed a new friend added to Jessie's MySpace page, MySpace was a very early social media platform, or saw that she was chatting with other people online in the public Pogo chat rooms, Thomas instantly suspected she had other boyfriends and therefore was cheating on him. And it was true that Tall Hot Blonde had become an accomplished cyber flirt and seemed to enjoy the power she had over Marine Sniper,

who showed absolutely no interest in any other girls. Tall Hot Blonde and Marine Sniper had their first lover's quarrel when Thomas became convinced that Jessie was sending pictures of herself to other internet admirers. Jessie did not deny the accusation. However, she told Marine Sniper that she was devastated by what he was claiming. And so, to make Tommy feel better, she sent him a pair of her red G-string panties, along with a silver key-to-my-heart keychain. She sent the package to Thomas's real address. He had said

that that was where his father lived and that he could forward any mail he got to Tommy wherever he was in the world. When Tommy received the panties, he forgave Jesse. However, his dad, Tom Sr., did not. Shortly after the panties arrived, Thomas, writing as Marine Sniper's father, Tom Sr., would send the 17-year-old girl a crude message calling her a bitch and accusing her of lying and trying to hurt his son. One evening, just before Christmas in December of 2005, so seven months after first meeting Jesse on pogo.com, Thomas once again chased his daughters off of the family computer and sat down to log into his Yahoo instant message account. For weeks leading up to that night, Thomas had begun talking incessantly to his co-workers at Dynabraid about how he was going to leave his wife, Cindy, and go

to West Virginia to be with this new woman who had come into his life. 22-year-old Brian Barrett, who was the co-worker who Thomas had overheard talking about having a pogo account, wasn't really surprised to hear what Thomas was talking about. Brian had heard lots of the old-timers at Dynabraid going on and on about their big plans for escaping their lives. But Brian and the rest of Thomas's co-workers had no idea that Thomas's mystery woman was actually just a 17-year-old girl. As Thomas' instant messenger account loaded up on the computer, he glanced over at Cindy, who was in her usual place on the sofa watching TV. He barely noticed all of the

Christmas decorations that his wife and his daughters had put up all over the living room that day. Because the only thing on Thomas's mind at that moment was what he was about to ask Jessie. He turned back to the family computer, and after exchanging a few casual messages with Jessie, Thomas got straight to the point. He told her that Tommy didn't know if he was going to make it out of Iraq alive. But before he shipped out, he wanted to marry Jessie. And would she have him? Jessie's answer came right away. Oh my god, yes, yes, she would marry her sweet, sexy Marine. The next night, when Thomas logged into his instant messenger account again, he saw excited

messages from Jessie telling Marine Sniper that she was already planning their first night in bed together. It would be her first time, she told him, but she was more excited than nervous. She also told Thomas that from now on, even before they officially got married, she'd be referring to herself as Jessica Blair Montgomery. Days later, another package of Jesse's panties arrived at the Montgomery house, and along with them was a set of engraved dog tags that read Tom and Jesse always and forever. Rationally speaking, Thomas knew that there was no way he could ever marry 17-year-old Jesse. But at the same time, he just could not accept that at some

point he would have to give up not just Jesse, but Tommy, the Marine sniper. And so at some point, shortly after asking her to marry him, Thomas made up his mind. He decided he would find a way to marry Jesse and have a real life with her outside of the internet. And to do that, he needed to become 18-year-old Marine sniper Tommy. And so on January 2nd, 2006, while he was on a break at Dynabraid, he pulled out a piece of stationery with the company logo at the top and wrote a letter that was part New Year's resolution

and part manifesto describing this vision he had for the future. It read, on January 2, 2006, Tom Montgomery, 46 years old, ceases to exist and is replaced by an 18-year-old battle-scarred Marine. He is moving to West Virginia to be with the love of his life. Thomas also wrote in this strange letter that Marine Sniper had more than two million dollars and would use that money to take care of Cindy and his two daughters, as well as help him build his new life with Jesse. At the end of this note, Thomas wrote,

quote, I wish I would know the exact time I would change to new Tom so I can prepare for it. After he signed his name to this letter, Thomas folded the piece of paper up and locked it in the toolbox he kept at work. In mid-March 2006, so two months after Thomas penned this New Year's resolution slash manifesto, one of his daughters, who was home from school and waiting for her mom and her dad to get home, was researching an assignment on the family computer when she heard a ping. Thomas had accidentally forgot to log out of his instant message account before he left for work that morning. Hello, I'm Emily,

and I'm one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And they don't get much bigger than the man who made badminton sexy. Okay, maybe that's a stretch. But if I say pop star and shuttlecocks, you know who I'm talking about. No? Short shorts? Free cocktails? Careless whispers? Okay, last one. It's not Andrew Ridgely. Yep, that's right. It's stone cold icon George Michael. From teen pop sensation to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet,

join us for our new series, George Michael's Fight for Freedom. From the outside, it looks like he has it all. But behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in turmoil. George is trapped in a lie of his own making, with a secret he feels would ruin him if the truth ever came out. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Music with your Prime membership? That's right. All your favorite Mr. Ballin episodes can be heard on Amazon Music ad-free, and you'll always be the

first one to catch our new episodes. But that's not all. You get access to other amazing shows like Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Morbid, 48 Hours, and 2020, all ad-free too. And you know what that means. Uninterrupted listening, so no more cliffhangers. Amazon Music is your home for all things true crime and offers the most ad-free top podcasts, so we definitely have something for you. And it's already included in your Prime membership. To listen now, all you need to do is go to amazon.com slash ballin. That's amazon.com slash ballin, or download the free Amazon Music app. It's just that easy.

Okay, back to the story. And so the message that his daughter received came from Jesse, tall, hot, blonde, and it was very sexually explicit and was clearly intended for Thomas. Thomas's daughter stared at the message, shocked. Could it really be for her father? Feeling sick, she pushed herself away from the computer, and she called her mom, telling her there was something she needed to come home and look at. Hearing the strain in her daughter's voice, Cindy left work, and 15 minutes later, she was sitting at the family computer,

scrolling through the hundreds of emails that her husband had written to a girl who went by the names TallHotBlonde and Peaches0617. Horrified, Cindy finally turned away from the computer and went upstairs and started searching through her husband's drawers and closet, where she would find a treasure trove of handwritten letters and pictures, lingerie, and a set of dog tags engraved with Tom and Jesse always and forever. When Thomas finally pulled into the driveway that night, Cindy was waiting for him inside. driveway that night, Cindy was waiting for him inside. As the mother of two teenage daughters, she could not believe that her husband had tricked and seduced a teenage girl who had never even been outside of the state of West Virginia into falling in love with an 18-year-old Marine who did not even exist. When Thomas stepped through the front door holding his car keys and lunchbox. He saw his wife standing in front of him.

She looked sad and furious, and she was holding a handful of frilly girl's underwear, including a bright red g-string. Thomas knew, like a punch right to his stomach, that his wife knew his secret. And when he tried to act surprised, like he had no idea what Cindy was holding out to him, even trying to step around her into the hallway, Cindy was not convinced even for a second. Instead, she walked over to the family computer and began reciting out loud some of the lewd things Thomas had sent Jesse. Cindy told Thomas that what he was doing and what he had done was not only totally inappropriate and totally disgusting, but it was

likely illegal. Jesse was a minor. And if that wasn't enough, Cindy told Thomas that his own teenage daughter had been the one to discover this raunchy affair. Cindy told her husband that he only had two options, give up this totally inappropriate, bizarre fantasy, or they could get divorced. As he stood there in stunned and guilty silence, Cindy told him that for now, he just needed to go away. Go walk the dog, go cut the grass, anything. But right now, she couldn't even stand to be near him. Thomas said nothing and turned around and walked back outside. As soon as Cindy was alone, she sat down at the kitchen table and

composed a careful letter to Jesse, and as she slipped it inside of an envelope, she also enclosed a recent picture of the Montgomery family. Let me introduce you to these people, Cindy had written. The man in the center is Tom, my husband since 1989. He is 46 years old, and here are our two daughters, 12 and 14 years old. Cindy told Jesse that there is no Tommy. There is no Marine Sniper. Cindy closed the note with a piece of advice for Jesse. Do not trust the words you read on a computer. When Jesse got Cindy's letter, she was completely crushed. Before breaking off all contact with the 46-year-old man she now knew had been posing as Marine Sniper, she sent Thomas a series of furious and hurt messages asking him how he could have done this to her and telling him he should have to go to jail for what

he had done. For his part, Thomas, who still lived in the same house with his wife and daughters but slept in the basement, told Jesse he was sorry and that he never meant to hurt her. And Thomas told his wife Cindy that although he was totally ashamed of what he had done to her and to the family, he was relieved that she had found out, because the guilt and the stress of this double life had become an unbearable burden. And for the next six weeks, even though Thomas still occasionally logged onto Pogo.com to play cards, he did not hear another word from TallHotBlonde. But it would turn out, despite no longer communicating with Thomas, Jessie was nowhere near forgetting or forgiving what Thomas had done to her. She also began to wonder if maybe the letter she had received from Cindy was a trick.

Maybe, thought Jesse, Cindy was really another girl who was also in love with Marine Sniper, and maybe Cindy had made up that whole story about Tommy being 46 years old and married with kids so that Cindy could have Tommy all to herself. Within two weeks of getting Cindy's letter and the picture of the Montgomery family, Jessie was back on Pogo, but this time she was looking for friends of Marine Sniper who could tell her the truth about him. On April 17th, Jessie got her answer. She had found another person online that Tommy had once mentioned to her.

It was a user who went by the name Beefcake1572. He was a 22-year-old student at Buffalo State College who also worked part-time at a company called Dynabraid in upstate New York. This man's name was Brian Barrett. Again, the same Brian Barrett who Thomas had overheard talking about Pogo that had inspired Thomas to log into Pogo in the first place. And it didn't take much time in a private chat room for Tall Hot Blonde and Beefcake to put together all the pieces of the puzzle. It also didn't take long for Beefcake to fall completely in love with Tall Hot Blonde, who wasted no time sending him the same titillating pictures she had sent to Thomas. Jessie was Brian's ideal girl, blonde, beautiful, and athletic. When Beefcake confirmed

that his co-worker, Maureen Sniper, really was 46-year-old Thomas Montgomery, and that he really did have two teenage daughters and a wife named Cindy, Jesse was crushed all over again. She was also very, very angry. As she and Beefcake got together in the Princess Priceless room on Pogo and played lotso, which is a cross between bingo and the lottery, Jesse told her new admirer how hurt and heartbroken she was over Thomas's betrayal. It didn't take long for Beefcake to feel just as outraged as Jesse over the predatory and creepy behavior of this older man he once thought of as a good friend and co-worker. So by the time Jesse got around to asking Beefcake if he would help her teach Thomas

Montgomery a lesson, Brian, dazzled by Jesse's beauty and attention, was all in. He asked her, what do you need me to do? A couple weeks later, at the end of April, 46-year-old Thomas Montgomery logged onto Pogo. However, as soon as he was logged in, he got a message saying that his account had been suspended due to complaints of inappropriate activity. Stunned, Thomas logged off and started going on some of the other gaming sites he often visited outside of Pogo, and what he saw on them horrified him. On each of these other sites were forums where members of the site could post questions or offer insights or whatever they wanted to talk about, and then other people on the site could click on those individual posts and they could

comment and interact with them. And when Thomas logged into each of these other gaming sites, the forum page where all these different topics are listed was the first thing he saw. And immediately, he saw his real name in several of these posts. And when he clicked on them, he saw the posts were all about how he was this 46-year-old predator and pedophile who posed as this Marine sniper. When Thomas checked to see who had written these posts, his heart sunk. They were all from either TallHotBlonde or Beefcake1572, who he instantly recognized as his co-worker, Brian. Meanwhile, Jesse and Brian became closer and closer. When Jesse suggested to Brian that he tell his co-workers at Dynabraid what Thomas had done, Brian didn't waste any time.

He asked Thomas' co-workers if they remembered all that talk from Thomas about him leaving his wife Cindy and moving to West Virginia to be with this new mystery woman he had met. Then Brian put out the word that the mystery woman was really a 17 year old girl that Thomas had met online by posing as an 18 year old marine sniper. It didn't take long for Thomas to start seeing the dirty looks and hearing the nasty comments all around work. He was now sure that half the people at his office thought he was a loser and a predator and parents no longer wanted him to be around their kids. Also, Brian outright told Thomas that he and Jesse were now an item, and

that every time they interacted, things got hot and heavy. At home, banished to the basement and now using his own computer, Thomas sent Jesse an instant message that hinted at suicide. It said, you can say goodbye forever to me and Tommy. At first, Jessie was glad to see the damage her revenge campaign was doing to Thomas, and it was clear that Brian was also getting a thrill out of it as well. But eventually, Jessie started to feel bad about what was happening, and in a series of text messages that started a few weeks after she and Brian had begun publicly shaming Thomas, Jessie was back in touch with Thomas, telling him how much she missed her Tommy, and that Thomas was all she had left of her, quote, sweet, sexy Marine.

Maybe, she told Thomas, they could just be friends, and together they could keep the memory of Marine sniper Tommy and the passion they had shared alive. But despite Thomas agreeing to this just be friends arrangement, his relationship with Jesse pretty much immediately became very sexual and intimate again, except now it was not just Thomas and Jesse, it was Thomas, Jesse, and Brian. Despite Jesse's promise to Thomas that she would end her relationship with Brian, she didn't, and instead she began going back and forth between the two men. And so in time, the hours that she and Thomas would spend messaging each other late into the night and early morning veered crazily between declarations of love and jealous

outbursts from Thomas, who kept seeing Brian's username pop up alongside TallHotBlonde on Pogo, other gaming sites, and on Jesse's MySpace page. Meanwhile, the tension between Thomas and Brian when they were at Dynabraid together was palpable. Thomas was furious with Brian, not only for interfering with his relationship with Jesse, but for also very publicly humiliating him. And Brian, who had developed real feelings for Jesse, had become furious with Thomas and felt like he really was a predator and a pedophile and should just go away. Thomas and Brian would openly argue and fight with each other at work, and then when they went home, they would get online and spend hours

accusing each other of telling lies about their relationship with Jesse. But by mid-May, Brian was just tired of the drama, and so he told Thomas that he was just going to go to West Virginia, and he was going to see Jesse in person and likely become intimate with her in person and then she would be all his. Even though Jesse told Brian, no, do not make a trip to West Virginia, the damage to Thomas was done. From that moment forward, Thomas became obsessed with the idea that Jesse and Brian were going to take their relationship out of the cyber world, where Thomas felt like he had a chance with Jesse, into the real world, where 46-year-old Thomas stood no chance. By early September 2006, this obsession had made it impossible for Thomas

to be even remotely civil with Jesse. His messages to her had become so crude and so violent that Jessie had just begun to ignore them. And when she did this, it only made Thomas more angry and more obsessed. At 10.16 p.m. on the night of September 15, 2006, Brian clocked out of his shift at Dynabraid. It was 63 degrees Fahrenheit and cloudy outside. The quiet and the light northeast breeze were a welcome relief after the noise and bright lights inside the machine shop. As Brian walked across the nearly vacant parking lot, he kept his head down and fished his car keys out of his pocket.

When he got to his white pickup truck, he polished a small smudge off the driver's side door before opening it up and hopping inside. Before Brian put his keys into the ignition, he paused and noticed that the back left side of his truck seemed to be sagging slightly. But before he could figure out why it was doing that, he noticed off to his left in his peripheral vision, a shadowy figure was moving across the lot toward him. Two days later, early on Monday morning, September 18th, Clarence, New York police got a 911 call from the security guard at the Dynabraid equipment factory. He'd just found the body of a young man

who'd been shot dead at close range inside of his white truck that was parked in the Dynabraid parking lot. By the time the police arrived, so too had the first shift of Dynabraid workers. As the police set up a perimeter around the crime scene, co-workers stood by in total disbelief. Based on interviews with Brian's family who had not seen him all weekend, and with his co-workers who identified his truck and his body, along with records that showed when Brian had last left the Dynabraid factory, it only took police a few hours to come up with a preliminary theory about what had happened. Whoever killed Brian must have taken the young

man by surprise. Brian sat slumped in the driver's seat of the truck, leaning slightly towards his right, away from the closed window with the three bullet holes punched through it. There were bullet wounds in his upper left arm and jaw and a gaping hole in the left side of his neck. Police noticed that Brian's back left tire on his truck was flat, and when they checked, they saw someone had punctured it with a knife. Also, a.30 caliber carbine rifle shell casing, as well as a peach pit, were discovered at the scene of the crime. Brian's family was devastated. They had absolutely no idea who might have wanted to harm their eldest child. When police interviewed Brian's parents, neither of them were aware of any problems or arguments that Brian was having at home,

at school, or at work. But once police began interviewing Brian's co-workers at Dynabraid that Monday morning, they heard a very different story. It seemed to be common knowledge that Brian had had a serious falling out with a co-worker who had been acting more and more erratically in recent weeks. That co-worker's name was Thomas Montgomery, and it seemed like the two men had both been involved in an online relationship with the same woman, except she wasn't really a woman, she was actually a 17-year-old girl. Unable to locate Thomas, police were concerned, if he really was the killer, that Jessie, the 17-year-old girl,

could be in danger. So police in New York went through Brian's cell phone and found contact information for Jesse and then contacted authorities in Oak Hill, West Virginia and asked them to do a welfare check on the girl. But before the West Virginia police could conduct that check, detectives in New York got in touch with Thomas and pulled him in for questioning. Thomas denied that he had anything to do with Brian's murder, saying that he had been at a local restaurant the night before and had arrived home sometime between maybe 10 or 10.10 p.m., which meant he would have been home when Brian was still alive and inside the Dynabraid factory. Thomas would admit to police that yes,

he and Brian both did meet the same girl online, Jessie, and they had been squabbling over her. But Thomas said he would never hurt Brian. But it wasn't until investigators in New York heard back from police in West Virginia and tracked down additional cell phone data and spoke with Cindy Montgomery that they were able to piece together who had really killed Brian and why. At 1.33 a.m. on September 13th, 2006, so two days before Brian was killed, Jessie heard the ping of an incoming instant message. When she looked at her computer screen, she saw that it was from Thomas. It said, you're a whore and that's all you ever will be. For weeks, ever since Brian had told Thomas that he planned to drive to West Virginia to see Jesse in person,

Thomas' messages to Jesse had become extremely abusive. Jesse had tried to calm him down to get him to become once again her sweet sexy marine sniper named Tommy, but it just wasn't working. And so now seeing this new message come across, Jessie took up a new strategy. She began ignoring him. And this drove Thomas mad. A day later on September 14th, Jessie heard the ping of yet another incoming message asking her if she planned to have sex with one of her boyfriends that day. Again, Jesse just ignored him. A day after that, early on the morning of Friday, September 15th, the day Brian was killed, Thomas woke Jesse up with a phone

call screaming at her in an uncontrollable rage. She hung up on him. Thomas Montgomery had reached a mental tipping point. On one hand, he knew that he could never really have a real life with Jesse. He also knew that his jealousy and rage were getting out of control. But the same part of him that had written out that New Year's resolution slash manifesto back on January 2nd, 2006, felt that he still possessed somewhere inside the young Marine sniper whom Jesse had loved and who represented to Thomas the best version of himself. And so on September 15th, after screaming at Jesse on the phone and hearing the click as she hung up on him, Thomas made up his mind. He had waited long enough for his transformation from middle-aged machinist with a wife and two daughters into that battle-hardened marine sniper who could and would

defend what was his. That evening, Thomas told his wife, Cindy, that he was going to go out to dinner by himself. Once outside in his car, he looked in the back seat to make sure his supplies were all there. Then he turned on his car and drove to a fast food place near Dynabraid. After eating, Thomas left the restaurant and drove the short distance to Dynabraid. Entering the parking lot behind the factory, Thomas chose a parking space that was far away from the door where he knew Brian would exit. After his car was parked, Thomas climbed out of his vehicle. He was glad it was cloudy, and he was glad that the parking lot where he now stood was almost empty except for Brian's white pickup truck. Thomas finally finished eating his peach and dropped the pit onto the parking lot pavement. Now, as a Marine sniper, Thomas had to get the

timing of this mission exactly right. He needed to get close enough to the truck to take his kill shots before Brian had a chance to drive away, but he also had to let Brian get into the truck without giving away his own position. And on his way in for the kill, he needed to make a silent puncture with his knife in the back left tire. This was his insurance policy. In case Brian did see him, it would make it very difficult for him to escape. Just after 10.16 p.m., the factory door opened and Brian walked outside into the parking lot. Brian didn't even look up as he walked towards his truck. To Thomas, what he was about to do almost seemed too easy. As soon as

Brian had climbed into the truck and closed the driver's side door, Thomas was there like a shadow, and a second later he had fired three shots through the closed window. Even through the blood spatter on the inside of the car window, he saw the massive hole in Brian's neck and knew that he was dead or was definitely going to die. Backing away from the truck, Thomas quickly returned to his own car, not realizing that he had dropped one of his shell casings. On his drive back to his house, Brian hoped his wife and daughters would be asleep. That way no one could contradict him when he said he'd gotten home that night before Brian had actually left the factory.

But when police did interview Cindy a few days later, she would tell them that it was her recollection that her husband had not arrived home on the night of Brian's murder before 10.16 p.m. Cindy estimated that it was closer to 10.45 p.m. or later. And when police arrived at Dynabraid to question Thomas, he made a remark that instantly connected him, in the minds of investigators, to the peach pit they had found at the scene of Brian's murder. Thomas asked police if they could wait just a minute before questioning him so he could get the peaches he'd brought in for lunch out of his car so they wouldn't spoil in the sun. Although Thomas refused to give police a DNA sample, the police were able to pick

up his DNA from a can of soda, and they found that it matched the DNA on the peach pit they'd found at the murder scene. A search of Thomas's house did not turn up a.30 caliber carbine rifle, but it did turn up an old photo of Thomas's gun cabinet that contained the exact same gun. an old photo of Thomas' gun cabinet that contained the exact same gun. Thomas' computer told investigators the rest of the story. In thousands of messages and emails to Jesse and Brian, coupled with his collection of Jesse's lingerie and other gifts, Thomas detailed his obsession with Jesse and his jealousy and growing hatred for Brian. Later, police would also discover the letter that Thomas had written that he kept locked in his toolkit at work.

It was his New Year's resolution slash manifesto that described wanting to leave 46-year-old Thomas Montgomery behind and become instead his 18-year-old alter ego, Marine sniper Tommy. On November 27th, 2006, two months after Brian's death, police arrested Thomas and charged him with murder. And it was at this time that Thomas learned he was not the only person

pretending to be someone else online. When West Virginia law enforcement arrived at Jessie's house to do that welfare check on her, her mother arrived at the door. When police told her that her daughter, Jessie, was in danger following the murder of a man she had likely been involved with online, the woman was shocked and told them that Jessie was not home. When police told her that they really needed to get in touch with her immediately and go get her in their own vehicles if necessary, the mother suddenly broke down and started crying, and then told police that she really did have a daughter named Jessie. But that was not the Jessie they were looking for. She, the mother, a slightly overweight 46-year-old housewife with short brown hair, whose real name

was Mary Sheeler, was the 17-year-old girl, tall, hot, blonde. It would turn out, for more than 16 months, Mary Sheeler had used her daughter's real identity to enter into multiple online relationships with men, sending them, just as she had sent Thomas and Brian, hundreds of pictures of the real Jessie, her daughter. When investigators asked her why she did this, Mary said she had joined Pogo to relax and kill time. After that, she enjoyed the drama and power and attention she got from

manipulating the emotions of her many online admirers, none of whom she loved. In fact, she told investigators she was happily married to her husband of 23 years and was very devoted to her daughter, who had no idea any of this was happening and was off at college. But all that would change when the real 18-year-old Jessie discovered her own pictures and name all over the internet, along with details of how her own mother used her identity as bait for a catfishing scheme that left one man dead, one in prison, and two families in ruins. When police arrived at the jail and showed Thomas Montgomery a picture of the real tall, hot blonde, 46-year-old Mary Sheeler, the color from his face drained. Then, without saying a word, he turned around and faced the wall. He would eventually plead guilty and would be sentenced to 20 years in prison.

There were no charges that could be brought against Mary Sheeler for catfishing, but her husband would divorce her and her daughter, Jessie, would sever all ties with her. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you got something out of this episode and you haven't done this already, just as the five-star review button is about to blow out the candles on their birthday cake, lean in and blow them out yourself. Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Ballin Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Google, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.

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